Day - 23 - The Real Via Dolorosa

View from Mount of Olives on the Old City and Temple Mount

Today we walked a much more historically accurate route of the road of suffering.

This started at the Garden of Gethsemane, where we had a really cool time of communion and prayer.

We also stopped by Saint Anne Cathedral.


Saint Anne was the Grandma of Jesus.


We also stopped at the church of the Holy Sepulcher. 

Day - 22 - Traditional Via Dolorosa

Today we went to the oldest part of Jerusalem, the city of David.


We also got to go to the one place in all of Israel, that we know for a fact, Jesus stood at one point of His life.

This place is the old 2nd Temple period entrance to the Temple Mount. 

Then we walked what is known as the traditional Via Dolorosa, or The Road of Suffering.


This is the way the catholics claim Jesus walked to His death.

Day - 21 - No Place for a Baby

We started the day by going to Herodium, which is a man made mountain that is hollowed out with a city on the inside. King Herod had it built, thus why it is named after him.

After Herodium we went to the scariest city of the trip, other than New York of course...

Bethlehem is controlled buy the Muslims, and there is no government. We had to leave our Jewish guides back in Jerusalem because they are not allowed in.

Masters did find this sweet necklace though.

Day - 20 - David and Goliath

We went to many Tels today, including Tel Beersheba.

Our last stop was the valley where David fought Goliath. 


I picked a smooth stone like the one David used to bring home as a gift for my Dad.

Day - 19 - The Shrine

Today we had an amazing opportunity to have the curator of the Shrine of the Book guide us on a tour of both Qumran, and the Shrine.


Qumran was home to the Jewish sect know as the Essenes. 

This is the place where we find some of the oldest and best persevered writings of scripture.

We got to see a couple of the original documents found at Qumran at the Shrine of the Book.

Day - 18 - 50,000

Today was a free day so we just walked around the old city and finished up any shopping we had left.


Little did we know that it was National Jerusalem Day.


The Jews had many celebrations and parades that all met at the Western Wall. 50,000 Jews in all.


There were many fights between Jew and Muslim, and about 47 were arrested, and numerous injured. 


We managed to sneak to a place where we could see everything going on. We snapped a couple pictures before we were thrown out, rather we ran out before they could throw us out. 


I guess your not supposed to have girls in a Jewish study area. Signs would have been nice...

Day - 17 - Holocaust

Today started off exciting and ended very somber.


First we got to do a sift of part of the temple mount that was excavated. We found lots of small artifacts such as Roman glass, pieces of the original Dome of the Rock, very old pottery, and many other miscellaneous pieces. 

After we spent the rest of the day in the Israel Holocaust Memorial. Having been the the Holocaust Memorial in Washington I was shocked at the differences. In D.C. the memorial is very shocking and sad, in Israel there was much less emotion. It was difference in feelings from reading a novel to reading a text book.

Our guide told us that most Jews have an idea in their mind that their persecution during the Holocaust was a necessary evil in order for their nation to be re-established.

Day - 16 - Old City Exploration

Today we went to the old city to be shown the ropes.


This place is crazy. Completely crowded with people, and most of them don't really like each other.


Everything is built upon itself, so it's very hard to navigate around. 


The markets are packed with a ton of crap that no body wants, but for some reason people buy.


















We went up onto the temple mount, where the girls got hounded for showing too much skin. Apparently your a hoochie if you show your shoulders...


The Dome of the Rock is a beautiful building with its gold roof.

Both the Muslims and the Jews believe that in the Dome of the Rock sits the corner stone of the world. The very first stone God created when he created the earth.


I couldn't get inside to verify, so I'll just take their word.


We ended our day at the wailing wall.

Day - 15 - Travel to Jerusalem

We started the day at another tel, Tel Jezreel, and surprise, surprise we then went to Tel Maggido.

From there we traveled west to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, to Caesurae.

There is a theater that dates back to the time of the Romans in Caesurae, that is still currently in use. Today they were having concert. 

During the hay day of Caesurae, King Herod had a 13 mile long aqueduct built from the area's main water source to his palace on the coast. The aqueduct had a consisted 1 degree slope the entire 13 miles of it. 

Of course climbed it....

Our last stop of the day was our arrival at our final hotel of the trip, in Jerusalem Israel.

Day - 14 - The Places Jesus Was

Today we went to Chorazin, which according to Matthew and Luke, were villages in which Jesus performed "mighty works." 

Something interesting I learned today was that according the the teaching of Jesus he was probably most likely aligned with the jewish sect of the Pharisees. This might explain Jesus' harsh words to the Pharisees. Who are you going to get more upset at for screwing up, your good friend or someone you have no relationship with?




In the Synagogue in Chorazin there is this interesting stone which seems to have the face of Medusa carved on it.












After Chorazin we went to the Mount of the Beatitudes. 

Then we went to Capernum, the place there Jesus called Peter, James, and John.






















On the shores of Capernum you can still find ancient fishing weights like this one that we found.

There are both a Catholic church which was built over what they believe to be the house of Peter,

And a Greek Orthodox church with crazy wierd pictures painted all over the inside of it like this one of the devil.

To finish off the day we went in a boat ride on the Galilee as the sun was setting. 

                               

Day - 13 - The Tiny Jordan

By far the most under whelming part of my entire time in Israel was the Jordan river, or more accurately, the Jordan Creek. This thing is tiny.

Today we went on a jeep trek through different parts of the river, and even had the opportunity for a few people to be baptized in the Jordan. 

After that we went to some natural springs and spent the rest of the day swimming, and letting little fish eat the dead skin off our feet.

Day - 12 - Crazy Catholics

Sorry it has taken so long to finish this Journal of my time in the Holy Land. My last posts will be published in the next few days. Promise!






Today we visited the Chapel of the Enunciation. According to Catholicism this is the place where the Angels revealed themselves to Marry and told her should would be giving birth to Jesus.

After that we went to a Jewish village where they taught us to make unleavened bread, and they let us ride their donkeys.

It’s very interesting traveling across Israel, and seeing all the amazingly magnificent churches built by the Catholics. During the crusades whenever they heard that an area was significant in the life of Jesus they plopped down a church. Even if that meant ruining what already laid there. Such as at the Chapel of the Enunciation. Caves, which were the dwellings of the time of Jesus, have been found underneath the church. Which may be the place the angels spoke to Mary.

Mere Shoes

Consider the following conversation which took place only a few weeks ago in the Yahoo Answers discussion forums.

Derrick:
If you go to heaven, but if someone very close to you does not, how can you be happy?
In the Bible it says you will be happy in heaven ("there will be no tears") or something like that. If I were to go to heaven and my mom or dad or child didn't make it, there is no way I could be truly happy. 

Charlotte:
In heaven you won't know who didn't make it because that would make you sad, and in heaven there is no sadness at all. 

Derrick:
Charlotte, I want to puke at the thought of that. I'm not saying the Bible is or is not the right way to go. I let people think and believe what they want. I'm just confused.
People also say God doesn't force you to love him. Well, if he doesn't force you to love him, why is there a hell to go to if you don't love him?
I'd really like to remember the people I've come to love and care about.

Next, consider your own context, biases, and expectations. What is your neighborhood like? Where do you buy groceries and how do you pay for them? How do you expect to be treated when you walk out your front door? These are all clues to the things in your life that color your perception. So think carefully about the influences you had while you were growing up, who decided you should pursue the career you're pursuing (do you really think you chose it independent of any feedback from those around you?) and why you subscribe to the type of moral value system by which you judge the world.

Think long enough and you'll see all the ways your particular matrix of experience has colored your ideas about life, including what parts of the Bible you are most interested and how you interpret them, as well as how you view your family. Think longer and you'll notice that people whose backgrounds are similar to yours often share many of your views and expectations. And that is why it is so easy for an entire culture--full of generations of people sharing and thinking similarly--to make an assumption that compromises the value of the entire moral cohesion of its members.

Why do we in the West so often treat heaven so superficially, taking note of its golden streets and jeweled walls; and pave our way there with elaborately decorated halls of noise? Why do we love the hope of eternal luxury so dearly that we compile our beliefs about eternity so lazily? What happens to people at death? What happens to you when you cross over? Are you content to believe that you will suddenly become so enamored of gilded footpaths that you will forget all about the fate of those who were your family and friends?

I cannot accept an ideological assumption that my few precious advocates within the great expanse of this universe will become as forgettable as my 1st grade textbooks. If the love of Christ is the power by which we conquer death and join him eternally, if God really is love, then a theological paradigm that forgets that love is indefensible and should be fittingly forgotten.

Thus, if we are to start anew, we must reconstruct heaven according to heavenly wisdom instead of Western notions. We must employ a worthy Architect and suitable Craftsman to show us what we ought to believe. I know God has more ahead than happiness for sake of being happy. There is something to be happy about. There is a cause for joy. There is an object of hope. There is a rock which does not give to sea or quake, and a carpenter whose ornate mansions will be humbled as adobe huts to witness the celebration within their walls.

I believe at that time we will fully realize that John the Revelator was trying to do two things that are each very complicated: (A) describe a heavenly scene beyond human words, and (B) disguise his letter of politically charged rhetoric into an allegory so heavily symbolic that only his intended audience would recognize the meaning of the symbols, thus keeping him safe from punishment by his captors. Either of those tasks would be difficult, but to do both obviously means the letter of John's Revelation must carry a wealth of hidden ideas and necessitates a deeper level of reading than that required to understand Paul's epistles or the Gospels.

And then all those superficial ideas about streets of gold, and the idea that meeting Jesus face to face could erase the love in your heart you feel for anyone. I go so far as to say that divine meeting will intensify that love to painful longing akin to Jesus' own love as we finally understand how much he loves us. And once we feel that love, what happens next that causes God to wipe every tear from our eyes?

So what about Derrick? What I observe about Derrick is a strong sense of connection to the people around him. He is genuinely concerned about how to maintain the bond of love he has with his friends and family, to the point that he has come to "scrape the barrel" on the internet to find answers. I also assume that Derrick is someone who does a lot of thinking and feeling--not the passive sort of person who aimlessly wanders about in life and hopes they end up somewhere nice. His conviction that people should be free to form their own beliefs is, in my estimation, not the product of lazy epistemology. He thinks deeply about problems like why God would send people to hell, and Derrick apparently expects everyone to labor as he does in the task of thought.

And what about Charlotte? She seems to assert that heaven will be some sort of ignorance-is-bliss city in the sky, where God delivers eternal rapturous joy by means of censorship. Does heaven serve cupcakes for breakfast? Charlotte strikes me as the sort of person wandering fields of her own interest, trying to solidify her own haplessly assembled belief system. She hasn't done the hard work of crafting her beliefs yet. She still may, somewhere in the future, but hasn't done so yet.

And what's left for us is this decision: To either wander through life waiting for heaven to come, or to seek heaven on earth while we live. Are the experiences of life just a pair of shoes we will one day throw away to forget the pain, or are they more important to us than mere shoes? I believe Christ will transform pain and sorrow into beautiful reminders of his love--just like the scars he bears for us. We must either perform the labor of cognition and the active discovery of God's uncensored truth, or we must get out of the way and let the true worshipers worship the Father in spirit and truth, recognizing that what happens and who we love in this life is every bit as important as what will happen and what love will do in the life to come.



*Discussion copied from the following URL; revisions made for clarity.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=An2kIdAiucuzrpC5H1wz8Ovd7BR.;_ylv=3?qid=20110724200715AAKMbmd

Mortal Hearts

Pride: The current infection.
The reason for the writer’s deception.
Play the game they teach you to play.
And as for your faith, you’ll have nothing left to say.
Some will never learn, oh some will never learn.
There company is ours, but there life is not.
The devil walks amongst the city.
Curse me, for I have unraveled his plot.
We gather in a circle,
but we mock the king.
We sit on our thrones,
but are we accomplishing anything?
“Take what you’ve learned,
truth you’ve built yourself on,
the God that you love,
and call it out to be wrong. “
Never!
You have my company,
but my faith is mine.
Curse me, for staring into the universe
and seeing something of the grate divine.
Mock me.
Curse me.
Break me.
Burn me.
Yet my God is still here.
Yet my faith is still mine.
Coward, you’re afraid,
of something that proceeds mortal time.
Fear is evident in your heart.
You can only hide behind your mask for so long.
This is not about who is right.
This is not about who is wrong.
I am no better then the man next to me.
One dies on land, while the other dies at sea.
Oh how I pray, how I wish you knew.
You can curse and scream, but I will not convict you.
For I am not God, I am just a man.
And all my thoughts quickly fall to the sand.
This light that I carry dose not fade away.
It brakes down the dark, and lifts the good from the gray.
I stare into the crowed, but your face dose not blend.
And I could sit here for hours telling you of the begging and of the end.
But all I would say is worthless, if I did not tell you that you were loved
By a power grater then me.
You are loved, by a power grater then,
mortal hearts.

By Chris Cameron 9/3/11

Standing Small In A World Of Giants

Wash away, all my tears,
for I’ve studied this bible for many long years.
And they only thing I’ve, ever learned form it,
was what the act of sacrificing, actually meant.
I’ve been a civilian within the crossfire.
I’ve been a romantic with love and desire.
But if I am not a man of Christ,
then what kind of man am I at all?
If I am not a man of God,
then in this world of giants I will stand so small.
I went hours without this addiction,
anger being my only conviction.
You showed me, within those hours,
the strength of your mighty, grace like powers.
And how I might be able to beat these thoughts.
Preserving threw all the wrongs and nots,
of life…
It was three nails, not two or one,
and odds are, that without you this battle for life,
of life, cannot be won.

-By Chris Cameron