Israel pilgrimage, tenth in series

Hello, everyone.

On this day, the fourth (?) day of visiting, we were in the area of Jerusalem. We began by walking from the road to the Ottoman walls, which were installed centuries after Jerusalem had become a Christian pilgrimage site, and which enclose not the ancient city of Jerusalem in Jesus' time--that had been destroyed in the Roman sack of Jerusalem--but the later built-up area around sites relating to Jesus' crucifixion. The "old city" is, therefore, actually the less-old city!

The Ottoman walls are in surprisingly good shape for their age. Of course nobody has taken a mind to tear them down since they were built.

Another reminder of how everything is close together. Our first stop was Dormition Abbey, the Church of the Dormition of Mary.

An aside here: Mary, being protected by Jesus from original sin when she was conceived--remember that God is outside of time here!--is taught not to have died in the regular fashion. This teaching is because death is the fruit of original sin. She did, however, "fall asleep" when her days on earth were completed. This falling asleep, the Dormition of Mary, is remembered by our Orthodox brethren as a separate feast from the Assumption of Mary.

 Above the memorial statue (below) is a mosaic meditation on women of the Scriptures. Here are two: Judith with the head of Holofernes and Ruth holding wheat sheaf from the threshing floor.

Below the mosaics, the statue of Mary.

After visiting this place, we walked through the gate of the old walls to the Church of the Last Supper, which is not the site but a nearby place that could be acquired for a shrine to be built, and the Room of the Last Supper, which is administered as a historical site by the Israeli government.

 I'm not entirely sure if this altar is in Dormition Abbey or in the Church of the Last Supper. At the time, I knew, but now the memory is a little confused.

The room of the Last Supper, which was openly venerated for centuries after Constantine made Christianity legal in the Roman empire, was included in the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem. The Muslims decided to make a mosque of the site. At the left, the mihrab which indicates for them the direction of Mecca so they can kneel in the proper direction for their prayers. The alcove on the far side, I think, was where the imam stood to preach. When the Israeli government came into authority over the area, they commenced to administrate the site as a historical place. None of the various changes made over the centuries were disturbed. The guides point out what was added by the Persian or Arab or Ottoman governments and what was original.

For lunch, we walked into the Muslim Quarter, past a Turkish shop or two, crossed the road a couple of times, turned into an alley, and came to a nice restaurant. After the mezze course--the appetizer plates that are spread out on the table first--the restaurant served a lovely chicken and saffron rice dish. At the end of the meal, they gave us Arab coffee. Cardamom is ground in with the beans and so the finished, thick coffee has a nice spicy flavor. Like with espresso, the coffee is good but you want to be careful not to drink the residue that forms in the bottom of the little cup.

Israel pilgrimage, ninth in series

Hello, everyone.

Today will cover the remainder of the third day of visiting sites.

En route from the northern part of the Holy Land to the more central part, besides the sites of Qumran and the Baptism site, we stopped at Jericho and at the Dead Sea.

Jericho has been a major city for thousands of years. Joshua came there and conquered it--it was not small even then. Jesus came there and encountered Zaccaeus, the tax collector, perched in a sycamore tree along the path. Our bus drove past the site of the sycamore tree and we viewed its descendant. Our guide told us that this is the only sycamore tree in the area. There has "always," meaning as long as anyone knows, been a sycamore on this spot, a sapling will grow there and replaces the old one over time.

The sycamore tree has a protective fence. There is a small play area inside the fence, too.


We went to the Franciscan sisters' convent for Mass. Their back patio, which is covered, is set up to be an outdoor chapel. It is in a lovely green area, and there are peafowl strolling the grass and cleaning up the bugs in the shrubs.

One of the peafowl

About a half block away from the convent is the big mosque of the city.

View of the mosque from the sidewalk in front of the convent

The mosque began playing a sermon (?) in Arabic on the loudspeakers of the minaret while we were having Mass on the patio of the convent.

I can just imagine how pleasant it is to be quietly offering morning prayers, or midnight prayers, or vespers, and having the loudspeaker kick off and try to drown out every other sound in its vicinity.

There was an Orthodox church nearby as well, but we didn't get a good photo of it.

Jericho has a number of shops that are like shops we commonly see in Mexico. This is a produce market. (Other photos were too blurry.)

Jericho has an ancient palace that is being excavated.

We ate lunch at the Dead Sea, at a resort restaurant. After we ate there was some time to experience the famous salt water. Which is kind of in the "have a little water with your salt" range of concentration.

The supervised area of this resort. They marked the lifeguard's area of responsibility with the float line out in the water.
The bottom varied between squishy, slippery mud, to a latex like surface, to gritty sandy precipitates. Yes, you will float in the water. I went out into it and tried to squat down on my heels in the warm water, but I couldn't. The water floated my rear end before it touched my heels.

The resort had both water spigots near the shore (to rinse your face if needed and your feet) and also showers with rental lockers and rental towels. In addition to the restaurant, which seemed to be set up for groups mostly, they had shops and a bar. There was a nice path down from the shops area to the waterside.

The Dead Sea is a lot smaller than it used to be. As there is no outlet, and the losses there are from evaporation, I think that a decrease in water arriving is the reason. The only source, as far as I know, for water into the Dead Sea is the Jordan River. Which also supplies drinking water and irrigation water to many, many people before reaching its end here.

After visiting the Dead Sea we drove to Bethlehem to our new hotel. It was about two doors down from a dental lab.

We don't think we would want any dental work there!

A statue of the Archangel Gabriel in front of the St. Gabriel Hotel in Bethlehem. (Link goes to Tripadvisor, has capsule information and pictures of the hotel.) The lobby has an upper level that includes the bar and seating areas. In the evenings, we sampled the red Israeli wine they had and it was good.

Israel pilgrimage, eighth in series

Hello, everyone.

Apologies for the break in posting, it was a busy week. Today's post begins the third day of visiting in the Holy Land.  We got out early as it was our day to change hotels as well as visit places. Our bus toted all of our luggage around in the hold all day as we went around.

Qumran region, Dead Sea in background

It was a desert day this day. We headed out onto the highway and went to Qumran and then over to a place with a camel ride (five minutes for those who wished) and then on to the Jordan River. Qumran is in a desolate place--a good trick for a region as small as the Holy Land. It isn't Texas, friends. It isn't even Wyoming. Think more like one of the East Coast states...Rhode Island? New Hampshire might be larger than the Holy Land. But in this highly populated area there are desolate, empty zones.


Qumran is famous because it is the site where the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls was discovered. The Israeli government maintains the place as an archeological site and has a small museum.






















They have what I think I remember as a reproduction of a scroll unrolled in the case for visitors to appreciate. The actual scrolls, being extremely old and written on animal skins for the most part, are kept in climate-controlled conditions I think. They were apparently the main project of a secluded religious community that lived on a hill overlooking the Dead Sea. The scrolls date back to the time of Jesus, give or take a few decades, and after the wars of the late first century AD the community was gone and later completely forgotten. Their stored scrolls were in caves around the area. Every so often a new collection of ancient scrolls gets discovered.

The first scroll cave (extra entrances added by archeologists)

The first scroll cave had only one entrance when its nature as a store room was discovered. A local shepherd was looking for a lost critter (goat? sheep?) and as the hold was deep and dark, he tossed a rock down to see if his creature was down there. I guess the logic is, if it's down there it will say something when the rock comes rolling down. Instead of a bleat, however, he heard the sound of breaking pottery. "Hmm," he said, crawled down to have a look, and the rest is history.







The ruins of the community there have been excavated, at least in part, and various features of the facility are labeled for visitors' information. There is a paved path as well.

They had a really big cistern to store the winter rain water. It might not have seemed so big toward the end of summer when the water would have been running low.

After visiting Qumran, and a short stop at the place with a couple of riding camels--and a shop--we rode over to the Jordan River.

Going to the Jordan meant driving through military areas. We saw people walking around in their uniforms, possibly training, and saw signs requesting that photos not be taken.

There is an Israeli government operated visitors center at the Jordan River at the traditional place St. John did his baptizing. The bathrooms were nice, there were assorted sitting areas, and while we didn't wander in there was a shop.

View of shrine on Jordanian side of the river

 Signs helpfully informed the visitor that immersion gowns were available for $9 each in the shop. Being Catholics, we didn't have interest in that. (The sacrament of Baptism is a "once and done" thing with us.) The folks at the water's edge did, however, have a bowl and shell for our pastor to pour water onto our heads in memory of our baptisms and in honor of St. John.

View of the baptizing area.

The water may be very edifying but I don't think I'd want my head to go under the surface with all that mud in it.

As y'all can see, the Jordan River is not, pace the song, "deep and wide" and it may not even be deep. The shed on the other side of the water is in Jordanian territory. The banks are steep enough that quite a crowd could have stood around listening to the prophet preach and call the repentant to come forward and wash off their old sinful ways.

There is a gentleman that offers to take pictures of the group. He brought the group prints to the hotel a couple of days later. The price was reasonable--about $10 for the group photo print.

The Baptism Site seems like a good stopping point for this post. More of the third day later!

Israel pilgrimage, seventh in series

Hello, everyone.

The remainder of this day, in the area of many Gospel incidents, has more churches, and a boat ride.

The area is named for the seven springs in the vicinity.

The Benedictine fathers placed a sign explaining the significance of the several churches in a small area. It's in reasonable boat riding distance from Capernaum and probably could be reached with a hike from there as well.

There are churches in memory of the Feeding of the Multitudes and others whose names escape me at the moment. There is a list on this sign.

This was another one of those moments when we were surprised to see how close together everything is in the Holy Land.




This is the stone, mentioned first in the letters of Egeria in the fourth century, which local tradition says is the place Jesus blessed the loaves and fishes.

It's easy for us, in the very mobile-oriented US, to laugh and say "sure it is." But these places were remembered from generation to generation and the places were passed down in families. In the fourth century, when it was finally legal to reverence the places Jesus walked, people still remembered where things had happened. And after shrines were built, even when conquerors later knocked them down and piled trash on the site, people remembered where they had been. When they could, they rebuilt the shrines in the same places. Rinse and repeat.

There are a number of interesting mosaics on the floor of this church. Of them all, this guinea hen is my personal favorite. (Photo edited to cover a bright white splash of light in upper right corner.)

 Not the same church, this one was a Franciscan one. Anyone who recognizes which one it is is welcome to contribute the information in comments! All I can remember is it was one of the three.

After visiting the churches of the Tabgha area, we went to an area restaurant (popular with tours--an amazing lot of buses there!) and ate fish from the sea of Galilee: "Tiberias fish." Which when DH inquired we learned is a kind of tilapia.


There were the customary mezzes: cabbage salad, eggplant and tomato I think at the bottom, tomato sauce, corn, tabouli...














And the whole fish, with fries on the side and a lemon wedge. They serve so many of these plates that they were already prepared...maybe because of the moment when we hit the place...the fish was tasty.

The waiter had an amazing way with removing used water glasses from the tables.
















After lunch, we went to a port, walked through a sculpture garden and out onto the dock and boarded a boat for a ride on the Sea of Galilee.

One of the boats offering this ride. The experience showed us, again, how close together these things are, as we passed the famous Golan Heights area and viewed the landscape.




The boat crews raised the flag of the tour groups' origin with each ride. We saw a Korean group, and ours of course had the Stars and Stripes. I think the crew members were a little surprised when, at the intro to the Star Spangled Banner, we all stood up, put our hands on our hearts, and sang along. (Hey, if you're going to have your flag out there waving in the breeze, have a backbone about it!)

At the end of the ride, we disembarked in Tiberias and met up with our bus. The day was pretty well gone and we returned to the hotel.

Israel pilgrimage, sixth in series

Hello, everyone.

After Mass at the Church of the Transfiguration, we rode down the switchback road on the vans and re-boarded our bus. Then we rode to Capernaum.

Entering the Capernaum area. Note that there are a lot of people. This was true pretty much everywhere.

Capernaum was not an ancient Jewish city at the time, it was one of the ones that had been built up later. It's on the Sea of Galilee ("sea" in the talk of the time included any large lake, apparently) and it's really where Jesus spent a lot of His time teaching and observing.

The dark layer, of the local building stone (basalt) is from the time of Jesus. Later, the local Jewish community had funds and rebuilt their synagogue in marble or limestone which is white. (No information was provided on why they needed to rebuild their stone synagogue building.)

Close up next to the synagogue building were homes of the residents of the town. Here in front are what appear to be parts of a press (juice? olive oil? small size grape?) and possibly some stove parts, with a stone jar. Like the wall bases around them, they're carved from the dark basalt stone.

Looking across the ruins of houses toward St. Peter's house, which is sheltered by this modern church. It looks like the 60's.

It looks like the 60's inside, too. The backless benches let the light come in very well, but they're probably a bit difficult for the older worshipper. Perhaps the space is designed around sitting to view and praise-and-worship services. The carvings on the wall are of various Gospel incidents. Too late, when it was time to leave, I realized that there are also captions below the carvings.

I was disappointed that there was really no information about the ruins of the house, which are intended by the builders to be visible through the glass in the center. Sadly, present-day persons decided that the viewing glass should be obscured by a large pot of ivy. One can see around the edges of the ivy pot and it would have been informative, and possibly even edifying, if there had been information boards--possibly outside--helping the modern day visitor understand the layout of the house and if there was any specifically fishing oriented feature there.

There is so much that we take for granted these days about living that wasn't true back then, and the Gospels were written back then in that environment, assuming that everyone had the same context. We moderns need to recover the context information to understand what was happening sometimes.

This is a crop of the above photo. I didn't make a picture of the altar by itself at the time as I was disappointed in how hard it was to see. It is only today, making this crop that I realized that whoever made the mosaic was apparently a die-hard Pointillist. Images show from a distance that are impossible to make out close up. Images that, with difficulty, I made out in the green up close vanish--there are people and baskets throughout the green--but since there was almost no use of contrast to help the viewer any reference and teaching to be found there is lost. I wonder, are the people and baskets in the green the folks being fed at the miraculous feedings? Are they the people selling fish in the local market?

From a distance, I can make out Jesus in the medium-toned pink, with two-toned pink halo (next to the person's shoulder), and next to Jesus there is a chalice and some loaves. (In the pale-pink squiggle created by darker pink shapes, the chalice and loaves are dark.) These are Eucharistic symbols.

Artists need to remember a few things: (pardon the shouting here) YOU AREN'T GOING TO BE THERE TO EXPLAIN ALL THE COOL THINGS ABOUT YOUR WORK. The words on the page, the paint on the canvas, the tiles in the grout must stand on their own. Tour-de-force technical brilliance isn't the point of art. Communication is. And if you can't get your heart and mind around the purpose of the art--say, you're a passionate atheist considering a commission for church art--you should just do a different project. The artist's true attitude toward his viewer/reader and subject will surely come out and diminish the quality of the art if it (the attitude) is inconsistent with the purpose and placing of the piece.

Israel pilgrimage, fifth in series

Hello, everyone.

The second day of our visiting in the land of Israel will be divided into multiple posts, as like the first day of visiting it was full of many places.

The day began at the Church of the Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor.  This is a smallish mountain, but it sticks up from the surrounding valley with steep slopes. We had to change from our bus to smaller vans to go up. (Three or four vans actually) The road up is full of hairpin switchback turns. There exists a walking lane, but if one walked up there and back down it would probably be the entire day's activity.

 After passing the ruins and some garden spaces, the gate of the church is before you.

Inside the door is a holy water font. The holy water fonts were generally stocked with holy water in the Holy Land.

The apse has a mosaic of the Transfiguration, which is also the fourth Luminous Mystery of the rosary. (The Luminous ones are the new set added by St. Pope John Paul II.)

Our  pastor offered Mass in a side chapel. The crucifix was constructed of many pieces of wood.

View from the patio outside the church, giving an idea of how far up the mountain is from its surroundings.

Israel post, fourth in series

Hello, everyone.

I think I'll combine the Church of St. Joseph/Workshop & Home of St. Joseph and the Church of the Annunciation into one post. It's not that the Annunciation church has a shortage of things, it's that I didn't take a lot of pictures of St. Joseph church.

To recap the order of the day, we went first to Cana, then rode over to the vicinity of the Church of the Annunciation and the Church of St. Joseph, then ate, then rode up to Haifa to visit the monastery of the Carmelite fathers and then rode back to the hotel. It doesn't sound like so much, until you remember that there was a fair amount of strolling around at most of these places. And by the time we returned to the hotel, I at least was tired.

So: the Church of the Annunciation. The inspiration for this shrine is found in the gospel of Luke. The angel Gabriel was sent to carry a message to Mary. "Hail, full of grace, the LORD is with thee," I think his salutation went. She was understandably perturbed at this. I will allow interested readers who don't already remember to look into the Bible to see the rest of it.

Our bus couldn't actually go up to the church, because of the street layout and traffic. We walked around, up some gradual steps, and around so more to find it. The church has a wall around it, forming the cloister, and on the inside walls of the cloister are many, many images contributed by the nations of the world. They were contributed to show that the world as a whole supports the shrine. Even Japan sent an image. I couldn't photograph all of them.

 These two images, the statue from Peru and the mosaic from Brazil, seem to me to show the image known as La Santina. I believe they are referencing the shrine in the South American mountains to Our Lady. They resemble the image of La Santina that is honored at Covadonga, in Asturias, Spain.

 
This image, contributed by Spain, is of the apparition to St. James the Elder (St. James Major as he is sometimes called in English) of Our Lady with the pillar. This apparition took place in Zaragoza in Spain. You will note that St. James is here depicted with his scallop shell and his walking staff with water gourd.

Inside the church there are more inspiring things. We also got to see laid out the tightly scheduled access of this popular shrine, as first one group and then another had a prayer service, sang hymns, or had Mass at the altar in front of the ruins of the ancient house.

The line going past the ancient house (behind the altar)--there are a lot of lines in the Holy Land. 

We walked from there over to St. Joseph's home-and-workshop.

There were many, many collections of pilgrims' petitions in the various shrines. It seems to be a thing, to carry written requests for the intercession of a saint, or just written requests for prayers to be granted, and then drop them in shrines or tuck them into the Western Wall of the ancient Temple, or similar.

I confess myself unable to really understand the custom, but it is very important to a lot of people. There are, consequently, heaps of little papers in all of the popular shrines.

This depiction of the Holy Family at home in Nazareth was interesting in the way it depicts St. Joseph in his workshop, Mary kneading bread dough, and Jesus pointing out to the viewer how His family lived.

I noticed that the walkways of the city were sometimes broad and easy to walk, but other times all of about 2 feet wide. And pretty much all of them are stone pavement.

When we ate lunch (forgot to take a photo of the food) there were lots of little dishes of various things like salads, bread, and hummus, followed by a meat dish and spaghetti with tomato sauce. (The tomato sauce tasted like it had sugar in it. Some people like it that way.) The restaurant brought around meringue kisses for dessert.