Looking out over Hell (parental advisory)

Hello Accotinkers,

I must make a correction from my previous post. I told you my hotel, Mt Zion, looks out over the Kidron Valley. This is not true. The Kidron Valley is on the other side of a hill to the left. The valley Mt Zion's rear windows look over is the Hinnom Valley. This was a major mistake on my part, and let me explain why.

Hinnom Valley was the place where pre-Israelites like the Jebusites and the Canaanites - as well as some apostate Israelites (like Moloch) - sacrificed their children by fire. The term for the area is better known as Gehanna, which in English is translated into Hell. Yes, our hotel sits atop Hell.

It is illuminating to see the proximity of Gehanna to all the other sites. Distances here are very tight, measured in meters not 100's of miles. The ancients could see the smoke from such the sacrifices easily from inside Jerusalem's walls, less than a half mile away. The Christian concept of Hell comes directly from this valley where people burned children to death - hence the fire and brimstone imagery. No wonder I do not believe in an cosmic, eternal Hell - a real one exists right here, one people saw and for which they created cautionary tales. It is understandable that the farther one would get away from Jerusalem - say, England in the time of St James (and his Bible) - the easier it could be to not understand the Hebrew text, the short proximity of the valley of death by fire, and imagine that Hell has a cosmic zip code. The view from my hotel is evidence of Universalism!

Sunday morning we visited the tunnels just outside the walls of the Temple. Israel has been excavating here since 1968, and they have found amazing things. Some stones that form the very base of the temple, limestone blocks sitting atop the bedrock, are 45 feet long weighing 620 tons. Construction crews today would have trouble with stones of this scale. Our guide claimed Herod placed them there, but how? And how do we know it was Herod? There so are many unanswered questions. The Israelis have made a couples attempts to tunnel under the Temple Mount, which of course enrages Muslims. For now, they have chosen to stop those excavations. But for how long?

While in the tunnels I placed written prayers in the cracks of the ancient colossal blocks underground; I placed prayers in the exposed Wailing Wall above when I returned. (The Wailing Wall was called so because the bedrock at its bottom 'cried' - the underground springs leached through, dripping 'tears' down the side.)

The most troubling thing today for me was when we exited the tunnels. Our tour guides told us we would be escorted by guards back to the Wailing Wall. Just a mention of the words "Muslim Quarter" and 'guards' put people on edge. As we emerged, I noticed we were on the same street (the Via Dolorosa) we strolled the day before, where we all felt perfectly safe. A bit of spin (propaganda) seemed at play, yet many on our tour didn't recognize (until Anya and I pointed it out) that we were there having a grand time the day before! Every stone tells a story, as they say around here, and every guide has a spin.

We visited the 'City of David' (not Bethlehem), the ancient Jebusite political center across the Kidron Valley from the Temple Mount (between Kidron and Hinnom). This is the hilltop city David captures in II Samuel as he unifies the Israelites. David's success, and that of his son Solomon, can be partially attributed to the engineering they applied to their water supply system, and that is what we toured. They used first bronze, and then iron chisels to craft 530 meter long tunnels in the limestone 300 feet deep. As Mr Spock would say, "Fascinating."

Despite the spin, despite the contentiousness and constant state of vigilance, the beauty and power of faith and the genuine affection for life and place are deeply moving here. Everything seems to be done with intention. This is a beautiful city with generous people.

The segregation of this place rankles me. For instance, the police force has only Israeli Jews. The Military command has only Israeli Jews. Each neighborhood is nearly 100% segregated ethnically and/or religiously. To me, it seems awful. I acknowledge I am judging with 21st century American values, but this way of partition does not seem sustainable for the long term. Right now a fragile peace is held together by American arms, Israeli vigilance, UN sanction, and Arab forbearance. How long can this last? I pray this place can take examples from the best of the USA and compose a way of true integration and peaceful co-existence.

Lance Morrow, in his Book "Evil: An Investigation," speaks of the "reflexivity of the past." Many people act with an acute awareness of the past, present and future. This is a natural tendency, and often wise instinctive behavior - "how has this person acted before? What results will come?" Yet at some point Morrow suggests that we need to step out from under the burden of the past. What if during the Civil Rights struggle the main focus of most white Americans had only been to think about the past when they were privileged as masters, or the potential that one of their offspring might marry a black person in the future? Somehow enough white Americans thought mainly about the present, Morrow suggests, as they saw people being beaten, whipped, lynched and prevented from voting, and they were able to say 'this must stop now, in my time." Morrow suggests that a radical focus on the present, regarding who is in front of us right now, is what is most likely to prevent us from participating in evil.

This what I continue to wish for here in Jerusalem. One can keep one';s rituals and love of Holy sites but still say, "We will be the ones who change the course of our history for the better forever." The burden of history, faith, tradition, families, territories, stories, propaganda, politics, may be stronger here than anywhere in the world. Yet if this place is to take a substantial step toward building a lasting peace, courageous visionaries must step forward and do the bold thing, taking the American experiment a step or two further, and say, "this is not way to live; Let us fashion a new way together."

May the visionaries of peace, the bold lovers of truth and justice, be enabled to step into leadership and lead this land into a place of beauty. wonder and embrace of diversity that shines as an example to all the world.

So May it Be,

Rev Scott