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Showing posts from January, 2020

Homework for the Holy Land: Day 8: And I am Officially a Pilgrim

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You know that feeling you have on the last day of any event you have found wonderful and marvelous and stupendous and...and...and...  That feeling tagged along today. We began the day at the Garden of Gethsemane and the adjoining Church of All Nations/Basilica of the Agony.  The Garden of Gethsemane is where, according to Christian tradition, Jesus experienced the agony of anticipating what lie ahead for him: betrayal; crucifxion; death.  And, according to tradition, the disciples slept while all this was going on.  Now, perhaps this was Jesus's comfort level.  He didn't want his disciples to see him experiencing an agony that was so severe, he sweated blood.  I get that.  Sometimes my preference is to hole up somewhere by myself and let it all out rather than doing that in the presence of those I love and who love me.  Or it could be the disciples were exhausted from all the travel they'd been doing.  Or maybe they had a little too muc...

Homework for the Holy Land: Day 7: Two somber visits

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Today was a free day in Jerusalem, which means we were on our own as opposed to being on the tour bus.  Before arrival, a group had expressed interest in visiting Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, so we engaged the services of a tour guide.  We were yet again blessed with a wonderful guide who enhanced the experience for us. The Spousal Unit â„¢  and I have been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.  In comparing the two, I would say that the DC facility had quite a few more artifacts of the Holocaust.  The Israeli center historically traces the rise of the Nazi persecution of the Jews through the liberation of the camps.  The center also has an number of beautifully done monuments to those who were instrumental in saving Jews.  They are called the Righteous. Rows of trees are planted on the Avenue of the Righteous Each sign is a marker for one of the Righteous.  They are located throughout the grounds of the Cen...

Homework for the Holy Land: Day 6: God Is On Our Side (until He isn't)

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From chatting with my fellow travelers, yesterday was an especially emotional day for many of them.  I'm not sure our tour guide designed it this way, but today was more of an infotainment day and for that I believe we all are most appreciative. We drove south from Jerusalem to Masada, a well preserved site in the mountains by the Dead Sea.  On our way we saw a couple Israeli communities that the rest of the world refers to as settlements.   Israeli settlements are civilian communities inhabited by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Jewish ethnicity, built on lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.  Seeing places that continue to be contentious to the Israeli and Palestinians feels surreal to me.  We also saw Bedouin encampments which look very much like what you might imagine a homeless encampment looks like.  Kind of a head scratcher, I guess. Perhaps you're familiar with the story of Masada; long story short, on the order King Her...

Homework for the Holy Land: Day 5: Connecting the Dots

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Today felt like a particular day of connecting the historical and Biblical dots.  My brain has been experiencing bells chiming, ringing, clanging, as in hearing a piece of information and then thinking, "Oh, yeah.  That rings a bell."  But so far the bells have been sounding solo, not in much synch or harmony with each other.  Gradually all this incredible history has been coalescing into the story it tells, but let's be honest.  We're going back centuries before Christ was born to denote pinpricks on the timeline that will signify significance in the life of Christ as relayed through the Bible AND how these then line up (or don't) with historical fact, defined by some sort of but mostly archeologic documentation. You'd feel like you're getting your bells rung, too. The day started on the Mount of Olives overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem. Here I am, astutely pointing out the Old City from the Mount of Olives.  Right after this, I checked my wat...