Getting to Gethsemane

Susan Jagannath — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 04:02:51 +0000

Mount of Olives

I took the easiest route to the Mount of Olives, after a lot of map study the night before, down the Via Dolorosa towards St Stephen’s gate, or the Lion Gate. Stepping out of Jerusalem with a backpack, as I’d checked out after an excellent breakfast, I walked tentatively across the slightly damp cobblestones of the via Dolorosa. Descending into the Kidron valley, and then up again the Mount of Olives is good uphill trot, and with a backpack, it was a very slow trot! But in the morning the sun was shining, and the panorama of the Mount of Olives was very biblical indeed – never mind the buses and cars going by!
The garden is not exactly that, more like a park where you could walk about after the heat and dust of ancient Jerusalem, but as usual for a Catholic administered site, it is beautifully maintained and captioned. For once I was happy with the mob of taxi drivers, who told me to go to the grotto first. Grotto? I thought that was more Lourdes – but there is a grotto here, where Jesus went apart from the disciples and prayed – or was it where they slept while He went outside and prayed? Maybe a bit of both – but there is artwork on the ceiling, and a very quiet chapel at the end of a narrow sunbaked corridor. A good resting place for the hike up the hill!

The Grotto in Gethsemane

I didn’t notice it until I uploaded this photo to the blog, but it seems to be a typical holy picture halo, this is the mural that shows the Assumption, and no, I haven’t ‘gimped’ the halo!! The flash of my camera perhaps? I have corrected Levels, and increased brightness a bit, but I’m not a Photoshop, I mean gimp, expert!

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At the Wailing Wall

Susan Jagannath — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:03:28 +0000

The traditional name for this last remnant of the Temple is the Wailing Wall, but the pc name appears to be the Western Wall. Entering the Western Wall Plaza requires a full security check and passing through a metal detector, and a passport check. The guard was fairly disinterested in me after looking at the Australian passport! I was relieved that he didn’t want to do a full search of my backpack. Might have found my rosary – on second thoughts, they are looking for explosive devices and sharp implements. It’s sad that its come to this.

The Western Wall

This was the closest from which I could get a picture, it being Saturday, we were advised closer photos weren’t kosher. We were also told not to insert prayers in the wall as it was Saturday, but there were large numbers of people doing it sneakily anyway. I figured that my prayers didnt need a bit of paper.

In fact, today, we should be able to “text” prayers to a server in the Wall that will then broadcast them heavenwards. The bits of paper in the Wall are very unsacred looking, but yes, we had to go the the women’s section and pray, it was hard to get a spot at the Wall, with all these women snuggling into the Wall for the sole purpose of sneaking their prayers into the cracks!

It appears that you have to walk away backwards from the Wall, I guess in view of this notice, its advisable anyway.

Western Wall Notive

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Getting to Gethsemane

At the Wailing Wall