Gathering

We arrived in Jerusalem a couple of days ago, and the greatest fun is running into cherished friends. The pilgrimage officially begins tonight at dinner, although pilgrims have been gathering together, trickling into Jerusalem on individual schedules and varied routes.

There are forty of us all together, and almost every person is a dear friend from our years of living in the Ananda Palo Alto community. Since moving away from the Bay Area eight years ago, we haven't spent much time with these friends, so this pilgrimage is especially meaningful, being able to spend extended time together with so many people that we love.

A walk back in time

We run into them in the hotel lobby, on the nearby streets, in the restaurant, and each new sighting is joyous and celebratory. This morning, a dozen of us gathered in the lobby at 5:30 to walk to the Church of the Sepulchre, twenty minutes away. Along quiet streets, with only an occasional early-morning car humming by, across empty intersections, and through a main entrance of a modern, high-end shopping mall. Walking through the elongated mall, with twinkly lights overhead and chic storefronts on either side, it was a journey through time, wending our way through cobbled passage ways, to emerge at the Jaffa gate to the old city. Just beyond, the high doors of the church beckoned us into a maze of passages, altars, stairs, balconies, tunnels, chapels, and alcoves. It seemed endless and somewhat bewildering.

And yet the quiet of the morning hours were gentle and serene. The first encounter was a stone slab, the stone on which Jesus' body had been anointed with oils, in preparation for placing him in the tomb, or sepulchre. Kneeling next to the stone, you place your hands, forehead, your heart onto the stone and imagine the sorrow with which they cleansed his broken body, binding it in its shroud, carrying it the short distance, measured in yards, really, to the tomb. Meditating at that stone, the site where the cross was wedged into its stone base is mere yards away in one direction, the tomb mere yards away in the other direction. It all happened in such a small area, it could have been a small, barren pasture, just there, there, and finally, there.

Pure devotion

A group of five exquisite singers gather each morning in St. Helena's chapel, around several interior corners and down two flights of stairs. Following each others' lead, we wound our way around and down to this small chapel, the site where St. Helena discovered the true cross, two or three hundred years after the crucifixion, just right there, below the foundations of the inner chapel that was once Jesus' tomb. The five voices blended together clear and pure, softly, devotedly, in harmony and rapture, transporting one's soul into inner light and beauty. We listened to them for perhaps a half hour, and then they were finished, kneeling in silence, then gently turning to gather their belongings and climb the stairs out into the dawn air.

We did not go into the sepulchre itself, out of respect for a tour group, then a full mass, then a long line of waiting visitors. Our hotel is so close by, we will go again and again, in the early hours, and find an even quieter day when we can linger and immerse ourselves in the sanctity of the sepulchre, the glory of the resurrection, and the worship from millions of devoted souls across centuries of time.

Our quiet walk back through the passageways, into the mall, back to modern times, out into the busier streets filled with commuters and bustle, back to our hotel and downstairs to breakfast, to gather together again with this friend, then that one, then newly arrived friends, then another. The pilgrims are gathering, and we will walk this holy journey together.