I didn't think I could love this place. I didn't believe that I could enjoy a big city. I didn't know I could find beauty in a place so cramped, so dirty, and completely without mountains. I thought I would love being here for what I'd learn about the Bible, for the people, for the experiences, but not for the current, living, breathing city that surrounds me. Somehow, all those things, the millenia of historical past, the remarkable students I live with, the current situation, all combined to create a love of this place as it now is.
I get this city. I understand it in and out. I know my way around. I give directions to foreigners, I know how, not necessarily to blend in with the crowd, since everyone can still peg you as Mormon, but how to at least act like the crowd. I love the intersection of three world-wide religions, and the way the devout of each respect the others. One of my favorite things to do is to stand at the Western Wall and just feel. I really can't explain just how much I love this place and love these people. But is it hard to understand, when Christ loved these people so much himself?
I admire the clean newness of the Jewish quarter, even though the reason behind its brand new walls makes me ache. I love my Palestinian neighbors. I love having my 100 closest friends just an arm's reach away from me at all times.
I love this adventure, and I love how it's made me grow. I understand the Jehovah of the Old Testament, the Christ of the New Testament, and his atonement better than I ever thought I would. I have learned how to have fun in new ways, how to travel, how to enjoy a city, and how to be myself even when everything familiar is stripped away. And those are perhaps the most important things.
Thank you, Jerusalem, for broadening my horizons, for building my testimony, and for introducing me to...me.
Showing posts with label adventures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adventures. Show all posts
Monday, April 16, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Jerusalem is changing my life
Life in the JC is marvelous. If I could always live like this, I would. I love having such a rich, reinforced education, filled with classes that touch on different aspects of the same concepts and visiting sites of the history we learn about, having adventures every day, spending lots of time with people I love, and being surrounded by peace and tolerance in the midst of perceived conflict. But there are habits and mindsets that I've developed here that I will take away and incorporate into my life.
I plan to have an adventure once a week. These weekly field trips have spoiled me. Visiting such historically significant, historically rich sites on such a regular basis, with such fun people, has been amazing. It adds to my weekend and breaks up potential monotony. So when I'm home, I will be creating adventures of this kind for myself. Obviously, I won't be able to find things of biblical significance, nor are the sites as easly accesible, as Utah is definitely not nearly as compact as Israel, but it will work out, even if it means some aspects of these adventures will be unexpected. One of my first stops? This Is the Place Monument.
I certainly won't be using facebook nor texting nearly as much as before this trip. It is so liberating to be free from the need to compulsively check social networking or add pictures to my college album. I'm not hating on social networking the way that some generations and professors do, but in spite of returning to a community of 30,000 (instead of the 100 or so here), I won't be maintaining my facebook presence nearly as much.
But perhaps the most important idea that I'll be bringing back with me is the tolerance that I've learned while here. In this city, Christians as a whole seem to welcome one another, in spite of sectarian differences (though that doesn't always apply, unfortunately, as in the case of the Holy Sepulcher). I certainly felt that at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer that I attended on Sunday. And Jerusalem has much more tolerance and unity between the three "Religions of the Book" than anyone could expect or predict before seeing this place for themselves. Being here has taught me to participate in that tolerance as well. That will be hard to maintain in face of continuing anti-Mormon sentiment when I return to the United States, where Mormons have difficulty being welcomed as Christians, and, if you can believe it, even more misunderstood than they are here in Israel where we've all signed agreements to not talk about the Church at all.
I plan to have an adventure once a week. These weekly field trips have spoiled me. Visiting such historically significant, historically rich sites on such a regular basis, with such fun people, has been amazing. It adds to my weekend and breaks up potential monotony. So when I'm home, I will be creating adventures of this kind for myself. Obviously, I won't be able to find things of biblical significance, nor are the sites as easly accesible, as Utah is definitely not nearly as compact as Israel, but it will work out, even if it means some aspects of these adventures will be unexpected. One of my first stops? This Is the Place Monument.
I certainly won't be using facebook nor texting nearly as much as before this trip. It is so liberating to be free from the need to compulsively check social networking or add pictures to my college album. I'm not hating on social networking the way that some generations and professors do, but in spite of returning to a community of 30,000 (instead of the 100 or so here), I won't be maintaining my facebook presence nearly as much.
But perhaps the most important idea that I'll be bringing back with me is the tolerance that I've learned while here. In this city, Christians as a whole seem to welcome one another, in spite of sectarian differences (though that doesn't always apply, unfortunately, as in the case of the Holy Sepulcher). I certainly felt that at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer that I attended on Sunday. And Jerusalem has much more tolerance and unity between the three "Religions of the Book" than anyone could expect or predict before seeing this place for themselves. Being here has taught me to participate in that tolerance as well. That will be hard to maintain in face of continuing anti-Mormon sentiment when I return to the United States, where Mormons have difficulty being welcomed as Christians, and, if you can believe it, even more misunderstood than they are here in Israel where we've all signed agreements to not talk about the Church at all.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Routine
I'm developing a routine here. Can you believe I just said that? I'm developing a routine in Jerusalem. I'm living in Jerusalem. It still is hard to believe. I've realized that I can't handle the fact that I'm actually living in Israel, and so my mind only registers that fact in small, sporadic bursts, during which I stop and marvel at the fact that I am so casually eating, sleeping, studying, and exploring in the Holy Land and becoming accustomed and oriented to its culture and landscape.
Every Monday we take a fieldtrip to a historically and usually biblically significant site. So far, we've visited Jericho - or Tel es-Sultan - and the Judean Wilderness, the Negev Desert (including Tel Arad, cite of a Judean temple, and the Nabatean city of Av Dat), Jordan (yes, the country. That took a whole week, actually), and the Shephelah. Today we visited the City of David, named for King David, which was the city he conquered from the Jebusites and made his capital. It sits outside the Old City walls of Jerusalem, down the hill from the Temple Mount, so named for the temple that his son built on the mount where currently is located the Dome of the Rock.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we have classes in the morning. I usually wake up late, rush to get ready, make it to breakfast for the last 5 minutes and make myself a breakfast pita or snag a bowl of chocolate pillows before racing to Brother Harper's class before the prayer. We have two hours of Old Testament or New Testament, then Ancient Near Eastern Studies, and then usually our Palestinian or Jewish class, and sometimes a language class. In there, we'll eat lunch and plan what adventures we'll have with the rest of our day. After classes end, you'll see a mass exodus from the lower gate as students head out to the Old City and adventures. We all return by sundown, at which time we go into dinner and then spend the rest of the evening doing homework or hanging out with each other in the student lounge, singing karaoke, playing card games, watching movies, having dance parties, playing steamroller, or what-have-you. You'll probably find me, at some point, in the gym playing basketball with people much more skilled and, sometimes, much taller than I. Or maybe doing a workout video with my roommates, interspersed with reviewing for Palestine tests.
Friday is a rather unique day. We'll have class as normal,but after class gets out, we get to twiddle our thumbs inside the Center's building and grounds until 3 pm when the security team gives us the yay or nay to walking through East Jerusalem. Friday can, in rare instances, be a day that Muslim leaders in certain groups take the opportunity to speak to their community and inspire violence or unrest. And so our overprotective security team takes a couple hours to monitor before we are allowed to walk to and through the Old City. And, of course, we are to be back by sundown as always, unless we are spending time in West Jerusalem, the modern, Jewish side. But, at sundown on Friday the Sabbath begins, and every business closes up shop in West Jerusalem. There is nothing at all for us to do in the city, so we all return to the center for a delicious dinner and a movie. And somehow, movies like Indian Jones and the Last Crusade mean so much more after visiting Petra, and Aladdin means a whole lot more once you've tasted falafel. When the movie ends, the dance parties begin, and we stay up all night until someone remembers we have church the next day at 10.
Saturday, the Sabbath, is an interesting day. Only in Israel (as far as I'm aware) do Mormons observe the Sabbath day on Saturdays. We begin with breakfast, then those of us who are more ambitious or musically inclined walk upstairs for choir practice in the beautiful auditorium with panoramic windows overlooking the city. We're joined by the congregation at 10 for Sacrament Services; yes, we do have church in our very own center. I don't even have to walk outside to get from my room to breakfast to church. I'm spoiled. After Sunday School and Relief Society, the students venture outside at 1 in order to visit the Garden of Gethsemane, the Garden of the Betrayal, the Orson Hyde Memorial Garden, or the Garden Tomb, where the English Protestants who keep the place recognize the BYU students and allow us to visit at any time, though other groups are required to have reservations. Typically we spend time in personal study in those places until we start to drift together and sing hymns. And it is amazing what Easter hymns come to mean when sung in the Garden Tomb. In fact, they say that's the reason they continue to let us visit whenever we like - because we sing for them.
We'll leave close to 4 o'clock in order to make it back for dinner. The cafeteria employees have the afternoons off on Saturday, which means no lunch for us, and everyone is famished by the time we have early dinner scheduled. The sun goes down shortly after dinner, so we end the day in the Center, watching movies, doing home and visiting teaching, calling home, writing emails and blogs, and just finishing up our day of rest, as well as planning the adventures of the next day.
Sunday is our Saturday. That's where anything goes, be it a trip to the Tomb of the Kings or the Yehuda marketplace for Jerusalem-flavor ice cream (dates, halva, honey), a beach trip to Tel Aviv, or playing the carillon tower in the YMCA. This is where we have the run of the city. We pack up our pitas and lunches, they turn us loose, and we return before sundown, or before midnight. And it is marvelous. And the next day? It starts all over again.
Every day is an adventure in Jerusalem. #YOLO
Every Monday we take a fieldtrip to a historically and usually biblically significant site. So far, we've visited Jericho - or Tel es-Sultan - and the Judean Wilderness, the Negev Desert (including Tel Arad, cite of a Judean temple, and the Nabatean city of Av Dat), Jordan (yes, the country. That took a whole week, actually), and the Shephelah. Today we visited the City of David, named for King David, which was the city he conquered from the Jebusites and made his capital. It sits outside the Old City walls of Jerusalem, down the hill from the Temple Mount, so named for the temple that his son built on the mount where currently is located the Dome of the Rock.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we have classes in the morning. I usually wake up late, rush to get ready, make it to breakfast for the last 5 minutes and make myself a breakfast pita or snag a bowl of chocolate pillows before racing to Brother Harper's class before the prayer. We have two hours of Old Testament or New Testament, then Ancient Near Eastern Studies, and then usually our Palestinian or Jewish class, and sometimes a language class. In there, we'll eat lunch and plan what adventures we'll have with the rest of our day. After classes end, you'll see a mass exodus from the lower gate as students head out to the Old City and adventures. We all return by sundown, at which time we go into dinner and then spend the rest of the evening doing homework or hanging out with each other in the student lounge, singing karaoke, playing card games, watching movies, having dance parties, playing steamroller, or what-have-you. You'll probably find me, at some point, in the gym playing basketball with people much more skilled and, sometimes, much taller than I. Or maybe doing a workout video with my roommates, interspersed with reviewing for Palestine tests.
Friday is a rather unique day. We'll have class as normal,but after class gets out, we get to twiddle our thumbs inside the Center's building and grounds until 3 pm when the security team gives us the yay or nay to walking through East Jerusalem. Friday can, in rare instances, be a day that Muslim leaders in certain groups take the opportunity to speak to their community and inspire violence or unrest. And so our overprotective security team takes a couple hours to monitor before we are allowed to walk to and through the Old City. And, of course, we are to be back by sundown as always, unless we are spending time in West Jerusalem, the modern, Jewish side. But, at sundown on Friday the Sabbath begins, and every business closes up shop in West Jerusalem. There is nothing at all for us to do in the city, so we all return to the center for a delicious dinner and a movie. And somehow, movies like Indian Jones and the Last Crusade mean so much more after visiting Petra, and Aladdin means a whole lot more once you've tasted falafel. When the movie ends, the dance parties begin, and we stay up all night until someone remembers we have church the next day at 10.
Saturday, the Sabbath, is an interesting day. Only in Israel (as far as I'm aware) do Mormons observe the Sabbath day on Saturdays. We begin with breakfast, then those of us who are more ambitious or musically inclined walk upstairs for choir practice in the beautiful auditorium with panoramic windows overlooking the city. We're joined by the congregation at 10 for Sacrament Services; yes, we do have church in our very own center. I don't even have to walk outside to get from my room to breakfast to church. I'm spoiled. After Sunday School and Relief Society, the students venture outside at 1 in order to visit the Garden of Gethsemane, the Garden of the Betrayal, the Orson Hyde Memorial Garden, or the Garden Tomb, where the English Protestants who keep the place recognize the BYU students and allow us to visit at any time, though other groups are required to have reservations. Typically we spend time in personal study in those places until we start to drift together and sing hymns. And it is amazing what Easter hymns come to mean when sung in the Garden Tomb. In fact, they say that's the reason they continue to let us visit whenever we like - because we sing for them.
We'll leave close to 4 o'clock in order to make it back for dinner. The cafeteria employees have the afternoons off on Saturday, which means no lunch for us, and everyone is famished by the time we have early dinner scheduled. The sun goes down shortly after dinner, so we end the day in the Center, watching movies, doing home and visiting teaching, calling home, writing emails and blogs, and just finishing up our day of rest, as well as planning the adventures of the next day.
Sunday is our Saturday. That's where anything goes, be it a trip to the Tomb of the Kings or the Yehuda marketplace for Jerusalem-flavor ice cream (dates, halva, honey), a beach trip to Tel Aviv, or playing the carillon tower in the YMCA. This is where we have the run of the city. We pack up our pitas and lunches, they turn us loose, and we return before sundown, or before midnight. And it is marvelous. And the next day? It starts all over again.
Every day is an adventure in Jerusalem. #YOLO
Monday, January 16, 2012
Jericho, the Judean Wilderness, and Zedekiah's Caves
Today marked our second field trip, this one to Tell es-Sultan, or, as some of you may know it, Jericho. We visited the tel upon which Old Testament Jericho and succeeding civilizations were built. As Dr. Harper put it, it's really just "a pile of mud" now, and not one of the best tel specimens we will see this semester, but at this point in the semester, it's still just enough to be standing on ground covering ground that saw biblical events occuring in real time, and to look toward Jordan, across the river, and see the land from whence Joshua started his campaign against Jericho. We read Joshua 2 and 6 while sitting at a pavilion on top of the archaelogical site, looking over the remnants of the city, trying to imagine where Rahab's home might have been, picturing the mountains nearby a few thousand years of erosion previously. While there, we also viewed the tel's neolithic stone tower, a remarkably well-preserved specimen and the oldest surviving human structure, which supposedly dates to approximately 8,000 B.C. and has internal stairs. Yeah. It's that old. Jericho is both the lowest city on earth (appx. 1,000 ft below sea level), and the oldest/first city in the world.
We also visited the nearby spring, which has been a continuous source of water for about 10,000 years, allowing Old Testament, New Testament, and modern Jericho to flourish in spite of the surrounding desert. And there may or may not have been a group marching around, pantomiming playing trumpets and shouting. But like I said, who really knows...
From there, we traveled to Herod's Winter Palace and viewed what's left of that site. This was probably Herod's finest of his pleasure palaces, as well as the place he died. We looked into the mikvahs that we believed he had there, took pictures on the reconstructed columns that once supported the roof of his palace, looked into the formerly tiled area to see the lines left by the thousands-of-years-old mortar, and, yes, got distracted by the two adorable children who came over with their goats to let we tourists pet them (and give them some shekels). The remains of the temple are pretty easily identifiable, though, and it's easy to pick out what rooms were what, as well as the purpose they served. I hope it never gets commonplace for me, walking on all this history every day.
From there we visted an overlook nearby that allows you a remarkable view of the St. George monastery built into the cliffs near the Wadi Qelt river valley, which runs from Jerusalem to Jericho through the Judean Wilderness. It would have been somewhere along that route where the traveler in the parable of the Good Samartian would have met with his misfortue as he traveled to Jericho. I now have a better understanding of that story, as the surrounding desert hasn't changed much since Christ's time. For that matter, the Judean Wilderness, which I saw plenty of yesterday, is surprisingly bleak. As a child of the American Southwest, I will be the first to admit that it is beautiful, but it has much less plant life than I'm used to.
After returning home from the monastery's surrounding areas, we were treated to a fajita lunch in the Oasis, and then some friends and I set out for Zedekiah's Caves near Damascus Gate. Supposedly, this natural cave was widened by King Solomon to provide the stone for his temple, though the dates don't quite match up as they should for that to be the case. Nevertheless, it appears to have been used as a quarry at some point, and extends much farther below the city than one would expect. The 8 of us spent quite a bit of time exploring the caves, jumping out at one another from around corners, and taking shadow pictures on the walls. And yes, we came out dirty. I loved it. This weekend has just been a caves high for me, and I can't get enough.
We also visited the nearby spring, which has been a continuous source of water for about 10,000 years, allowing Old Testament, New Testament, and modern Jericho to flourish in spite of the surrounding desert. And there may or may not have been a group marching around, pantomiming playing trumpets and shouting. But like I said, who really knows...
From there, we traveled to Herod's Winter Palace and viewed what's left of that site. This was probably Herod's finest of his pleasure palaces, as well as the place he died. We looked into the mikvahs that we believed he had there, took pictures on the reconstructed columns that once supported the roof of his palace, looked into the formerly tiled area to see the lines left by the thousands-of-years-old mortar, and, yes, got distracted by the two adorable children who came over with their goats to let we tourists pet them (and give them some shekels). The remains of the temple are pretty easily identifiable, though, and it's easy to pick out what rooms were what, as well as the purpose they served. I hope it never gets commonplace for me, walking on all this history every day.
From there we visted an overlook nearby that allows you a remarkable view of the St. George monastery built into the cliffs near the Wadi Qelt river valley, which runs from Jerusalem to Jericho through the Judean Wilderness. It would have been somewhere along that route where the traveler in the parable of the Good Samartian would have met with his misfortue as he traveled to Jericho. I now have a better understanding of that story, as the surrounding desert hasn't changed much since Christ's time. For that matter, the Judean Wilderness, which I saw plenty of yesterday, is surprisingly bleak. As a child of the American Southwest, I will be the first to admit that it is beautiful, but it has much less plant life than I'm used to.
After returning home from the monastery's surrounding areas, we were treated to a fajita lunch in the Oasis, and then some friends and I set out for Zedekiah's Caves near Damascus Gate. Supposedly, this natural cave was widened by King Solomon to provide the stone for his temple, though the dates don't quite match up as they should for that to be the case. Nevertheless, it appears to have been used as a quarry at some point, and extends much farther below the city than one would expect. The 8 of us spent quite a bit of time exploring the caves, jumping out at one another from around corners, and taking shadow pictures on the walls. And yes, we came out dirty. I loved it. This weekend has just been a caves high for me, and I can't get enough.
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