Exploring (Feeling) the Holy Land . Part I

I went to Jerusalem believing it would change my life.

It did.

Every stitch and fiber of my being has always wanted to visit the land of Jesus.  I discovered Jesus when I was a very small child of 3 or 4.  Hopping onto the bus to church on Sunday mornings all by myself, off I would go to my Sunday School storyland of the benevolent soul Jesus Christ.  He loved everybody.  He healed everybody.  And he fed everybody.  I loved him, I could sense his energy and his golden halo.  I clung to it.  My little life had lots of dark corners in it, but Jesus was something bright and strong that I could hold onto.  They told me he would save me from my sins, and I believed that he would.  He was just the kind of person who would do something like that.

jerusalem as seen from the Mt of Olives

A few years later, one of the members of my church in Northern California returned from a trip to 'the Holy Land' as it was called in our circles, and held a show and tell service, complete with a slide show of images documenting their places of pilgrimage.

  Imagine me, seven or eight years old, sitting in the front row, my feet dangling off the edge of the pew.  Long long hair, curious eyeballs and heart, and a longing to be close to the purity of Jesus.  There, in front of me, on a larger than life slideshow screen on my church's platform, the photos played out.  One after another.  Click.  Click.  Click.  I can still hear the sound of the slide projector as it moved each image through it's circular tray, flooding each transparent slide with light.

That was the first time I realized there was a whole other world out there.  And that this energy of love and protection that Jesus was to me was actually represented on Earth, in that world out there.  He actually walked in those places, he sat, and ate and breathed and laughed.  

The Jesus I knew laughed a lot, head thrown back, eyes sparkling with corners crinkled.  He had gentle calloused hands, and his voice was husky.  His cause was the underdog.  He wanted everyone to feel worthy, to know themselves as love incarnate, and to stand up for themselves. 

I wanted to go there, where he walked;  where his feet, covered in dust, connected step by step with the land.  Surely the land holds that memory sacred, then.  If I could just go there, and touch that land, the land would release it's memories into me.  I just knew it.

Jesus loved all kinds of people no matter what they did, and they loved him back.  He died, too.  I was very aware of his death.  I have very visceral memories of my whole body sobbing more than once over the tragedy.  It was just too much for me to handle.  Jesus was my friend, my protector, my light.  I took him seriously.  After all, in those long nights when the corners were especially dark, he showed up and held my hand.  That's how I know what his hands are like.

The Jewish tradition believes that when the Messiah comes he will walk triumphantly through this section of Jerusalem, and so this has become their preferred burial ground.

 When I grew up and left home, I began to seek the truth about the origins of religions.  I read book after book about the conception of the Christian faith.  The Jesus I knew didn't quite fit into what I had always been taught, anyway.  I still see his character just as I always did ... I also have an education about the origin of the Christianization of the world. 

That is the backstory to my lifelong desire to go to Israel.  When the trip was finally booked just a few months ago, I took a deep breath and did a happy dance.  Aware of my expectations, I knew that this trip would be a major homecoming for me.  A part of me already knows Israel; deeeeep inside I feel a cellular synergy and recognition of the land.

All that stuff about peace and war and bombs and stealing land and killing?  Never once did I believe that would get in the way of my connection to the land.  I totally believed the land Jesus walked would still hold his footsteps, his very heartbeat, and would sing them to me.  

That's what the earth does.  It sings to me.

So, I arrived in Israel.  Heart wide open.  Excited.  My inner little-girl-who-freakin-loves-Jesus was pretty excited too.  My camera was ready:  oh my, the photos I would take.  

The ornate ceiling over the top of Golgotha, rock of Calvary, inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  This church reportedly contains the burial and crucifixion areas of Jesus - including the tomb from which he rose after 3 days of death.

I went to Golgotha.  Or rather, the spot that someone in the 4th century claimed was Golgotha.  It is now a gargantuan church.  I stood in line amidst the trembling pilgrims, and touched the very rock upon which they believe Jesus was crucified.   I then queued for the entrance into the tomb of Jesus.  When I was inside, the priest/guard continuously smacked the wall of Jesus' tomb, 'Hurry up!  Let's go!  Keep moving!'. 

The video below shows the tomb, on the left side of the frame.  It's a bit wobbly, and you may want to brace yourself for the mega blast of organ music.

I went to Bethlehem, in the West Bank, just a ten minute bus ride from Jerusalem.  Bethlehem is now surrounded by tour buses and olive wood factories.  Oh, and a really big wall with barbed wire, video cameras, and one way mirror watchtowers.  And people with guns.  You have to go through the  gutwrenching process of the Israeli checkpoint before you can cross in or out of Bethlehem, which sits on the other side of the graffiti-sprayed security wall built to separate Palestine and Israel.  A thick tension uncomfortably permeates the atmosphere.  As if a hand were clamped over your mouth and you can still breathe, but your breath is limited and you know you are at the mercy of the hand.

The Church of the Nativity, where they say Jesus was born in a manger, is a cab ride away from the wall.  The Church of Nativity itself is owned by two separate religious sects, who are quite well-known for their fist-fights with each other over who is the REAL owner of the site.  

 I got yelled at by a priest there, just a few yards away from the manger, for sitting with my legs crossed. (Floor-length long skirt fully covering the female temptress regions of legsanklestoes, arms covered too).  Until that moment, I was unaware of the unholiness of that seated position.  But fist-fights are holy obviously.

 Back in Jerusalem, I walked the Via Dolorosa, the narrow route on which Jesus carried the cross on the way to crucifixion.  I went to the Garden of Gethsemane.  I stood on the spot where Jesus was beaten and scorned.  I tried really hard to get to the Temple Mount, to visit the ultimate holy site for all 3 major religions, but was repeatedly turned away for not appearing to be Jewish, Muslim, or arriving at the proper time (closing time is apparently not the REAL closing time if you are me.)  

 

 I watched with intense curiosity as at least a thousand Jews celebrated Shabbat at the Wall; I felt their inherent sense of belonging to one another, the rich heritage that runs through their veins, the land upon which they danced, and their God.  The energy created by their righteous conviction of belonging was spine-tingling, invigorating, awe-inducing.

 I listened to the Call to Prayer as the sun set over Jerusalem.  The haunting devotion of the Muslim prayers activated a primal ache inside of me.  Standing on the ramparts of the walls, removed from the layers where history and present-tense converge, the cascading sounds of multiple prayer calls woven over the waning, pinkish light of the sky is sheer beauty.

 The passions contained within the walls of the Old City are like a maniacally throbbing heartbeat; fed from 3 isolated veins, ever-escalating and kaleidoscoping out in a myriad of beliefs --- with a frenetic fervor that is all at once mesmerizing and bonechilling.

Do you know what?  I could write an entire book about my time in Israel.  The Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the West Bank, Haifa ... addd a quick jaunt over the border into Jordan and Petra for the icing on the cake ... and you've got a girl with a hell of a lot to say, who can double her words with pictures.

 Jerusalem gets inside of you.  There is something about it ... something that wakes you up and shatters you to smithereens all at the same time.  It is polarizing, smothering, intoxicating, maddening, overwhelming, and completely beyond definition.  Even though I keep trying.  As if defining it will help heal the questions and aches that Jerusalem birthed in me.

(You can read a little more about that here)

I've said enough for now.  And for the first time in my life, I feel my photographs don't quite tell the whole story.  Maybe just because it all just feels so big over there.