It’s the little things...

Am learning that when on a pilgrimage it is not only the marquee events that hold the meaning, it is also the little things.  We have had two injuries in our group on this pilgrimmage.  The first happened two days ago as we ascended stairs toward Dome of the Rock in the Temple Mount, a pilgrim in our group fell and hit her nose which bled badly and was cut and scrapped.  And yesterday our host was talking in the front of the bus when the driver needed to make an abrupt stop causing our host to fly forward and hit his head on the windshield, cracking it in a mosaic ring.  None of us planned on these events, yet we responded as we could and cared for the ones who were hurt.  These events are forever a part of our experience, yet would we have written them into an itinerary?  Do I, or could I, believe everything is needed?

The mornings have been an unexpectedly powerful time of reflection for me.  I have opted to rise very early, hours before I need to, in order to have space to reflect and consider the movements of the day ahead and the one behind me.  The experience of being here and visiting these places is so laden that I feel I can’t digest it, can’t center in it.  Yet isn’t this the mark of a mystery or that which some call transcendence?  I think maybe so.

For example, today I walked the Via Dolorosa, the path that tradition has determined is the one that Jesus walked through (and out of) Jerusalem on his way to crucifixtion.  The path begins in the Muslim quarter in the courtyard of a little chapel which was absolutely packed with groups beginning the same walk I was about to take, the same walk that millions of pilgrims have taken, and millions more will take.  Our guide reminded us that when Jesus walked this route is was Friday, a very busy time as families are at the markets getting the supplies they need for the Sabbath that would begin at sundown.  The commotion around us should not be a distraction in any way, rather, it is a part of the walk that we were to do.  Maybe a week ago I would have thought about this experience as a sleepy, quiet, reflective, early morning walk.  No.  There were hundreds of pilgrims present walking through the tiny streets of the Old City, proceeding from station to station along the way toward the most sacred site for Christians, the Holy Sepulchre (home to the sites of Calvary, Golgotha, and the stone of unction, and the empty tomb).

 The Stone of Unction 

Not a station, rather an unmarked spot on the wall of the Old City venerated for where Jesus put his hand when he fell carrying the cross.  People were touching and kissing it as they passed.

One of the many, many mosaics in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  Each tile piece is not even 1/4” wide.

I have never walked the stations of the Cross in any Catholic Church, so it was a revelation to be learning about these sites in the past couple of days and then to be walking them this morning.  Banged my knee on a stone curb as I kneeled, pushed one of our pilgrims in her wheelchair for most of the middle of the walk while helping to carry her chair when she walked, watched pilgrims weep on the stone of unction.  Yes, I made this walk this morning, but it is the little things (like the mosaic pictured above) that aggregate to make an experience.  And so these blog posts feel somewhat futile in that an entire post seems like one tile added to a mosaic when ten thousand more little tiles are needed to tell the tale that has been.  

Consider this image below.  It is a photo that I took at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum earlier today on an afternoon excursion I took there via the trolley.  It is an actual German cattle car donated to the museum by the Polish authorities, parked on a rail line that extends out toward a 2.5 acre monument grounds commemorating the names of 5,000 Jewish communities decimated in the Holocaust.  I sat and pondered this installation for over a half an hour, likely, and found it to be inexhaustible.  The sun is producing golden light on the car and the forested valley that it overlooks, there was stillness all about.  I haven’t even mentioned the concrete walls behind it that feature the harrowing testimony of Holocaust survivor Avraham Krzepicki describing being crammed into one of these very cars and travelling toward a concentration camp.  It just goes on and on...

 

Perhaps you are starting to sense that I won’t be able to do this, or maybe shouldn’t try.  That to try to offer every detail, to chronicle the sites and scenes one by one is no longer possible.  It must be given up.  Maybe I should say that this is the last night I have in Jerusalem.  I so hope to return someday and that my plans for a return in Spring of 2019 can come about.  Maybe I need to return to prove I was here, to continue this project of attempting to understand that I have been here...and these thoughts even while I am here.  This is how it goes.

Maybe I will conclude with the image above.  This is in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  It is called the Catholicum and is opposite the Tomb of the Holy Sepulchre (which is a stand alone structure in the heart of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre...I know).  This photo, the Catholicum, is the Greek Orthodox cathedral and it has a a little rose-colored basin (in the foreground) which contains a circular stone marked with a cross and known as Omphalos, or “navel”.  They believe it is the center of the world.  I just want to pause a moment and let that sink in....  (pause)    What would it take for me to understand how they understand the Omphalos?  How to hold this in mind (heart?) when just the other day I walked around the Dome of the Rock which is the third most sacred site in the world for Muslims yet is considered the considered the center of the world for many Jews (because it is believed to be the site of the binding of Isaac and was perhaps the site of the inner sanctum of the First Temple of Solomon)?  What does it mean to recognize a center, or (and this might be more relevant for me), what does it mean to not be able to recognize a center, to not be able to point there or there and say, know, and touch a real center to reality?

Further, this is not a note of despair or a disparagement.  Actually, these riddles of faiths and the side-by-side Ultimate Realities that comprise this place raise the questions which are exactly my gratitude for this experience.  Because you will not solve Jerusalem or reconcile it to an order of one mind.  That there is too much, that is the miracle.