Jerusalem Stories, #2

Hello everyone, Since Ole and I are just basking day after day in the glorious beauty surrounding us here in Scotland, we don't want you to get bored with the tediously repetitive ecstasy of our blog, so I thought I would try to write a little story every day from the adventures we had in our travels that I didn't have time to report. I thought I would start with the weekends we spent in Jerusalem, so here is: Jerusalem Story #2: During the weeks Ole and I were at the dig in Israel, we had to leave the Kibbutz every weekend because our cottages were rented out to vacationers. We kept going back to Jerusalem because we found it endlessly fascinating. I had written to my children about the personal anguish I experienced the first weekend. (That was Jerusalem story #1.) My heartbreak was the result of two factors. First, I had very high expectations that I would experience an unparalleled closeness to God when I visited the very places that Jesus had walked. I was very disappointed in the commercialization of the Holy City and in the tension between the various religious groups. Secondly, we were treated very rudely again and again in our encounters that first weekend. We finally realized that the Arabic people we were trying to relate to thought that we were Jewish. (Ole's new beard and his nose made him look the part of a Jewish resident. We began to notice that all the Jewish bus drivers, security guards, restaurant owners, etc., spoke to him in Hebrew, whereas they spoke to other tourists in English.) We learned that there had been an incident that weekend: two Israeli policemen had been shot and killed very close to where we were staying, and so tensions were heightened, and we were feeling the nasty emotions directed at us. I finally ended up in tears, and God sent a lovely Hebrew woman to comfort me – an unforgettable experience. After God's intervention through her, I was fine, and the next weekend we had an entirely different and wonderful experience. We checked into our hotel on Suq Khan-el-Zeit in the Old City on Friday afternoon, showered off the 5000-year-old dust from our dig at Gath, ate hummus and pita bread at a little Arabic restaurant, and walked through the ancient streets to the Wailing Wall to be present for the beginning of Sabbath. We had to walk through a security checkpoint, but there was a sign that assured us that the chief rabbis of Jerusalem had ruled that operating the turnstiles did not constitute a violation of the Sabbath. No photographs are allowed to be taken near the Wailing Wall on Sabbath, but we watched in fascination as hundreds of Orthodox families, dressed in their Sabbath costumes, came to pray, sing and dance. We were sitting on a low wall at the edge of the Plaza that adjoins the Wall when I became aware of a man sitting next to me on a section of wall that was a bit higher. I looked up into his kind face, and we began to visit. Eventually, he moved down beside Ole on our low wall, and we talked for more than an hour as the Plaza gradually emptied and we were left alone in the soft Jerusalem night. He told us that he was Jewish but had been born and grew up in Lebanon. His dear elderly parents and some siblings still live in Beirut, but he had managed to escape about twelve years before and had been living in Jerusalem ever since. He described his childhood and youth as an agonizing struggle to belong in a society that rejected him, his family, and everything about his culture. As a little boy he was consistently the victim of bullies, and there was no authority to protect him – they looked the other way. His dear parents struggled with poverty as their shop was boycotted. Every interaction with the community was filled with threats and disdain. During the civil war, they were detested by all sides. People often spat at them and said, "Why don't you go back where you came from." His sensitive heart was tortured by an inability to find a sense of identity, to feel good about his heritage. Eventually, he was able to fly to Cyprus and from there back to Israel where he claimed "Alia" or the Right of Return for anyone whose mother is Jewish. He gave up his right to ever return to see his parents in Lebanon, but he keeps hoping to be able to bring them to Israel as well. He told us "For several years after I came back to Israel, I had dreams within dreams." We weren't sure what he meant, but he explained that he would have a nightmare that he was back in Lebanon, suffering as he had before. He would wake up terrified. He would get up and walk about his bedroom touching the walls, the furniture and telling himself, "No, this is Israel. I am free. I am safe. I belong here. I am in Israel." But even as he tried to convince himself, he would not be certain that this was reality. He suspected that he was only dreaming that he was in Israel – because he had dreamed of that for so long. He would go back to sleep, and the nightmare of being back in Lebanon would return, and he wouldn't know which was reality and which was the dream. Eventually, those nighttime horrors subsided and now he praises God every day that He brought him back to the promised land. As our new friend struggled to help us understand what Israel meant to him, Ole and I thought we could grasp for the first time how desperately important this homeland was to Jewish people all over the world. This conversation helped us to be more sympathetic with their determination to hang on to this land even though it meant soldiers with machine guns on every corner and rabbis and scholars who carry pistols in their belts at all times. As we walked back to our Arabic hotel through the ancient streets, now quiet and dark, we tried to imagine our escape from this sad world to our true home. Will it take us some time to really believe we are in the New Jerusalem? During the first years of the millennium, will we have dreams that we are back in the land of death and sorrow? Sabbath morning dawned sunny and still. We walked out of the Old City through the Damascus Gate, to the Garden Tomb. A British Christian organization cares for the lovely gardens that surround the possible site of Jesus' crucifixion and burial. We walked to the cliff with the rock formations that looked like a skull. Was this Golgotha? We walked back down into the garden and found the huge winepress that indicated this might have been the vineyard of the very wealthy Joseph of Arimathea who buried Jesus in his own new tomb. A group of young Christians had gathered in a small gazebo and were singing hymns with a guitar. We spent more than an hour in prayer and reading the story again of our Savior who endured so much to ensure that we do have a true Home to go to and can claim the Right of Return. In the afternoon, we walked to the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. This photo is of the ancient olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane that may have been the very ones that heard Jesus' prayer the night he was arrested.

Scottish Distractions

Our major purpose here on Seil (pronounced "seal") is to write sermons and two books we have dreamed of. But sometimes it's not easy! Because of wonderful opportunities and necessary exercise. Let's talk about the distractions this Sunday evening.

Yesterday, Sabbath, after some home-therapy for Vonnie's "owies" (left over from her fall in Leeds), we used some maps to choose an afternoon walk to the ruins of a castle. First we walked up onto the moors behind Ardara Cottage trying to cut cross country to the road. Then we took the road to Ardencaple. Once there, the keeper told us how to reach the castle, but after litteraly getting bogged down (in the soggy, soggy bog), we turned back. However, the owner of Ardencaple, a very large estate, came by on his "quad" and offered to drive us both since he was looking for some stock over there. In the end, Vonnie didn't want to go so I hopped up beside his dog and off we went. On one corner the dog slipped off, so I decided to hold on to the dog the next time. But then I slipped off myself! Praise to my Savior (physical this time), no harm done, and on we went to the remaining ruins. He took a photo of me up there with the nearest, more northerly castle hidden in the mists far away. Apparently in the middle-ages, this castle was one of a series throughout the western isles that could signal each other with fires that the Vikings were raiding, giving folk time to seek shelter. Ardencaple, it turns out, was owned before the current owner, by the mother of the Princess of Wales, Diana herself. Our host in Ardara Cottage told us later that when Frances Shand Kydd, 68, was dying, she still lived on Seil, and occasionally her grandsons would be flown in on royal helicopters. Apparently Diana had her own room at Ardencaple, but we haven't learned if she did part of her growing up here. I found the estate so charming that I hope she did. This photo is of Ardencaple, and Diana's bedroom window is the top one on the right.

This Sunday morning we accepted Robert Rae's invitation to join him for Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) services at Kilbrandon Church. The lay-preacher, a "Reader" for the Church of Scotland, introduced Vonnie and me, mentioning that I was the first Seventh-day Adventist preacher to visit their congregation. We both enjoyed his thoughtful sermon on creating a warm and welcoming congregation. Although a small group were there, it felt like the message was getting through.

By the way, Kilbrandon Church is named after Brandon, one of the early, early Christian missionaries who evangelized Scotland after the Romans pulled out of Britain. Evidence shows that his first church, the first village he lived in sometime in the late 400s or early 500s, was just down-hill from the current church on the edge of a loch/lake near the shore of Seil Sound. Brandon is the one who may well have sailed his boat all the way to North America, even before the Vikings found their way there.

In fact, one lady who arrived midway through the sermon, caught up with us in the parking lot and invited us, along with Robert, to join her for "tea" this afternoon. After helping Robert go out to his sailing yacht, "Weaver" and remove two, big, marine batteries - bringing them back for recharging, we changed clothes and went to Fiona's house, an old hotel. Vonnie, in the meantime, had picked a bowl full of blackberries, and made them into a pie (without a recipe, or a roller, and using a centigrade calibrated oven!).

When we all (there were five of us there) sampled it, we were all amazed at how delicious it was. In fact we finished off the pie in one sitting! And the conversation was wonderful. Fiona is the daughter of a British Navy Admiral, and lives (has homes) throughout Europe. When she learned we had been at Tel es-Safi / Gath for four weeks, she invited us to come back to Greece where she has one of her homes and offered to take us to many more sites and collections.

And again, the views were magnificent. Once again I want to give credit to God for making such a place. And I also want to give credit to "Autostitch" for letting me use their demo software to create the panoramic views. I urge you to click on the photos and see them as large as your computer allows. Enjoy.

Scottish Views

While the weather has been consistently cloudy, often rainy, and rarely sunny, (the storekeeper told me they had a "drought" of six weeks back in May), still this is a beautiful place to be. While Vonnie and I are successfully using our computers to write (and communicate by email and blog), we do get out and see the beauty as we can.

#1 - a autostitch of two photos of kayakers on the sound that separates the Isle of Seil ("seal") from the mainland.

#2 - looking down from the hill above our cottage past an old fence corner to a wonderful house on the mainland.

#3 - the 200+ year old stone bridge, named the Atlantic Bridge that connects Seil to the mainland. Until a modern bridge was built to the Isle of Skye to the north, also crossing an arm on the Atlantic, this stone bridge was the only bridge over the Atlantic Ocean - or so they understood.

#4 - picking ripe blackberries on our walk back from the store and Post Office in Balvicar, two miles from our cottage.

#5 - Vonnie, searching for blackberries (and not finding them) near the top of the hill behind our cottage. Later we found plenty down the hillside closer to our cottage, and had a bowl-full for supper.