What a Day today Was....

We started the day, as we’d said we would, getting up early for a 7:30 am departure.  I found out much too late (last night) that the hotel has two massage chairs in the lounge.  For NIS 5, or less than two dollars, you get a 15 minute massage.  I tried it out last night and again this morning.  Delightful!

The reason we got up to leave so early was to make good time getting into Jerusalem.  We could not have been more wrong.  We were stuck at the Dung Gate, so we went down through the Hinnem Valley and entered in through the Moroccan Gate, or Magreb, for African, gate.  As we drove through the Hinnem Valley, we passed by the site where Judas is alleged to have committed suicide.

Once inside, we saw the lines were incredibly long to get onto the Temple Mount.  The reason was this was the first day the Mount had been open for a number of days, because of the Eid feast.  We wanted to go, so we waited 1 hour and 45 minutes on line, only to have the guard tell us (within 5 minutes of the entrance) that the Mount was closed.  While it would reopen at 12:30, we had to get busy in order to come down to the bridge and cross into Jordan.

So we went through the Old City again.  It was incredibly crowded, with tour guides attempting to push their groups ahead of everyone, and even people with collars on behaving in unseemly ways. It bothered me and I wanted to have a “New York Moment,” but I didn’t.  It was hard, but I didn’t.

The lines to get into everything were really pushed and crowded.  We started out at the Sisters of Zion convent.  They have a quiet, private church in the rear of the convent that they let us use.  The chapel, it turns out, prominently displays 1 of 2 arches constructed by Hadrian in the second century.  The basilica was actually built around the arch, and the middle arch extends out into the Via Dolorosa.  It is called “Ecce Homo”, Latin for “This Man,” and is a testament to the time when Pilate says to the crowd “ Look,  here is your king.”

Archaeological evidence doesn’t always point us to the exact, actual place where events occurred (how could it?); what happened over time is that people demonstrated a need to commemorate events, and the places grew up around them. 

Of course, downstairs in the Sisters of Zion convent is the Lithostratos.  These are paving stones from the time of Hadrian with etchings on them that indicate a board game, Basilenda, or “The Making of a King.”  This was played by Roman soldiers, with dice, with condemned prisoners.  The roll of the dice determined the prisoners’ fate:  some were “proclaimed a king,” perhaps crowned and/or draped with a purple robe;  some were mocked; some were tortured – and all were eventually put to death.  The story is told in Mark 15.  Here, incidentally, is one of only two places in the Gospels where Jesus is called the King of the Jews.  Jesus and his followers never actually used the term.  Also in the Sisters of Zion convent is the Praetorium, where Jesus was brought before Pilate.

So we left the Convent and went on to the church of the Holy Sepulchre.  We actually went in through a back way because it was so crowded; this was good for me, as I’d never seen inside the Ethiopian Orthodox section of the Church. 

We went up to Golgotha, but the lines to revere the spot were just too long.  We took some pictures, then went down to the Empty Tomb, where the lines were also quite long.  There were just too many people.  As I said last year, if Heaven is like this, I don’t want to go.  And what I learned is that not everyone was there for religious reasons.  Some people were there to revere holy sites; some people were there to visit a museum.  All the tour guides were standing around explaining stuff, some people were milling around just looking, some people were revering sites, and it occurred to me that we are all here for different reasons.  It’s the same way with coming to Christ.  We can intellectualize our experience, we can try to explain or rationalize our experience, we can explore our emotionalize our experience – but at the end of the day, what is called into question is how we MANIFEST our experience with and of The Divine.  Who is Jesus Christ, and Where is He in Our lives?

After we left the church, we had lunch in Jerusalem and continued our walk through the Old City.  We went out through the Joppa Gate and met our driver.  We drove down to the border crossing at the Allenby Bridge.  The Israelis didn’t want us to pass because we didn’t have our Jordanian visas (which were on the other side of the border waiting for us).  Peter went and spoke to them and got us through. 

When we got to the place where they inspect our bags, and where the Jordanian guide was supposed to be, we found they weren’t there.  So Israel would not, of course let us go out (well, they might, but Jordan wouldn’t let us in.)  It turned out our Jordanian guides had gone to the wrong border.  They were supposedly an hour and then about a half hour away, but that was before I sat down to write.  They’re still not here. 

So we’ll keep waiting…..

We did keep waiting, and the Jordanian guides and our visas finally came.  We took the three hour drive to Wadi Musa, had a DELIGHTFUL dinner, and are now preparing to go to bed so we can hit Petra in the morning.  No more climbing for me;  the group wants to go up to the Place of High Sacrifice and all that;  I'm hiking in, sitting and having tea and checking out the Bedouin guards, and taking a carriage out.  I have neither need nor desire to climb the mountains in Petra.  Instead, I made arrangements to have a Turkish bath, including steam room, all over body scrub, and relaxing massage; Jacuzzi; Unlimited internet for two days, and a cup of tea in the Turkish bath, all for 13JD, or about $20.00 US.  That's way more my speed than climbing a mountain, and that's what I plan to do after Petra tomorrow.....