East Jerusalem, Day 1

United Airlines #84 from Newark's Liberty Airport arrived at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv earlier than scheduled (about 9:00am local time...we're 7 hours ahead of EST), and the passport control was a breeze.

Canon Iyad Qumri, our guide (and I think the guide of nearly every Episcopal Church group) was there to greet us, as were Epiphanyites Ted & Laura Reboul, who had spent a couple days in Tel Aviv. The journey from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is just 45 minutes, but eye-opening on every level, especially as we passed through the West Bank, though with our Israeli license plates it was uneventful. Even so, one cannot miss the fences and walls.

The only real setback for the group is that Bishop Harris is very sick, likely the flu. She arrived at Logan with what she thought was a cold, but by the time we landed in Israel, it was clear that whatever she has is more than a cold. Thankfully in our group we have three pediatricians, Lester, Donald, and Rita. Though they're not internists, they're all pretty expert in the flu. With their counsel, along with our guide, Iyad and his wife, Simone, (who's a nurse and is well acquainted with Bishop Harris) they agreed that Bishop Harris needed to see a doctor. She was given some intravenous fluids, a prescription or two, and is in her room resting.

Our accommodations at the Holy Land Hotel, in East Jerusalem, are perfectly fine: they're clean and we have free wi-fi. What else does one need? My room has a balcony which looks out onto the old city wall and the dome of the rock. I'll post some pictures later.

Iyad took us a few blocks for a shawarma lunch (delicious!), and gave us a brief tour of the neighborhood. A few of us, feeling intrepid and restless, ventured on our own into a small section of the old city: Noah (the rector of Grace Church in Medford), Pat (a parishioner from Epiphany), Marie (a parishioner from Epiphany), Anna (a young adult intern with the Diocese of Massachusetts), and I.

The wall of the old city is visible from my room. What's not visible,
unfortunately, is the dome of the rock....just beyond that illuminated wall.

Staggering, really. The psalmist put it this way: Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity with itself, to which the tribes go up. I felt that--something of that. Which is to say, that even on that brief trek through a very small portion of the old city, entering through Herod's gate and exiting at the Damascus gate, there is power in knowing that Jesus himself walked there.

There's one story that keeps coming back to me. My friend Dominic, a priest in the Church of England who leads many pilgrimages here, once said, "something happens to every person, spiritually, in the Holy Land. Every person has a moment." I don't yet know if he's right, nor am I suggesting that today was my "moment," yet here it was, "Jerusalem the golden."

 This evening we'll have dinner together, here at the hotel, and be reunited with two more members of our group, David & Kathy Laubenthal, who, like the Rebouls, came earlier. We'll say our prayers, and head off to bed.