11/29/12 – Behind the wall: Part II

After entering the walled city through the Lion’s gate we stopped at the Church of St. Anne and the Pools of Bethesda.  St. Anne was the grandmother of Jesus and the church dedicated to her was my favourite structure so far.  Simple, clean, and unadorned bare stone; it represented a place of quiet contemplation and minimalism.  Outside the church are the Pools of Bethesda which in ancient times were said to be able to heal the sick.  Well, not all of the sick, just the first person to enter the pools after they were agitated by seismic events which released new minerals into the water.  Sounds legit.

Sr. Jocelyn asked me to read a passage from John’s gospel while standing on a pillar’s base.  In the passage, Jesus heals a man at the Pools of Bethesda.  The man claimed to have been ill for 38 years, which sounds like a modern day a worker’s compensation claim.  Jesus told him that if he wanted to be healed, all he had to do was get up and walk, and sin no more.  The modern interpretation being that now that you are healed, go out and get a job and be a productive member of society.

Seriously though, sick for 38 years?  He couldn’t have been that sick.  Maybe he had an early form of fibromyalgia!

Church of St. Anne

Pools of Bethesda...just slightly dry

After the Pools of Bethesda we began to recite the Stations of the Cross along the Via Dolorosa (way of sorrows) which is said to be the original route of Jesus as he carried the cross beam of his cross through the streets.

Dad and Chi-Chi (aka Don)

Dad and Mary from North Bay

I had chosen to not participate under the guise of taking photos of the group.  Unbeknownst to me, the people who rent the cross to tour groups also assign a photographer so they can sell pictures back to you.  The “official” photographer was not pleased with my presence and saw me as a potential threat to his sales.  He was even so bold as to tell me that I had to walk behind the cross.  I politely told him that I would stand wherever I pleased in order to get the photos I wanted.  Game on!  He tried his very best to get in my way and ruin my photos, but I quickly showed him that two could play that game.  It took a little bit longer than I thought it would, but eventually he gave up when he figured out that he wouldn’t have any good shots to sell if I kept getting in the way.  At the end of the procession his boss collected the cross and approached me to ask if I was with the group.  When I told him “yes”, he suggested that I owed him 25 shekels for each photo I had taken… yet another display of Israeli’s incessant attempts to intimidate and rip off tourists.  I promptly pointed the camera in his direction and clicked the shutter without taking my eyes off of him, a crystal clear indication of what I thought of his request (it would have been even better if I had remembered to remove the lens cap...damn!).

But vastly more important that my own personal battle with the photographer and his boss was my father’s participation in the Stations of the Cross.  He read the bible passage describing the first Station and then led the way carrying the cross, albeit a very light one that served as merely a symbol.  Dad’s appreciation for the suffering of Jesus is real and profound; I know that his participation in the Stations of the Cross while on holy ground was profound as well.