Onto Bethlehem today.
Early into the Garden of Gethsemane. Saw Skull hill and the tomb. It was very peaceful, and whilst it may not be the actual place where He was crucified and buried, it has a lot more Godly presence than all the other places we've been to.
At the Mount of Olives is the Church of All Nations which has fourteen domes, one for each nation involved in building it.
Also there, the altar of Dominus Flavit faces the opposite way to normal - towards the temple of Jerusalem as this is where Jesus wept and looked towards Jerusalem.
We could see the Golden Gate blocked off. Tradition says that the Messiah when he comes will come through the gate and the dead of the Kidron valley (down below us) will be the first to be resurrected.
We passed the Jewish graves that are at the end of the film Schindler's list. Robert Maxwell is also buried there. Stones are put on top of the graves instead of flowers as they last that little bit longer. Cheaper too !
Driving along a by-pass road built by Israel for Israel, Palestinian children threw a stone at our bus. I wondered whether we had hit one of the kids. Our coach has yellow Israeli plates. Palestinian number plates are blue or green and have a Hebrew letter denoting the town the car is from, so that the Army can make them out easily. Also, Jewish licences get renewed on 1st of the month, Palestinian on 15th. Another way for the Army to see at a glance.
The Army isn't called the Army as armies are offensive. Instead they are called the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).
Almost at Bethlehem.
Visited the Shepherds fields and saw the cave where shepherds would have kept their flocks by night. It may not have been the place where the angel appeared but it gave us an appreciation of the landscape (if you can ignore the fences, barbed wire, buildings, etc !). Here there is a YMCA helping disabled people to help get their lives back in order; most are disabled from fighting in the Intifada ("Rising up").
Good to hear about the work of the YMCA, particularly in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
During the Intifada school was put into peoples homes as the actual schools were closed for 2 years. You can't get decent work without a degree.
From our air-conditioned hotel room we had an impressive view.
Went to the oldest church in the world - the place of Jesus' birth - the Church of the Nativity. Saw the place where the manger would have been. In the Bible it says Joseph and Mary tried to stay at an inn. There were no inn's in Bethlehem at that time - it would have been a house on top of a cave where the animals would have been kept (the stable). Seeing the place means I can never look at our traditional nativity scene with the same eyes. Mary would have been in the cave with the animals as she would have been considered unclean and anyone who touched her would also be unclean for 40 days.
The Church of the Nativity had the remnants of mosaics on the floor and walls which originally would have covered them. The pillars had the pictures of the Saints and officers from Crusader times.
Again, like the Holy Sepulchre, this church is split between the denominations, and is also falling into a state of disrepair since they can't agree here either. The Greek Orthodox have the main body of the old church, with the Armenians have a very small patch, marked out in green carpet, to the left of the altar. The Greek Orthodox have a wall of icons separating the congregation from the Holy of Holys (Very Jewish !).
In the Armenian section there is a mosaic showing Thomas testing the Lord's wounds and also Pentecost.
The Roman Catholics have their own church tacked onto the side of the Church of the Nativity. Very modern, very big.