Dear Family and Friends
I know it’s only been a week, and life is just going like usual but I feel like so much has happened since I last updated you. Maybe it’s just me and my head keeps getting filled with so many things it’s just hard to keep up with myself! So here is an update on what has happened this week, er weekend mostly I guess.
On …Wednesday Succot started. This is the final festival in the fall season of festivals. It starts with Rosh Hashanah, then Yom Kippur, and finally Succot. I will have to do a separate post on these because each of them basically needs there own. There are fascinating to study. So anyway, this whole week is the holiday. On Thursday my friend Megan (she is also a grad at Wheaton) had her birthday so we went out to celebrate. It was a fun night but in the process another friend threw her hip out of socket stepping off a curb, so that made for an interesting evening and next couple of days. Friday was Archeology of Jerusalem class (3 hours straight with no break) ultimate Frisbee (which was so hot and humid) and Shabbat in the evening (When I come home we are having one and I’m going to make you all Halla bread ). Saturday Megan and I and another friend, Hans, went to a Jewish man’s house for Shabbat lunch. His name is Alter and he dug with us at Ashkelon this summer. It was his family, his wife and4 yr. old son, and a friend of theirs from somewhere. It was very interesting. The food was delicious but all three of us left with upset stomachs. We aren’t sure why. At one point the little boy comes out with white stuff all over his hands and his mom is going “what did you do!?”. Turns out he had gotten into the chamomile lotion and dumped it all over his toy box. It was interesting though because they couldn’t do anything about it…clean it up or anything because that would be work and they couldn’t work. So it just had to sit there until Shabbat ended. Kind of a weird thing. They also brought out their prayer books and sang their songs and muttered their prayers and we just sat there and tried not to stare at them. Slightly awkward, but was interesting to witness it in a home. It is interesting to observe the Jewish cultures and traditions. I am realizing that in the Christian attempt to separate themselves from Judaism we have lost cultural and historical understanding that is so important to understanding scripture. But again, I’ll have to mention that more later when I have had time to study it a bit more in depth.
Sunday was a field study to Samaria. We visited Shechem, Shiloh, Samaria and Mt. Gerizim. Sadly it was really hazy and we couldn’t hardly see anything but we did get to hear from a Samaritan priest and what they believe. Their traditions are a bit different from the Jewish, even though they celebrate the same festivals and holidays. It was very interesting. At one point he was describing the Samaritans and he said, “The Good Samaritan? We are the Good Samaritans.” It was sort of funny. So that was Samaria. Granted we learned a lot more than that but my head is slightly tired and I don’t want to have to recall all the information at the moment. Guess if you really want to know you can read my notes when I get home!
Life is going well here. I am surrounded by smart godly people who are challenging me left at right on multiple levels. And we are always laughing about something. I miss home and all of you who are there. I miss ice cold coke refills (Hannah that means soda in general). I miss cheese burgers. I miss spending time with all of you and seeing you regularly. But I am having a hard time imagining the end of the semester here when I have to leave this place and all these people. I know if I stayed it would be different. Most of them are only here for a semester like me and everything would change next semester. Yet I’ve only been here a month and my heart feels like it’s going to get ripped in half when I have to leave. But who knows. Maybe by the time the semester ends I’ll be ready to say goodbye.
For now, know I love you all and am thinking about you often.
Shalom,
Cait
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
a Second thought from Benjamin
On this last trip to Benjamin my professor gave me a new understanding of a phrase and I wanted to share it with you. In Dueteronomy 32:10 there is a phrase, “he guarded him as the apple of his eye.” Now this is not an exact translation, but it is the closest example we have in English. The exact translation is “the little man of his eye.” It’s understandable why they didn’t translate it that way, we wouldn’t get it. Little man of his eye? What the heck does that mean? Well, let me tell you. Here is what our prof. had us do. “Find a neighbor next to you, get really close to them and look in their eyes. What do you see?” It was slightly awkward but we did it. You try it. What do you see when you look in a person’s eye up close? Do you see a reflection? Can you see a reflection of yourself? That’s the idea. God will hold Israel that close. So close that they can see their reflection in his eye, and his in them. You could go a lot of places with that little analogy. But I’m not going to. Just think about it. He holds us that close, always. In fact read the entire chapter! It looks different to me than it will to you, but …eh, read it anyway.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The land of Benjamin
Some thoughts from my most recent trip around the area of Benjamin:
When I look at a map of Israel I automatically make it the size of someplace at home that’s familiar, like Ohio, and all the distances are computed the same way in my head. (Maybe because maps of Israel are blown up so much so that you can see it! It’s so tiny.) Someplace ½ an inch away on a map from home will take 30 min to 1 hour to drive. Here, someplace that far away means maybe a 15 min drive, but it’s only that long because of the hills. If it were a straight shot it would take even less time. You can stand on a hill in the middle of the wilderness and not hear a sound except the quite buzz of a giant bug, or occasional bird or perhaps a dog barking. Otherwise there is nothing but the ringing in your ears. And yet you climb the hill higher and away to your right, what’s that? It’s green trees, water, life. And if you look to your left what do you see? A village, no two villages! And straight in front, if you can distinguish it through the haze, is a third village. You can drive from a beautiful oasis, like Jericho, full of fruit and flowering plants, date palms and grape vines, out and up a twisting vein of a road through the wilderness with no color visible other than gray and brown and a cloudless blue sky in every direction. Then suddenly, you crest the hill and spread out in front of you is life: rich fertile soil for growing wheat, people and spiked plants and houses and animals.
Standing in Jerusalem or on a hill overlooking it you can feel the way it is hugged by the hills. It is surrounded by a wall of hills. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it is so striking. Even from the North where the access is easiest, you still have hills to climb in order to reach the city. If you drive over, around, and under these hills to the west, you find the land abruptly opens up before you into sweeping, rolling, open spaces with broad valleys green and full of life even now before the rains come. Standing at Gezer to the west of Jerusalem, you can look out in any direction and see a different landscape. To the west the sun glimmers off of the Mediterranean sea. East the hill country is visible with the Judean wilderness faintly sticking up behind it. South the Shephelah rolls away in gentle waves while to the North the land is open and covered with the cityscape of Tel Aviv and surrounding towns. There are trees of all kinds covering various hills, gorgeous bushes full of flowers in brilliant red, pink, orange and white.
As I stood on top of Gezer and looked out toward the sea I experienced a feeling I hadn’t realized I was missing until then: freedom. I was raised in the Ohio countryside, the place of fields and flat land. I realized I had been feeling Closter phobic in Jerusalem. I have never been a city person and being surrounded by hills almost makes it worse. It gives you the feeling of someone wrapping their arms around you and not letting go till you feel so squeezed you just want to explode out and breathe in a space all your own. I realized that is how I feel in Jerusalem. I have loved the ability to walk anywhere I want to go. Yes, it might take awhile, and you may have to climb a million hills (side note: if you ever come to Jerusalem make sure you spend a few months climbing hills and walking so they don’t kill you when you get here!) but not as long as it would at home and it is a little freeing to just wander around the city discovering shops and fun little stores with souvenirs or cheap clothes or whatever. But I miss the wide open fields of home.
Shortly after my liberating experience of recognizing I was in a wide open space (mostly) Emily (one of the students here who helps lead some of our field studies) said something about the Israelites that struck me. She said that the Israelites were a hill people. They didn’t know what to do with the low hills of the west and the open land of the coast. It frightened them, left them feeling unprotected. If you had lived most of you life, in a place surrounded by hills, enclosed and covered in every direction, it would make sense that you would feel very vulnerable in the openness of western Israel (of course people from Colorado probably think this is nothing). However, if someone like me, who is used to open spaces where everything is flat (or at least more open), they could feel very trapped within the hill country. It gave me a new perspective on cultural differences. Even within this little space of land (smaller than the distances between Bluffton, Beaverdam, Columbus Grove, and Pandora) there were various cultures from the shepherds in the wilderness, to the hill people, to the coastal towns and those living in the agricultural Shepelah. I don’t think I will ever get over this. Sorry, I try to stay concise but these posts always turn into books!
Much love and Shalom,
Cait
When I look at a map of Israel I automatically make it the size of someplace at home that’s familiar, like Ohio, and all the distances are computed the same way in my head. (Maybe because maps of Israel are blown up so much so that you can see it! It’s so tiny.) Someplace ½ an inch away on a map from home will take 30 min to 1 hour to drive. Here, someplace that far away means maybe a 15 min drive, but it’s only that long because of the hills. If it were a straight shot it would take even less time. You can stand on a hill in the middle of the wilderness and not hear a sound except the quite buzz of a giant bug, or occasional bird or perhaps a dog barking. Otherwise there is nothing but the ringing in your ears. And yet you climb the hill higher and away to your right, what’s that? It’s green trees, water, life. And if you look to your left what do you see? A village, no two villages! And straight in front, if you can distinguish it through the haze, is a third village. You can drive from a beautiful oasis, like Jericho, full of fruit and flowering plants, date palms and grape vines, out and up a twisting vein of a road through the wilderness with no color visible other than gray and brown and a cloudless blue sky in every direction. Then suddenly, you crest the hill and spread out in front of you is life: rich fertile soil for growing wheat, people and spiked plants and houses and animals.
Standing in Jerusalem or on a hill overlooking it you can feel the way it is hugged by the hills. It is surrounded by a wall of hills. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it is so striking. Even from the North where the access is easiest, you still have hills to climb in order to reach the city. If you drive over, around, and under these hills to the west, you find the land abruptly opens up before you into sweeping, rolling, open spaces with broad valleys green and full of life even now before the rains come. Standing at Gezer to the west of Jerusalem, you can look out in any direction and see a different landscape. To the west the sun glimmers off of the Mediterranean sea. East the hill country is visible with the Judean wilderness faintly sticking up behind it. South the Shephelah rolls away in gentle waves while to the North the land is open and covered with the cityscape of Tel Aviv and surrounding towns. There are trees of all kinds covering various hills, gorgeous bushes full of flowers in brilliant red, pink, orange and white.
As I stood on top of Gezer and looked out toward the sea I experienced a feeling I hadn’t realized I was missing until then: freedom. I was raised in the Ohio countryside, the place of fields and flat land. I realized I had been feeling Closter phobic in Jerusalem. I have never been a city person and being surrounded by hills almost makes it worse. It gives you the feeling of someone wrapping their arms around you and not letting go till you feel so squeezed you just want to explode out and breathe in a space all your own. I realized that is how I feel in Jerusalem. I have loved the ability to walk anywhere I want to go. Yes, it might take awhile, and you may have to climb a million hills (side note: if you ever come to Jerusalem make sure you spend a few months climbing hills and walking so they don’t kill you when you get here!) but not as long as it would at home and it is a little freeing to just wander around the city discovering shops and fun little stores with souvenirs or cheap clothes or whatever. But I miss the wide open fields of home.
Shortly after my liberating experience of recognizing I was in a wide open space (mostly) Emily (one of the students here who helps lead some of our field studies) said something about the Israelites that struck me. She said that the Israelites were a hill people. They didn’t know what to do with the low hills of the west and the open land of the coast. It frightened them, left them feeling unprotected. If you had lived most of you life, in a place surrounded by hills, enclosed and covered in every direction, it would make sense that you would feel very vulnerable in the openness of western Israel (of course people from Colorado probably think this is nothing). However, if someone like me, who is used to open spaces where everything is flat (or at least more open), they could feel very trapped within the hill country. It gave me a new perspective on cultural differences. Even within this little space of land (smaller than the distances between Bluffton, Beaverdam, Columbus Grove, and Pandora) there were various cultures from the shepherds in the wilderness, to the hill people, to the coastal towns and those living in the agricultural Shepelah. I don’t think I will ever get over this. Sorry, I try to stay concise but these posts always turn into books!
Much love and Shalom,
Cait
The land of Benjamin
Some thoughts from my most recent trip around the area of Benjamin:
When I look at a map of Israel I automatically make it the size of someplace at home that’s familiar, like Ohio, and all the distances are computed the same way in my head. (Maybe because maps of Israel are blown up so much so that you can see it! It’s so tiny.) Someplace ½ an inch away on a map from home will take 30 min to 1 hour to drive. Here, someplace that far away means maybe a 15 min drive, but it’s only that long because of the hills. If it were a straight shot it would take even less time. You can stand on a hill in the middle of the wilderness and not hear a sound except the quite buzz of a giant bug, or occasional bird or perhaps a dog barking. Otherwise there is nothing but the ringing in your ears. And yet you climb the hill higher and away to your right, what’s that? It’s green trees, water, life. And if you look to your left what do you see? A village, no two villages! And straight in front, if you can distinguish it through the haze, is a third village. You can drive from a beautiful oasis, like Jericho, full of fruit and flowering plants, date palms and grape vines, out and up a twisting vein of a road through the wilderness with no color visible other than gray and brown and a cloudless blue sky in every direction. Then suddenly, you crest the hill and spread out in front of you is life: rich fertile soil for growing wheat, people and spiked plants and houses and animals.
Standing in Jerusalem or on a hill overlooking it you can feel the way it is hugged by the hills. It is surrounded by a wall of hills. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it is so striking. Even from the North where the access is easiest, you still have hills to climb in order to reach the city. If you drive over, around, and under these hills to the west, you find the land abruptly opens up before you into sweeping, rolling, open spaces with broad valleys green and full of life even now before the rains come. Standing at Gezer to the west of Jerusalem, you can look out in any direction and see a different landscape. To the west the sun glimmers off of the Mediterranean sea. East the hill country is visible with the Judean wilderness faintly sticking up behind it. South the Shephelah rolls away in gentle waves while to the North the land is open and covered with the cityscape of Tel Aviv and surrounding towns. There are trees of all kinds covering various hills, gorgeous bushes full of flowers in brilliant red, pink, orange and white.
As I stood on top of Gezer and looked out toward the sea I experienced a feeling I hadn’t realized I was missing until then: freedom. I was raised in the Ohio countryside, the place of fields and flat land. I realized I had been feeling Closter phobic in Jerusalem. I have never been a city person and being surrounded by hills almost makes it worse. It gives you the feeling of someone wrapping their arms around you and not letting go till you feel so squeezed you just want to explode out and breathe in a space all your own. I realized that is how I feel in Jerusalem. I have loved the ability to walk anywhere I want to go. Yes, it might take awhile, and you may have to climb a million hills (side note: if you ever come to Jerusalem make sure you spend a few months climbing hills and walking so they don’t kill you when you get here!) but not as long as it would at home and it is a little freeing to just wander around the city discovering shops and fun little stores with souvenirs or cheap clothes or whatever. But I miss the wide open fields of home.
Shortly after my liberating experience of recognizing I was in a wide open space (mostly) Emily (one of the students here who helps lead some of our field studies) said something about the Israelites that struck me. She said that the Israelites were a hill people. They didn’t know what to do with the low hills of the west and the open land of the coast. It frightened them, left them feeling unprotected. If you had lived most of you life, in a place surrounded by hills, enclosed and covered in every direction, it would make sense that you would feel very vulnerable in the openness of western Israel (of course people from Colorado probably think this is nothing). However, if someone like me, who is used to open spaces where everything is flat (or at least more open), they could feel very trapped within the hill country. It gave me a new perspective on cultural differences. Even within this little space of land (smaller than the distances between Bluffton, Beaverdam, Columbus Grove, and Pandora) there were various cultures from the shepherds in the wilderness, to the hill people, to the coastal towns and those living in the agricultural Shepelah. I don’t think I will ever get over this. Sorry, I try to stay concise but these posts always turn into books!
Much love and Shalom,
Cait
When I look at a map of Israel I automatically make it the size of someplace at home that’s familiar, like Ohio, and all the distances are computed the same way in my head. (Maybe because maps of Israel are blown up so much so that you can see it! It’s so tiny.) Someplace ½ an inch away on a map from home will take 30 min to 1 hour to drive. Here, someplace that far away means maybe a 15 min drive, but it’s only that long because of the hills. If it were a straight shot it would take even less time. You can stand on a hill in the middle of the wilderness and not hear a sound except the quite buzz of a giant bug, or occasional bird or perhaps a dog barking. Otherwise there is nothing but the ringing in your ears. And yet you climb the hill higher and away to your right, what’s that? It’s green trees, water, life. And if you look to your left what do you see? A village, no two villages! And straight in front, if you can distinguish it through the haze, is a third village. You can drive from a beautiful oasis, like Jericho, full of fruit and flowering plants, date palms and grape vines, out and up a twisting vein of a road through the wilderness with no color visible other than gray and brown and a cloudless blue sky in every direction. Then suddenly, you crest the hill and spread out in front of you is life: rich fertile soil for growing wheat, people and spiked plants and houses and animals.
Standing in Jerusalem or on a hill overlooking it you can feel the way it is hugged by the hills. It is surrounded by a wall of hills. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it is so striking. Even from the North where the access is easiest, you still have hills to climb in order to reach the city. If you drive over, around, and under these hills to the west, you find the land abruptly opens up before you into sweeping, rolling, open spaces with broad valleys green and full of life even now before the rains come. Standing at Gezer to the west of Jerusalem, you can look out in any direction and see a different landscape. To the west the sun glimmers off of the Mediterranean sea. East the hill country is visible with the Judean wilderness faintly sticking up behind it. South the Shephelah rolls away in gentle waves while to the North the land is open and covered with the cityscape of Tel Aviv and surrounding towns. There are trees of all kinds covering various hills, gorgeous bushes full of flowers in brilliant red, pink, orange and white.
As I stood on top of Gezer and looked out toward the sea I experienced a feeling I hadn’t realized I was missing until then: freedom. I was raised in the Ohio countryside, the place of fields and flat land. I realized I had been feeling Closter phobic in Jerusalem. I have never been a city person and being surrounded by hills almost makes it worse. It gives you the feeling of someone wrapping their arms around you and not letting go till you feel so squeezed you just want to explode out and breathe in a space all your own. I realized that is how I feel in Jerusalem. I have loved the ability to walk anywhere I want to go. Yes, it might take awhile, and you may have to climb a million hills (side note: if you ever come to Jerusalem make sure you spend a few months climbing hills and walking so they don’t kill you when you get here!) but not as long as it would at home and it is a little freeing to just wander around the city discovering shops and fun little stores with souvenirs or cheap clothes or whatever. But I miss the wide open fields of home.
Shortly after my liberating experience of recognizing I was in a wide open space (mostly) Emily (one of the students here who helps lead some of our field studies) said something about the Israelites that struck me. She said that the Israelites were a hill people. They didn’t know what to do with the low hills of the west and the open land of the coast. It frightened them, left them feeling unprotected. If you had lived most of you life, in a place surrounded by hills, enclosed and covered in every direction, it would make sense that you would feel very vulnerable in the openness of western Israel (of course people from Colorado probably think this is nothing). However, if someone like me, who is used to open spaces where everything is flat (or at least more open), they could feel very trapped within the hill country. It gave me a new perspective on cultural differences. Even within this little space of land (smaller than the distances between Bluffton, Beaverdam, Columbus Grove, and Pandora) there were various cultures from the shepherds in the wilderness, to the hill people, to the coastal towns and those living in the agricultural Shepelah. I don’t think I will ever get over this. Sorry, I try to stay concise but these posts always turn into books!
Much love and Shalom,
Cait
Monday, September 20, 2010
Waterfalls and boulders
Well all, here is a quick update on my adventures from last Sunday. (I know, i'm behind! So much to tell, too little time to write.) We had a student activity day, which was….can you guess? More wonderful hiking! Whoot whoot! By the end of Saturday’s hiking adventure I was thinking “There is NO WAY I want to hike more tomorrow. But it actually turned out to be super fun. It was beautiful with waterfalls and pools, large volcanic rock you had to scramble over and little lizards running over the rocks in this huge gorge along a river. We were in an upper part of Galilee called the Golan. I didn’t take my camera because I didn’t want to get it wet. We had to swim across a couple areas with our bags above our heads. But other people took pictures. They are on facebook if you want to see them . It was so beautiful though. You didn’t even know this place was there until you were on top of it looking over the edge down. down, down. The trek down was pretty challenging. The hills were steep and though there were steps it sure made my thighs burn. At the bottom of the hill there was a beautiful cool pool with a waterfall. Several people climbed the rocks and jumped into the water. My group kept walking, scrambling over these huge Basalt rocks and using the metal handholds to slide around the edges of rock faces. We ended up on top of a second waterfall. As we arrived one of the guys from our group was trying to get up the nerves to jump off the waterfall down into the pool below. You had to go down and swim through the pool in order to continue hiking, but you didn’t have to jump. There was a ladder you could climb down and then just swim across. That had been my plan. But as we climbed up we started cheering for the guy, his name is Chris, trying to jump. We would count him down and he would get ready and then just stand there. I told him to just let go and he could do. I’m a good encourager, but I wasn’t going to jump. So all of the sudden he turns around and looks at me and says, “Are you jumping?” I thought “crap” cause I wasn’t going to say no, but I didn’t want to jump, so I just said, “if you jump I’ll jump” thinking I would just not go then. But he sticks out his hand and says “shake on it”. I almost didn’t, but then I figured what the heck, so I shook his hand. We counted him down one more time and he jumped. It really didn’t look that far, but I was suddenly very nervous. I ate my lunch quick and then worked up the courage to jump. Several other people had climbed down the ladder by then and there was a large group on the other side of the pool. So I climbed on the rock and after a little encouragement from my friend Megan, launched myself of the rock. I managed to go in straight I think, I don’t remember it hurting. I just remember thinking it was cold…and felt amazing! It was wild. My friend Amy had her camera to take a picture, but didn’t manage to get it. I’m hoping one of the other guys who had his camera got one. Hopefully there is proof! Anyway I was really glad I jumped. The rest of the day we spent hiking, swimming, climbing, laughing, and drinking lots of water. The last place we went was a third waterfall you had to climb down in order to get to the pool below. It was sort of tiered with a water fall above, a small pool, then a second waterfall into a bigger pool. On the far side of the larger pool (none of them were very big, much smaller than ponds at home) there was water pouring of the cliff face in a kind of rain. My friend Liz and I scrambled down to join some other people already swimming. We had hiked back to tell another part of the group there was more waterfalls and to come join us. They had followed behind us a bit. I had swam out to sit on the rocks under the cliff falls when I noticed a group gathered on the rocks above. We weren’t sure what happened but I’ll spare you all the following details of us wondering and just skip to the event. One of the girls in our group, Robin, had climbed up the rocks at the top of the waterfall, just a little ways to set her bag down so it was in a safe dry place. I don’t know if her foot slipped or the ground gave out, but she fell and landed on the rocks about 8 to ten feet below. The guy right in front of her, Joe, managed to keep her from rolling off the rocks into the pool farther down, dropping is camera into the 20 foot pool. It turns out there were several guys from the military with medic training and an Israeli with training and a cell phone. Not to mention we had two people trained in wilderness medical procedures. Overall we were well covered and Robin was well taken care of. It turns out her only injuries were a bruised hip and leg, a busted up chin (requiring a few stitches), a black eye, bump on the head, and minor scratches. They had to carry her out on a stretcher, (not easy since the climb out was almost straight out with hardly room for one person to walk at a time) because they thought her leg might be broken. It turns out it wasn’t thankfully. Robin was so thankful to everyone who helped and that the Lord protected her from more serious injuries. She had such a great attitude. There were more details but the cool part was how everything worked out, how we all banded together to pray for her, and how the rest of us were protected. In spite of that, and getting back a bit late for supper, it was an amazing trip!
Much love to you all!
Shalom,
Cait
P.S. I promise I am being careful so I don’t get injured
Much love to you all!
Shalom,
Cait
P.S. I promise I am being careful so I don’t get injured
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Images of Jerusalem
Here are a few photos's I wanted to upload earlier, however due to technical difficulties it's just now possible. This of course is not nearnly all of the ones I'm taking, but just a few quick snapshots of some of the events in my life these last couple of weeks.( whoa! has it really only been that long?!)
The Israelie Idol competition (Called American Idol Israel since Israel is not supposed to have "Idols". haha!)
Muslim Quarter lights for Ramadan (which just ended)
Well I had more but my internet connections is flailing so that's all for now folks!
Shalom
Cait
The Israelie Idol competition (Called American Idol Israel since Israel is not supposed to have "Idols". haha!)
Muslim Quarter lights for Ramadan (which just ended)
Well I had more but my internet connections is flailing so that's all for now folks!
Shalom
Cait
Adventures in surrounding areas
What a weekend! Saturday we traveled to areas just outside of Jerusalem for our weekly field study. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say traveled just over the hill. Our first stop was an outlook from Hebrew University on the Mt of Olives. You could see the whole of the City of David and the Temple Mount. I guess the City of David was slightly behind Temple Mount. 
However, that only reinforced the understanding of why the city was designed in such a way. The most significant, fortified, and in Israel’s case, powerful place (the Temple Mount) was directly located in the most vulnerable place: the northern corner, the entrance to the city of Jerusalem. The Temple Mount was doubly fortified. The presence of God also resided there making it full of power. The significance of this was that if an enemy came through they had to get through God first before they could get to the city. If the Temple was taken the rest of the city fell. Israel was not the only group to build their defenses that way. It really was the best place for a defense and other civilizations believed their god would protect them as well.
I am still trying to process everything I saw and did today. One of my favorite places cresting the hill of Mt. of Olives and seeing the drastic landscape change. It was absolutely amazing. Rolling hills full of green bushes and trees cut away into a sharp maze of desolate looking mounds, high and stark. A solid colored wall of misery: the Judean wilderness.
It looked like the most lonely, deserted place in the world. As we climbed the Herodian hill (Herodian = Herod "fun house") 
and looked out over the Judean wilderness it seemed to stretch for miles away in front of us. A line of strange looking hills spreading out along the horizon. You could see the exact place where the cultivatable land stopped and the wilderness began. The villages simply stopped: no barns, no houses, nothing. The closest thing I could compare it too would be the Bad Lands. And yet, these hills make the Bad Lands look tame. It’s not a gradually change from habitation to nothing, but an immediate, drastic, absolute cut. How do people survive in such a place? How did they survive thousands of years ago? The stories of David tending his flocks became starkly real. His statement in Psalm 23 about the Lord leading to green pastures makes you wonder, “Where?” Where in all the nothingness could there possibly be something green? My mom has a saying she likes to use, “Seeing green in brown world.” The meaning is that even when things seem hopeless and lost, desolate and deserted (a brown world), look for the green (Hope). I guess even David knew where his hope lay (and what color it was)!
Yet, in spite of how frightening these hills look God took people out there to meet with him. He used these hills as a place to show himself to people, his power, grace and goodness. It’s amazing to me to walk these places and realize what an impact geography had on the lives of biblical people. It brings them to life, their stories, their songs, their losses and triumphs. It makes me wonder how geography impacts my life, if it carries the same weight for me as it did for David, Jesus, Isaiah, Ruth and Naomi, Joseph, Moses, Joshua. There are worlds within worlds of understanding the Bible. I am realizing that geography is one of the most important. It helps open all the other worlds up. In my required freshman Bible course we were taught that in order to understand scripture we need to understand the author’s original intent. I would also argue that to understand the author’s intent, we need to understand the physical landscape of where they were coming from. The historical is also important, but the geography influences the history on every level. I guess that’s perhaps more than just first impressions, but these are the thoughts that come to me as I process what I’m seeing throughout the day. I just keep being amazed and loving every second!
That's not the whole weekend, but Sunday's story will have to wait till later. Love you all
Shalom,
Caitlin
However, that only reinforced the understanding of why the city was designed in such a way. The most significant, fortified, and in Israel’s case, powerful place (the Temple Mount) was directly located in the most vulnerable place: the northern corner, the entrance to the city of Jerusalem. The Temple Mount was doubly fortified. The presence of God also resided there making it full of power. The significance of this was that if an enemy came through they had to get through God first before they could get to the city. If the Temple was taken the rest of the city fell. Israel was not the only group to build their defenses that way. It really was the best place for a defense and other civilizations believed their god would protect them as well.I am still trying to process everything I saw and did today. One of my favorite places cresting the hill of Mt. of Olives and seeing the drastic landscape change. It was absolutely amazing. Rolling hills full of green bushes and trees cut away into a sharp maze of desolate looking mounds, high and stark. A solid colored wall of misery: the Judean wilderness.
It looked like the most lonely, deserted place in the world. As we climbed the Herodian hill (Herodian = Herod "fun house") 
and looked out over the Judean wilderness it seemed to stretch for miles away in front of us. A line of strange looking hills spreading out along the horizon. You could see the exact place where the cultivatable land stopped and the wilderness began. The villages simply stopped: no barns, no houses, nothing. The closest thing I could compare it too would be the Bad Lands. And yet, these hills make the Bad Lands look tame. It’s not a gradually change from habitation to nothing, but an immediate, drastic, absolute cut. How do people survive in such a place? How did they survive thousands of years ago? The stories of David tending his flocks became starkly real. His statement in Psalm 23 about the Lord leading to green pastures makes you wonder, “Where?” Where in all the nothingness could there possibly be something green? My mom has a saying she likes to use, “Seeing green in brown world.” The meaning is that even when things seem hopeless and lost, desolate and deserted (a brown world), look for the green (Hope). I guess even David knew where his hope lay (and what color it was)! Yet, in spite of how frightening these hills look God took people out there to meet with him. He used these hills as a place to show himself to people, his power, grace and goodness. It’s amazing to me to walk these places and realize what an impact geography had on the lives of biblical people. It brings them to life, their stories, their songs, their losses and triumphs. It makes me wonder how geography impacts my life, if it carries the same weight for me as it did for David, Jesus, Isaiah, Ruth and Naomi, Joseph, Moses, Joshua. There are worlds within worlds of understanding the Bible. I am realizing that geography is one of the most important. It helps open all the other worlds up. In my required freshman Bible course we were taught that in order to understand scripture we need to understand the author’s original intent. I would also argue that to understand the author’s intent, we need to understand the physical landscape of where they were coming from. The historical is also important, but the geography influences the history on every level. I guess that’s perhaps more than just first impressions, but these are the thoughts that come to me as I process what I’m seeing throughout the day. I just keep being amazed and loving every second!
That's not the whole weekend, but Sunday's story will have to wait till later. Love you all
Shalom,
Caitlin
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
the Hills
Dear Family and Friends,
It has been an intense couple days. Ok, maybe not that intense for all of them. HOmework load hasn't been bad so far and I've been out and about quite a bit...not to mention I love what I am learning :) It was a rather eventful last couple days however. Let me tell you....
Friday afternoon a large group of us enjoyed a lovely hot sweaty exahusting game of Ultimate frisbee. It was so much fun and at times rather strange as the park workers kept coming over and watching us. There was also an older Israelie man sitting on a park bench right by where we were playing, we ran past him and kept throwing the frisbee into the tree above his head (on accident of course), but I don't think he once looked up from his paper. And he was there the entire 2 hours we were! It was rather entertaining. I have to admit though, my body is just now recovering from that game.
Saturday night was Israelie Idol! They performed just down the hill from school. We all sat along the wall with some Israelie fans and enjoyed the concert, even though we couldn't understand a word of the Hebrew :) We have all been singing the tunes this weekend much to the annoyment of my wonderful roomate. It's quite entertaining. (She is secretly bitter because her favorite didn't win, haha!) We were of couse up late and that made for an early next morning.
Sunday was a hard day physically and mentally in some ways also. Fascinating, enlightening, but hard and exhausting. We were up early, left campus at 7 and headed down towards the city. Notice the “going down” part. I sure did and notice more and more as I get to know Jerusalem better. The rest of the day I was constantly reminded of it. We descended, we climbed, we went up and then down and then up again. This psalm was one we read while standing overlooking the City of David.
Psalms 121:1-8
I will lift up my eyes to the hills; from whence shall my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is the shade on your right hand. The sun will not smite you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul. The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever.
The sky was bright, the sun already causing backs to sweat, and all around us the hills rose. Not towering, but enough to block the view. I felt two very distinct, but different feelings. The first was one of protection. Surrounded, enclosed, fortified are all words that came to mind. It really was a great spot to build a community, with water close by, although still quite a hike up or down the slippery hill. Something very noticeable when you have you climb up it or even scramble down it on a paved streets. I wonder if the people still huffed and puffed after climbing it regularly. I can’t imagine they wouldn’t. I can see the younger children and adults hurrying up it and still breathing hard after reaching the top. The second feeling I had while standing on the lookout point over David’s City and the Kidron Valley gazing around at the Mt. of Olives, the Temple Mt. and the Watershed Ridge was one of entrapment, claustrophobia. You aren’t low enough to have to look up at the hills, but you aren’t high enough to see over. You are stuck somewhere in the middle. As I thought about this throughout the day I considered something else. It was triggered by Psalm 125:1-2 where the Lord is described like the mountains surrounding Jerusalem, doing the same for his people. In one way it’s reassuring. However, in another it’s very intimidating. While your standing in the middle it feels like there is no where to go, no outlet from those hills for even the valley’s are rising as time goes on. There is no way out. In the same way, there is no way to escape from the Lord. You can’t hide from him. He is “higher” than you. Just as anyone standing on the top of one of those surrounding hills can look down and see everything, the Lord can look down and see Israel, every activity, glorifying to him or not. You cannot escape the consequences any more than you can escape the protection. It seemed to me that the hills literally represented a dual purpose. Physically, they provided protection from enemies from all directions but the North which was carefully fortified. However, if the walls there fell, it was over. In a similar way, the Lord protected and provided while Israel was faithful and obedient, but when they failed, or more correctly chose to ignore God’s warnings, they were trapped in a place where his judgment would reach down and find them. You could try to run out of the hills, but after hiking up them I know it’s not so easy to do. It’s even harder to run from God. So I was struck by the hills of Jerusalem in several ways: the geographical sense, the closeness and steepness of the slopes; the literal sense, in how the hills were described by the Psalmists and other writers; and for my own personal spiritual sense through both of those that the Lord is the only way, the only reason, a place like this works. Without him, there is no protection, no crop, no hope. It all becomes a desolate wasteland without his provision. I think I will be even more aware of this as I am exposed to the more desolate area’s of Israel so close to the hills of Jerusalem.
A few more things. It's hard to describe the geography. Even the pictures don't quite capture the feeling of being here. It looks beautiful, with nice rolling hills and valley's, but as i've Mentioned before, everything is much more compact than it looks. The Hardest part of the day was the climb from the Pool of Siloam at the bottom of the City of David back up to school. A 45 degree angle the whole way. Pictures don't even do it justice. The hill is torture to climb. My professor told us of a man who, before the little tractor's with trailers on them they use now, would carry refridgerators up that hill on his back....by himself! I barely made it with my two pound back pack on! It's amazing how life works here. And knowing the hills and such it's amazing how it worked 2000, 4000, 6000 years ago. Back then the valley's were deeper and the hills higher. They have filled in and worn down some due to the consistent occupation. It's amazing to stand on the high places and overlook the various areas of the city. It's strange to stand in the lowest point of the Valleys and smell the garbage that still flows down the hill, just as it did thousands of years ago. No breeze down there, just the sun reflecting of the whites stone houses and paved streets.
There's always more to write, but only so much you can process at a time, so for now,
Shalom.
It has been an intense couple days. Ok, maybe not that intense for all of them. HOmework load hasn't been bad so far and I've been out and about quite a bit...not to mention I love what I am learning :) It was a rather eventful last couple days however. Let me tell you....
Friday afternoon a large group of us enjoyed a lovely hot sweaty exahusting game of Ultimate frisbee. It was so much fun and at times rather strange as the park workers kept coming over and watching us. There was also an older Israelie man sitting on a park bench right by where we were playing, we ran past him and kept throwing the frisbee into the tree above his head (on accident of course), but I don't think he once looked up from his paper. And he was there the entire 2 hours we were! It was rather entertaining. I have to admit though, my body is just now recovering from that game.
Saturday night was Israelie Idol! They performed just down the hill from school. We all sat along the wall with some Israelie fans and enjoyed the concert, even though we couldn't understand a word of the Hebrew :) We have all been singing the tunes this weekend much to the annoyment of my wonderful roomate. It's quite entertaining. (She is secretly bitter because her favorite didn't win, haha!) We were of couse up late and that made for an early next morning.
Sunday was a hard day physically and mentally in some ways also. Fascinating, enlightening, but hard and exhausting. We were up early, left campus at 7 and headed down towards the city. Notice the “going down” part. I sure did and notice more and more as I get to know Jerusalem better. The rest of the day I was constantly reminded of it. We descended, we climbed, we went up and then down and then up again. This psalm was one we read while standing overlooking the City of David.
Psalms 121:1-8
I will lift up my eyes to the hills; from whence shall my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is the shade on your right hand. The sun will not smite you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul. The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever.
The sky was bright, the sun already causing backs to sweat, and all around us the hills rose. Not towering, but enough to block the view. I felt two very distinct, but different feelings. The first was one of protection. Surrounded, enclosed, fortified are all words that came to mind. It really was a great spot to build a community, with water close by, although still quite a hike up or down the slippery hill. Something very noticeable when you have you climb up it or even scramble down it on a paved streets. I wonder if the people still huffed and puffed after climbing it regularly. I can’t imagine they wouldn’t. I can see the younger children and adults hurrying up it and still breathing hard after reaching the top. The second feeling I had while standing on the lookout point over David’s City and the Kidron Valley gazing around at the Mt. of Olives, the Temple Mt. and the Watershed Ridge was one of entrapment, claustrophobia. You aren’t low enough to have to look up at the hills, but you aren’t high enough to see over. You are stuck somewhere in the middle. As I thought about this throughout the day I considered something else. It was triggered by Psalm 125:1-2 where the Lord is described like the mountains surrounding Jerusalem, doing the same for his people. In one way it’s reassuring. However, in another it’s very intimidating. While your standing in the middle it feels like there is no where to go, no outlet from those hills for even the valley’s are rising as time goes on. There is no way out. In the same way, there is no way to escape from the Lord. You can’t hide from him. He is “higher” than you. Just as anyone standing on the top of one of those surrounding hills can look down and see everything, the Lord can look down and see Israel, every activity, glorifying to him or not. You cannot escape the consequences any more than you can escape the protection. It seemed to me that the hills literally represented a dual purpose. Physically, they provided protection from enemies from all directions but the North which was carefully fortified. However, if the walls there fell, it was over. In a similar way, the Lord protected and provided while Israel was faithful and obedient, but when they failed, or more correctly chose to ignore God’s warnings, they were trapped in a place where his judgment would reach down and find them. You could try to run out of the hills, but after hiking up them I know it’s not so easy to do. It’s even harder to run from God. So I was struck by the hills of Jerusalem in several ways: the geographical sense, the closeness and steepness of the slopes; the literal sense, in how the hills were described by the Psalmists and other writers; and for my own personal spiritual sense through both of those that the Lord is the only way, the only reason, a place like this works. Without him, there is no protection, no crop, no hope. It all becomes a desolate wasteland without his provision. I think I will be even more aware of this as I am exposed to the more desolate area’s of Israel so close to the hills of Jerusalem.
A few more things. It's hard to describe the geography. Even the pictures don't quite capture the feeling of being here. It looks beautiful, with nice rolling hills and valley's, but as i've Mentioned before, everything is much more compact than it looks. The Hardest part of the day was the climb from the Pool of Siloam at the bottom of the City of David back up to school. A 45 degree angle the whole way. Pictures don't even do it justice. The hill is torture to climb. My professor told us of a man who, before the little tractor's with trailers on them they use now, would carry refridgerators up that hill on his back....by himself! I barely made it with my two pound back pack on! It's amazing how life works here. And knowing the hills and such it's amazing how it worked 2000, 4000, 6000 years ago. Back then the valley's were deeper and the hills higher. They have filled in and worn down some due to the consistent occupation. It's amazing to stand on the high places and overlook the various areas of the city. It's strange to stand in the lowest point of the Valleys and smell the garbage that still flows down the hill, just as it did thousands of years ago. No breeze down there, just the sun reflecting of the whites stone houses and paved streets.
There's always more to write, but only so much you can process at a time, so for now,
Shalom.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
The WOW factor
Dear Family and Friends,
Today I had quite an experience. Not having a class until 3pm I and some new friends decided to attempt an entrance into the Temple Mount. I have to admitt I was a bit nervous. The first adventure came as we were trying to find it. Although we had been there before for one of our orientation tours, the streets are small and full of shops that all look the same. Plus we had to wander through several quarters until we could see the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock.
Sidenote: If you look at a map of the Old City (you can probably google it) it is split into 4 unequal quarters: Muslim, the largest quarter (which is where the Dome of the Rock sits on what was once the Temple Mount, just on the edge of Muslim and Jewish quarters), Christian, Armenian, and Jewish, the smallest section. I may have mentioned this in my previous blog but just in case I didn't I didn't want you all to be confused.
After some wandering we found our spot. The next adventure was how to get in. The Muslims allow non-muslims through only one entrance. You can exit anywhere but you can only go in one way, and you are not allowed in during prayer times. This of course put a bit of a time constraint on us. We had to be in and out before 10:30am when the 2nd call to prayer came. We saw the ramp our prof. had told us about that was our entrance. However, we couldn't find the gate up the ramp. In our attempt to locate it we wandered, read a few signs and finally found ourselves walking throught security into the area of the Western wall or Wailing wall.
The Picture (hopefully on the right) is of the wall, split into male and female sections. Notice the men's side is much larger (there were also separate security gates for us to go through). It was rather interesting. Amy (the other girl in the group) wanted to go touch the wall, but since it looked rather full we decided to come back another day. We wandered around the area looking for an entrance to the Dome of the Rock, but finding none decided to go out and try again. So we exited, walked back around the entire area to the gate we had come in at and realized the entrance we wanted was the third gate area by the security we went through before. This time we managed to get up the ramp. It was strange walking up a ramp that went right over a Jewish holy area and into a Muslim holy area. As we exited the wooden ramp into the couryard/park of the Dome of the Rock the guys with us were told they needed longer pants and couldn't go in with their shorts on. They felt silly that they had forgotten that fact. But instead of making us leave they waited graciously at the exit while Amy and I ran up the steps to the open area where the Dome of the Rock sits. I have to tell you, it is an impressive site from outside the courtyard.
But from inside.....it was amazing! It felt strange standing there, like we were maybe someplace we shouldn't be. The sun reflecting of the golden dome and white stones that paved the upper courtyard made everything brilliant it was hard to keep your eyes open. The blue tiles covering the Mosque looked beautiful against a blue sky. I can't tell you how strange and awsome it felt to be standing there. But it wasnt' just the beauty of the building and the surronding area. It was even cooler to stand gazing around imagining what it might have looked like when Solomon's temple stood there. The size of the place had to have been spectacular! It still is. Amy and I went as quickly as we could in all our excitment walking around the Mosque, and snapping a few quick pictures before we headed back out. I am posting a few to give you an idea, but they just don't quite justify standing there. I can tell you though that I am definitly going back up there!
Today I had quite an experience. Not having a class until 3pm I and some new friends decided to attempt an entrance into the Temple Mount. I have to admitt I was a bit nervous. The first adventure came as we were trying to find it. Although we had been there before for one of our orientation tours, the streets are small and full of shops that all look the same. Plus we had to wander through several quarters until we could see the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock.
Sidenote: If you look at a map of the Old City (you can probably google it) it is split into 4 unequal quarters: Muslim, the largest quarter (which is where the Dome of the Rock sits on what was once the Temple Mount, just on the edge of Muslim and Jewish quarters), Christian, Armenian, and Jewish, the smallest section. I may have mentioned this in my previous blog but just in case I didn't I didn't want you all to be confused.
After some wandering we found our spot. The next adventure was how to get in. The Muslims allow non-muslims through only one entrance. You can exit anywhere but you can only go in one way, and you are not allowed in during prayer times. This of course put a bit of a time constraint on us. We had to be in and out before 10:30am when the 2nd call to prayer came. We saw the ramp our prof. had told us about that was our entrance. However, we couldn't find the gate up the ramp. In our attempt to locate it we wandered, read a few signs and finally found ourselves walking throught security into the area of the Western wall or Wailing wall.
The Picture (hopefully on the right) is of the wall, split into male and female sections. Notice the men's side is much larger (there were also separate security gates for us to go through). It was rather interesting. Amy (the other girl in the group) wanted to go touch the wall, but since it looked rather full we decided to come back another day. We wandered around the area looking for an entrance to the Dome of the Rock, but finding none decided to go out and try again. So we exited, walked back around the entire area to the gate we had come in at and realized the entrance we wanted was the third gate area by the security we went through before. This time we managed to get up the ramp. It was strange walking up a ramp that went right over a Jewish holy area and into a Muslim holy area. As we exited the wooden ramp into the couryard/park of the Dome of the Rock the guys with us were told they needed longer pants and couldn't go in with their shorts on. They felt silly that they had forgotten that fact. But instead of making us leave they waited graciously at the exit while Amy and I ran up the steps to the open area where the Dome of the Rock sits. I have to tell you, it is an impressive site from outside the courtyard.
But from inside.....it was amazing! It felt strange standing there, like we were maybe someplace we shouldn't be. The sun reflecting of the golden dome and white stones that paved the upper courtyard made everything brilliant it was hard to keep your eyes open. The blue tiles covering the Mosque looked beautiful against a blue sky. I can't tell you how strange and awsome it felt to be standing there. But it wasnt' just the beauty of the building and the surronding area. It was even cooler to stand gazing around imagining what it might have looked like when Solomon's temple stood there. The size of the place had to have been spectacular! It still is. Amy and I went as quickly as we could in all our excitment walking around the Mosque, and snapping a few quick pictures before we headed back out. I am posting a few to give you an idea, but they just don't quite justify standing there. I can tell you though that I am definitly going back up there! 
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