Week 14 - The Blank Ticket

On a white table in the center of bright white room there lies a small piece of card paper. On it is what appears to be the likeness of a plane ticket. It says of its face, ALL EXPENSES PAID. Observing the entirety of the ticket, however, there is no note as to where this ticket is for. No destination. It is blank like the bright white room.

A pencil lies on the white able next to the ticket. Maybe to fill in the blank and complete the mystery. But what to write? Where to?

England? The rolling green countryside with its magnificent towering castles and quaint, tightly woven villages with clothesline strung up between the 200 year old homes. And its amazing rugged coastlines that harken to an age when the Royal Navy dominated the waves of the earth. Or London with its unlimited attractions including the Crown Jewels and Buckingham Palace. That would be nice, but England is too posh and western. It has to be more exotic.

The white pencil erases England from the ticket.

Italy? Much more exotic. A different language and culture, different food, and very different history. A more ancient land blanketed with ruins and fortresses. Roman cities and roads two thousand years old can still be seen and touched. From Venice to Milan, the choices are literally endless. And then there is Rome. The things you read about standing right in front of you, a breathing incarnation of early western civilization contained within a single city. Yet even Rome, the once greatest city on earth, in all its glory, still lacks that certain qualcosa di speciale.

The white pencil erases Italy from the ticket.

Isreal? A hotbed for violence and unrest, and yet a beacon that summons millions to its borders to offer patronage and receive spiritual renewal. A tiny stretch of the most historically saturated soil in the world. Its culture entirely different from the west its food even more unique, this land of divided religions has seen more wars and bloodshed than maybe anywhere else. Even so, it is a land where one man, two thousand years ago, sparked a flame that grew into a roaring inferno that shattered Rome and Uprooted England, and transformed the whole of the earth and its people. The very ground where his feet once trod, are waiting. The home to the world's largest religion; a country and its capital of Jerusalem; the bedrock of history itself. A singular, soul invigorating experience of culture, history, and religious pilgrimage all united onto one line of a single blank ticket.

The white pencil lays still on the white table, the blank ticket now missing. The white room empty.