Oh, Jerusalem!

Wow, what can I say…but that today was amazing! We got to experience Jerusalem for the first time, an incredible experience. Partially because it’s a complete mess, with all sorts of rubble and trash laying around (never before have I seen such a huge collection of garbage), partially because of the great diversity of people and cultures and tastes and smells and all sorts of other sensory input, oh my. But what made the experience even more incredible took a little thinking to come to. I had to stop and think about how much this city really meant, and should mean.

On one level it’s just a dirty city, a very dirty city, built on a piece of land that has little merit compared to many other pieces of land in the world. But the incredible value invested in this land by events and beliefs is incredible. In order to feel the weight of Jerusalem you have to try to get out of your own shoes, and into the shoes of a people who really sense meaning much more than we do. Looking at the many Jews throughout the Jewish quarter, I tried to imagine what sorts of sentiments arise in their souls as they walk the streets of their city. Similarly, as we traveled through the Muslim cemetery I tried to imagine what it must mean to the deceased to have that great honor (or just to use their bodies as an insult to Israel maybe). Anyway, it’s not something that can be acquired in a single day, and it’s not like our culture does a peachy job of instructing proper reverence for that kind of monolithic symbolism. Yup, I just had to get my negative remark in there!

Oh yeah, and the walls were lovely. Score one for the purely positive comments!