A monk, pilgrims, and a granddaughter

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Psalm 86 for today's PsalmChallenge.
Our host, Robert Geiss in Athens, has a wonderful photo today for Verse 16--not to be missed! 
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PSALM 86.   A prayer.  Of David.

Incline Your ear, O LORD, answer me, for afflicted and needy am I.

2. Preserve my soul, for I am steadfast; deliver, O You, my God, Your servant who trusts in You.

3.  Be merciful to me, O my Lord, for to You I call all day long.

4. Bring joy to Your servant's soul, for to You, my Lord, I lift up my soul.

5. For You, my Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in loving kindness to all who call on You.

6. Give ear, O LORD, to my prayer; heed the voice of my pleas for mercy.

7. In the time of my trouble I call on You, so that You will answer me.

8. There is none like You among gods, O LORD, and there is nothing like You have created.

9. All the nations that You have created will come to bow down before You, O my Lord, and they will glorify Your name.

10. Indeed, great are You and creator of wonders; You are God, You alone.

11. Teach me Your way, O my LORD; I will go forward with your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart to fear Your name.

12. I will praise You, O my Lord my God, with all my heart, and I will glorify Your name forever.

13. Indeed, Your loving kindness toward me is great, and You will save my soul from the depths of Sheol.

14. O God, arrogant men have arisen against me; a band of ruthless men seek my soul―men without regard for You.

15. But You, my Lord, are the Deity Who is compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness and faithfulness.

16. Turn to me and have mercy on me; grant Your strength to Your servant and deliver Your maidservant's child.

17. Create for me a miracle, for good, that those who hate me may see and be put to shame, for You, O LORD, have helped me and comforted me.

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Translation: Rabbi Benjamin J. Segal.  See also his explanations and the Hebrew original. 

PHOTOS:

1. An Ethiopian monk prays at the door to their church at the Holy Sepulchre. 

2. Pilgrims softly singing on the way, in the hill country of John the Baptist.  Probably devout Russian Orthodox Christians.  I met them as I hiked today.  They and I were the only ones out in the wilderness. 

3. Libby daughter of Naomi. My youngest grandchild.  At Jerusalem's Biblical Zoo.
All the photos can be enlarged. 

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(Added to Delirious Doors meme, too.)
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Welcome miners from Chile!

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Today Israel will welcome 31 of the 33 Chilean miners as they arrive in Jerusalem to begin an 8-day pilgrimage of thanksgiving.
The men are accompanied by their wives or girlfriends.
Our Ministry of Tourism is paying for their air fare and expenses.
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More about it here:
Jerusalem Post  and Israelity.

Photos are from the opal exposition in Sydney, Australia.
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UPDATE:  Now the papers are saying that 23 (and not 31) of the miners arrived.  They are having a wonderful and moving time at the holy places.
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Russian bridge to a WC in Jerusalem

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Will this qualify for Louis la Vache's Sunday Bridges, you think?
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Here's the story as told by Aviva Bar-Am in The Jerusalem Post:

"Russian pilgrims began visiting the Holy Land en masse in the middle of the 19th century.
To provide for their needs, several hostels were constructed inside the Russian Compound within walking distance of the Old City's holy sites.

But none of these hostels was fancy enough to house the Russian aristocracy.

The nobility preferred the elegance of Beit Sergei, built in 1890 on the initiative of Prince Sergei Alexandrovitch, brother of the ruling czar.

The complex included stately visitors' rooms, bathrooms and showers, dining rooms and cisterns.
The first floor was the service area, with a reception hall, kitchen and other rooms.
On the second floor were 25 rooms, half of which were fairly plain and the other half elaborately furnished with Persian rugs, silk wall hangings, plaster sculptures and brocade curtains.

On weekdays, you can walk inside to view two squat towers within the courtyard that held the bathrooms; indeed, bridges leading to the upper stories are still in place."
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And today, 120 years later, the public toilet is located in the bottom of one tower!
It is one of my favorites, always clean and with TP. : )
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(More pictures of Sergei's Courtyard here, here, and here.)

A new blog is born!

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Meet my Australian artist/photographer friend Lucy, the Wildgoose, who tomorrow sets out on the 1,000 kilometer Bibbelmun Track through southwestern Australia.

She will reach the great trail's end (God willing!) only the week before Christmas.

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Lucy opened a brand new blog today and I invite YOU to follow her!

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While walking the Camino de Santiago, the ancient pilgrimage route across Spain, Lucy found this Spanish saying in a logbook: "El turista exige; el peregrino agradece," meaning, "The tourist demands; the pilgrim gives thanks."

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That was nine years ago, but that idea stayed with Lucy.

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To quote her new blog:

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" I’m walking the [Bibbelmun] track as a reflective, embodied practice as part of my Honours thesis in sustainability. Its working title is: Pilgrimage and the Alchemy of Transformation – Finding a way from Entitlement to Gratitude.

. . . So I’m playing at being a pilgrim, and finding a way from entitlement to gratitude."

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Lucy hopes that what she learns and writes will help us all walk more softly on our troubled planet, through adopting an attitude of gratitude.

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Lechi leshalom, go to peace, friend.

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Revelation and response

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Happy Shavuot! The holiday begins tonight.
And so does ABC Wednesday R Day.

One name of the Shavuot holiday is The Time of the Giving of Our Torah.
Moshe Rabbenu, Moses our Teacher, received the revelation from God on Mt. Sinai.
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"Boaz and Ruth" by William Hole, 1607-1624, British

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In the synagogue the Book of Ruth is read.

Converts like Ruth the Moabite, who followed Naomi, are appreciated especially on this day.

Ruth was gleaning in the field when she met Boaz. They married and became ancestors of King David.

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Shavuot is indeed The Festival of the Harvest.

Last week, from the bus window, going up north to the Galilee, I could see that the grain had just been cut.
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Pilgrimage section at the Tower of David Museum

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It is also the Festival of the First Fruits.
Specific agricultural offerings were brought to the Temple on Shavuot, which is one of the Slosh Regalim, the three pilgrimage festivals when Jews went up to Jerusalem.


Not part of the ritual, but really important as a custom, is to eat cheese and dairy food on Shavuot.
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Then there is Tikkun Lel Shavuot, the all-night study session of Torah.
And wearing white.
And decorating the house with greenery.
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Every year on this holiday we renew our acceptance of God's gift and God "re-gives" the Torah!
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Entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday

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For me it is the day before Pesach, a day for cleaning the cupboards of the last vestiges of bread, cookies, pasta, etc.--anything that may have touched leavening. Tomorrow we start a week of eating matsa, the hard "bread of affliction," instead of soft bread.
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But for Christians, today is Palm Sunday and I wish you all a joyous holy day.
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If I were a braver blogger, I would have gone to the Holy Sepulchre to get you fresh photos of the festivities.
I should explain that this ancient church is not your modern orderly type of church. It has no pews or chairs. You do not have your own space.
Instead you have surging masses of pilgrims, the press of bodies, a lack of air.

Last time I was in the huge church for Palm Sunday, I was literally trapped in the crowd and could not force my way to the only door.
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But my pictures from 2007 are basically no different from what is happening this very day and year.
So I invite you to see my previous slideshows, from the comfort of our own homes:

• Morning services for Palm Sunday in the Holy Sepulchre
• Afternoon pilgrimage of the faithful from Mt. of Olives to the Old City

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Menorah in Magdala

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Where are archaeology volunteers taken on their weekly field trip?
To other digs, of course, to be guided around by the director of the site!

Don't mind the sign "Archaeological excavations. DANGER -- NO ENTRY."

Our group drove 4 miles south of Tiberias, along the Sea of Galilee, to Migdal.
Migdal in Hebrew, Magdala in Aramaic.
Readers of the New Testament will know that the town was most likely the birthplace or place of residence of Mary Magdalene, a devoted follower of Jesus.

Something like a scene from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" greeted our expectant eyes.
A stone box-shaped object literally under wraps, hidden by a heavy cloth and white sandbags.
It stood in the front of a 1st century synagogue. The basalt benches still in situ!

As he uncovered it, the archaeologist in charge cautioned us not to take any close-up photographs of this very recent and very spectacular find.

I compromised and sneaked a shot of only half of the stone structure. The carved decorations are different on each side and on the top.
They think it is the base of the table used 2,000 years ago for reading the Torah scroll.


In this Photo from the Ministry of Tourism, you see what the whole country was excited about!

You will enjoy reading the authoritative article about the discoveries at Migdal, available here.

This is the paragraph about the menorah:

According to the excavation director, Dina Avshalom-Gorni of the IAA, “We are dealing with an exciting and unique find. This is the first time that a menorah decoration has been discovered from the days when the Second Temple was still standing. This is the first menorah to be discovered in a Jewish context and that dates to the Second Temple period/beginning of the Early Roman period. We can assume that the engraving that appears on the stone, which the Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered, was done by an artist who saw the seven-branched menorah with his own eyes in the Temple in Jerusalem. The synagogue that was uncovered joins just six other synagogues in the world that are known to date to the Second Temple period.”

Ironically, this synagogue would not have been found if ground had not been broken by the Magdala Center, a Catholic pilgrim center planned to be built by the Legionaries of Christ/ Regnum Christi Movement. The Israel Antiquities Authority stepped in to do its always-necessary survey (before anything is built) and were so surprised to find all these treasures.

The Center will eventually be built around, not ON, the antiquities. But can you imagine how a synagogue from the time and place of Jesus will draw vast numbers of visitors of all faiths?!
Don't you just love how these things work? :-)

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Centuries-old graffiti

. Does being old make graffiti more respectable? So many of you had strong reactions to the post of yesterday that tonight I want to give you a nicer kind of writing and marking found on some stones of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

  Remember the tall entrance doors from last Friday? I photographed them from the top of these steep stairs, on what is called Golgotha or the Mount of Calvary. See the ledge on top of the little white pillars to the left?

  I was leaning on this smooth, cool ledge to take the picture of the doors below. Under my elbows I suddenly noticed the graffiti , carved in 1876! . Blogger friend Mediterranean Kiwi of the fine One Day in Hania e-mailed her help in solving the mystery of what is written in Greek: "MNSOT KYRIE is probably something like 'the servant of the lord' KAISAPOYS - this name has to do with the name 'caesar' ATHONITOY - from Mt. Athos (he must have been a monk) GRIGORA - obviously from the name 'Gregory' PELOP---ONHSIOS - from the Peloponese"

  Centuries before the monk from Greece's holy Mount Athos arrived, other pilgrims came up to Jerusalem and showed their devotion by cutting these little crosses into the walls of the church, along the stairs going down to the Chapel of St. Helena.

 

I find it very touching.

To think of medieval folks who made great sacrifices to make the long and dangerous journey to the Holy Land . . . how they must have felt, finally to touch the walls of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre!

It matters little, what (if any) religion you belong to. The feel of a place much prayed in is very touching. Touching our soul.

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UPDATE April 2021: Research being done on these little crosses indicates that most were

done by a handful of masons who did the work for the pilgrims who asked for it. 
See short video here: 
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-researchers-claim-to-solve-mystery-of-engraved-crosses-at-holy-sepulchre/
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Moses, John Paul, and Benedict on Mt. Nebo

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Pope Benedict XVI arrived in the Kingdom of Jordan yesterday, the first stop on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land(s). This morning he is standing on Mount Nebo.
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This is where Moses, at the end of the 40 years of wandering in the desert, stood and looked longingly across to the Promised Land.

Deuteronomy 34:1-6 says
"And Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land, Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negev, and the Plain, that is, the valley of Jericho the city of palm trees, as far as Tsoar. 
And the Lord said to him, 'This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, "I will give it to your descendants." I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there.'
So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord, and he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Bethpeor; but no man knows the place of his burial to this day." 

Once I wandered into Vatican territory--the Pontifical Institute Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center. In a showcase were photos of the last papal visit in 2000.  
Please click to enlarge their photo of the previous Pope, John Paul II, and read the poetic and prophetic words he spoke on Mt. Nebo!
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The remarks made this morning by Pope Benedict at the ancient basilica on Mt. Nebo are already published here.
 He concluded with this wish:

"May our encounter today inspire in us a renewed love for the canon of Sacred Scripture and a desire to overcome all obstacles to the reconciliation of Christians and Jews in mutual respect and cooperation in the service of that peace to which the word of God calls us!"
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W people

Women in white on a white donkey for the Big Hug of Jerusalem, 2007.

White-clad man (pilgrim? clergy?) with walking-stick in the Old City.

Well-armed woman soldier.

Wet Windows umbrella over wonderful grandson.

Via Dolorosa, Via Crucis

Today's ABC Wednesday is brought to you by the letter V. Contributing blogs have various other Vs. Visit them at mrsnesbittsplace.

V is for Roman numeral V. The 5th Station of the Cross where Simon of Cyrene takes the cross from Jesus. Via Dolorosa is the Way of Sorrows.

Veronica wipes the face of Jesus at the House of St. Veronica, the 6th of the 14 Stations of the Cross in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Videotaping a procession.

Asian pilgrims walk the Via Crucis or Way of the Cross.

Very narrow streets, very many visitors.
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Scenes from the Holy Sepulchre

Tarboosh (or fez) on the head of Muslims leading the Armenian clergy in procession to the Holy Sepulchre church.
Turban on a pilgrim from a far country on Palm Sunday.
Tarnished? Not for long when the workman does his labor of love.
Tall old doors into the church.
TV cameramen from CNN cover Palm Sunday festivities.

Touching history

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The altar of the Greek Orthodox Chapel of the Raising of the Cross stands over a glassed-in part of the Rock of Calvary. The disc under the altar has a small hole through which pilgrims can touch the rock which held the cross.
It is the 12th of the 14 Stations of the Cross, or Via Crucis, also called the Via Dolorosa.

Many are the stones in the Holy City who beg to be touched by us.
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Procession of Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday afternoon everyone gathers on the Mount of Olives and then begin a joyful procession all the way down to the Old City, entering the city walls through the Lions (St. Stephan's) Gate, and gathering again at the old Crusader church of St. Anne. En route there is singing and dancing and waving of palm fronds and olive branches. Oh, and lots of security.

My pictures from last year can be seen small on the slideshow or big at http://picasaweb.google.com/ponddina/ProcessionPalmSunday2007 .

And a link to the previous post's photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/ponddina/PalmSundayAtHolySepulchre2007

Palm Sunday in the Holy Sepulchre

Happy Palm Sunday to the Christian friends!
Last year on Palm Sunday I experienced all the colorful and diverse worship services of the many different faith communities within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The ancient church was packed with pilgrims. This year my claustrophobia got the better of me, and I chose to stay closer to home for this festive day.
Enjoy the slideshow. For bigger version of the photos you can go to http://picasaweb.google.com/ponddina/PalmSundayAtHolySepulchre2007

Into the hill country, to a town of Judah

I was out wandering alone down near the spring when these Russian monastics came by and asked me directions to Ein Kerem.
Ein Kerem is the lovely ancient village believed to be the birthplace of John the Baptist. From here near the spring it is only maybe a mile and a half walk.
 I pointed (we had no common language) to the path that goes around the hill, through the woods, down to the valley of Nahal Soreq.
It can be a problem when the our trail signs are only in Hebrew.

Having lost the way plenty of times in my life, always glad to direct a pilgrim in the way he should take!
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Windows into Heaven

I've seen a lot of different identifying signs in tourist buses--but never an icon! 
This bus was parked down by our local monastery today, waiting for its group of Russian pilgrims to return from their visit to some holy places associated with John the Baptist.

In Christian tradition, an icon is not meant to be looked at as a work of art; it is to be gazed upon as a "window into heaven."

So here you have a photo of a window in a window now on a computer screen. 
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