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. 

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.

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.

Day Two

Am on the Sea of Galilee this evening in the town of Tiberias.  Can’t say much for the town yet since we arrived after dark, but it was nice to get a walk in along the Yigal Allon Promenade which features a wide, tiled boardwalk, sleepy restaurants, and clusters of young people eating ice cream in the small parklets along the water.  

It was a long day, and to be honest, not the kind of travel day that I am used to as a backpacker/free-lance style traveler.  I am with a tour and the objective is to see things...but the price for a long list is little time.  That said, we saw some pretty cool sites today starting with a stop on an arid bluff that looks out into the Judean desert and also down into Wadi Qelt, a river basin that runs between Jerusalem and Jericho and becomes active when there is consistent rain.  It is dry now.  From our bluff we looked down on St. George’s Monastery, a 5th century wonder carved into the rock beneath the cave where Elijah is believed to have been fed by ravens.  Eight Greek Orthodox monks live there.  Would love to have walked there and visited, but that will have to be a different time...

We moved on from there to the scrappy town of Jericho, the “world’s oldest continuously inhabited city”...they date this back to about 10,000 years ago!  The town is also famous for being the first city the wandering Israelites conquered after their desert sojourn (though archeological dating posits that the town was actually sacked about two hundred years before this fabled conquest). Mostly we went to Jericho to see the Mount of Temptation (below) which is the site said to be where Jesus experienced his 40 days of temptation.  This site is home to the Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Qurantal, which appears to be hanging on a cliff face.  Tiny caves poch-mark the hillside where monks flee and retreat for weeks trying to escape the annoying, half-clad tourists that bang on their door and want tours.  Everybody’s got their own deal!

Okay!  From here we descend down, down, down until we are well below sea level (somewhere around 300 meters) and begin to experience the change in geography as we enter the Jordan Valley and travel north up into the agricultural hub of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel.  It was also at this time of day that we crossed a highly militarized check-point as left the West Bank and re-entered Israel.  Teenagers with semi-automatic rifles walked down the aisle of the bus and I did not enjoy that.  Onward!

Our destination was Nazreth, the home town of Jesus and the holy family, likely a village of no more than thirty families in the early first century.  We walked around a bit in old part of town and then entered the Basilica of the Annunciation, built between 1960-9 and an absolute artistic marvel.  It’s the largest church in Israel/Palestine and one of the most stunning I have ever been in.  It is especially striking because the entire complex is rich with devotion and artwork highlighting Mary.

The walls of the courtyard and the interior feature murals of Mary and the lower level of the church is a grotto built at the traditional site of Mary and Joseph’s home.  The murals below only begin to hint at the beauty and vast diversity of modern artistic renderings which frame the experience of this incredible basilica.

The one above is from Mexico.

From the United States...

I have never really traveled like this before.  For example, we wear ear pieces when we are at the sites so that our group of 34 can all hear the guide (who is amazing, by the way) and on the bus he uses a microphone to tell us about the regions we are in and the sites coming up.  There is really very little free time in a day or choice about where to eat.  The hotels we stay in have many other groups our size who all eat in the same areas and are coming and going in their buses, like ours, at similar times.  And I accept that...this is not a rant.  I am just saying that this method has design behind it which is effective for its end and just different than the ways I have travelled before.  

I find spaces to cut out, take walks, find space.  Grateful for the chance to be here and looking forward to seeing the Sea of Galilee in the daylight tomorrow.  

Be well!

Day One

To even try to understand how an airplane can stay in the air 14 hours is beyond me.  Yet, the 787 actually got us to Tel Aviv despite me sitting by a guy who didn’t have proper elbow etiquette and slept with an open mouth much in need of a good brushing.  But, hey, I got here safe and sound and the bus ride to Bethlehem was fairly quick.  Went to bed last night around 1:00 (my time) after having been travelling for 20 hours (which began at 5 p.m. back home).  Actually, I can’t really make the time difference comprehensible in hindsight...let’s just say that the call to prayer from the Mosque of Omar across the street at 4:30 in the morning after going to bed at 1:00 was an invitation to acceptance.  It did bring back some fun memories of travelling in India yeas ago, though!

Pulled back the heavy curtains to my room and found this lovely view (below) into the Old City of Bethlehem.  In the shot below you will see St. Mary’s Syrian Church and the tiny, Da’ik St. which winds up to a market up on that hill (I managed to squeeze a walk in before we organized as a group and check out the fruit stalls and myriad other used shoe and sundries for sale...super warm people, lots of “Welcome” and some chatting with folks who asked me where I’m from).

The day began in earnest with my group by a visit to the Church of the Nativity, the oldest continual operational church that was built in 326 by Constantine.   This church features a series of rounded marble steps (see below) into which you descend.  The small opening expands into a candle-lit underground grotto hewn into the rock that features a 14-pointed star that people bow and kiss and photograph.  Did I mention that we were in line to have this moment with the star for almost two hours?  Also, I am the only non-Catholic on this trip and while the group was cued they did a Holy Rosary prayer that took about fifteen minutes.  I have been carrying and reading a book about the Aramaic spirituality of Jesus by Neil Douglas-Klotz and decided to read it and pray with Klotz’s Aramaic renderings while I held the priests alb over my shoulder to help him manage all the stuff he was carrying.  It was kind of a funny momemt.  My group saying, “Our Father which art in Heaven”, me reading a rendering of this “O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos, you create all that moves in light.”  They, “Hallowed by thy name”, my version “Focus your light within us - make it useful: as the rays of a beacon show the way.”  They, “Thy kingdom come”, my version, “Create your reign of unity now - through our fiery hearts and willing hands...”. And on and on...

  

Our path then took us to Shepard’s Field, the commemorative location of the shepards being told of the upcoming birth of Jesus, where there was a Mass in a cave (I ducked out of that one to get some fresh air and walk) and a beautiful moment of singing “Silent Night” in the Bedouin tent-shaped Church of the Angels.

 

Next we visted an amazing school called Holy Child of Bethlehem which features a therapeutic space of learning for kids and their families that have been traumatized through the violence that is not uncommon in their world.  Amazing to hear about their method, their interfaith commitment and also to sing and play with Yuli (who had long scars on his forearms and hands about which I did not ask).

Finally, we visited Hebron and the Tomb of the Patriarchs.  There is much that could be said of this town and the history of violence that has happened here with the Palestinians and Israeli settlers.  It is incredible to see the amount of barricades from the Israeli border guards and the Palestinian homes that lay ruined after being seized and razed in order to make the road wider for tour buses to do exactly what I did today (ugh).  Anyway, it is a VERY complicated city and charged with well-armored checkpoints and fervent worshippers bowing and singing inside this impressive 1st century Herodian complex which is supposedly built over the tomb that Abraham purchased for Sarah and was later buried there himself, along with Jacob, Leah, Isaac, and Rebekah.

Okay.  I am exhausted.  Tomorrow off to the world’s oldest city (guesses?) and then on to the Sea/Lake of Galilee.  Good night!

An Academic and a Leaf Blower

I am attending a conference on the realities how people explore and live their spiritual/social lives within a sense of belonging to multiple religions rather than just one. The conference is going very well when, suddenly, an unfortunate and overwhelming experience of boredom arises and detonates in my brain and body. The well-intentioned and well-educated voice of the presenter becomes a drone that I cannot detangle into coherent thoughts and I decamp from my stiff wooden chair to a to a quiet space at the back end of the conference hall hidden by cloth partitions. We are on the fifth floor and it's a beautiful view that looks out over an autumnal scene of the university's central square. The trees are in full fall regalia and dazzling in their final show of hope before the long, wet winter sets in. It is dry, that is, the speech goes on and the speaker's voice is relentlessly mono-dynamic and firmly committed to the dense repose of academic-speak. It goes on and on and I listen to the words, familiar with the ethos, my gaze wondering over the square. It feels good to stand. I finally realize that while the words are drifting into my mind it is actually a leaf blower that I hearing. A worker is bundled in a large yellow coat and over-sized pants like the kind people wear on the tarmac at airports. She is bearing a gas powered leaf blower on her back. I can just hear it, even five stories up behind a glass window with a prominent academic droning on in the speakers directly above my head. The task at hand is to herd the disparate, dry leaves scattered throughout the square toward an opening in the low bulwark wall where students sit and talk when the sun shines. The leaves curl and swirl like a wave in the push of the invisible, manufactured wind. They spray out and only loosely obey the intention of the task. They drift up, and over, and out, and away, in their doomed campaign to maintain chaos and decorate the (now) noisy square. The speaker is talking about multiple religious belonging. It is the theme of the entire conference. How a person can claim (or how they might fear to claim) truths from numerous traditions within their person or congregation. Exclusivist claims of religions hold people in (or down) even as they hold out new possibilities of being and expression. The speaker is wrestling with the tensions of traditional structures of belief to open themselves to new modalities of hybridity and innovation. And to his credit, and credentials, the speaker is making some very salient points of which I might even agree with some. But no matter.... I am in the square. I am with the leaves as they resist the machine of conformity even as they loosely lilt and lift, drift over and around the bulwark opening and out of sight. In all of this, as the words move and the leaves move, I never see the air that becomes wind or words. And I find room for a smile thinking about how the leaves do not change as they move over the wall. Push them around as much as you like; they are the same as before, only in new place of being.

Consciousness and Community with Animals

Hey, all! Here is a link to a talk I gave about consciousness in the human and in our non-verbal partners in consciousness...the animals!