Monastery retreat in Lebanon (Photo: Emily O'Dell)
Paradise is there, behind that door, in the next room; but I have lost the key.
Perhaps I have only mislaid it.
You are blind and I am deaf and dumb, so let us touch hands and understand…
— Khalil Gibran
On Sunday, when I arrived at this door of a monastery in the mountains, my mind flashed back to the last time I wandered through Bab Touma, the Christian district of Damascus–just two months before the war in Syria began…
