Jerusalem

I’ve been here several days, and I will stay several more. It is a city of contrasts. In many was it is like most modern cosmopolitan centers. It has traffic, noise, the bustle of people. It also has history, and history upon history.

It is a destination of pilgrims of three faiths, it has ruins to ponder for everyone. It has places to worship and think about the historical events around that worship. It also has contention between faiths, and inside the faiths. It must make God wonder.

There is no better sample than the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I’m not referencing the battle for the historical truth of the site. Helena, Constantine’s mother, came to the area during the 300s and asked where Jesus was buried. Someone said, “Here!”, and she built a church. It’s been there ever since. It’s hard to see that it was once outside, the church is big, and musty, and full of incense. Maybe it is the place, maybe it isn’t.

What is the most obvious truth is that multiple denominations are responsible to take care of the place, and over the last thousand years they have learned to mistrust and dislike each other, with plenty of shoving and fisticuffs to prove it.

The saddest proof is the ladder. The way to the church is narrow with twists and turns. When you finally break out into a court yard you can see a ladder on the second story just below a window. Apparently the window at some point needed repair, hence the ladder.

The responsibility of the church changed orders, the repair was finished, but the ladder remained. The next group refused to take it down, so did the next group. When the original group that placed the ladder came in charge, the other groups refused them the right to take it down, because they had not agreed to put it up in the first place. The ladder has been there around three hundred years. They have agreed to replace some rotten wood in the ladder, but they have not agreed to remove it.

It has become to me the symbol of man’s dysfunction.