Colourful Dreamer

Day seven was quite a day. It was Yom Kippur – the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. The name Yom Kippur translates from Hebrew to English as the Day of Atonement. Jewish people may spend the day fasting, attending synagogue, or observing the holiday in other ways. It follows Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. And it is big in Israel – not surprisingly. And some factions within Jewish Israel are keen for everyone to stop and observe it in some way; including Muslims and Christians, and less orthodox Jews for that matter. It can be problematic. So, the normal programme of our pilgrimage was altered so that we were not needing buses and could walk everywhere. Our day began with a lecture on Holy Sepulchre, which was super helpful. I wish I had known some of that stuff before. The history begins with Helena identifying the site as that of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection and Constantine building the first church on that site, a much grander affair than the current one. T...

Day six was a huge day. We left early, all dressed to the utmost modesty, especially the women, for al-Haram al-Sharif or Temple Mount. This is such a deeply contested and ancient holy place. For Jews it is the site for the two temples, and there are those who long to rebuild it on that site. For Muslims it is as the site where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven on his famed Night Journey . The site is so important to Islam that it is one of the only two mosques mentioned in the Quran (the other being the al-Haram Mosque in Mecca). The Quran also considers al-Aqsa Mosque to be the first qibla, or point of direction for praying, and the Prophet and Muslims prayed toward it before it was changed to Mecca; as such, al-Aqsa is also known as the Qibla Mosque. For more read here . The term “al-Haram al-Sharif" (Arabic for “The Noble Sanctuary”) is used interchangeably with the terms “al-Aqsa Mosque compound” or, simply, “al-Aqsa.” The elevated compound, which includes al-Aqsa Mosqu...

Day five began (after breakfast of course) with a walk to the Greek Orthodox church at Mary's Well, where the conversation with Gabriel began. Because we Christians have not been great at getting along – with the first big official rift coming in the 400’s when the Oriental Orthodox family of churches disagreed with everyone else about how to describe Jesus being both human and divine , and then the Great Schism between Catholics and Eastern Orthodox churches (with both the Catholic Pope and the and Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicating each other in 1054), and then of course the Protestant Reformation, we have not been able to share worship spaces. So at nearly all these holy sites you will find both an Orthodox place of worship, and a Catholic place of worship. Holy Sepulchre is a fantastic example of this, and also how over recent time we have got a lot better at working together. Us Protestants just do our thing outside mostly. (But that is why there is a prot...

This was a big day. After breakfast at the Sisters of Nazareth Convent we set off to up into the Golan Heights below Mt Hermon to the Banias National Park and the site of Caesarea Philippi – the Roman city built by Herod the Great’s son Philip on the site of a Greek Temple for Pan and the Dancing Goats. It is built at the source of the Banias Stream, one of the main tributaries for the Jordan River. This is another wahi tapu - long been seen as a holy place – hence the Greek temple built at the time of Alexander the Great. It had been occupied for 2,000 years until the Syrian population fled after the 1967 Six-Day War. It is now part of Israel. The border with Lebanon and Syria were in the hills above us. When we were there, on the border, it was peaceful with uncertainty and danger lurking at the fringes. Last year it became part of the war zone with Hezbollah. We spent over two hours at the Banias National Park, walking through the ruins of the Temple of Pan and the first Greek se...