Jacob's Well

John's gospel tells us the story of the Samaritan woman drawing water at a well in Samaria.  Jesus was hot and thirsty after a long journey (it was 'the sixth hour' .... i.e. mid-day) and when a woman of Samaria came to the well to draw water, he asked her to give him a drink.  She commented that there wasn't a bucket so he could draw some up for himself, and wasn't sure if she, a Samaritan, should be drawing water for a Jew ?    The story continues in John, chapter 4 ...

The church where the well is situated is the Greek Orthodox Church of St Photina in Nablus, and is found by descending stairs in front of the iconostasis to the crypt.   One of our group said he had visited the well about 40 years ago, when it was still in a field !  The present church on the site was completed in 2007.  Like all ancient sites, the key feature is below present day ground level, whether this is in the UK or the Middle East, so we went down the stairs to see the actual well.  

The winding gear at the top of the well .... the water is reached at about 30 metres, though it is thought in ancient times it was much deeper.   We tried the water which our guide wound up for us; it was cold, crystal clear and possibly with a slight sweet taste, though as I had a heavy cold, I couldn't taste much of anything.

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Nablus and Jacob’s Well has often been a site of contention and violence. In 1979 a Zionist group claimed it as a Jewish holy place and demanded that crosses and icons be removed. A week later the custodian, Archimandrite Philoumenos, was butchered to death in the crypt and the church was desecrated. No one was ever convicted of his murder.   This sad event is recorded in icons and paintings in the church, and around his coffin, which is in the church.

One of our group, the Dean of the Cathedral in Newport, had been a friend of Philoumenos, and so stood to one side and sang a psalm in Greek, which was very moving and other tourists stopped to listen.  The acoustics in modern Greek Orthodox churches are usually very good.  

Some trees and other plants ...

The ugli fruit ....... a sort of cross between a grapefruit and an orange ??

    










Cyclamen growing in cracks in paving

Some sort of succulent ?

He's a fun flower-pot !













The 'sycamore-fig' tree supposedly climbed by the short, fat tax collector, Zacchaeus, who wanted to see Jesus in Jericho !  
Wiki tells me it is Ficus sycomorus, called the sycamore fig or the fig-mulberry
(A bit blurry as snapped through the bus window)

The Massacre of the Innocents

I regularly receive the Mill Hill Missionaries newsletter via email, and this morning was surprised to see a photo of one of the posters on the Separation Wall near Bethlehem, and remembered the church at Ein Karem we visited with the painting of the massacre which moved me so much (see below).   

This is the image from the MHM newsletter:

How DO parents explain the separation wall to their children ?   And if a wall is eventually built between the US and Mexico, then how to explain that to little children, be they American or Mexican ?  

This is the wall painting which shocked me so much when I saw it... the two children about to be killed are the age of my two (local) grandchildren, M and R.  

The 'massacre' is explained in Matthews gospel:  "Herod, when he saw that he was mocked by the wise men, was 'exceeding wroth' (I love the King James version !) ... and ordered that all children in Bethlehem and around, from two years old and under, were slaughtered."

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When I think of what adults can do to children ....the many ways in which they can ill-treat them, neglect them, abuse them; well, that's the reason I support HATW and have worked with them for about ten years now.  

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Coming out of the Church of the Visitation at Ein Karem, this was the peaceful view 

Church of Dominus Flevit and on to the Garden of Gethsemane

Dominus Flevit is a church on the Mount of Olives in the shape of a tear-drop, which is thought to be the site where Jesus wept over what he foresaw was the future destruction of Jerusalem.

View from inside Dominus Flevit.

The view over the old city of Jerusalem is magnificent, and one photographed millions of times by millions of visitors.   Below is my photo of the golden Dome of the Rock ... the Al Aqsa Mosque is over to the right, out of shot, both on the Temple Mount, which is now a Moslem site, and not so easy for Christian tourists to visit.  The Dome of the Rock was built in the late 7th century, and is a shrine, not a mosque.  The Prophet Mohammed, founder of Islam, is traditionally believed to have ascended into heaven from the site.

Between the Temple Mount and Dominus Flevit, down in and across the valley, are thousands of Jewish graves, all facing the Temple Mount, and the sealed Golden Gate ready for the day when the gates of Jerusalem are flung open for the arrival of the expected Messiah .... 

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The Garden of Gethsemane .... 

Some of the olive trees are close to 2,000 years old, but perhaps not the actual trees amongst which Jesus prayed the night his disciples slept and he was arrested, having been betrayed by Judas ... 

Wild-life ?

Hooded crow, very common in Jerusalem

The Jerusalem Cathedral cat .... very sharp teeth and claws, but beautiful .... and uncastrated, like just about all middle eastern cats.

We stayed in Jericho for only one night, in a posh hotel .... with cockroaches in our bathroom !

Odds and ends .... things that caught my eye !

(Churches and places we visited .... will be continued !)

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Some sort of water hydrant ?  It made me laugh anyway !


The delicious breads I couldn't eat   

Santa was everywhere, which somewhat surprised me, in a Jewish state with large numbers of Moslems.

Pre-prepared fruits of every variety ... it was grapefruit and pomegranite season.

            Giant Lego Egyptians !

Pater noster

'Our father', in Latin.

We visited Paternoster church, which has gardens and walls decorated with the Lord's Prayer in every (just about !) known language.

(I noticed that the word 'which' in the first line has been changed to 'who' !)

                               

I found the Kiswahili version, and noticed that many other African languages are represented .... Fon, Afrikaans, Wollof, and so on.   Couldn't find one in Dholuo though ... so here it is ...

"To un onego ulem kama; wuonwa manie polo, nyingi mondo omi luor; lochni obi, kendo dwaroni mondo otimre e piny kak timore e polo ...."   (and I forget the rest). 

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I love it that in the crush and crowdedness of Jerusalem, the churches have walled gardens and trees around them.   

Three postings in one day !

More about Bethlehem .... 

The main reason pilgrims visit Bethlehem is to see the birthplace of Christ.  The Church of the Nativity is huge, with crypts, tunnels and hidden areas below ground level, as well as the vast church above.   Because of the huge numbers of tourists visiting, it is frequently  necessary to join queues and slowly shuffle along for more than an hour.   But on this visit, the church seemed more crowded than on my previous visit in 2012, I suspect because the interior space this visit is full of scaffolding and screening as a major restoration is taking place.

Restorations and cleaning have revealed beautiful gold mosaics on the walls, as well as the paintings of saints on the red limestone columns, painted by the Crusaders.   The iconostasis is typically Greek Orthodox, with icons and lamps and glittery 'bling' .... such as we never see in our Welsh or English Anglican churches ! 

The real purpose of our queueing was to go into the crypt and see the actual birthplace of Christ.   To the right of the iconostasis are some steep steps leading down to the Grotto of the Nativity.   Its strange how these sort of ancient places have an 'aura' of their own, but last time I was there, at the top of the steps, I had a sudden and very urgent desire to remove my sandals .... probably remembering what God said to Moses: "take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground" - it certainly seemed the right thing to do, so I went bare foot into the crypt.

Going down to the grotto ....

                                           ... and the star marking the actual spot where Christ was born.

I asked Bp. Dominic what the 14 points of the star represented, and ever the tease, he said they represented the 14 pains that Mary felt as she gave birth !   Obvious he'd never had a baby !

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After all the crowds and crush of our visit to the church, I got up early the next morning (hotel right next to the church) and went back into the church about 6.30 (it opens at 5 a.m.) and was able to wander around by myself in the peace of an almost empty building.   Much better !

Leaving through the 'Door of Humility' .... 

The wall

Look closely at this map ... Bethlehem is in the West Bank (Palestine) and so to visit and stay there, we had to go through various check points, and pass 'The Wall'.  

The Separation Wall is about 30 ft high, topped with barbed wire and with watch towers at each bend in the wall.

Israeli settlements are springing up all over the West Bank, with similar walls around them and large quantities of soldiers to protect the Israeli inhabitants.

People from the West Bank side cannot cross the boundary without various permits and good reasons (i.e. employment) to cross.   As tourists, we had no problem, thought at one point a well-armed soldier came onto our bus to check us, and the luggage compartments under the bus had to be opened and inspected ....  

"Make hummus, not walls"

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"

"I don't want to survive, I want to live"

"Palestine is a Holy Land, not painting on 
the walls"







This is the sort of thing Mr Trump has in mind for the border with Mexico; the Palestinians don't think much of either the separation wall OR Mr Trump !

Nine lessons and Carols

**  (Can I just remind readers that I went to the Holy Land six years ago, and I'm using some of my photos from then, if I don't have an applicable one from the recent visit).

We had this traditional service of nine lessons today in church, and as we sang, it brought back recent memories and images of us singing 'While shepherds watched their flocks ...'  at the shepherds' field just on the edge of Bethlehem.  

  

There are churches everywhere we went, most if not all with wall paintings, mosaics and icons.   I had a dreadful cold throughout the whole trip and could barely hear what our guide, Fahdi, was telling us, so the fresco's and other decorations gave me something to ponder on whilst the others in our group were listening to commentaries

I liked this one, with the young shepherd boy dancing for joy ...

Unfortunately we didn't have time to see the excavations which were going on but saw one of the caves which shepherds often used for shelter ... and which is now used for services for visitors.   

(Can I at this point just say that the number of tourists going to these places has increased ENORMOUSLY, especially visitors from the far east .... Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, Hong Kong, etc. etc.)  

For me, this pilgrimage proved to be for a different purpose to the one I made six years ago.   I think being so bunged up with a cold and unable to hear much, meant that I had instead, to look and think much more, and recall all the Bible stories of the places we were visiting, and reflect on what these places meant to others in our group, and indeed, to the thousands of other tourists ... 

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We next went on a tour of the developing Bethlehem University, the first university in the West Bank, founded 1973.   Most of the students (about 80%) are girls, studying hotel management and tourism, accountancy,  arts, nursing and education.

The catering students had cooked and served us with an enormous and delicious lunch, which we ate, seven to a table, with a Bethlehem student joining us.   It was really interesting to be able to talk freely to students; on my table was Sarah, who at 22, was completing an accountancy degree.    (Lucky girl, she hadn't heard of Brexit !!)

Three of the students who entertained us.   One came from Hebron, one from Nablus and the third from Ramalla ... all places we have heard about on the news, in reports of terrorist incidents .... but do they look like terrorists ?!  Think of the terrorist incidents which have happened in London, Paris, Strasbourg; far worse than anything happening in the West Bank and Palestinian territories.  They told us of the regime under which they are forced to live, with permits and passes needed to move around within the West Bank which has been divided into three areas, each of which has different regulations on movement ...