Day Three

Been thinking a lot about layers today.  Maybe it started yesterday with seeing the Tel al-Sultan archaelogical site outside of Jericho that has detected 29 different layers of constructed civilization in the same spot.  Or maybe it has been the ongoing translation by our guide of the multiplicitous definitions and connotations in the Hebrew words and names that surround us and compromise the heart of the biblical/geographic narrative through which we are moving.  But I have been thinking about layers today, and even feeling a sense of collapse in time, a folding back of history on itself, the past being present, tangible, and only the thinnest layer away or maybe even the layer upon which I stand.

(Okay, this picture is a little arty, but these are adorable little conch shells that comprise the beach on Galilee and it was getting toward evening and the Golan Heights were in the background and I just decided to get arty!!!)

Because today we went to Capernaum on the north coast of Galilee.  This is where Jesus spent most of time in the three short years of his public life.  It was his base, situated on a popular road (the Via Maris, that linked Syria to Egypt) and a place where he gathered disciples of the fishermen who lived and worked in this village.  The Church of the Loaves and Fishes is situated here in a feat of modern architecture, literally suspended like a massive disc above the excavated floor plan of a humble residence believed to be Peter’s family home.  This is the town where Jesus figured himself out, started healing in public, started speaking out against the disease of wealth that he must have observed first-hand as a laborer in the nearby town of Sepphoris (just outside of Nazreth and the most active hub of employment in the area at the time).

After this first stop in Capernaum  we bused 80km to a gorgeous park called Banias, which is a headwaters of the river Jordan and site of a massive Roman park of monuments to Augustus and various gods including Zeus and Nemesis.

It was to this spot that Jesus walked with his disciples and asked them who people say he is.  Then he asked who they say he is and we encounter the famous proclamation of Simon that Jesus is the anointed one, to which Jesus demands secrecy and changes Simon’s name to Peter, the rock upon which the church would be built.  Today Christians venerate this spot and reflect upon this question in the context of their own lives.  The Romans are long since gone yet pilgrims from all over the world travel here, walk the grounds and reflect.  Layers.

(This is a picture of me taken by a nice Korean couple in the early hours of the morning.  The perspective is facing north, right where I would be headed in just a few minutes toward Capernaum)

The day concluded with a stop off at St. Peter’s restaurant for a fish dinner, but I wanted to walk and headed out on a trail that led north along on the Galilee.  There was no one around.  Not a soul.  It was getting toward dusk and I had a chance to sit for a long while under the shade of a giant eucalyptus tree and look over the beautiful scene of the Jordan river delta pouring into Galilee set before the (now) golden Golan heights.  It was a meaningful time.  So many stories centered around this very spot, this very lake, these hills...  And here I am. 

Started walking again and the meditative element of the stroll switched to cave-man mode when I out of the corner of my eye I saw a very sizeable animal’s back as it ducked into a very nearby bush.  Wasn’t a deer.  What the hell was that!?  As one does, I calmly picked up a good sized rock and decided that is about as far into this delta woods that I need to go.  Had to circle back at some point anyway and rejoin the others on a boat ride back to Tiberias during sundown.

(This is my friend, Timothy Mullner, and I on a wooden boat getting ready to sail to Tiberias)

A long day and a deep one....  Oh, I forgot to mention how after sunset the skin of the lake was matte as a sudden East wind started kicking up little waves.  It probably wouldn’t be long until it was totally dark, and how those waves could quickly grow to the size of a bow, or more, with the right storm.