Spirituality is a personal faith journey; organised religion is a man-made industry - welcome to the Holy Land, an oxymoron on steroids. Old Jerusalem city with its wall rampants and its multi-cultural melting pot of quarters: Muslim, Armenian, Christian and Jewish; all combine to give differing narratives on Jesus.
The Via Dolorosa - The Stations of the Cross is a diorama of history swept up in a story of betrayal, brutality, sacrifice and resurrection. Each station is surrounded by touts offering religious icons to pilgrims and travellers alike as they progress to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where according to the teaching of Catholics, Armenians and Greek Orthodox, Jesus was crucified and then rose from the dead.
Within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, each religious order has its own place of worship with the only common area being the tomb of Jesus. So complicated is the status of worship within in the Church that the keys are held by a Muslim family who pass the keys down from generation to generation.
A feeling of omnipotence can engulf you when you stand in the place where the birth of Christianity occurred and you are reminded of the importance of Jerusalem to each religion here, when you are surrounded by military packing fully automatic assault weapons and barking commands to stay away for this gate or that entrance because it has some sense of religious significance which you are not part of.
Whilst this is occurring, the call to prayer reverberates through the narrow alleyways as it has done since 691AD from the Dome on the Rock. This cacophony mixes with the rampant wailing and rocking that occurs at the Western Wall. The holiest of all Jewish sites sees devotion divided by gender and by symbolism of prayer and dress; prayers are stuffed into cracks so that Yahweh will hear one's prayer over anothers.
No sojourn would be complete without crossing the apartheid wall/security border that forcefully separates Israel from Palestine, to visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The grotto is the oldest site continuously worshipped in Christianity. The Church is the oldest, major church in the Holy Land. At our time of visiting, the baby Jesus was competiting with a large Christmas tree set up next to Santa's village and Santa's guzzled down Coke on covered billboards, whilst pilgrims and travellers alike, popped down a few steps to see an ornate manger and the best decorated stable one would ever hope to see.
Once again, organised religion has dictated how one is to view their own spiritual journey.
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