Kathy's travels: Ein Kerem and Bethlehem

Wednesday, May 13

Today we talked about the infancy narratives in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. (The other two don't have them). The course follows the life of Jesus. So this morning, we sang two advent hymns. Then we left in a bus to go to Ein Kerem.

We went to see a cave owned by the YMCA. It's actually a real cave and it's been reinforced so that you can go in and see what it was like where the shepherds were living. (I also found it funny that YMCA in Arabic has the work al Al Shabab in it.) Brother Mark read the passage from Luke to us and we sang two Christmas hymns.

We also went to the Church of the Visitation. Elizabeth is supposed to be living there when She was pregnant and Mary, her cousin (also pregnant) came to see her. At the church of the Annunciation, they have The Magnificat on tiles on the wall in many languages. We read it again there. We also sang some Christmas hymns. I was surprised to see there was a group of Indians there. They were very pious.

Then we had lunch in a very nice restaurant. Afterwards, we went to Bethlehem. It's in the West Bank. We had to have our passports and go through a checkpoint. Both Brother Mark and Rodney pointed out several times where there are Israeli settlements well inside the boundaries of the West Bank. We saw the Wall. In some places, it is concrete, others not. On the Palestinian side, there's lots of political graffiti. In Bethlehem, there is a church that is shared by the Greeks, the Roman Catholics and the Armenians. A Palestinian Christian who was born and grew up in Bethlehem was our guide. He showed all three parts of the church. There is a place where there is a fourteen pointed star on the floor. They believe this is where Mary gave birth to Jesus here is another place where they say Jesus was in a manger.

Then we went into a small chapel. Our guide said that he wanted to sing a prayer for us in Aramaic. He sang a pretty long song. Then he asked us to sing something for him. We sang Silent Night and O Little Town of Bethlehem. Then we went up to the Catholic area. They were processing in and singing. We sat in the pews to watch for a while.