I’ve already written a little about how Nazareth was the boyhood home of Jesus.  Nazareth is the site of one of the most famous churches in all of the Holy Land.  The Church of the Annunciation celebrates two important things in Christianity.  One is the location of Mary’s home in Nazareth, and the other is the appearance of the angel Gabriel telling Mary she was to give birth to The Son of God.

Straight down this walkway you see the Church of the Annunciation. To the left of where I’m standing, on the same grounds is the Church of St. Joseph.  Almost all of the imagery in St. Joseph’s Church is of the Holy Family.  Some even refer to it as the Holy Family Church.  There is a gallery of stain glass windows depicting the Holy Family.  The one below was a favorite of mine.  It is Mary and Jesus caring for an aging Joseph.  The circumstances of Joseph’s death are not known, but it’s fairly certain it was before Jesus began his ministry.  There are no references to Joseph in the present in the Gospels.

Annunciation marks the location of the home of Mary.  The excavation projects in the Holy Land must number in the hundreds of thousands.  I’ve already written how churches mark and protect the important sites of Christianity.  These photos show the preservation of the home where Mary grew up.  And the grotto marks the spot.

I mentioned earlier about all of the imagery in St. Joseph’s.  You as my readers are at somewhat of a disadvantage when it comes to the subjects and sites of this particular trip.  In my travels, I discovered just by circumstance, that I am not comfortable taking pictures of worship spaces.  I have no judgement about people who do, it’s just a line that i stay on this side of.  Pictures of things outside the confines of the sanctuary I’m fine with.  The Churches in the Holy Land are particularly incredible in my mind.  I mean going from church to church just keeps getting better and better.  So in truth, on my site, you are missing out.  The good news?  You can find all kinds of photos on line of any of the places I mention.

Here are a few other things around the church grounds in Nazareth that drew me in.  One of the side doors leading into the Church of the Annunciation.  A gift of African art depicting Mary and the Angel Gabriel.  A statue of Joseph with the patina worn off the knees from all of the people touching it.

 

One of my favorite areas was a gallery of icons from all different countries depicting the Annunciation.  Not surprising, one of my favorites, Guatemala.

Our last stop of this day was Cana.  The church in Cana commemorates the spot where the Gospel story of the Wedding Feast at Cana took place.  The married couples in our group had an opportunity to renew their wedding vows.  Not all of them opted in.  Just kidding. 🙂

Thanks so much for being out there and following along.  Take care.

I’m taking you back to last Saturday on our trip.  At least I think I am. 🙂

In the past, when I’ve been traveling on my own and blogging, it was much easier to keep my photos and my activities straight in my head.  And I could actually “write” a post in my head as I drove along in silence.  With this trip, not so much.  In fact not at all.  Okay enough of that whine.  It’s a real privilege to be here.

We started our day with a nice little boat ride on the Sea of Galilee.  We just moseyed across to catch our bus in a different location.  That’s Tiberias, where we are staying, on the hillside in the background.  And that’s my good friend Cathy with the cool sunglasses.

This is a scale replica of the kind of boats that the fishermen were using in the time of Jesus.  A boat like this features prominently in a number of Gospel stories.  Not very many years ago, when the level of the lake dropped dramatically, the remains of a nearly intact boat was discovered buried in the mud.  It was carbon dated to the time of Jesus.

We left Galilee to travel to the Mediterranean coast, to Caesarea.  Caesarea was an important city in the time of Jesus.  Mostly important to the Romans, but it was also the place where Paul left Palestine when he was arrested and taken to Rome for imprisonment.  Herod the Great built the city to be the main port and administrative center for the Roman Empire’s presence in northern Judea and Palestine.  He was considered ahead of his time in the methods he used to construct a protected harbor.  Much of those ruins are under water.  One of his accomplishments, with evidence even today, was the construction of a great aqua-duct.

Even though Caesarea is still a busy port city, most of what is interesting about it are the ruins from the Roman presence here.  The picture below has columns that are replicas, placed just to demonstrate the site of the old palace area.

Here’s our group sitting in the arena waiting to hear a short talk about the history we are going to see.  The arena is part ruins and part rehab so it is used for events.

 

The ruins of the floor of a coliseum.

Caesarea is a beautiful spot on the Mediterranean.  It must have been an impressive Roman city.

On to Nazareth.

I know it’s been a couple of days.  Maybe three.  I don’t know, the calendar and clock in my head is somewhere between intermittent breakdown and full implosion.  I’m on sensory and emotional overload.  Today I decided that tonight I have to write about today, and then try to catch up working somewhat backward until I’ve covered the stuff since Capernaum.  So I might do catchup posts just by the day or I might write a post about a specific site.  I’ll decide as I go and by the end you might be as confused as I.

Today we started our day at the Mount of Olives.  When you read the Gospels, you get the distinct impression that during the days that Jesus and his Disciples spent in Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives, and particularly the Garden of Gethsemane, was a favorite place to hang.  The Garden is at the foot of the Mount of Olives.

This is looking across the Kidron Valley at the Mount of Olives.  The church in the middle of the picture, The Church of All Nations, is in the Garden area.  The French Franciscans look after it.  In the upper right, with the golden dome, is a Russian Orthodox Church.  And up on the horizon, at the very top of the Mount, is the Church of the Our Father.

The are over 180 panels around the church grounds of The Lord’s Prayer in different languages.

The one below is Aramaic on the left, the language spoken in the time of Jesus.

And I picked out a couple of others; Spanish, here to the right, and down below is Lakota.

As you move down the Mount toward the Garden, there is a very large Jewish Cemetery.  In the middle of this photo is the area which was The City of David.  Jerusalem about 1000 years before Christ.  On the horizon, close to the middle, is Mount Zion which is the traditional burial site of Kind David and also the site of the Upper Room.  That’s in our plan for later today.

This photo is looking past the Jewish Cemetery and over the Kidron Valley to the wall of the old City.  That’s the Golden Gate where Jesus entered the city on Palm Sunday, and below the wall is the Muslim Cemetery.   The golden dome is the Dome of the Rock, the historic site of the Jewish Temple, but it’s now controlled by the Muslims.  I will sometimes refer to who has dibs on what sites, but Jerusalem has been fought over for centuries and destroyed seven times.  The history, nuances, and details are endless, so for the most part I won’t go there.  I’d never get any sleep. 🙂

Here’s a couple of shots of the Garden of Gethsemane.  The one below is the oldest preserved section.  It is the area where Jesus and his Disciples came to pray the night he was arrested.  Adjacent to this garden area is the The Church of All Nations which is built over the rock where Jesus prayed.

The oldest olive tree in the Garden.  Could be as old as the time of Jesus, but it’s more likely about 1500 years old.  Olive trees go hollow as they age so you can’t age them by rings.

Our next stop was the house of Caiaphas.  He orchestrated the arrest of Jesus and led the plot to kill him.

After Jesus was arrested in the Garden, he was led across the Kidron   Valley and very likely up these steps to the house of the Chief Priest. When this site was excavated, these stones were dated to about 2000 years.  And the dungeons that we know existed under Caiaphas’ house can be seen below.  They are way down in the bedrock.  It is where Jesus would have spent the night after being questioned by the Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin.  In the morning, the morning of Good Friday, he would be taken to Pilot.     

Other foundational ruins around the grounds of Caiaphas’ house.  An Armenian church is built on this site now.  By the way, in the photo above, the prisoners were lowered into the dungeon with ropes through this hole in the prison caverns.

 

Our last stop of the day was to the site of The Cenacle, or as most people know it, The Upper Room.  It is very certain that this is the site of The Last Supper.

It didn’t look like this back then of course.  These columns are Roman era columns.  The shallow grotto in the photo was added fairly recently.  The Muslims had control of this room last, until the Israeli Government took it over, thus the Arabic stainglass window seen below.

This sculpture was given during a Papal visit in 2000.

Mount Zion is crowded with schools and a synagogue.  The Franciscans were allowed to build a small chapel on this site in the last couple of years, and we were able to use it for Mass.  A special celebration in special and important place.

After dinner we returned to the Church of All Nations for the traditional Holy Hour that happens about three times a week.  It was a special privilege of timing that we were able to do this.  A silent hour of Adoration remembering the words of Jesus to his Disciples when he found them sleeping instead of praying.   “Could you not stay awake with me one hour?”

I’m going to depart slightly from my normal closing.  I feel sluggish from to much eating. 🙂 The food has been amazing and I’ve test driven some that I’ve never had.  I’m also wearing down a little.  An accumulative effect of the pace.  Otherwise, I’m pretty ok.

Oh, and I hope you all are too.

One of the “dangers” of coming to The Holy Land is having all of those nice little Jesus movies that are in our heads shredded by the modern day.  But this area is so beautiful.  The hills, the vineyards, the olive trees, the rocky ground, the fertile ground.  My fellow travelers, if they have noticed me at all, might think I’m the world’s most accomplished gazer.  I’ve thought so many times in recent days, it’s easy for me to picture Jesus thinking when he was ready to start his ministry, I know where I’m going to hang.  We’ve already seen so much, and I am so appreciative of the opportunity, but I could spend the whole ten days within a couple of miles of Capernaum and come back next year for another ten.  It becomes a where do I start, and I hope I can do it just a little justice.  I guess really, I already started at the Mount of the Beatitudes.

Then next I’ll go  here.  This is our group, and that’s Giovanni regaling us with his gentle wisdom.  Even standing back from him I can hear him in my ear.  He has a single channel mike and we all have little receivers around our necks with an ear piece.  It really adds to the experience I think.  There are so many tour groups all over the place, and in such close proximity, and the technology removes the necessity for them to shout to be heard.

No where was that more in evidence than when we were in the Chapel that commemorates the site of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.  There was a small group of Russian Orthodox Nuns gathered in front of the alter singing a cappella.  And Giovanni was in my ear reading the story from The Gospel in a soft voice.  It was the most beautiful moment.  Ya just can’t make this up.

You can’t tell that well from this picture, but this church is built up on pylons right over the archeological ruins of Peter’s house.  Below is another view from the side.  I took this picture while I was standing inside the ruins of the synagogue where Jesus preached a number of times. 

And speaking of the synagogue ruins, here are a number of shots of those. The new synagogue is elsewhere on the site.   

The man himself.  Well, not that Man, this man.  You are Peter, and on this Rock I will build my Church.

It was warm, and so hazy that day on the Sea of Galilee, that you can’t tell that the water is in the background of this photo.  All of these pictures are taken right near the shore.  Peter, and Andrew his brother, made their living fishing, so it just makes perfect sense that they would live on the water.

Here to the right, these ruins would have been Peter’s neighbors.  And one could speculate that this would have been an important man of Capernaum because these foundations are right next to the synagogue.

And just above, a well in an area just up the shore from Capernaum called the Seven Springs.  And below, shore lunch rock.

You’ll have to indulge me just that little moment of irreverence.  If I don’t have one occasionally my eye starts to twitch.

In all seriousness, after the Resurrection, not knowing what else to do, some of the Apostles had gone back to their fishing.  One day when they were coming back in, Jesus cooked them some breakfast.  This chapel commemorates and protects this site.  The Gospels tell this story a lot nicer than me.  You should read ’em.

I’ll close this post by sharing a moment with you that I had with my closest friend, and fishing buddy, Tim.  We were standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, right outside this chapel, and we remarked to each other how cool it was that we were experiencing this place together.  And while I’m on that subject, if I haven’t shared this already, I’m on this trip with a number of very good, close friends.  They’re like extra frosting on the world’s best carrot cake. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, in a previous post I promised to come back to how the Tour Guides talk about the various important sites that tours and pilgrimages visit.  In my view it is an important contextual piece.  In the Holy Land one cannot just hang out a shingle and become a tour company.  With the millions of people who come to the Holy Land every year, these guides are considered important representatives of their countries.  In our case it was Omar in Jordan, and Giovanni in Israel.  They go to school for several years and have to maintain strict certifications.  Many of them are highly educated before they become tour guides.  Think about the varied points of view and belief systems that they encounter in the people they interact with while doing their job.  In my view they are obviously trained in how to be authentic and accurate about the important sites they are leading groups to.  When it comes to any given site, they will use phrases such as, tradition has it, or, we know that near here, or, we know that this IS the spot where this took place.  And they are graceful and gracious about how they talk about the delicate political balance, or lack of it, in this region of the world.  To me, this is extremely important and it is not done cavalierly.

This is nowhere more important than when talking about what I will call the “miracle sites” of our Christian Faith.  So I’m going to do my best to express what I think and believe about this.

If Jesus had just been an interesting guy, who talked good, and went around preaching for a few years in a little known region of what was then the known world, what would have been the likely result of that?  I can’t pose a more key question to ponder.  As Christians we believe that Jesus was both Human and Divine.  Without that, could his life have launched another major world religion in a time when the other major religions had already existed for thousands of years?  What would it take for a baby to be born in a muffler shop in Nowthen, Minnesota, that would have people changing their whole way of thinking and being 2000 years later?  As flip as that may sound, I could not pose a more important scenario to myself and to anyone else who would listen.

I have come to believe with everything I have that when we die we get to know all the answers.  It has taken me a long, sometimes dark and painful time, to get there.  And I believe that until that time, there are mysteries that we are not meant to fully understand.  I believe that our souls are eternal.  I believe that they weave through all living things and give us an opportunity to be part of the Sacred.  This is my faith, and it has taken me to place where most days I think everyone should have my life.

Rewind just a bit.  Back to the Tour Guides.  I know right?  Just stay with me a little longer.

What gives them the confidence to say, “We know this is the place.”  This is the place where Jesus healed.  This is the place where He comforted his closest friends even after they had thought Him lost?  The answers are in both the mystery and the practical.  In the decades after the Crucifixion of Christ, four different guys thought that all that had happened had to be written down.  But it wasn’t just that.  And this is what becomes immediately apparent when you are actually here.  His followers almost immediately began to commemorate and protect these sites by building churches and chapels right over them.  And through the centuries they built churches on top of the churches.  With records.  Today in some spots you can go down through several archeological layers that are the history of the “this is the place”.  They have become part of the Gospel story.  We know where Mary lived.  We know where Peter lived.  We know where Jesus preached in the synagogue.  Some places we can walk right up to it and touch it.  Some places you can’t.  Humans being what they are, some places you can only view from a few steps back.  The preservation of the physical story becomes part of the story.  I feel in awe of the truth that the early followers of Jesus somehow knew this.  An interesting guy who talked good and had his fifteen minutes of fame.  Not this time.

I am well and hope you all are too.  But phew, writing this one wore me out.  What you can read in a few minutes has been doin’ a dance in my head for three days.  And you thought this was going to be about tour guides.   🙂

The Scots Hotel has been our “headquarters” for the past three nights.  Part of the hotel is an historic hospital site.  On the front of the pamphlet given to each guest is this simple mission statement: Owned and Operated by the Church of Scotland.  Maintaining Christian Witness in the Land of Christ.         As a proud Ross Clansman with maternal heritage from Scotland, it warms and percolates my pride.  By the way, the joyful presence by the front door is Hein, our Magi Travel Coordinator, who has deftly herded us from place to place.

In 1885, a young 23 year old surgeon named David Torrence arrived from Scotland to set up “The Mission for the Jews” in the Holy Land. His work, along with the work of others in Tiberias, eventually led to a hospital being built on this site that opened in 1894.

In 1959, with establishment of a state-run hospital in Tiberias, it was no longer needed.  It closed for a time and eventually re-opened as a hospice for pilgrims which led to it expanding to a full fledged hotel.  All supported by Scotland and The Church of Scotland.  Today it is a beautiful and welcoming place in Galilee.   

Okay, for those of you who need to bone up on your Bible history, here’s little primer.  For the rest of you, just bear with us for a second, please.

The parents of Jesus, Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth.  Nazareth is one of the little towns in the northern part of The Holy Land near the Sea of Galilee.  It’s where Jesus grew up.  But Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which is down south of Jerusalem, because Ceasar had ordered everyone to go to their hometowns to be counted in a census.  Which is why Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem when Mary was pregnant.  And because everybody and his brother were traveling all over the place, all the B and B’s were filled.  So our Lord was essentially born out back somewhere.

Capernaum is also a little town up in Galilee, right on the shore of the lake.  It’s where Peter lived and where Jesus went to do his ministry after being baptized by John.  Most of Jesus’ first Disciples and Followers grew up, and lived, and worked in this area.  End of primer.

Somewhere on this hill Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount which famously began with the Beatitudes. (see previous post).  This photo, from near the top, looks west over the Sea of Galilee.  Across the water is the Golan Heights.  This area is so beautiful.

A church has been on this site since the 4th Century and this is what it looks like today.

 

 

This was a very moving start to the day for me.  So I am very well and hope you all are too.  Thanks for being out there. 🙂

aka, Always worth another read                                                                                     aka, My first good cry

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.  Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

Thursday, February 21st

The first stop today for our merry little band of pilgrims was the Jordan River.  We visited the site of the Baptism of Jesus.  In this photo it’s evident that the river level is up from what is “normal”.  You can tell on the left side of the photo where the edge of the river typically is.  And conversely, there have been times when the bleacher area has been mostly underwater.  So why is that important?

No one really knows the exact spot where Jesus was baptized.  The Jordan River almost assuredly looked different back then.  But we do know with some certainty the area where John the Baptist preached and baptized people, including Jesus.  So this site is thought of, and visited, as a likely spot where the baptism of Jesus took place.  And the tour guides are quite forthright about that.  More on how they talk about the various historic sites in a later post.  I won’t presume to speak for others, but for me the exact spot doesn’t matter.  Jesus was baptized in this area before he started his life of ministry.  We share that baptism with Him in our own lives.

This is the town of Madaba in Jordan.  It is known that at one time this area was a large  Bedouin camp that was perched on a hill.  Then a very important archeological discovery was made quite by accident. A large mosaic map of The Holy Land, that was the floor of some 6th Century structure, was uncovered while a site for a Greek Orthodox Church was being developed in the late 1800’s.  

 

And this is a taste of how Madaba looks today.

 

And here are the two sections of the map that survived the centuries right where they are.  They are still a floor.  It’s hard to get a perspective from the photos, but these map sections are in a protected area that is sixteen by five meters.  It is thought that the original complete map was about twenty one meters by seven.  But that’s only part of the story.  The map eventually became key to a revitalization of mosaic art in the Arab culture.

The current Jordanian Royal Family, specifically Queen Noor, eventually took up the cause and a School of Mosaic Art was founded in Madaba.

The school became a springboard for the Queen to establish a non profit organization dedicated to getting people with physical impairments involved in the preservation and practice of mosaic art.  How’s that for combining benevolent leadership and a heart social justice.  We were treated to a lecture about how the stone is processed into usable pieces, and then cut and turned into beautiful works of art.  The gentlemen who gave lecture, as well as the artists we were watching create, were in wheel chairs.   

Okay, change gears.

If you know your Old Testament history, you know that Moses led the Hebrew People out of slavery in Egypt.  It took them forty years of violent, wandering hardship to reach what today is the state of Israel.  Moses never got to enter and live in the Promised Land.  He only got to see it from atop Mount Nebo before he died.  He lost favor with God and that was his sacrifice for doing so.

With allowances for the passage of time, and some imagination, this is what Moses saw as he gazed north from Mount Nebo.

Mount Nebo is also an important historic and archeological site.  Our group celebrated Mass in what was both a Chapel and a museum of foundational ruins of one of the oldest churches in the history of mankind.

 

This sculpture of Moses was dedicated during a visit by the Pope in the Jubilee Year of 2000.

 

And below is a stone that was excavated in the area, still nearly in it’s upright position.  It was the rolling doorway of a monastery, and is similar to stones that were used to seal tombs.

It was truly a varied day of learning and inspiration.

 

This way to The Siq. In Arabic, Siq means canyon, or more accurately, gorge, implying narrowness.

Ever since I left Petra yesterday, and all day today, I’ve been scratching my head wondering how I was going to right about Petra. It seems to me to be a complex place with a unique place in history. It is at once, an ancient trade center, an archeological tomb center, and a long history of the people who lived and came here literally “written in the rocks”. And if that wasn’t enough, from a natural beauty viewpoint, it was extremely reminiscent for me of some of the areas I’ve camped and hiked in Utah.

Petra may have had permanent inhabitants as early as 9000 BC. It lies along the route that came to be known as The Kings Highway. The road connected the four kingdoms as a commerce route and pilgrimage road to Mecca. Aside from it being the busiest trade center of its time, it was unique in its access. It was a city with only one way to get in and out, though The Siq.

As you work your way down into Petra the gorge gradually becomes more and more narrow. It is likely that over the centuries many people died in this area from flash flooding. The ancient Nabataeans dug a two thousand meter tunnel, (seen below right), near the entrance to the gorge to divert water during rains.

It gets to its narrowest point right before you burst into a large plaza area dominated by what is known as the Treasury Facade. It’s not really a treasury but a tomb.

It became an archeological tomb center because the sandstone in the area was relatively easy to cut chambers into, and to decorate with carvings and great stone facades. The wide variety of tribes and cultures who were drawn to this area is evidenced in the varied designs and styles of the stone carvings and facades. Nabataean, Egyptian, Roman, Greek, and Byzentine are all on display.

Not all tombs were regal. Some were just simple burial chambers carved into the rock in groups. Kinda like condos for corpses. (Yikes did he just write that?) Those of you who have followed me for awhile know I’m not without my irreverences. 🙂

As the area opened up near the city of Petra, an amphitheater was built into the rock. You can see what remains in the right side of this picture.

And in this one on the right.

Petra is like no other place I’ve ever been, Utah notwithstanding. I’ve just made a few historical comments for context. If you’re interested you can certainly go on line and see a lot more photos and learn much more about it’s history, and the variety of cultures that impacted this unique area.

And of course you can do all of that and then go yourself. It is something to behold and a great hike in and out.

With the exception of a couple of minor mis-steps, one of which turned out to be kinda funny really, our group is doing well and enjoying the ride.

And of course, I am well and hope you all are too. 🙂