Anafora

We traveled north of Cairo on the Alexandria Desert Road to a Coptic Retreat center.  Anafora is a compound surrounded by fruit, olive, date and other trees. It is a sea of green that has burst out of the desert. It was created as an ecumenical place where people from many backgrounds and many nations can come and live together and form relationships that cross the boundaries that separate many of us. It was built upon the idea of the monastics, i.e., let go of the trappings of this world and the frames that tend to categorize humans such as class, occupation, gender and ethnicity and build an alternative community. Bishop Thomas the founder of Anafora and its chief visionary describes the mission of the center as a place to “teach active pacifism to solve the problems of the world.”