Pictures from Jerusalem

Bringing to mind Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

The stones Jesus walked on, as he made his way to Golgotha carrying his cross.

The Holy Sepulchre where Jesus was lain after his crucifixion, and from where he rose on the third day.

Fridays in Lent

Today is the Friday before Palm Sunday, a Day of Penitence for Franciscans around the world.  Counting Good Friday, there are seven Fridays in Lent, today is the sixth--six being an imperfect number because it is one short of seven, the perfect number. 
Today, in preparation for next Friday, I sought out (via Google) the booklet I bought in Jerusalem last year.  I have the booklet "someplace safe", which means I'll come across it in a very logical place but when I'm not looking for it.  That happens to me all the time.  But I knew it was online, and here it is: the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem.  This is the way I prayed the Stations of the Cross with Franciscans in Jerusalem one Friday afternoon.

Stations of the Cross for children

Here's a simple yet meaningful way for children (or those of us who refuse to grow up) to walk the via dolorosa.  As I viewed this series of meditations, I remembered the two weeks I spent at station 3 of the via dolorosa last year.  I remember each of the stations, how it felt to walk with the Franciscans on my last Friday in Jerusalem.  It's hard to hold back the tears. 

forty days and forty nights

Lent is my favourite time of year.  I know it's crazy.  Most people dislike it because of the tradition of giving up things we like to do or eat or whatever.  I've given up chocolate and coffee and alcohol in the past.  But I don't usually have enough of any of these things to make it any sort of penance.  This year, I've given up playing solitaire on the computer.  OUCH!  I really have to slap my fingers hard.  It's how I get through reading boring emails. 
Lent is more about preparing for Easter.  This time last year, we were in England.  It was our last few days of a six-week trip, two weeks of which had been spent in the Holy Land. 

the view from the tram taking us up Temptation Mountain

Going through the check-out to leave Tel Aviv on February 16th, (an experience more arduous than entering Israel) my suitcase was scanned. "Did you go to the Dead Sea?" the Israeli woman asked me.  "Yes," I said.  "Did you get any mud from the bottom of the Dead Sea?"  "Yes," I said.  "Did you scoop it out yourself or did you buy it?"  "I bought it."  "Where?  What was the name of the shop?" she asked.  "Temptation Mountain," I said.  Temptation mountain, where Jesus spent the forty days and forty nights remembered each Lent.  I'll try and post the pictures here.

It's hard to photograph this place.  You can see it is desolate desert and mountainous.  There is a Greek Orthodox monastery near the top.  Long difficult climb from where the tram stops, leads to the small cave where it is said that Jesus slept for those forty nights.

this time last year

I think it was February 4th that we went to Bethlehem and Hebron.  Elsewhere on this blog you'll find entries about that--with pictures.  I could look up in my journal exactly where we were on the 5th, 6th, and so on.  But I won't.  It really doesn't matter that I celebrate these life-changing events on the right dates.  The ads from the Israelis inviting people to come as tourists promise that "you'll never be the same" and it's true.  If you are a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, I don't see how seeing, experiencing the Holy Land can leave you unchanged. 

One of the important places we visited was Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum.

this time last year

This time last year I was in Heathrow Airport, waiting to board a plane to Israel.  Having left Vancouver on the evening of February 1st, and arriving in Tel Aviv early morning of February 3rd, we lost February 2, 2010 altogether. :))

Category II tag a: Travel

Today is the second Sunday in Advent: lighting the candle for John the Baptist.  This makes me think of our visit to Israel, and to our brief stop at the River Jordan.  It was in some ways, nothing like what I expected, yet in other ways what I hoped it might look like.  I rather expected a huge church over the spot where Jesus was baptized, and the river mostly obscured by religious stuff.  I had hoped it might not be like that.  And I was not disappointed.  There is a song that says "The River Jordan is chilly and wide" or words to that effect.  Well, it might be chilly.  It was February, and I saw a shell in the water and reached in and took it as a souvenir.  The water was a bit chilly.  I wouldn't have wanted to swim in it, or be baptized in it, for that matter.  But it was, after all, February.  Wide, though, it is not.  Not where we were, anyway.  As for big churches, there may be one a few yards down river from where we were, on the Jordan side.  We were on the Israeli side (or maybe it was Palestinian, I don't remember), but we were on the west bank of the Jordan.  This site didn't claim to be the exact spot of Christ's baptism, but for us it was close enough. 

suite 101

I'm still writing articles and publishing them on Suite 101.  I've earned almost $4 so far.  Don't scoff.  This is apparently par for the course, with only 14 articles up and about 700 or so page views.  Things don't get profitable until you have about 50 articles and over 1000 PVs. But, for those of you who are interested, I'll post the link to my current article (published today), and you can seek out the other articles by clicking on my name at the top of the article.  That will take you to my profile, and there you'll find a list of all fourteen of my articles.  So, click away and I hope you'll enjoy them. http://www.suite101.com/content/a-bethlehem-pilgrimage-a311463
This article, by the way, has pictures of my visit to Bethlehem, one of which you've already seen in this blog.

category #2 travel

In category 2, the topic is Family & Friends.  The subheadings are travel, kids' activities, and school visits/volunteering.  I'm tempted to repeat "kids' activities" today, as I did last time I wrote in this category, but I'll resist.  The reason I want to write about that is that I've just finished "publishing" a book review of Compost Stew, by Mary McKenna Siddals in suite 101.  Instead, though, I'll stick to the idea of not overdoing any one topic by moving on to "Travel". 
Maybe this is the time to return to my blogs about my trip to Israel.  In a couple of weeks, we'll be into Advent, the time to prepare for the celebration of the birth of Jesus.  We aren't quite there yet, so I don't want to steal all the Advent material in this advent to Advent.  Anyway, I'll just point out that one of the first places we visited, right after Hebron, was Bethlehem.  It is a sad place, surrounded by big ugly walls, isolating the Palestinians from the rest of Israel.  We even had to show our passports to go from Israel to Palestine.  I'll post the pictures of the wall here, and save the religious pictures of Bethlehem for later.

blog comments

Way back in April, when I had just arrived home from my travels, someone left a comment on one of my blog postings and said he'd left an email address for me to respond to him. Unfortunately, I didn't even see his comment until yesterday! And worse than that, I could not find the email address he said was there. So, I don't know if there's a hidden spot in this site where I could find such information. It's too bad, because I wouldn't mind exchanging ideas with people who read my blog. This person, in particular, wanted to discuss travels in Israel and Palestine. Hmm. Too bad.

day 2 in the Holy Land again

The photo in the previous post is actually from the other side of the building, the Muslim side. In the back, you can see the little grill that is the window on the Jewish side. The Muslim side is a beautiful, big mosque. Beside Abraham's tomb stands a matching tomb, that of Sarah. In the centre of the mosque, there is the tomb of Isaac and on another side stands Jacob's tomb. These three cause a concern, no doubt. Muslims claim descent from Abraham and HAGAR (not Sarah) and her son ISHMAEL, (not Isaac) and of course the other name for Jacob is no other than ISRAEL, the father of the Jews. Surely, the Jews are not happy that these three tombs are not only in Muslim-only territory but are not even visible from the Jewish side of the building.

day 2 in the Holy Land

Our second day in the Holy Land was a day of traveling. We went (by taxi) south from Jerusalem to Hebron and then to Bethlehem: our first foray into Palestine. We had been warned that it could be dangerous. We didn't see any danger, but we did see lots of soldiers with guns. It was a bit tense at the border stops. Our Arab driver became very submissive in attitude when speaking to the authorities at the check point. Our passports were examined closely and returned to us without comment. Our driver was allowed to pass. By the side of the road, we noticed an Arab woman who had been refused entry. She had to stand and wait for someone to give her a ride. We drove into Hebron, but finding a parking space was not easy. The driver dropped us at the steps leading up to the building that housed Abraham's tomb. A soldier stopped my husband and me, and asked, "Are you Christians?" We answered, "Yes." He said, "Good." And let us pass. At the top of the stairs we entered an area that seemed to me to be a Yeshiva (a Jewish university, maybe) or perhaps just a library. On the right, there was a small grilled window with through which we could glimpse Abraham's tomb.

a minaret

This minaret was right outside my window. The calls to prayer were through a loudspeaker, and early in the morning it was better than an alarm clock. The nun in the Austrian Hospice where we were staying said that the early morning call to worship was good advice. She was able to translate it from the Arabic to mean: It is better to rise early and pray than to stay in bed and sleep.

day 1 in the Holy Land

My husband and I are on the Mount of Olives, with Jerusalem behind us. Notice the Dome of the Rock (golden dome) between us. The weather was cold and windy, but despite the blue sky we had a downpour just a few hours later, followed by a brief hailstorm. Later in the week, though, we could leave our winter coats behind.

travel report 3

Still continuing the "day" we travelled from Vancouver to Tel Aviv: Our taxi driver didn't take us directly to the hospice. He hummed and hawed about it being in the Old City, and how taxis couldn't go in. I knew they could get to the hospice and I said so, and he mumbled something about only certain times, certain gates, etc. I said I had heard that it might be difficult (or impossible) on the Jewish sabbath, Friday evening to Saturday evening. February 3rd was Wednesday. Nevertheless, the driver took us from the Damascus Gate to the Lion Gate by way of the Mount of Olives. But as we couldn't get into the hospice just yet, we didn't complain. We enjoyed the view from the sacred place, looking across the Kedron Valley to the Golden Gate. Here began the first of our three hundred plus photos we took on this journey--I plan to get the best of them on this blog as soon as possible. First I have to learn how to do that.
Eventually, though, the driver did take us to the Austrian Hospice, 37 Via Dolorosa, in Old Jerusalem. Our first mistake? When he said, "Pay me tomorrow. I'll take you wherever you want to go. How about Bethlehem?" we didn't object. Of course we wanted to go to Bethlehem. We were too exhausted to argue and too fuzzy-minded to think that this might not be the best way to arrange our visit to Bethlehem. Now, not having paid him for the trip from the Damascus Gate to our accommodation, we were obliged to him. Not a good thing!

travel report 2

You may have noticed something about me by now: I can't count. The first of these travel reports actually was written in Jerusalem; this is the second report written since arriving at home. Still, I hope you don't get too caught up in the numbers and will be able to follow along anyway.
I mentioned in report 1 that I'll never again go away for six weeks in a row. Another "never again" will be trying to lump several places into one trip. I just feel that once I'm on the other side of the continent and Atlantic, I really should take advantage. But if I do that, sometimes the route gets complicated because the airlines have their rules and regulations that do not take customer convenience into consideration. (Why would they worry about customers? Like many businesses, the airlines have totally forgotten that the customers are the REASON for their jobs and earnings, NOT merely an inconvenience or interruption to their money-grabbing.) The inconvenience for customers I refer to is the illogical itinerary I stupidly signed up for. I really should have paid closer attention, but I was being told that this was the only way British Airways would take me to my desired destinations.
This trip (pilgrimage, actually, as we were commissioned as pilgrims in our church before we left) was to Jerusalem and Assisi and Northumbria. (Northumbria was more of a visit to relatives than to sacred shrines, although we did a little of that, too.)
The route to Jerusalem from Vancouver was like this: Leave YVR roughly around 5 or 5:30pm on February 1st, and arrive ten hours later at Heathrow somewhere around noon their time, February 2nd. Then we had to hang around Heathrow for seven hours before our flight to Tel Aviv. Now, first thought is, hmm, could I book a hotel room and sleep for a couple of hours before the flight; or maybe take the tube into downtown London and walk about for a while. No. Can't do that, because as we're en route to another country, we don't actually LAND in England officially. We're in transit. So we mustn't leave the airport--not even the "not in England" part of the airport. This was a bit of a problem, because my husband's walker was sent on to "England" instead of "Israel" because if we're seven hours in the airport, he's going to need his walker to get around. Without going into detail, let me tell you that it took a couple of hours just to get someone to take me down to the luggage area to get the walker for my husband. Through security, shoes off, the whole bit, just to get the walker for him. We finally got on our flight to Tel Aviv and arrived there around 5:30 am, February 3rd. How many hours is that? I don't do numbers, as you may recall, but I know this was far too long to go without even seeing a bed. But we aren't there yet! We still have a bus ride to Jerusalem, and a taxi ride to our hospice, and can't book in until 3pm.