Day 10 Part 2 Gethsemane

With my two bottles of water, which taste wonderful being slightly cool, I head to the little gate that leads out of Dominus Flevit and back to the narrow, steep and busy street that heads down the mount of olives.  I look carefully both directions before crossing the street to the other side where there is another gate with a sign indicating it leads to the Garden of Gethsemane.  

A couple of steps and I am across.  Entering the gate, you come into a place where it seems less of a garden and more of an orchard of some very ancient trees.  I have never seen trees that look this old.  They look so old as to wonder if they are still live but they obviously are, at least parts of them.  I wonder to myself if these trees could be so old as to have been here when Jesus was in the garden.  

As if that particular question had been asked a million times, our guide who walks us through the garden answers that these trees might could possibly be the "children" to the trees of Jesus' day.  They are probably 1500-1600 years old even though they look like could be much older.  Hearing the answer, I am glad I didn't ask it out loud.  

We wander a bit but head in the direction of the Church of All Nations which was built over the rock that Jesus prayed on when he sweat great drops of blood.  I am hoping we will have another opportunity to sing inside of this beautiful edifice but the sign on the way in instructs us to keep silent inside of the church as it is dedicated to prayer.  

The interior of the church is marble, like many of these structure are.  Marble must be somewhat of a softer stone as the wear patterns of many feet make a definite pathway that is easy to follow.  The interior has many beautiful stained glass windows, paintings and murals depicting Jesus's betrayal and agony in prayer in the garden. I try to snap a few pictures but my camera is just not up to the job.  Just remember you can click on any picture to enlarge it if you want a little better detail.

Up near the altar area there are people kneeling surrounding the stone that is traditionally identified as the stone that Jesus prayed on.  The way the altar and the floor is built up around it, and or how large stones like this tend to "sink" over the centuries makes this stone look less like a boulder and more of a table top.  

Just like the site of the Nativity and the burial cave of Jesus covers up nearly all of the natural surface of what is identified as the place of Jesus' birth and burial, this site covers most of the stone except the top surface which is fairly large. The beautiful mural above the altar area depicts what the stone may have originally looked like. 

There is a long line to take a turn at kneeling around the stone for prayer.  

Our tour doesn't spend a lot of time at this site.  We board our buses at the front of the church to take us across the Kidron valley so that we can go to the Western Wall of the Temple Mount.  We board and soon pull out into the busy traffic on the east side of the Kidron.  

Coming back toward the Eastern Wall, we get a good view of the Tower of Absalom which is a prominent feature near the floor of the Kidron Valley.  We are told its origins are uncertain, but it has been traditionally identified as Absalom's tomb for a long time.  Too bad the makers of these sites back in Antiquity didn't leave us more signs telling us things like: This is Absalom's Tomb.  It would make identifying things a lot easier.  Probably some pilgrim in the 3rd century made off with whatever sign there was at the time.

On the other side of our bus the eastern wall of the Temple Mount looms large as we drive by.

The road pulls around to the right and along the southern wall of the Temple Mount near where we will debus to go to the western wall.  There is a fascinating area below the southern wall that is full of interesting ruins that is never explained to us.  I would love to know more about it.

Our buses pull up to the same long white stone paved entrance area to the Western Wall that we used to access the Temple Mount some days ago.  It is again very busy and we wait our turn in line in the sun as it is really making its presence known.  

We all make our way through and for some reason our guides attempt to bunch us up on a part of the large square that overlooks the main square where all the people pray at this "wailing wall", a name that our Jewish guides tell us is not a favorite of the Jewish people.  For the first time I am aware that the square is divided into two parts.  One for the men to pray and the other part for the women to pray.  I don't know if more men tend to pray here than women, but the men's area is about twice as large.  

I am also fascinated that half of the men's and women's areas are roped off as it is Sunday and it is the day that the wall is cleaned out of all of the little pieces of paper that people have written their prayers on and wedged them into the cracks and crevices of the wall.  

They are really through about this and even seem to have specialized tools to retrieve paper that is deep into the cracks.  They sweep these prayer papers up to be taken to a special place where they will be burned together rather than just dumped into the trash.  Burning them is considered more respectful than tossing them into the dump somewhere.  I consider this and realize that they would have to do something with what must be hundreds of little prayer papers that are left each day.  There is only so much space and people can only reach so high.  

We watch from our elevated perch for a time but I can't figure out why we are not descending down to the lower plaza to pray at the Western Wall.  It is getting exceedingly hot where we are and there is really no shade anywhere.  I decide that I am going to seize the moment and go on down to pray.  I walk down to the place where you go in.  Just before you get there, there are many "loaner" yamaka's that must be worn when we approach the wall.  I take one and put it on my head.  

I observe many orthodox Jewish men as they recite the Torah and pray.  Many of them do a peculiar "bobbing" sort of motion as they pray, standing or sitting they bend at the waist and then sit or stand upright over and over and over.  Some did the whole time I was at the wall which might have been about 30 minutes.  

Since the cleaners are still at work the available space to pray is about half of what it normally is.  Because of that, I wait a couple of people deep until a spot opens up.  There is a lot of out loud praying going on in many different languages.  I decide that since I can't understand them, I will pray in my own prayer language.  I stretch my hands forward and touch that ancient wall and begin to pray out loud.  I pray for the peace of Jerusalem.  I pray for Jesus the Messiah to come quickly.  I pray that the Great Commission be fulfilled soon.  I prayed that Muslims everywhere would come to know Jesus as their savior. 

I figure I should allow someone else the privilege to pray in my spot so I end my praying and turn around.  I meander over to the wall of separation between the men and women and spy over to the other side.  I see Indiana Jolie among the many other women there and snap a picture.

I rejoin our group at the higher plaza where the sun is beating down with some real intensity.  I light colored pavement stones of the plaza must be reflecting the heat and light of the sun back in our faces rather effectively.  I wouldn't mind staying here longer if it wasn't so hot.  

We have much to see today and our time is slipping away.  Our tour gathers together and we begin to walk.  Indiana Jolie and I quickly recognize the area we enter soon after leaving the Western Wall Plaza.  It is the Arab Quarter!  

We walk with our group in the very corridors where we were lost only 24 hours before now.  At least if we had to spend the night in the street our group would have found us today.  There was nothing to worry about after all.

We walk quite a ways from the south end of the Western Wall to the north end of the Western Wall or the North Wall of the Temple Mount (I hope you are not thoroughly confused).  We are where they believe the Pool of Bethesda once was and there is another cathedral, the Cathedral of St. Anne.  I will leave it to you to find out who St. Anne was, at least until the next blog installment!