There are ten measures of beauty in the Universe...

The pace is quickening.  It is feeling a bit difficult to keep up.  Every morning I am getting up to study for an hour or so all the places that were the day before and the ones coming up the next day.  In the evening I try to read more, but there is too much.  This land is full of story and names, every inch repleat with history layered upon itself.  But we can try!

Leaving the lake of Galilee and the town of Tiberias we bussed to the second highest point in the Holy Land, Mount Tabor, home of the famed battle of Deborah and the spot commemorated as the place of the Transfiguration.  The shots below are facing East toward the Valley of Jezreel from the incredible early-20th cent. Church of the Transfiguration.

On to Megiddo where a well-respected and seemingly reasonable king of ancient Israel, Josiah, got the bold idea to interdict a pharaoh from Egypt en route to Assyria as the pharaoh and his army passed by Megiddo on the Via Maris (the ancient highway that ran from Egypt to Assyria that goes right by the town of Megiddo and later Capernaum).  Bad idea!  Josiah dies from an arrow with his last words being, “Take me away, I am badly wounded.”  Yup.

From there we traveled on the port wonder of Caesarea, on the Mediterranean coast south of Haifa.  This was a fetish project on an outrageous scale by Herod the Great, began in 22 BCE and featured a palace, gymnasium, and amphitheater, all set against the soft off-shore breeze of the sea.  It is a lovely spot and the technology that went into the aqueducts (some still standing!), the self-cleaning 400+ meter long jetty walls, and the natural sea water pool in front of Herod’s palace (in which he and others bathed naked) is mind-boggling. The foot below should give a sense of scale to the sculptures that decorated the grounds along with the many, many hundreds of marble columns shipped from Egypt for display in the amphitheater. Oh, and this entire city was self-funded by Herod.  The wealth this took is incomprehensible.

After a couple of hours of bussing we arrived in Jerusalem, with time to eat a dinner and get a quick walk into the Old City.  A book in my hotel room about Jerusalem begins by saying that there is a saying that “There are ten measures of beauty in the Universe, nine belong to Jerusalem, and one to the rest of the world.  Whoever has not seen Jerusalem in her glory has never seen a beautiful city in their life.”  As we entered Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate my jaw was dropped and I knew immediately that this was a city unlike any I have ever been before.  Inside the walls of the Citadel on our right a symphony was playing, Orthodox families swished by, Muslim shopkeepers leaned against the walls of their stores, smoking and beckoning us to consider their wares.  The smells of coffee, exotic spices, and incense rise from the stalls of the vendors.  There are bells ringing and the muezzin cries out from the Dome of the Rock.  This is a very special place indeed.

So what a way to start today by ascending the Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem in the morning light to contemplate the view from Dominus Flevit (The Lord Weeps) Church before walking down to the Garden of Gethsemane where pilgrims looked on at the trees and grounds where Jesus spent his last night before his arrest.  Onto the Western Wall where approached this last, unlikely vestige of the Second Temple and offered prayers for peace.  After a cue we then approached the Dome of Rock on Temple Mount, where Muslims say that Muhammed stepped up into his heavenly flight.  A walk through the Muslim quarter brought us to the Pools of Bethsaida where the man who was unable to enter the healing pools for 38 years was invited to stand and take up his mat.  

View of Jerusalem (looking West) from Mount of Olives.

Garden of Gethsemane.

Western Wall (the women pray on the other side of that divider at the far end of the photo).

Dome of the Rock (south perspective)

Pools of Bethsaida.

Perhaps I am too late, but I want to mention the presence of emotion in all this.  As I sat at Dominus Flevit today staring at Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives I reflected how I have rejoiced and struggled with the Christian faith for almost thirty years now.  I have read the stories with the names of the places in the photos above countless times.  Yet being here has allowed a kind of emotion to be present which is new.  Perhaps if I were alone at these sites it might be different, but being a pilgrim among thousands of other pilgrims, seeing them weep as they touch sacred sites, shedding my own tears as I sing with strangers, sharing sacred spaces of silence...everything feels amplified.   I am trying to allow it.  Too often I fear what others think about any kind of reaction that I might have to life which could be called religious; will I be measured for what or how I believe, do I have the energy to explain what I feel is true?  On and on.  Not here.  Not now.  I am letting myself feel deeply.  There is sorrow in the stones of the Western Wall along with hope.  There is a longing in the call to prayer from the minarets.  The ancient, unkept graves in the Kidron Valley on Jersualem’s East slope and the Ottoman-era wall that surrounds the Old City all contain emotion.  The pace is quickening.  I am trying to keep up with the names as a student, but I am also trying to keep up with the emotion as a human and a believer, here and now.