Mount of Olives
Silly me thinking we'd take a taxi to the Mount of Olives. If there's not an international border, a canyon or, say, a fifty-foot high wall between where we are and where we want to be, Anna doesn't feel like a taxi is warranted. Not that it's a ten-mile hike from the university to the Mount or anything, but we picked the hottest day in weeks to go there, and we have to pass through an all-Arab section of town, which means long sleeves. Yipee.
So we eventually got to what Anna said was the Chapel of the Ascension. Me, I was skeptical that she had the right place, since it was missing the distinctive feature of the Chapel, namely a big-ass belltower, visible in the next photo. Despite my skepticism, we explored the place, and ran into a few problems identifying it. There's a main courtyard, a few smaller courtyards on either side, and a chapel, and on practically every wall or flat surface that wasn't floor, there were big tiles with the same text written in probably every language still spoken by man. And I saw Sanskrit, so dead languages too. We looked for an English tile, or a Spanish one, or even one written in dumbed-down, simple Hebrew (not likely), hoping it would at least contain the name of the place, or an explanation of its significance. We got sidetracked by the small church and the marble coffin with a marble man on top, and then found the English tile, on which was written the Lord's Prayer, but no information. Time for Plan B: asking the two people who work there and were, I think, French. They spoke passable English, so I think we were in the Church of Our Father, or the Chapel of the Father, or something with Father in it. So the marble man might have been Joseph, or something. I'm still confused, really.
Down the street from that place is the road that lines the top of the massive Jewish graveyard, you actually have to take some steps off that road and go straight down through the graveyard to get to the garden of Gethsemane. Well, there are other ways, but not very safe ones. Anyways, the little road leads down through the graveyard, passes by a small place I thought was the garden but is actually the Sanctuary of the Dominus Flevit, and the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene. Gethsemane is at the bottom of the Mount, turns out, right in the Kidron valley, you could go up Mount Moriah and reach the East wall of the Old City in a short time if you wanted. The garden itself is a small little squarish thing, walled-in and simple, with a few olive trees and some flowers.
Connected to it is a sanctuary and a beautiful church called the Basilica of the Agony. It's a relatively large and high-roofed church with intricate mosaics all over the floors, the back wall and the cuppolas above. It was too darkened inside to see the mosaics on the cuppolas in much detail, but the three mosaics on the back wall depicted, if I recall, the kiss of Judas, Jesus in agony and something like "Ego Sum, I Am," whatever that meant. The side walls had huge stained glass crosses but no pictures, and there were multiple marble columns that sprouted from the ground to support the cuppolas. Where the altar would be in a regular church, in front of the wall with the mosaics, there was a little pulpit and some whitish rock coming out of the marble and tile floors, that was surrounded by small wrought-iron grates. Apparently this is the Rock of the Agony. The mosaic of Jesus in agony on the wall had him lying propped up against a rock, so I'm guessing that was what this was. There was very little light in the whole place, mostly around the pulpit and the rock, and only two people in there besides Anna and myself, a guy in Franciscan friar robes and another guy who looked like nothing more than a shaggy-haired college kid, both of them sitting in chairs praying. I didn't feel like it would be right to take pictures, because of the darkness, and so I wouldn't disturb them, but I kind of wish I had. It was really very beautiful.
Walking back up the Mount was not fun, but we made it up and back to the dorms with only a few stops. Stupid long sleeves.
So we eventually got to what Anna said was the Chapel of the Ascension. Me, I was skeptical that she had the right place, since it was missing the distinctive feature of the Chapel, namely a big-ass belltower, visible in the next photo. Despite my skepticism, we explored the place, and ran into a few problems identifying it. There's a main courtyard, a few smaller courtyards on either side, and a chapel, and on practically every wall or flat surface that wasn't floor, there were big tiles with the same text written in probably every language still spoken by man. And I saw Sanskrit, so dead languages too. We looked for an English tile, or a Spanish one, or even one written in dumbed-down, simple Hebrew (not likely), hoping it would at least contain the name of the place, or an explanation of its significance. We got sidetracked by the small church and the marble coffin with a marble man on top, and then found the English tile, on which was written the Lord's Prayer, but no information. Time for Plan B: asking the two people who work there and were, I think, French. They spoke passable English, so I think we were in the Church of Our Father, or the Chapel of the Father, or something with Father in it. So the marble man might have been Joseph, or something. I'm still confused, really.
Down the street from that place is the road that lines the top of the massive Jewish graveyard, you actually have to take some steps off that road and go straight down through the graveyard to get to the garden of Gethsemane. Well, there are other ways, but not very safe ones. Anyways, the little road leads down through the graveyard, passes by a small place I thought was the garden but is actually the Sanctuary of the Dominus Flevit, and the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene. Gethsemane is at the bottom of the Mount, turns out, right in the Kidron valley, you could go up Mount Moriah and reach the East wall of the Old City in a short time if you wanted. The garden itself is a small little squarish thing, walled-in and simple, with a few olive trees and some flowers.
Connected to it is a sanctuary and a beautiful church called the Basilica of the Agony. It's a relatively large and high-roofed church with intricate mosaics all over the floors, the back wall and the cuppolas above. It was too darkened inside to see the mosaics on the cuppolas in much detail, but the three mosaics on the back wall depicted, if I recall, the kiss of Judas, Jesus in agony and something like "Ego Sum, I Am," whatever that meant. The side walls had huge stained glass crosses but no pictures, and there were multiple marble columns that sprouted from the ground to support the cuppolas. Where the altar would be in a regular church, in front of the wall with the mosaics, there was a little pulpit and some whitish rock coming out of the marble and tile floors, that was surrounded by small wrought-iron grates. Apparently this is the Rock of the Agony. The mosaic of Jesus in agony on the wall had him lying propped up against a rock, so I'm guessing that was what this was. There was very little light in the whole place, mostly around the pulpit and the rock, and only two people in there besides Anna and myself, a guy in Franciscan friar robes and another guy who looked like nothing more than a shaggy-haired college kid, both of them sitting in chairs praying. I didn't feel like it would be right to take pictures, because of the darkness, and so I wouldn't disturb them, but I kind of wish I had. It was really very beautiful.
Walking back up the Mount was not fun, but we made it up and back to the dorms with only a few stops. Stupid long sleeves.
1 Comments:
Grandma here: Ego sum is Latin for "I am" so I think Ego Sum would connote the idea "I am God."
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