Category Archives: Pilgrimage

On my first full day in Jerusalem…

The BeerBazaar in Jerusalem – where I got my first real meal of the day, on May 12, 2019…

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My last post – Back from three weeks in Israel – discussed just returning from 18 or 19 days (depending on time-change calculations) in the “Holy Land.” I’d taken part in a course at St. George’s College, the “Palestine of Jesus.” The photo at right shows the bell tower, looking west from the balcony of my room.

But that last post talked about the end of the trip.

It talked about “the most recent ‘cluster’ – half a word – part of the pilgrimage.” (The day I flew home – Wednesday, May 29 – which began by “getting lost in Tel Aviv,” then spending 26 hours without sleep – for reasons including the time change – before I got back home.)

This post will detail the beginning of the trip, from the time I arrived at Ben Gurion airport.

I flew over with a group of nine – of the 20 or so people from our local church. (All told there were 40 people in the “Palestine of Jesus” course, from other places like Australia, Canada and England.) For starters, we’d all been prepped to expect the worst from the vaunted Israeli airport security. But lucky for us, the College sent a shuttle driver, complete with a sign, “St. George’s.” From there the driver waltzed us through security and on to our shuttle bus.

There was a bit of a problem finding my lodging. (We got there the evening of Saturday, May 11, so I’d had to get lodging for the two nights before the course started, on Monday evening, May 13.) The driver found Al Isfahani Street all right, but had no clue as to the whereabouts of “Herod’s Guest House.” (Near Herod’s Gate, at left.) But he eventually called the number on my reservation sheet, and shortly after that the proprietor met us and walked me “home.” (The sign was pretty well hidden.) Once settled, I wandered up and around to the namesake Herod’s Gate, looking for a cold beer, but had no luck.

Then came these thoughts – from the middle of the night – which I posted on Facebook:

Greetings from Jerusalem. It’s 4:14 a.m. Sunday morning here, 9:14 p.m Saturday night back in ATL (Atlanta). I just heard what sounded like an explosion outside my hole-in-the-wall guesthouse on Al-Isfahani Street at 4:08 a.m. I’ll have to check that out later… I’m suffering a bit of jet lag. I went to sleep pretty quick, about 10:30 p.m. local, 3:30 in the afternoon on my body clock. But then I woke up at about 2:30 a.m. local, and have been awake since. SO ANYWAY, it’s been quiet since the 4:08 explosion, 22 minutes ago. (And BTW, I’m about a block away from the local police station.) So I’m gonna try and go back to sleep.

Later on I woke up at 10:30 a.m. local time (3:30 a.m. ATL time), after finally getting back to sleep. Then I wandered up Saladin* Street and eventually found out where I’m supposed to be Monday evening. (The Pilgrim Guest House that is, not the Cathedral or the School.*)

But I had a tough time finding a place to get a snack, or coffee – nobody seemed to speak English – but did stop at one little shop and got a “Tapazina Mango soft drink.” Then I headed out “No’omi Kiss and Ha-Neviim” streets. I was trying to find the bars I’d located – before I left – on Google Maps. And hopefully some place to eat that “talked American.”

I wandered around – starting near the Old City and on up Jaffa Street – from 12:30 to 5:15 p.m. local time. Eventually I got over and onto Ha-Neviim Street and west on Jaffa Street, up as far as Sarei Israel Boulevard. (Close to where Herzl comes in to Jaffa.) There I found a liquor store at Davidka Square, seen at right. I asked about a draft beer, but the guy indicated – in Hebrew – that I could only buy a bottle. The one I got turned out to be a Belgian ale. (With cherries and cherry juice in it; not bad). I also got an Oreo ice cream sandwich.

The combo wasn’t bad but I thought, “I came all the way to Israel just to get a frikkin’ Belgian ale?” This was about 2:00 or so, and the ice cream was the only thing I’d eaten all day.

Along the way I stopped at a bank and got 200 New Israeli Shekels, which would help with haggling. Then once I headed back from Sarei Israel, I found the place called “BeerBazaar.” It’s close to Jaffa Street – “at Etz Hayyim 3” in local-ese – AND IT WAS KOSHER!

That turned out to be quite a treat. I got two glasses of a “Negev” Israeli beer and an order of Hummus Olei Zion. The menu said it was a “timeless Israeli dish to complement your Israeli beer.” So I sat happily at my high-top table just outside the front door – after all that hiking and checking my street-map periodically – and watched the street life passing by.

The hummus, pita bread plus a side of sweet pickles and olives were pretty filling, and it cost a mere 33 shekels. (About 11 dollars, including the two beers.) I saved two slices of bread for later, as necessary. (I finally threw the bread away some days later, at St. George’s.)

Then I came home and took a nap until about 7:00. I was hoping the jet lag had been whipped, but then I heard another “explosion,” about 7:33 p.m. local. I later found out those explosions were mere souped-up firecrackers. (The Israelis won’t let the Muslims fire a real cannon.) And they were merely alarm clocks, for Ramadan. (As illustrated below left.)

The one at 4:08 in the morning let faithful Muslims know to get up and get something to eat and drink, before the all-day fast. The one around 7:30 p.m. let them know the fast was over – and that they could finally have something to eat and drink.

Later on that busy Sunday, May 12, I hiked up to St. George’s again, but the front gates were all locked up. Which was good for security, but didn’t do me any good. (I wanted to see if any other pilgrims from St. Andrews had arrived.) But from there I shunted over to the Leonardo Moria Classic hotel, a mere .2 (point 2) miles to the west. It was pretty swanky, AND it had a bar. And a piano bar – some guy playing piano – at that.

There I got a short Heineken’s first, mostly because I couldn’t read the other two draft-beer choices. But after further questioning and banter with the bartender, it turned out that one of the other draft choices was the Maccabee Israeli beer I’d heard so much about.

It turned out to be mostly old people in the bar area, but still interesting to watch the local give-and-take, and while enjoying the piano playing. After that I wended my way home, back to Herod’s Guest House on Isfahani Street, after two beers and kibbutzing at “the Leonardo.”

I’d just come in the guest house when I met “Greta,” doing some laundry. Despite the German name, it turned out she was from Italy. She was there as an exchange student and staying at Herod’s awhile to write a book. So I offered that maybe I could visit her some time over the next two weeks, and maybe we could have a Starbucks and discuss international politics…

“And the evening and the morning were the first day“ – in Jerusalem…

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Looking ahead, to our visit to the Wall of Separation…

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The upper image is courtesy of Beerbazaar – Image Results. The image came with an article, dated December 2015 and titled, “Beer Bazaar comes to Jerusalem.” The lead paragraph began: “Jerusalem must have done something right. A few weeks after the opening of the Beerateinu beer specialty store on Yanai Street, a branch of the Beer Bazaar from Tel Aviv has opened in the Machane Yehuda market.” See also the business site, BeerBazaar. A note, “Etz Hayyim 3” is near the intersection with Jaffa Street, part of the “Mahane Yehuda Covered Market.”

Re: “Saladin Street.” It’s actually “Salah e-Din” Street.

Re: “Bars I found – before I left – on Google Maps.” The subject of a future post, “The nightlife in Jerusalem.” A side note: I never did find the Hataklit Bar, which ostensibly offered karaoke. It’s at “Heleni ha-Malka Street 7,” which definitely sounds Hawaiian, and may be why I never found it.

Re: “The Pilgrim Guest House … not the Cathedral or the School.” I discovered the difference around mid-day Sunday, the 12th. Looking for the guest house, I wandered into the school area across Nablus Street. Some Turkish-looking guy gave me a look that indicated “what the hell are you doing here?” He didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak whatever he was talking. However – perhaps taking pity – he DID make me a cup of strong Turkish-style coffee. We sat in comradely silence while it was brewing, then he handed me the coffee and bid me adieu, after which I found the guest house.

Later that evening, I was walking back to Isfahani Street after my two beers and kibbutzing at the Leonardo bar. (Catty-corner to St. George’s, about a two-minute walk.) There’s a St. George’s gift shop on Nablus, across from the gated “Pilgrim” complex. And who should be walking out the gift shop but the same friendly guy who made me a cup of coffee that morning? So we waved at each other and a gesture of international friendship was thereby made.

I figured there was some kind of lesson there...

Re: Davidka Square. The photo shows only a part of the Square, which memorializes the “Davidka,” a jury-rigged mortar:

In the early stages of the War of Independence [in 1948], the Israeli army had no artillery other than a primitive, homemade mortar that was not accurate but that made a thunderous explosion. The noise from this weapon – called the Davidka (“Little David”) after its inventor, engineer David Leibovitch – often sent the enemy fleeing in panic… The Israeli army used the Davidka exclusively until July 1948, when it was able to acquire conventional artillery such as mountain howitzers, cannons and field guns.

Above left is a better view of the Square, at night, with its benches and adjoining stores.

The “Ramadan” image is courtesy of Ramadan Cannon – Image Results. The image is accompanied by a Tom Powers — VIEW FROM JERUSALEM article, “Jerusalem’s Ramadan Cannon, Then & Now.” The article includes a description of the photo at issue, dated 1918, “from a personal album compiled by John D. Whiting of the American Colony.” The photo features “Gordon’s Calvary, a hilltop just northeast of Damascus Gate.” Further, it looks “east toward the Mount of Olives-Scopus ridge, [and] the people pictured are locals in traditional dress.” (“Gordon’s Calvary” is also known as the Garden Tomb or the “rock-cut tomb in Jerusalem, which was unearthed in 1867 and is considered by some Christians to be the site of the burial and resurrection of Jesus.” See Garden Tomb – Wikipedia.)

The lower image is a photo I took… The “Wall of Separation” is also called the Israeli West Bank barrier, i.e., the “separation barrier in the West Bank or along the Green Line. Israel considers it a security barrier against terrorism, while Palestinians call it a racial segregation or apartheid wall.” Some 440 miles long, it “cuts at times 18 kilometres (11 mi) deep into the West Bank, isolating about 9% of it, leaving an estimated 25,000 Palestinians isolated from the bulk of that territory… The barrier was built during the Second Intifada that began in September 2000, and was defended by the Israeli government as necessary to stop the wave of violence inside Israel that the uprising had brought with it.” As a side note, “The International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion stating that the barrier is a violation of international law. In 2003, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that stated the wall contradicts international law and should be removed; the vote was 144–4 with 12 abstentions.” (Wikipedia.)

And I never did see Greta again…

“Back from three weeks in Israel…”

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Night-dining area, St. George’s College. (28 shekels at the lower-left bar gets you a Taybeh…)

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June 1, 2019 – I did my last post on May 2. Since then I spent three weeks – 18 or 19 days – on a pilgrimage in Israel. (Including traveling to and from. I left the night of May 10 and got back the night of May 29.) It was all part of a course given by St. George’s College, Jerusalem.

A side note: For visits to many churches and all Muslim areas in Jerusalem, you’re expected to “dress modestly.” Ladies showing bare knees – like those at right – get brown cover-leg skirts.

The Jerusalem experience was wonderful, overwhelming, intimidating and enlightening. But let’s start with the most recent “cluster” – half a word – part of the pilgrimage that happened. It occurred on Wednesday, May 29, the day I spent 11 hours flying back home. (And, considering the time change, 26 hours straight without sleep before I got back home.)

The problem was that I got all cocky from the day before, when I’d made an easy connection from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. (On Monday the 28th.) That is, after parting ways with the other pilgrims in my church group, I made a fairly-easy two-mile trek from the College to the central bus station in Jerusalem. (Lugging 30 pounds in a back-pack and large gym-bag to be checked at the airport.) Then from the Tel Aviv bus station I hiked a “mere” mile, to my night’s lodging at “Yavne 26.” (They list the street number last.) On the way I managed a visit to the Haganah Museum, right around the corner from Yavne 26, at “Rothschild Boulevard 23.”

Later that evening I managed to hook up with eight or nine fellow pilgrims from Georgia, who – unbeknownst to me – were staying at the Abraham Hostel in Tel Aviv, two or three blocks from my place. (And despite the fact that the guy at the front desk wouldn’t take a message, let alone make contact, so I had to check the local eateries, and found them basically across the street.)

Unfortunately my visit to the bar at Abraham’s was cut short because I was all hyped up to get to Ben Gurion airport early enough to get through the vaunted Israeli airport security. All the guides said that you should get to the airport at least three hours ahead of time, so since my flight was at 9:55, I figured I should be at the airport by 6:55 a.m.

Another side note: Gentlemen who wear shorts – or otherwise show their knees at “many churches and all Muslim areas in the city” – are also given “skirts.” (Like the two dumbasses at left.)

So anyway, to get to the airport on time, I got up at 4:00 a.m. and started hiking back to the Haganah train station on Levinsky Street. (Where I’d just hiked up the previous day.) But I missed the intersection – “wool-gathering” I suppose – and had to double back. As it turned out I hiked an hour – with the same 30 pounds of baggage – but got to the train station right about six a.m.

Then the real trouble started…

I got a ticket easily, but only after gashing my left forearm. (I was rushing to “unpack” at yet another security check-point, just inside the train-station entrance.) To make the lugging easier I’d tied together the upper arm straps of my pack with a knotted handkerchief, but after a sweaty hour’s walk it got “un-tieable.” So to get the pack off I had to lift it up over my head, and in the process gashed my forearm. And got blood all over the upper-leg portion of my jeans. (I could just hear Israeli security: “And where have you been to get all that blood all over you?”)

Then I got on the wrong train. It was on Platform 3, like the ticket guy said, but it ended up going the wrong direction. The train I got on – at the wrong time, it turned out – went to Lod. That’s a beautiful city 9.3 miles southeast of Tel Aviv, but it’s not the Ben Gurion airport.

Once I found that out – after finding someone who spoke English – it seemed like forever to get back to the central station. On the way a friendly uniformed Israeli suggested I take a taxi from the central station; about 65 shekels, or 22 dollars. I was all set to do that, but getting off the train another Israeli – in blue jeans and flip-flops – fell down right behind me, missing the first step down. I helped him up and asked if he was all right. Then he asked if I was trying to get to the airport. (He probably overheard my plaintive cries for directions somewhere along the way.)

He helped me get on the right train, the 7:09 going in the right direction, so I suppose there’s a lesson there. Then while waiting for the 7:09 train, two lovely young Israelis in brown uniforms sat next to me while we waited. (Incidentally, I’d done a lot of praying on the train to and from Lod.) Then the 7:09 got delayed an extra six or seven minutes, so I got to enjoy their company even longer. (Another note: Tel Aviv in general was a nice change from Jerusalem, appreciating-the-opposite-sex-wise. I.e., there were fewer women all covered up with burkas and such.)

That pleasant “accompaniment” wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gotten on the wrong train, going the wrong direction, so I suppose there’s a spiritual object lesson lesson there too…

The end result was that despite getting to the airport at 7:35 a.m. – instead of 6:55 like I should have – I got through the numerous layers of the “vaunted Israeli airport security” in plenty of time to get to Gate C-6. (I had time to relax for 30 or 40 minutes, and finally have some breakfast: Mango juice and a “lox” croissant.) And to remember the time I’d just spent in the company of two lovely Israeli Female Soldiers. (Not unlike the one shown below, from 1948.)

I’ll be writing more – lots more – on other lessons learned (and experiences experienced) from my pilgrimage to Israel. But for now it’s enough to enjoy the comforts of home once again. Here, on the functional equivalent of “my own back doorsteps,” I can – a la John Steinbeck – finally come to think about all I’ve seen in the last three weeks, then “try to arrange some pattern of thought to accommodate the teeming crowds of my seeing and hearing.” In other words, to make some sense of all I’ve seen, heard and experienced those last three weeks.

At least until my next pilgrimage, to the Camino Portugues in September…

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A “Haganah female officer in 1948…”

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The upper image is courtesy of St. George’s College Jerusalem Israel – Image Results. See also Home | Saint George’s College Jerusalem, for more on available courses and staff members. The course in question was “The Palestine of Jesus.” (See the link at the “Home” page.)

Re: Taybeh. See Taybeh Brewery – Wikipedia, on the “Palestinian brewery founded in 1994[, at] the West Bank village of Taybeh,” 22 miles north of Jerusalem. “It produced its first beer in 1995 and has since developed a global following. It is the first microbrewery in the Middle East.” The other beer available to St. George pilgrims is “Maccabee,” brewed by Tempo Beer Industries: “Maccabee (Hebrew: מכבי‎) is a 4.9% ABV pale lager that was first brewed in 1968. It is distributed in Israel and is also marketed in the United States and Europe.” I found Maccabee on draft at the LEONARDO MORIA CLASSIC HOTEL, Jerusalem 9 Georges St., a mere four-minute walk from St. George’s.

Re: Cover-leg skirts. Ladies are also cautioned not to have bare shoulders or visible cleavage.

Re: “Vaunted airport security.” The link is to What To Expect At Israel’s Airport Security. | Bemused Backpacker. See also Leaving Tel Aviv: My Experience Through Airport Security, or you could Google “vaunted Israeli airport security.” Also, I found out the next morning – Thursday the 30th, at home – that Lod is actually pretty close to Ben Gurion airport. It’s a little over two miles as the crow flies, but walking the route involves “restricted usage or private roads.” See also Lod Airport massacre – Wikipedia, about the “terrorist attack [on] May 30, 1972, in which three members of the Japanese Red Army … attacked Lod Airport (now Ben Gurion International Airport) near Tel Aviv.”

Now they tell me!!!

Yet another note: “Wadie Haddad, the primary organizer of the attack, was assassinated by Mossad in early 1978.” (Those guys don’t fool around.)

Re: Accompaniment. In the sense of “something incidental or added for ornament, symmetry, etc.” See Definition of Accompaniment at Dictionary.com.

The Steinbeck reference is to the Penguin Books paperback version of Travels with Charley: In search of America, detailing his 1960 road trip travelogue, at pages 108-109. He described the feeling – “like constipation” – of being overwhelmed by his experiences, as in going to the “Uffizi in Florence [or] the Louvre in Paris.” In yet another memorable passage he made an apt comparison:

Maybe understanding is only possible after. Years ago when I used to work in the woods it was said of lumber men that they did their logging in the whorehouse and their sex in the woods. So I have to find my way through the exploding production lines of the Middle West while sitting alone beside a lake in northern Michigan. [Emphasis added.]

Re: The Camino Portugués, also called the “Portuguese Way.” It’s the collective name of the “Camino de Santiago pilgrimage routes starting in Portugal,” beginning in either Porto or Lisbon. (My companions and I will be starting in Porto.) As Wikipedia noted, the Portuguese Way is the “second most popular route after the French Way,” which my Utah brother and I hiked-and-biked in 2017. See – from October 2017 – “Hola! Buen Camino!” A review of the post shows that some of my pictures got “screwed up…” But it’s still good for reference and informational purposes.

The lower image is courtesy of Haganah – Wikipedia. Caption: “Haganah female officer in 1948.” For more on the topic, Google “Israeli women soldiers brown uniform.” That led me to sites like Pictures of Israeli Female Soldiers In and Out of Uniform, Israeli female soldiers are not afraid to reveal their assets, and 18 Pics Of Hot Israeli Army Girls IDF | Female Supermodel.

“If I Forget Thee, Oh Jerusalem…”

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“By the waters of Babylon,” in exile, where a Hebrew Remnant finalized the Old Testament…

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As noted in “On to Jerusalem,” this upcoming May 10th I’ll be flying to Jerusalem for a two-week pilgrimage. (As part of a local church group.) To that end, I’ve been listening to a series of lectures-on-CD, The World of Biblical Israel | The Great Courses Plus.

And in the process of doing this post, I stumbled on a Jerusalem Post article that tied in to a point the professor made in Lecture 2, “By the Rivers of Bablyon – Exile.” The article: If I Forget Thee, Oh Jerusalem:

There is an almost natural magnetic draw to Jerusalem that stirs within us a special emotion. For millions of people around the world the heart of ancient Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, symbolizes spirituality and mysticism, a place of prayer and miracles, the centre of the world and a holy portal to God.

Note the “spirituality and mysticism” part, which ties in with frequent themes of this post. (That the “spiritual path” has more to offer than the “literal path.*”) But the point here is this: The title of that article is from Psalm 137:5-6: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.” (That’s from the King James Version; the Bible God uses.)

Which just happened to tie in with the Biblical Israel Lecture 2, described further below.

See also Psalm 137 – Wikipedia, which described “Nebuchadnezzar II‘s successful siege of Jerusalem in 597 BC.” That ended up with the people of Judah being “deported to Babylonia, where they were held captive until some time after the Fall of Babylon,” in 539 BC:

In English it [Psalm 137] is generally known as “By the rivers of Babylon,” which is how its first words are translated in the King James Version… The psalm is a communal lament about being in exile after the Babylonian captivity, and yearning for Jerusalem. The psalm is a regular part of Jewish, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican and Protestant liturgies. It has been set to music often, and was paraphrased in hymns.

So anyway, Professor Cynthia R. Chapman began by focusing on Psalm 137 as the story of how the final version of the Old Testament got made up by that Hebrew Remnant – those people in exile. In other words, something very good – the final version of the Old Testament – was the result of something very bad happening to “God’s Chosen People.”

According to Professor Chapman, Psalm 137 constitutes both the mid-point – the very middle – of years of Ancient Jewish history, and also the very middle of Bible itself.* And Psalm 137 came at precisely the time when the books of the Hebrew Bible – the Old Testament – were collected, edited and redacted. And it all came about because of the Exile, that “national disgrace.”

That is, the Old Testament as we know it didn’t exist before 586 B.C., the year many Judeans were taken from their homeland. (After the horrors of the Babylonian conquest.) Then they went through a “death march,” 800 miles to Babylon, during which many of the Remnant died along the way. (Those who weren’t executed during the post-siege “mop up.”) After those horrors – and the shame of this national disgrace – they compiled, edited and shaped their collected national stories into a “virtual library.” A library that connected them to their homeland.

In other words, before the calamity of the Exile, many books (in the form of scrolls) existed, but “here is where they were first collected into what we know as the Old Testament today.”

That idea was mirrored in Babylon captivity, at Psalm 137 – Wikipedia:

This period saw … the emergence of the central role of the Torah in Jewish life. According to many historical-critical scholars, the Torah was redacted during this time, and began to be regarded as the authoritative text for Jews. This period saw their transformation into an ethno-religious group who could survive without a central Temple.

The link-article went on to say the period of exile “was a rich one for Hebrew literature.” For example, the Book of Jeremiah 39–43 saw the exile “as a lost opportunity.” Also, the “Priestly source, one of the four main sources of the Torah/Pentateuch in the Bible, is primarily a product of the post-exilic period,” while also “during this Persian period, the final redaction of the Pentateuch purportedly took place.”

I’ve written before about Moses writing the Torah – the first five books of the Bible – during and right after the 40 years of “wandering in the wilderness.” (See e.g. On Moses and Paul “dumbing it down,” and My Lenten meditation.) Which would mean those first five books of the Bible were written some time before 1,400 B.C., about the time Moses died. (What year did Moses die – answers.com.) But it was only some 800 years later – and the product of a humiliating national disgrace – that the final version of the Old Testament as we know it came into being.

I’ll be writing more about Psalm 137 and “On to Jerusalem” in a later post. In the meantime, here’s wishing you a happy Easter. And a reminder that that joyous occasion could only come about after 40 days of Lenten “doing penance, mortifying the flesh, repentance of sins, almsgiving, and denial of ego.” Not to mention a humiliating death on the cross.

You know, I’ll bet there’s a lesson that can be gleaned from all this…

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James Tissot, “The Flight of the Prisoners,” from Jerusalem and on into exile…

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The upper image is courtesy of Psalm 137 – Wikipedia. The full caption: “By the Waters of Babylon, painting by Arthur Hacker, c. 1888.”

About the photo to the right of the paragraph beginning, “As told in ‘On to Jerusalem:'” From the Wikipedia article on Jerusalem, the caption reads: “Israeli policemen meet a Jordanian Legionnaire near the Mandelbaum Gate (circa 1950).”

As to the “Great Course,” see also The World of Biblical Israel – English. Other books I’m reading for the upcoming include Entebbe: A Defining Moment In the War On Terrorism, by Iddo Netanyahu.

As to the “piritual path being better than the literal path. See John 4:24: “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” (See also Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers, which noted of God that “His will has been expressed in the seeking. But His very nature and essence is spirit, and it follows from this that all true worship must be spiritual.”) And of course 2d Corinthians 3:6, saying the letter of the law kills, “but the Spirit [of God’s law] gives life.”

Re: Psalm 137:5-6. See also Psalm 137:5 Commentaries: If I forget you…, and Psalm 137 – Commentary in Easy English. Also, “137” is an Imprecatory Psalm. See Wikipedia, on those invoking “judgment, calamity, or curses, upon one’s enemies or those perceived as the enemies of God.”

Re: “Babylon.” See Wikipedia: “The remains of the city are in present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about 85 kilometres (53 mi) south of Baghdad, comprising a large tell of broken mud-brick buildings and debris.” There’s probably a lesson there too…

Re: Psalm 137 as “the very middle of Bible itself.” In my Good News Bible, Psalm 137 folds out pretty much right at the middle. Also, it’s on page 687 of a combined 1,395 pages. (1,041 for the Old Testament, 354 for the New Testament.) The precise mid-point page would be “697.5.”

About the image to the right of the paragraph, “That idea was mirrored in Babylon captivity.” From Psalm 137 – Wikipedia, it’s captioned “Psalm 137 in the Eadwine Psalter (12th century).”

The lower image is courtesy of the Babylonian captivity link at Psalm 137 – Wikipedia. The full caption: “James Tissot, The Flight of the Prisoners.” That article added these notes:

In the Hebrew Bible, the captivity in Babylon is presented as a punishment for idolatry and disobedience to Yahweh in a similar way to the presentation of Israelite slavery in Egypt followed by deliverance. The Babylonian Captivity had a number of serious effects on Judaism and Jewish culture. For example, the current Hebrew alphabet was adopted during this period, replacing the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.

This period saw the last high-point of biblical prophecy in the person of Ezekiel, followed by the emergence of the central role of the Torah in Jewish life. According to many historical-critical scholars, the Torah was redacted during this time, and began to be regarded as the authoritative text for Jews. This period saw their transformation into an ethno-religious group who could survive without a central Temple.

This process coincided with the emergence of scribes and sages as Jewish leaders (see Ezra). Prior to exile, the people of Israel had been organized according to tribe. Afterwards, they were organized by smaller family groups. Only the tribe of Levi continued in its temple role after the return. After this time, there were always sizable numbers of Jews living outside Eretz Israel; thus, it also marks the beginning of the “Jewish diaspora,…”

Also, as to Hebrews killed during the post-siege mop-up, see 2d Kings 25, verses 8-12:

On the seventh day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan commander of the imperial guard … came to Jerusalem. He set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down. The whole Babylonian army under the commander of the imperial guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem. Nebuzaradan the commander of the guard carried into exile the people who remained in the city, along with the rest of the populace and those who had deserted to the king of Babylon. But the commander left behind some of the poorest people of the land to work the vineyards and fields.

Also verse 18-20, describing the number of prisoners taken, mostly high-ranking officials. And verses 20-21: “Nebuzaradan the commander took them all and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. There at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, the king had them executed.”

“On to Jerusalem!”

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A late-afternoon view of Jerusalem – with the Dome of the Rock, in gold, in the foreground…

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And speaking of pilgrimages: This May I’ll be making such a two-week journey to Jerusalem. (As part of a local church group.) On that note, Kenneth Clark – the noted British “art historian, museum director, and broadcaster” – discussed the origin of such spiritual journeys in his 1969 TV series, Civilisation. (The following quotes are from the book version, at pages 40-42.)

In Chapter 2 – “The Great Thaw” – Clark noted the “sudden reawakening of European civilization in the 12th century.” (That is, the years from 1101 to 1199 or so.) He said that “great thaw” – the sudden spurt of growth in human development – did not come about from mere idle contemplation. Instead it came as the result of action: “a vigorous, violent sense of movement, both physical and intellectual.”

The physical – action – part took the form of pilgrimages; most often to Jerusalem. That led in turn to the Crusades. (“Traditionally, they [the Crusades] took place between 1095 and 1291;” and of course “the most important place of pilgrimage was Jerusalem.”) But these early pilgrimages were not at all like our “cruises or holidays abroad” today. For one thing they took a long time; often two or three years. “For another, they involved real hardship and danger.”

That is, despite efforts to organize (“pilgrims used to go in parties of 7000 at a time”), “elderly abbots and middle-aged widows often died on the way to Jerusalem.” (Note that our church group requires a doctor’s note from those over 70, saying they “must be able to walk three miles at once at a normal pace” – at least 2-and-a-half miles an hour – “without assistance from others.”)

Another difference: Today such a pilgrimage is typically “a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person’s beliefs and faith, although sometimes it can be a metaphorical journey into someone’s own beliefs.” But in those early days, the “point of a pilgrimage was to look at relics.” (On that note, see 2015’s On Peter, Paul – and other “relics.”)

The belief in the “magic” of relics – Clark said – was a product of the Medieval Mind. “The medieval pilgrim really believed that by contemplating a reliquary containing the head or even the fingers of a saint he would persuade that particular saint to intercede on his behalf with God.” (Clark cited an example, Saint Foy, a “little girl of who in late Roman times” was put to death for refusing to worship idols, and then was “turned into one herself.” That is, an idol.*)

In other words, the man with a Medieval Mind believed that by going on a pilgrimage – and in the process venerating relics – he could “get good stuff from God.” Which is of course the same incentive for many practicing Christians today. (If not for those of any religion.) Or as Napoleon put it, “Men are moved by only two things: fear and self-interest.”

But we digress… As seen in the links at the right of this page, I’ve devoted a whole category to Pilgrimages. (Including – the summer of 2018 – I’m back from my Rideau pilgrimage, and – October 2017 – “Hola! Buen Camino!”)

On the topic being discussed, the most relevant blog-post is probably On St. James, Steinbeck, and sluts, from September 2016. That post pointed out that St. James the Greater is the Patron Saint of Pilgrims. And it indicated that on a true pilgrimage – usually by and through “the raw experience of hunger, cold, lack of sleep” – we can “quite often find a sense of our fragility as mere human beings.” And it noted that a true pilgrimage can be “one of the most chastening, but also one of the most liberating” of personal experiences.

In Back from Rideau, the chief ordeal was hour after hour of butt-numbing, back-aching canoe-paddling. In Buen Camino the chief ordeal was hour after hour of hiking, much of it across the dry and dusty Meseta of northern Spain. Which meant sore achy feet and blister upon blister. (At least for the first 250 miles. From León, we mountain-biked the remaining 200 miles. Which just meant different parts of the body got sore, achy and/or blistered.)

So the question for the upcoming trip to Jerusalem: “What part of the trip will help me ‘find a sense of my fragility as a mere human being?'” And “What part of the trip will be ‘most chastening, and also most liberating?’” Or maybe I’ll find somewhere a relic to venerate, and so in turn get some “good stuff from God.” (Aside from being chastened and liberated…)

On that note: Stay tuned! There may well be “further bulletins as events warrant!”

Calvin and Hobbes

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On another note, last Monday – March 25 – was the Feast of the Annunciation. See The Annunciation “gets the ball rolling,” from March 2015. The full title is the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the post showed how in this case the early Church “figured it backwards.” That is, they started with the birth of Jesus on December 25, then figured backwards nine months. Since they said Jesus was born on December 25, He had to have been “conceived” on the previous March 25. That’s where the Annunciation comes in.

It celebrates “the announcement by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus, the Son of God, marking his Incarnation.” There’s more on the Incarnation in the post, along with how and why the Conception and Annunciation both got to happen on the same day. Now, about that “getting the ball rolling.”

Technically the liturgical year – the church’s calendar year, illustrated at left – begins with Advent (December 1 or so), and goes through next November. (When it starts all over again.) But it could be argued that the liturgical year properly starts with the Annunciation; that is, the first moment when it became obvious that God would intervene on our behalf, by and through the birth, life and death of Jesus.

More to the point, the church year “sets out to attune the life of the Christian to the life of Jesus.” (It’s not an “arbitrary arrangement of ancient holy days”):

It is an excursion into life from the Christian perspective [and] proposes to help us to year after year immerse ourselves into the sense and substance of the Christian life… It is an adventure in human growth; it is an exercise in spiritual ripening.

As noted in the “ball rolling” post, I couldn’t have put it better myself. Thus in one sense the Church Year does begin with Advent. On the other hand, you could say that while “technically the liturgical year begins” with Advent, it’s the Annunciation that gets the ball rolling…

And speaking of “getting the ball rolling.” Who knows: My upcoming adventure in Jerusalem will result in some personal “human growth.” At the very least it should be:

“An exercise in spiritual ripening…“

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‘St. James the Greater, dressed and accoutred as the quintessential Pilgrim…’

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The upper image is courtesy of Jerusalem – Image Results. See also Jerusalem – Wikipedia. Note that the post-title – “On to Jerusalem!” – is an allusion to the Civil War’s famous (or infamous) battle cry, “On to Richmond!” See the National Park Service’s The Focal Point of the Civil War, and Richmond in the American Civil War – Wikipedia.

I cited Clark’s book in On Moses and Paul “dumbing it down:”

Which is another way of saying that all the people who wrote the Bible had to keep in mind the human limitations of their audience. They were trying to put incomprehensible things into plain and simple language that even the most obtuse dolt could understand. Or to paraphrase Sir Kenneth Clark, the people who wrote the Bible had to have the intellectual power to make God comprehensible.

The Kenneth Clark paraphrase is from the hardcover book version of Clark’s Civilisation (TV series). On pages 84-85 of the book, Clark compared the poet Dante with the painter Giotto. Then on page 85, Clark noted the differences between the two men, beginning with the fact that “their imaginations moved on very different planes.” But in the film version – and only in the film or TV version – Clark said Dante had “that heroic contempt for baseness that was to come again in Michelangelo. Above all, that vision of a heavenly order and the intellectual power to make it comprehensible.” Which is the phrase that drew my attention… See also Wikipedia, for more on the TV series.

Clark’s writing about early pilgrimages – especially to Jerusalem – are at pages 40-42 of the book.

Re: The medieval mind. The link is to The Medieval Mind: A Meditation:

The latter [people in the Middle Ages] were drenched in mysticism, whereas the contemporary world has been shaped by rationalism so that mystical concepts and experiences have been stripped away except among a small number of people steeped in the religious thought of our Western ancestors… [Also:] It can be argued that the decline of pilgrimages is a loss to Christian spiritual life in an age of unbelief and immorality when people have a profound need for spiritual examples.

Re: Saint Foy, put to death for refusing to worship idols, then “turned into one herself.” (The “idol” is shown at left.) Clark wrote that she was “obstinate in the face of reasonable persuasion – a Christian Antigone” – and so was martyred. But then her relics began to work miracles,” including the restoration of sight to a man who eyes had been gouged out “by a jealous priest.” As to the little girl whose “relics” were turned into an idol – even though she’d been put to death for refusing to worship idols – “that’s the medieval mind. They care passionately about the truth, but their sense of evidence was different than ours.”

Also, the link in the text is to St. Foy’s Golden Reliquary – Conques, France – Atlas Obscura, about the “huge golden reliquary of a testicle smashing saint.” The article added that “Pilgrims pray to saints for holy intercession in all kinds of problems, but they should be very careful what they ask for when approaching St. Foy, who seems to have a wicked sense of humor.” That is, “St. Foy developed her reputation for… unusual cures. [Ellipses in the original.] Notably, when a knight came to her seeking a cure for a herniated scrotum, she, via vision, helpfully suggested that he find a blacksmith willing to smash it with a white-hot hammer.” See the article for the “rest of the story…”

Also, re “idol.” See Idolatry – Wikipedia: “ldolatry literally means the worship of an ‘idol,’ also known as a worship cult image, in the form of a physical image, such as a statue. In Abrahamic religions, namely Christianity, Islam and Judaism, idolatry connotes the worship of something or someone other than God as if it were God.” Note the subtle difference to the medieval mind, asking the “saint” in question to intercede with God…

Re: Hiking the Meseta part of the Camino de Santiago: “Many people avoid the Meseta, catching the bus from Burgos to Leon,” while others – who aren’t so wussified – think that misses the whole point of hiking the Camino.

I borrowed the “further bulletins” cartoon from The Transfiguration of Jesus – 2016.

I borrowed the lower image from St. James, Steinbeck, and sluts, from 2016. See also Wikipedia, with full caption, “Saint James the Elder by Rembrandt[.] He is depicted clothed as a pilgrim; note the scallop shell on his shoulder and his staff and pilgrim’s hat beside him.” Also, the “sluts” post noted in part: “Of course the two [pilgrimages] I went on this summer weren’t close to being like going to Jerusalem. (See Back in the saddle again, again.) But for next summer – more precisely, September 2017 – my brother and I plan to hike the Camino de Santiago…” (Can you say foreshadowing?)

On my “mission from God…”

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Since 1989 or so, I too (along with the Blues Brothers) have been “on a mission from God.”

That is, back around 1989 I started trying to “help” my favorite team win. The particular team was Florida State University football, and I started by trying to help them win a national championship. I began with a weekly “ritual sacrifice” of exercise, especially pushing myself to earn more and more aerobic points. (Mostly through running, or more like jog-walking.)

That didn’t work, so in 1992 I added the discipline of daily Bible reading. (See What’s a DOR, which includes the image at right.) Then in 1993, the Seminole football team won its first national title. You make the connection.

Then too, for 14 straight years the Florida State football team went from success to success – with my “help.” For 14 straight years they finished in the Top 4,* then won another national title in 1999. (That was – in the words of one writer – “something no other team has come remotely close to accomplishing” and thus was “the greatest run in college football history.”)

Unfortunately, after that things started going downhill.

FSU football went into a bit of a slide, but then again so did I. Then in 2013 they won another national championship, and along the way I also got my life back in order.

But once again things started going downhill for the Nole football team. That is, since 2013 there have been, at best, “mixed results.” And this past football season was especially painful. In 2018, FSU went 5-and-7, and broke a streak of consecutive post-season bowl appearances. That “anti-climax” marked their first losing season since 1976 (41 years), and that included the first time they didn’t make it to a bowl game in 36 years.

But the strange thing is, on a personal level I’ve done a lot better. As a matter of fact, my life is going far better than I could have expected, at any time in the past. For example, as recently as 2017 I thought I’d spend my last days here on earth still living in a dinky, rented one-bedroom apartment. But against all odds I managed to get a mortgage – and now have a 4-bedroom home on an acre of woodland. And in terms of exercise too I’ve done very well indeed.

Going back to the beginning, my mission from God – my “mystic quest*” – started back in Florida, in 1989. Three times a week I ran outdoors, for an hour or more. That often meant dodging the daily summer-afternoon thunderstorms, or waiting until 6:00 p.m. or so, for the heat index to get down below 100.

Then I moved from Florida to Georgia, and starting in 2013 added two hours kayaking a week. And incidentally that year – 2013 – FSU won its third national championship. I’ve also moved from outdoor running to indoor stair-stepping. (An hour at a time two or three times a week.) And near the end of this last (2018) season, I “graduated” to wearing a 25-pound weight vest, along with ten pounds of ankle weights, while doing my hour of stair-stepping.

Then – somewhere along the line – it struck me that at age 67, that was pretty dang impressive. (Standing by itself, as a “signal accomplishment.”) But “on-the-field results” for 2018 were exactly the opposite of what I’d hoped for, and come to expect. Which came to remind me what Lawrence LeShan said of the ideal Zen archer or karate student: “The real goal is to help you grow and develop as a total human being, not to become a better archer or karate expert.”

So I came to realize that maybe I shouldn’t get too upset because FSU had such lousy football season in 2018. After all, the real goal in my “mission from God” was to grow and develop as a total human being, not necessarily to have FSU win all the time.

There’s also the fact that the original Children of Israel – whose own quest I tried to mimic – had some pretty lousy seasons too. They did have the Exodus, along with King David and Solomon, but also years of slavery, exile, and foreign oppression, followed by the Great Diaspora.

On the other hand, there have been plenty of good and fruitful collateral consequences, and not just for me. Many of my other favorite teams – other than FSU football – have done quite well. Most recently, my adopted Atlanta United soccer team won the MLS Cup in its second season. The FSU Women’s soccer won the 2018 National Championship last December, and the Women’s softball team won its first National Championship last June. Aside from that, my Tampa Bay Bucs won Super Bowl XXXVII, to top off the 2002 season, and my Tampa Bay Lightning won the 2004 Stanley Cup. So maybe I shouldn’t complain too much…

Which brings up this whole matter of sport-superstitions, and “what kind of a moron would really think what he does matters to the outcome of a particular game?” See for example, “Super”stitions: Fans engage in odd rituals. But the truth of the matter is that such ‘”weird rituals” go back to the time of Moses, and the Battle of Rephidim.

See for another example, Was Moses the first to say “it’s only weird if it doesn’t work?” You can see the full story at Exodus 17, on the battle that happened some 3,500 years ago. There, like at Pearl Harbor, the dreaded Amalekites launched a sneak attack on the Children of Israel as they emerged from “the Exodus, at Rephidim near Mount Sinai.” Verses 8 to 16 – of Exodus 17 – tell of Israel pulling off an “upset of the season.” In essence they beat a hated arch-rival, thanks to Moses:

Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; and whenever he lowered his hand, Am′alek prevailed. But Moses’ hands grew weary; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat upon it, and Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; so his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.

As I’ve noted elsewhere: “That sounds a lot like a modern-day football fan, watching his favorite team on TV.” Sometimes he moves around the room, sometimes he stands, sometimes he sits. Other times he’ll mute the sound on the TV, sometimes he’ll tell his wife to leave the room – because she may be jinxing his team – but he’s “always trying to ‘help his team win.’”

Or by offering a weekly “ritual sacrifice” of exercise – with lots of aerobics – along with a good dose of daily Bible reading. So just in case you think I’m weird for trying to help my team win – by and through such highly profitable intense exercise and Bible reading – I can only say:

“Hey pal, tell that to Moses!”

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Moses at Rephidim: “If I let my arms down, the other team will win!“

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The original post had an upper image, courtesy of Blues Brothers Mission From God – Image Results. On the topic of my “Metaphor” – trying to help my team(s) win through various kinds of Ritual Sacrifice – see also “Unintended consequences” – and the search for Truth, and Moses at Rephidim: “What if?” A side note: The “unintended consequences” post also pointed out that – “with my help,” metaphorically or otherwise – the FSU basketball team got to the Elite 8 in 2018, and FSU’s Mike Martin became the winningest coach in college baseball history. See FSU Basketball is true Cinderella of 2018 NCAA Tournament, and Mike Martin is the winningest coach in college baseball.

Re: Aerobic points. See also Aerobic exercise – Wikipedia.

Re: “14 straight years.” See Top College Football Dynasties of the AP Poll Era: “Florida State’s 14 year streak of top 4 finishes in the AP poll 1987-2000 is … something no other team has come remotely close to accomplishing. So I’m calling this the greatest run in college football history.” (They “dropped to #5 in the fixed poll for 1994,” but ranked #4 in the AP poll.)

Re: FSU’s bowl streak. See Florida State’s Incredible 36-Year Bowl Streak, for more positive spin: “It might be lame, but Dr. Seuss once said, ‘Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.’”

A lot has happened for the Seminoles since 1981, such as three National Championships, 15 conference titles, three Heisman Trophy winners and 35 consensus All-Americans. Now that the all-time streak has ended, everyone will take shots at FSU, but people should really just appreciate such an impressive feat. [So] this isn’t the time to be embarrassed as a streak ends. It is time to celebrate that it happened, and no other program has ever made more consecutive bowl games in FBS football history. It does suck it was ended by a rival, but the longest bowl streak they [the Florida Gators] ever had was 22 consecutive.

Re: “Signal accomplishment.” See How To Answer The Interview Question “What Is Your Greatest Accomplishment, and/or What Are James Monroe’s Accomplishments? | Reference.com: “Monroe’s signal accomplishment was the formation of the Monroe Doctrine.”

Re: The definition of mystic quest. In one “worldly” sense it refers to Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, “a role-playing video game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System,” first released in North America in 1992 and marketed as a “simplified role-playing game… In the game, the player controls a youth named Benjamin in his quest to save the world.” (Wikipedia.) My mystic quest – or “mission from God” – was not nearly so grand. It did however pay great dividends in terms of personal health, especially cardio-vascular, and spiritual development. (For example, it led me to create my two blogs, including this one, “Daily Office Reading Scribe.”) As to the more spiritual definition of “mystic quest,” see Mystic | Definition of Mystic by Merriam-Webster (used in a sentence, “She had a mystic vision while praying”); Mysticism – Wikipedia; Quest | Define Quest at Dictionary.com (“a search or pursuit made in order to find or obtain something” or “an adventurous expedition undertaken by a knight or knights to secure or achieve something”); and also Quest definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary: “A quest is a long and difficult search for something.”

The “only mile” image is courtesy of Running Outdoors The Rain – Image Results. The text reads, “The only mile regretted is the one that isn’t run.” I might add that while I no longer run in the rain, as I did in Florida, I do end up kayaking in the rain oftener than I’d like…

Re: My hour-long stair-stepping with a 28-pound weight vest and ten pounds of ankle weights. According to my calculations, that now – at age 67 – helps me earn 155 aerobic points per week, whereas Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper‘s ”’minimum aerobic fitness’ level is 36 points a week.” See KEEPING FIT; Just How Far, And How Fast, For Fitness? See also Dr. Cooper’s 1977 book, The Aerobics Way, 1978 Bantam Books edition, at page 186, on earning additional points for wearing ankle weights and a 35-pound pack. (Chapter 9, “The Point Charts.”) Also see page 245 on “stair climbing,” in the Appendix under “The Point System.” All of which formed the basis of my calculations…

Re: Lawrence LeShan on the ideal Zen archer, “to help you grow and develop as a total human being.” See his How to Meditate: A Guide to Self-Discovery, Bantam Edition, 1975, at page 38.

Re: “Collateral consequences.” Strictly speaking, such consequences are “additional civil state penalties, mandated by statute, that attach to criminal convictions. They are not part of the direct consequences of criminal conviction, such as prison, fines, or probation. They are the further civil actions by the state that are triggered as a consequence of the conviction.” See Wikipedia. But defined more liberally or spiritually, they can refer to additional – but indirectly intended – consequences of a mystic quest or “mission from God.” Thus they’re distinct from Unintended consequences: “outcomes that are not the ones foreseen and intended by a purposeful action.” As Wikipedia said, these can come in three forms, including an “unexpected benefit” (also referred to as luck, serendipity or a windfall); an “unexpected drawback” (unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect); or a “perverse result.” See also “Unintended consequences” – and the search for Truth, about the FSU women’s softball team winning their national title…

The “only weird” image is courtesy of Bud Light It’s Only Weird – Image Results.

The lower image is courtesy of Rephidim – Wikipedia. The caption: “Moses holding up his arms during the Battle of Rephidim, assisted by Hur and Aaron, in John Everett Millais‘ Victory O Lord! (1871).” As borrowed from a post on my companion blog, Was Moses the first to say “it’s only weird if it doesn’t work?” (That companion blog is The Georgia Wasp | A blog of life-reviews by an old guy who still gets a kick out of life. The post includes an extensive analysis of such sport-superstitions:

The thing is, this business of “helping your team win” has been around a long, long time. (Longer even than “Touchdown Jesus,” seen at left, visible from Notre Dame stadium…) In fact, it may all have started with Moses, back at the battle of Rephidim, noted above.

See also “Super”stitions: Fans engage in odd rituals, and this “bottom line” from the blog-post: “Athletes know it, fans know it, and even Bud Light knows it. Superstitions are as big a part of the game as anything. They were there when your parents and/or grandparents first started watching, and they’ll be here long after we’re gone.” Unfortunately, that last link is “now defunct.”

On a better way to spread the Gospel…

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“I Want to Be like Mike” – An idea that just may be the key to spreading the Gospel better…

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NOVA: The Bible's Buried Secrets The other night I watched The Bible’s Buried Secrets. That was the NOVA program that aired on PBS in 2008, and explored the historicity of the Bible. In other words, it explored whether the Bible was “factually accurate,” or history as we understand it. According to Wikipedia:

The producers surveyed the evidence and [took] positions that are mainstream among archaeologists and historians, although they continue to raise objections among both Christians who believe in the bible as either literal or historical truth and minimalists who assert that the Bible has no historical validation.

Which I thought missed the whole point.

That is, among other findings the program said there was “no archaeological evidence to corroborate the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah’s flood and Abraham.” That finding led the conservative American Family Association – promoting “fundamentalist Christian values” – to issue an “online petition urging Congress to cut off federal funding for PBS.” The petition said that “PBS is knowingly choosing to insult and attack Christianity by airing a program that declares the Bible ‘isn’t true and a bunch of stories that never happened.’”

Which I thought – again – misses the whole point of the Christian faith.

My theory is that you can’t “prove” the Bible-faith by scientific or courtroom evidence. You prove the validity of that faith by your own experience walking with and/or working with God. Like the man with the legion (demons), as told in Mark 5 (18-20):

As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him.Jesus did not let him, but said, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you…”So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.

In other words, the demon-possessed man could care less if archaeologists found Noah’s Ark in Turkey, or whether there was “archaeological evidence to corroborate the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah’s flood and Abraham.” He cared about what Jesus did for him. Or as it says in Psalm 66:16: “Come and listen, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for me.”

Which is – to me – the far better way of spreading the Good News of Jesus…

Getting back to the Gerasene demoniac, the man with “legion” told people in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him “and all the people were amazed.” And – no doubt – many of them tried out this “new faith” for themselves. Or as applied today – when few of us seem so possessed – we start by reading the Bible and applying it to our lives, then “proceed on:”

[Like the Bible, e]very martial art – judo, kendo, aikido, etc. – has its own forms, actions, procedure. Beginners must learn the kata and assimilate and use them. Later, they begin to create out of them, in the way specific to each art.

Jesus Christ, Public Defender: and Other Meditations on the Bible, For Baby-boomers, âNonesâ and Other Seekers by [Ford, James B.] That’s a thought from my e-book “Jesus Christ, Public Defender.” Near the end of Chapter 8, I wrote about the early years, when I’d just started daily Bible readings and applying them to my own life. (And in particular to my own “obsession,” college football.)

“In the process, something seemed to happen that may be like what happens to a student of an eastern martial art.” I also noted that maybe the Bible student – like a good karate student – first struggles to learn the basics, and then – after he learns the fundamentals – he can start to use them in his daily life:

Finally, after the student has been at it long enough, he can begin to “create” out of those Bible readings, and in the process create something new out of something very old, or as the Bible says, “sing to the Lord a new song.” As time passes the student can “create” something new, giving a new meaning to the “old” Bible message…

The result could well be a “new song to the Lord,” as illustrated and updated in the student’s own life. And incidentally, that theme of singing a new song to the Lord – and not just another stale, old “conservative” or literalist rehash – is repeated again and again in the Bible. Like in Isaiah 42:10, and Psalm 96:1, Psalm 98:1, and Psalm 144:9.

So what’s all this about a “better way to spread the Gospel?” We can start with one basic assumption and one big question, two points common to all the world’s religions.

The basic assumption is: “You’ve been given a gift.” The big question is: “What are you going to do with it?” You can say you’ve been given the gift of “salvation through Christ,” which basically means that you’ve gotten the gift of a “new” bridge to God. Or for that matter you can say you’ve been “gifted” the road to a more spiritual life, through Islam, Buddhism or one of many other spiritual paths. (Though I believe all those others will eventually “lead you to Christ…”)

Or you can just say that you’ve been given the gift of life, by whoever or whatever gave that gift to you. (Possibly even some generic Higher Power.)

But the big question remains: What are you going to do with that gift? Or in Christian terms, “How are you going to help spread the Gospel?” (The Good News or “the message of salvation, justification [illustrated by Luther’s rose, at right], and sanctification.”) That’s the question raised by the Great Commission, as detailed notably in Matthew 28:16–20:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.

Of course one method – so favored by conservatives – is to browbeat people, telling them that they’re going to hell if they don’t listen to you. Or you can become a parrot, spouting out random Bible verses, generally full of hell and damnation, fire and brimstone.

Or you can be “like Mike.” You can be the kind of person other people want to emulate. You can lead the kind of life that makes people look at what you’ve accomplished, and say, “That’s what I want! I want what he’s got!” Or done, or accomplished. In other words, you – “like Mike” – could be a walking advertisement for the kind of Bible faith that potential converts want to imitate. (See 1st Corinthians 11:1, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”)

Like – for example – my being 67 years old and keeping fit by stair-stepping an hour at a time, wearing a 25-pound weight vest and 10 pounds of ankle weights. Or having a series of “adventures in old age,” like Mike. Or like successfully hiking the Chilkoot Trail (“meanest 33 miles in history”), or canoeing 440 miles down the Yukon river (in 12 days), or canoeing 12 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico, primitive camping for eight days on offshore islands (and an occasional salt marsh), or hiking and biking 450 miles on the Camino de Santiago in Spain.

As detailed in the notes, and which incidentally will be the focus of my next blog post…

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And no, at 67 “I’m not too old to have some adventure in the time I have left…”

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The upper image is courtesy of I Want To Be Like Mike – Image Results.

Re: “Be like Mike.” See Be Like Mike – Wikipedia, about the “Gatorade commercial featuring American professional basketball player Michael Jordan that originally aired in 1992.” See also “I Want to Be like Mike” – Josh.org: “A MAJOR SPORTS-drink company once ran an ad campaign encouraging people to ‘be like Mike,’ as in NBA basketball legend Michael Jordan. The phrase, ‘I want to be like Mike’ was everywhere. Kids said it. Adults sang it.”

The “buried secrets” image is courtesy of Amazon.com: NOVA: The Bible’s Buried Secrets.

Re: The Bible’s “historicity.” See Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: Two Volumes in One, which noted, “The Bible is not a history book in modern sense, of course, since its writers lacked the benefit of modern archaeological techniques, did not have our concept of dating and documentation, and had different standards of what was and was not significant in history.” (Avenel Books edition, 1981, page 7.) Of course Asimov is “probably going to hell too…” (Kidding! See Deuteronomy 19:16-19.)

Re: “Insult and attack Christianity.” I’d respond that the PBS Nova program didn’t insult my Christianity. Or as I’ve said before: “It was never ‘contrary to Scripture’ that the earth revolved around the sun. It was only contrary to a narrow-minded, pigheaded, too-literal reading of Scripture.” See “There’s no such thing as a ‘conservative Christian.”

Re: “Proceed on.” The link is to “We proceeded on” : Lewis & Clark – oi – Oxford Index Home. It spoke of a concluding chapter in a book about the Lewis and Clark Expedition: “This concluding chapter presents the perspective of a documentary filmmaker who traveled the entire length of the Lewis and Clark trail. It looks at the inspiration he derived from the unofficial motto of the expedition—’We proceeded on.’—and observes that the phrase is frequently used in the Journals.”

Re: “Come and listen, all you who fear God…” Note that in the Revised Standard Version of the Psalter in the Book of Common Prayer, the verse is 66:14.

Re: “Jesus Christ, Public Defender.” Available at Amazon.com: Kindle eBooks. Just type in the title and look for the 4th Edition, with Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch on the cover.

Re: Sing a new song to the Lord.” See On singing a NEW song to God.

Also re: the Nova program The Bible’s Buried Secrets. See Wikipedia, which noted what the Biblical Archaeology Review wrote: “The producers have done a magnificent job summarizing over a century of biblical archaeology and biblical scholarship in two hours. The film strikes a balance between the old-fashioned biblical archaeology approach, which tried to prove the Bible’s historicity, and the extreme skepticism of some minimalists, for whom the Bible contains little factual history.” Rabbi Wesley Gardenswartz wrote: “Conservative Judaism is fully accepting of the type of scholarship featured in this documentary.” And Rev. Kenneth Himes, OFM Professor, wrote: “For some, the ideas presented may seem novel or surprising, but this is material that is being discussed in the theology courses found at many Catholic universities.”

See also Historicity of the Bible – Wikipedia. But again, my theory is that to focus on the Bible’s “historicity” is to miss the point of the faith entirely. The question is: Having accepted God and/or Christ, what now do you do with your life? How will you live out the life you’ve been given? What will you accomplish with that life? How are you going to make this world a better place?

Re: “Walking advertisement.” The cite-link is to Human billboard – Wikipedia.

Re: Some of my adventures in old age. See for example – from my companion blog – Remembering the “Chilkoot &^%$# Trail!” Also, Canoeing 12 miles off the coast of Mississippi. (From 7/19/17.) That cited On canoeing 12 miles offshore, from May 2015. As to the Yukon River trip, see “Naked lady on the Yukon.” As to hiking in Spain, see “Hola! Buen Camino!” – Revisited, and “Buen Camino!” – The Good Parts. Another “incidentally:” Future pilgrimage-trips include two weeks in Israel, and another hike, this time on the “Camino Portugues.” Also, I’ve written about some overnight adventures into the Okefenokee Swamp in several posts: Operation Pogo – “Into the Okefenokee” (11/7/15), “Into the Okefenokee” – Part II (11/15/15), “Into the Okefenokee” – Part III (11/24/15), “There he goes again…” (5/30/16), and “There he goes again” – Revisited (5/31/17).

And of course, those “adventures in old age” necessarily include writing this thought-provoking blog.

The lower image is courtesy of happyotter666.blogspot.com. See also Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – Wikipedia, which provided the following “cornered” quote, which was in turn part of a blog-comment about the second day of my “adventurous” hike on the Chilkoot Trail:

Okay, it wasn’t quite as bad – crossing that “swinging bridge” the first day on the Chilkoot Trail – as it was for Indiana Jones in the photo above. (For example, we hadn’t been “cornered by Mola Ram and his henchmen on a rope bridge high above a crocodile-infested river.”) But that second day on the Trail was pretty &^%$ bad…

See specifically On the Chilkoot &^%$# Trail! – Part 2.

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For further review you may wish to consult the following, some or most of which I’ve read for “Deep Background:” What the Gospels Meant, by Garry Wills; How to Spread the Word of God: 7 Steps (with Pictures; What is Christian mysticism? – GotQuestions.org; What is Christian mysticism? – fRimMin; Mysticism – Wikipedia; and/or Christian mysticism – Wikipedia.

“Am I going to live to be 141?”

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“The actor Roger Rees renders [William] Bradford beautifully,” in Ric Burns’ “The Pilgrims…”

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[Editor’s note: I originally posted this under the title, “A review of Ric Burns’ ‘Pilgrims’ DVD.” I’ll be writing a review and re-write of this post some time near January 2021, with the tentative title, “Two years ago today.”]

To preview what’s coming up in the Church Calendar for 2019 – including a continuation of the Season of Epiphany – see Happy Epiphany – 2018. Among the Feast Days coming up are the Confession of St Peter, Apostle, on January 18; the Conversion of St Paul, Apostle, on January 25; and the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, on February 2.

That all leads to the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, March 3, and that takes us to the beginning of Lent. And Lent – a season of “penance, mortifying the flesh, repentance of sins, almsgiving, and self-denial” – begins with Ash Wednesday, symbolized at right. This year it falls on March 6.

Meaning Easter Sunday will be pretty late this year, on April 21.

“In the meantime,” again, I offer this review of a DVD I just finished watching: American Experience: The Pilgrims, a documentary film by Ric Burns. (Available at Amazon.com.)

I must say that – overall – I found the tone pretty depressing. I wrote before – in Thanksgiving 2015 for example – that of the 102 Pilgrims who landed in November 1620 at Plymouth Rock, less than half survived the first year. (To November 1621.) And of the 18 adult women, only four survived that first winter in the hoped-for “New World.” (Illustrated at left.)

I just hadn’t appreciated the extent of that loss on an emotional level. Another way of saying that – just as at Jamestown, started in 1607 – there was a whole lot of human suffering:

The major similarity between the first Jamestown settlers and the first Plymouth settlers was great human suffering… November was too late to plant crops. Many settlers died of scurvy and malnutrition during that horrible first winter. Of the 102 original Mayflower passengers, only 44 survived. Again like in Jamestown, the kindness of the local Native Americans saved them from a frosty death.

In Thanksgiving – 2016, I wrote that the “men and women who first settled America paid a high price, so that we could enjoy the privilege of stuffing ourselves into a state of stupor.” But the Ric Burns film brought that suffering home in a way I hadn’t fully appreciated before.

And by the way, the full caption for the picture at the top of the page reads, “The actor Roger Rees renders Bradford beautifully; it was among his last performances before his death in July,” 2015. Which could be both prescient and ironic. That is, while Rees died at 71 – when life expectancy today is about 78 – William Bradford lived to the ripe old age of 67, when life expectancy was about half that.

There’s more about that at the end of this post…

But what I found most fascinating was how Bradford’s journal, Of Plymouth Plantation, proved the truth of the old adage, “Everything perishes, save the written word.*” For starters, here’s what Wikipedia said about Plymouth Colony in general:

Despite the colony’s relatively short existence, Plymouth holds a special role in American history… The events surrounding the founding and history of Plymouth Colony have had a lasting effect on the art, traditions, mythology, and politics of the United States of America, despite its short history of fewer than 72 years.

And what gave “Plymouth” such a special place in American history? Bradford’s journal, Of Plymouth Plantation. (Which proves again, “Everything perishes, save the written word.”) And which brings up another thing that I hadn’t realized: That the book was almost lost to history.

That is, the original manuscript was left in the tower of the Old South Meeting House in Boston during the American Revolution. But after British troops occupied Boston, it disappeared “for the next century.” The missing manuscript was finally re-discovered, “in the Bishop of London‘s library at Fulham Palace,” and printed again in 1856. It was only after much finagling – including a verdict ultimately rendered by the Consistorial and Episcopal Court of London – that the manuscript was brought back to the U.S. and given to Massachusetts in 1897.

That’s one of several points noted by the New York Times’ In ‘The Pilgrims,’ Ric Burns Looks at Mythmaking. (Including the Plymouth “Signing of the Mayflower Compact.”)

Mr. Burns’s most inspired touch is to end not in the 1600s, but two centuries later, by following what happened to Bradford’s journal. It disappeared during the Revolutionary War, then was rediscovered in the mid-1800s… The Mayflower passengers suffered terrible hardships, and from the Indians’ point of view their arrival was ultimately a dark day. But not on Thanksgiving. “There’s been a tremendous amount of memory produced around the Pilgrims, but there’s also been a lot of forgetting,” the literary critic Kathleen Donegan notes, adding later: “We don’t think about the loss. We think about the abundance.”

Or consider this, from Who Were the Pilgrims Who Celebrated the First Thanksgiving. “The first winter, people died from dysentery, pneumonia, tuberculosis, scurvy, and exposure, at rates as high as two or three per day. ‘It pleased God to visit us then with death daily,’ Bradford wrote.”

But the Pilgrims were “inventive enough” to conceal their losses from the Indians: “inventive enough, as Donegan notes, to prop up sick men against trees outside the settlement, with muskets beside them, as decoys to look like sentinels to the Indians.”

The point is this: Our “Forefathers” – and Foremothers as well – suffered greatly to come to America, and usually much more than we appreciate. More than that, from the beginning they were “aliens in a strange land.” Which brings up Deuteronomy 10:19, where God said to the Children of Israel: “You are also to love the resident alien, since you were resident aliens in the land of Egypt.” And that’s a point worth remembering these days…

But let’s close with a note of hope and cheer, at least for me. That is, rumor has it that William Bradford was one of my long-ago ancestors. If that’s true, I hope I inherited his longevity gene.

That earlier “Bradford” lived to a ripe old age of 67. That was at a time when life expectancy for that time and place was about half that long. See for example, life expectancy in America in the years 1750-1800. That is, the life expectancy a century after Bradford’s time – he died in 1657 – was 36 years. So if that “1.86 factor” applied to me today – with a male U.S. life expectancy of 76 years – I should live to be 141. (Giving me another 74 years.)

And who knows, I might end my years with the old-age benefits of King David:

King David was old and advanced in years; and although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm. So his servants said to him, ‘Let a young virgin be sought for my lord the king, and let her wait on the king, and be his attendant; let her lie in your bosom, so that my lord the king may be warm.’ So they searched for a beautiful girl throughout all the territory of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king. The girl was very beautiful. She became the king’s attendant and served him, but the king did not know her…

(In the biblical sense.) On the other hand, King David didn’t have all the “better living through chemistry” advantages we have today. And that will no doubt increase by, say, 2080?

Something to look forward to…

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The upper image is courtesy of Review (NYT): In ‘The Pilgrims,’ Ric Burns Looks at Mythmaking.

Re: “Everything perishes save the written word.” The quote is from Techniques of Fiction Writing: Measure and Madness, by Leon Surmelian. Surmelian cited Plato as saying the poet – including but not limited to the writer of fiction, and maybe of such essays as these – creates “not by science or technique, not by any conscious artistry, but by inspiration or influence of some non-rational, supernatural influence.” Which could apply to the writers of the Bible, which Surmelian implied by saying a true writer “is the medium of some higher spirit that gets into him. He is literally inspired.”

But – Surmelian continued – the writer needs more than mere inspiration, by and through “what mysterious power dwells within him.” (The “madness” in the book title.) He needs “measure:”

Through measure a story is given the structure and style that snatch it from the chaos of reality and fix it in the memory of man. We remember through measure. We move from the unrealized to the realized through measure. Through measure writing resists the ravages of time. Everything perishes save the written word, says an old eastern proverb.

From the 1969 Anchor Books paperback edition, at pages 242-44, emphasis added.

The image to the right of the paragraph ending, “Bradford lived to the ripe old age of 67, when life expectancy was about half that,” shows the “Coat of Arms of William Bradford.”

Also from (New York Times) Review: In ‘The Pilgrims,’ Ric Burns Looks at Mythmaking:

The Pilgrims and their fellow travelers weren’t terrorists, of course (despite an instance of putting the severed head of a perceived enemy on a pole), but they and those who followed certainly did effect a cultural conquest. Some versions of their story play that down, partly because a plague resulting from earlier contact with Westerners brought widespread death to coastal Indians in the Northeast just before the Mayflower arrived. God, it seemed to some, killed off the Indians to make way for the whites, a view this program corrects.

It draws on the unique, nearly lost history, Of Plymouth Plantation, written by William Bradford, the new colony’s governor for more than 30 years, whom the late actor Roger Rees portrays from a script derived from Bradford’s book.

Right from the start, the death rate was awful. Mortality had been enormous at the Jamestown colony, where by 1620 nearly 8,000 people had arrived, although the settlement was struggling to keep its population above a thousand. Bradford’s history recalled the Pilgrims’ anticipation of “a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men.” Ferrying in supplies from the ship meant wading through ice-cold water, at one point with sleet glazing their bodies with ice. The first winter, people died from dysentery, pneumonia, tuberculosis, scurvy, and exposure, at rates as high as two or three per day. “It pleased God to visit us then with death daily,” Bradford wrote…

The lower image is courtesy of King David Abishag – Image Results. The painting may actually show Bathsheba, see Moritz Stifter Bathsheba – Image Results, and/or Bathsheba Painting – Image Results. The “Abishag” connection was gleaned from “Interesting Green: Reflection – King David and Abishag,” from veryfatoldmanblogspot.com. But see also Is Veryfatoldman.blogspot legit and safe? (Review).

I’m back from my Rideau pilgrimage…

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An old-timey – 1906 – photo of the Poonamalie lockstation on the Rideau Canal in Canada.

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Ottawa Lockstation I just got back from three weeks canoeing the Rideau Canal in Canada with my brother. We paddled from Kingston on Lake Ontario to Ottawa. (The image at left shows the last eight locks on the system – in downtown Ottawa – which we didn’t make, for reasons explained in the notes.)

One thing I learned: This canoe trip was “more of a Camino than the Camino.” (To see what I mean, check out “Hola! Buen Camino!” – Revisited or “Buen Camino!” – The Good Parts in my companion blog. About the same brother and I hiking – and biking – 450 miles of the Camino de Santiago.)

That is, the Camino de Santiago is often so crowded that it’s hard to get a thought in “edgewise.” But there on the Rideau water system, there were plenty of times when all I had to do was paddle, and think. Think a lot about my aches and pains – and how mind-numbingly boring it is to paddle a canoe hour after hour. But also, just to think – period – without all the distractions of modern life. For more on that idea see St. James, Steinbeck, and sluts.

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And now an overview: The guide books say it should take six to ten days to paddle the 125 miles to Ottawa. They also say prevailing winds are “generally” from the southwest, but “be ready for anything.” We took 11-and-a-half days – 11 nights – but two of those nights we spent in relative luxury in a rustic cabin in Portland, Ontario. (For nine days “actual canoeing.*”)

That came after taking a wrong turn padding north from Colonel By Island the morning of Wednesday, August 22. That overnight campsite included a violent rainstorm and raccoons breaking into our food containers and taking our supplies of breakfast bars, crackers and trail mix. That in turn was preceded by paddling through a veritable monsoon the afternoon of Tuesday, August 21. That morning we made 10 miles, but in the afternoon – after leaving the Narrows (Lock 35) – we made four miles before stopping at ” Colonel By.”

But such is “the stuff of legends.” And we digress…

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Getting back to James, Steinbeck, and sluts, that post noted about “pilgrims:”

A pilgrim … is a traveler (literally one who has come from afar) who is on a journey to a holy place. Typically, this is a physical journeying (often on foot) to some place of special significance to the adherent of a particular religious belief system. In the spiritual literature of Christianity, the concept of pilgrim and pilgrimage may refer to the experience of life in the world (…as a period of exile) or to the inner path of the spiritual aspirant from a state of wretchedness to a state of beatitude.

In other words, a pilgrim is someone on a quest to “find himself.” (See also Self-discovery – Wikipedia.) And one way of finding yourself is through a healthy sense of ritual, as noted in Passages of the Soul: Ritual Today. (James Roose-Evans.) The book noted that a healthy sense of ritual “should pervade a healthy society, and that a big problem now is that we’ve abandoned many rituals that used to help us deal with big change and major trauma.”

The book added that all true ritual “calls for discipline, patience, perseverance, leading to the discovery of the self within.” More to the point, the book said a pilgrimage – like an 11-and-a-half-day canoe trip on Rideau – “may be described as a ritual on the move.” Further, the book said through “the raw experience of hunger, cold, lack of sleep,” we can quite often find a sense of our fragility as “mere human beings.” Finally, the book said such a pilgrimage can be “one of the most chastening, but also one of the most liberating” of personal experiences.

All of which seems to have applied more to our “Rideau adventure” than the more popular and better-known method of pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago.

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For one thing, to avoid the often-contrary prevailing winds, we started getting up at 4:00 a.m. (Which would be – to most people anyway – a “raw experience” in the form of a lack of the usual number of hours of sleep. Not to mention having to stumble around in the dark while breaking camp.) On the other hand, getting up that early led to the picture at left, of one of the benefits of getting up at 4:00 a.m. Aside from the fact that the water is usually much smoother at that hour – especially important on those “big-ass lakes” in the first half of the trip – it also led to us seeing some beautiful sunrises. (As seen above left.)

So all in all we spent 11-and-a-half days on the trip, but that included two nights in a nice cabin in Portland Ontario. And aside from primitive camping the first two nights – “dig a hole and squat” – most of the rest of the nights we camped at the lock stations themselves. They featured nice level lawns, hot and cold running water in the nearby “washrooms,” and every once in a while a nearby pub or restaurant with hot food and cold beer.

Which helped persuade me that this Rideau trip was “more of a Camino than the Camino.” That is, last September and October – on Spain’s 450 miles of the Camino de Santiago* – my brother and I kept meeting up with flocks of fellow pilgrims, most greeting us with a too-cheerful “Buen Camino!” In other words, the Rideau trip was more of a pilgrimage, in the truest sense. That is, a “journey or search of moral or spiritual significance.” Or consider the words of John Steinbeck in Travels with Charley. Speaking of long-distance driving – at least in 1962 – he wrote:

If one has driven a car over many years [one] does not have to think about what to do. Nearly all the driving technique is deeply buried in the machine-like unconscious. This being so, a large area of the conscious mind is left free for thinking… [T]here is left, particularly on very long trips, a large area for day-dreaming or even, God help us, for thought.

Unfortunately, there was precious little of that on the Camino. (Or for that matter, on any modern long-distance driving trip, what with Sirius, GPS, iPod Shuffles or the new “Sandisks,” not to mention “books on CD,” none of which were available in 1962.) On the other hand, there was plenty of time – paddling up the Rideau river system – for “God help us, thought.”

In my case, on the Rideau I spent plenty of time – along with Steinbeck – thinking about the past: “And how about the areas of regrets? If only I had done so-and-so, or had not said such-and-such – my God, the damn thing might not have happened.”

Which is one way of saying there weren’t that many other canoeists or kayakers on the Rideau. (A necessity for “finding yourself?”) In fact I can only remember one, the lady kayaker shown below, portaging – carrying her kayak – at the Burritt’s Rapids lock station. Whereas my brother and I paid extra to take our canoes through the locks, this younger lady chose to do it the “hard way.” She’d carry her kayak on one trip – from one end of the lock station to the other – then go back and get all her gear, stacked what seemed a mile high on her backpack.

The point being – in case I’m being too subtle – that the dearth of fellow paddlers meant there was plenty of time “for day-dreaming or even, God help us, for thought.” Or self-discovery.

Which seems to be what makes a pilgrimage a pilgrimage. (Though it helped to find the Lock 17 Bistro, a short walk from Burritt’s Rapids, where we camped the night of Sunday, August 26. That is, a hot meal and a cold beer can go a long way in “neutralizing or preventing anxiety…”)

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The upper image is courtesy of Rideau Canal – Wikipedia. The caption: “Poonahmalee, on the Rideau River, near Smith Falls, Ontario – October 1906.” See also Poonamalie … Rideau Canal.

The image below the upper image – of “last eight locks” near downtown Ottawa – is courtesy of Rideau Canal – Rideau Canal World Heritage Site, Ontario.

Portions of the text and/or images were gleaned from my companion blog. The most recent blog post was The “Rideau Adventure” – An Overview. I also previewed this latest pilgrimage in Next adventure: Paddling the Rideau “Canal,” and “Naked Lady” – on the Rideau Canal?

Re: “Our’ 450 miles of the Camino de Santiago.” For more on that pilgrimage see “Hola! Buen Camino!” – Revisited and/or “Buen Camino!” – The Good Parts.

Re: Portland, Ontario: “The Landing on Big Rideau Lake, which is now the community of Portland, lies at the heart of the Rideau Canal System and is central to the history of the canal and to the early development of Canada. Portland is on Highway 15, midway between Ottawa and Kingston, Ontario.” See also Portland, Ontario – Wikipedia.

Re: Self-discovery. See Wikipedia, which noted that a “journey of self-discovery is a popular theme in literature. It is sometimes used to drive the plot of a novel, play or film.” Also:

The term “journey of self-discovery” refers to a travel, pilgrimage, or series of events whereby a person attempts to determine how they feel, personally, about spiritual issues or priorities rather than following the opinions of family, friends, neighborhood or peer[s]. The topic of self-discovery has been associated with Zen. A related term is “finding oneself.”

The quotes from Travels with Charley are from the 1962 Penguin Books edition, at pages 94-95.

Re: “Neutralizing or preventing anxiety.” See Ritual – Wikipedia: “In psychology, the term ritual is sometimes used in a technical sense for a repetitive behavior systematically used by a person to neutralize or prevent anxiety…” While I take issue with the article’s assertion that all true ritual is marked by strict “invariance,” I would agree with its sense of a pilgrimage as a “rite of passage,” that is, a “ritual event that marks a person’s transition from one status to another.” Which transition generally involves “three stages: separation, transition and incorporation.”

The lower image: My photo of a lady kayaker, portaging at the Burritt’s Rapids lock station.

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On the beginning of Lent – 2018

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The Temptation(s) of Christ – during His 40 days of wandering – which Lent seeks to emulate…

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I confess – I “do not deny but confess” – that I have been lax in posting new essays for this blog. One excuse is that I’ve been focusing more on my art. (For one thing, I’ve finally gotten to the point – after 66 years of this incarnation – that I actually feel like I know what I’m doing.) Be that as it may, it’s high time to finish another post, especially since Lent began a week or so ago, with Ash Wednesday.

If nothing else, I may need to do penance for my sins… (The image at right is “‘La Penitente’ by Pietro Rotari.”)

Which relates to the kind of Wandering in the Wilderness that many of us seem to have to go through. (That is, before we “reach a certain age” and – for example – feel like we know what we’re doing.)

So anyway, this whole idea of Lent as a kind of mini-Wandering in the Wilderness started back with Moses. And with his leading the Children of Israel during the original Exodus, as recited years later by Nehemiah, at 9:12-21. Now we don’t have an actual “pillar of cloud” by day, or a “pillar of fire in the night” to light our way. But we do have the example set by Jesus.

Which brings up the whole topic of Ash Wednesday and the Season of Lent:

According to the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus Christ spent 40 days fasting in the desert, where he endured temptation by Satan. Lent originated as a mirroring of this, fasting 40 days as preparation for Easter.

See Wikipedia, On Ash Wednesday and Lent, and also Lent 101 – The Upper Room.

So the “40 days of Lent” are supposed to commemorate the 40 days that Jesus spent “wandering in the wilderness.” (And being “tempted.”) In turn, that act by Jesus mirrored the 40 years that the Hebrews – led by Moses – also spent “wandering around.” But as it’s evolved, most people today equate Lent with “giving up something they love.” Which may miss the point entirely. (See e.g., Lenten disciplines: spiritual exercises or ego trip?)

For me it seems more appropriate to remember that “while the Promised Land is wonderful, we learn our greatest lessons on the journey along the way.” That’s from the “mini-Wandering in the Wilderness” link above, posted by Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman back in 2011. His article is called “What We Can Learn from Wandering in the Wilderness,” and it contains some valid points for this Lenten season. Points like this:

Life can be hard, and the world can be scary. If we learn to accept that, and not expect the world to revolve around us, we can discover the myriad ways in which we can make a difference, and invest our energy in those tasks.

So the Christian life itself is a pilgrimage, and the 40 days of Lent can be a kind of dress rehearsal, or “full-scale practice.” (Where it’s important to remember the happy ending.)

Another lesson: It can be “fun, natural and even important to explore uncharted territory [during Lent]. After all, we never learn or grow if we stay in the same place.” Which is why – two years ago – I chose a different course. See My Lenten meditation, from February 14, 2016:

I’ve always wondered just when, where and how Moses came to write the first five books of the Bible. (The Torah.) So I’ve decided that – aside from Bible-reading on a daily basis, which I already do anyway – I’ll spend this Lent “meditating” on this topic. More precisely, I plan to spend this Lent contemplating on how and when Moses wrote those first five books.

Which turned out to be pretty enlightening. For example, Moses probably knew the earth revolved around the sun, but couldn’t share that information with the primitive, illiterate tribes he led. (He would have been stoned to death for heresy. See On Moses getting stoned. And as an aside, the same thing almost happened to Jesus. But in Luke 4:21-30, Jesus wasn’t threatened by stoning, as Moses was. Instead, “the people” wanted to throw Him off a cliff, as shown at left.)

For another thing, four of the five books of the Torah were “pretty much autobiography.” (That is, Moses wrote about his life, and his role in leading the Hebrews out of slavery and into their Promised Land. And in doing so he referred to himself in the third person, a literary device called illeism. See also On Moses and “illeism.) But in writing Genesis, Moses had to go back to the origins of time itself. He had to go back to the Creation of the World itself. And in doing that, he almost certainly had to rely on oral tradition.

Then there’s the question whether “writing” had been invented by the time of Moses at all. All of which are fascinating questions, but certainly beyond the scope of this post. (Maybe later?)

So I’ll end the post with this BTW: There are actually 46 days of Lent; 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. That’s because Sundays don’t count in the calculation. Sundays in Lent are essentially “days off,” when you can still enjoy whatever it is you’ve “given up.” But somehow that fact got overlooked by the writers and/or producers of 40 Days and 40 Nights, the “2002 romantic comedy film.” That film portrayed the main character “during a period of abstinence from any sexual contact for the duration of Lent.” But as noted, the main character “could have taken Sundays off.” Which just goes to show that – sometimes at least:

It pays to read and study the Bible!

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40 Days and 40 Nights (2002)

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The upper image is courtesy of Temptation of Christ – Wikipedia. The caption: “The Temptations of Christ, 12th century mosaic at St Mark’s Basilica, Venice.”

The “Penitente” image is courtesy of Penance – Wikipedia, which adds this note:

The word penance derives from Old French and Latin paenitentia, both of which derive from the same root meaning repentance, the desire to be forgiven (in English see contrition). Penance and repentance, similar in their derivation and original sense, have come to symbolize conflicting views of the essence of repentance, arising from the controversy as to the respective merits of “faith” and “good works.” Word derivations occur in many languages.

Re: Phrase “reach a certain age.” The allusion is to “women of a certain age.” That phrase was “repopularized in a 1979 book by the psychotherapist Lillian B. Rubin, ‘Women of a Certain Age: The Midlife Search for Self,’ in which midlife spanned 35 to 54.” The 1995 New York Times article noted that – at the time it was published – Ms. Rubin was then in her early 70s. It then added:

[T]he phrase … “has a long history in French, where it refers to women of fortyish and thereabouts who are able to initiate boys and young men into the beauties of sexual encounters. The early use in English seems to be about spinsterhood, but the French meaning has nothing to do with marriage…” In French, the phrase has erotically or sexually charged overtones. [Naturally.] “It comes from a society where sexuality is freer,” Dr. Rubin notes, “and more understood as an important part of human life…” The phrase in French is femmes d’une certaine age. The term, however, can apply to either sex.

To which I add my own hearty Amen. (“So be it.”) And note that as I’ve said before, one of the pleasures of blogging is that you can learn so many interesting new things…

The “giving up” image is courtesy of Diary of a Sower (“Giving up – or adding something – to Lent”).

Re: Prior posts on Lent. See On Ash Wednesday and Lent – 2016.

Re: “Sundays off in Lent.” See How Are the 40 Days of Lent Calculated? – ThoughtCo, Fast during Lent – EWTN, Is There Really a “Sunday Exception” During Lent?

The lower image is courtesy of 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002) – IMDb.

“Hola! Buen Camino!”

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My Camino pilgrimage started at Pamplona, at lower right, for 450 miles of hiking and biking…

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Well, we did it. My brother and I arrived in Santiago de Compostela on Thursday, October 12. This was after hiking – and biking – the Camino de Santiago, as shown in the map above. Along the way I occasionally listened to my iPod Shuffle – to help pass the time – and one of my favorite songs was It’s a Long Way to Tipperary. Except in my mind I had to change the words to “It’s a long way to Santiago!”

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Just as an aside, Monday October 23 was the Feast day for St. James of Jerusalem. He was also known as James, the brother of Jesus, “James the Just,” and was said to be the first Bishop of Jerusalem.* He held that post until his death, by “martyrdom in 62 or 69 AD.”

And just in case you’re confused – about the number of “Jameses” in the Bible – there are at least three men named James in the New Testament, and possibly as many as eight. (See “BIO of Philip and James,” which attempts to sort them out.)

In that list, James the Just (“Brother of Jesus”) is listed third. James the Less – possibly the “son of Alphaeus” – is listed second. Listed first is St. James the Greater – “for whom the Camino de Santiago is named,” and who is in fact the Patron Saint of Pilgrims. Which is something I mentioned in my last post, On a pilgrimage in Spain. A link in that post added this, after first noting that in English the route is known as “the Way of St. James:”

The Way of Saint James … is a network of pilgrims’ ways serving pilgrimage to the shrine of the apostle Saint James the Great in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition has it that the remains of the saint are buried. Many follow its routes as a form of spiritual path or retreat for their spiritual growth.

So on October 23 we remembered St. James of Jerusalem, also known as James, the brother of Jesus. But from September 13 to October 12 – you could say – I “remembered” St. James the Greater, by going for a long walk on his pilgrimage route. (Sore feet and all…)

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Getting back to the pilgrimage itself: On October 3, in Puente La Reina, in Spain – “about eight miles shy of León” – I wrote that – on reaching Leon – “we will have hiked 250 miles from Pamplona, in the 21 days since we left on September 13.*” Here’s another note:

The first 10 days after [Pamplona] – on the hike – were pretty miserable. My left foot constantly throbbed, until it blistered up and got tough. But the day off in Burgos helped a lot. And since then we’ve made good progress. Still, we had to implement a Plan B, which involves renting bikes in Leon and cycling the remaining 194 miles.

And speaking of Burgos, here’s a picture of the city’s famous Cathedral. My fellow traveller and I took over an hour, hiking, to get out of the city from there, on the morning of September 26, 2017.

Later, after we reached León, we covered the last 195 miles in seven days, riding mountain bikes, with panniers on the back. In other words, in the first two-thirds of the trip we averaged 12 miles a day, hiking. In the last seven days we averaged closer to 28 miles a day. But in a way that turned out to be simply a variety of Dorothy Parker‘s “different kind of hell.*” (We just got way too sore again, but in different parts of the body.)

You can get a better idea from the map at the top of the page. It took ten days to hike from Pamplona to Burgos, where we too our first day off. It took another 10 days to reach Leon, where we took our second day off and picked up our pre-ordered bikes. Then that long section from Leon to Burgos – some 195 miles of the 450 – we covered in seven days.

But not without mishap. Neither of us had ridden a bike in 40 years or so, so it wasn’t real surprising when my right handlebar smashed the heck out of the side-view mirror of some poor slob’s nice new car. In the second mishap I literally “ran my ass into a ditch…”

We were zooming downhill one afternoon. I tried to adjust my left pantleg, and the next thing I knew I was laying in a ditch, bleeding like a stuck pig. And not just any ditch. A nice deep ditch covered with thorns and brambles on the sides and bottom. The “stuck pig” part came when my Ray-Bans gashed the bridge of my nose, causing it to bleed profusely…

The third major mishap came a mere six kilometers from Santiago, when my rear tire when flat.

We finally got a new tube on and inflated, but then had a time getting the chain back on the derailleur. I finally flagged down a passing Spanish cyclist. He helped get that straight, but then – after he peddled his merry way – we found out there were no rear brakes, which posed a problem. We knew that much of the remaining six kilometers was downhill, and also that if applied too forcefully, using front-only brakes can cause a cyclist to go “ass over teakettle.”

So my brother had us switch bikes, and we both glided – carefully and gingerly – into Santiago.

I’ll be writing on more of these adventures, including the several times I – or we – got Lost in Spain. But after five weeks in Spain – the last part of which included a nine-hour bus ride from Santiago to Madrid, and a 10-hour flight from Madrid to Atlanta – I can only say, with feeling:

There’s No Place Like Home!!

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There is truly“no place like home” (after a long pilgrimage…)

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The upper image is courtesy of Camino de Santiago 800 PROJECT: Map of the Route silverarrow18.blogspot.com.

The “Tipperary” image is courtesy of It’s a Long Way to Tipperary – Wikipedia.

Note” also: An asterisk in the main text indicates a statement supported by a reference detailed further in this “notes” section. Thus as to Jesus’ brother being the “first,” see James the Just, First Bishop of Jerusalem, Jesus’ brother.

For the “RCL” Bible readings for the October 23 feast day, see St. James of Jerusalem.

As to the asterisk next to the passage “the 21 days since we left on September 13:” We actually reached Leon on October 4.

The Burgos Cathedral image is courtesy of Burgos Cathedral – Wikipedia.

Re: Fellow traveller. Here referring to a person who is “intellectually sympathetic” – in this case, to the crazy idea of spending thousands of dollars and five weeks to hike in a foreign country – as opposed to the term as used in U.S. politics in the 1940s and 1950s. At that time and place the term was a “pejorative term for a person who was philosophically sympathetic to Communism, yet was not a formal, ‘card-carrying member‘ of the American Communist Party.”

Re: “Different kind of hell.” The allusion is to Dorothy Parker‘s famously saying – whenever the door rang in her apartment – “What fresh hell is this?” That’s also the title of Parker’s 1989 biography by Marion Meade. See Amazon.com: Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?

Re: “Some poor slob’s nice new car.” City streets in Spain are generally very narrow and difficult to maneuver.

The lower image is courtesy of There‘s No Place Like Home- Image Results. See also No Place Like Home – Wikipedia, which noted that – aside from the famous line in the movie Wizard of Oz – the phrase may also refer to “the last line of the 1822 song ‘Home! Sweet Home!,’ words by John Howard Payne and music by Sir Henry Bishop; the source of inspiration for the other references here: ‘Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home,’” and/or “‘(There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays,’ a 1954 Christmas song most famously sung by Perry Como.” For a “live” version, see also There’s No Place Like Home – YouTube.

DOR Scribe

Expand your horizons – Read the Bible with an open mind

Category Archives: Pilgrimage

On my first full day in Jerusalem…

“Back from three weeks in Israel…”

“If I Forget Thee, Oh Jerusalem…”

You know, I’ll bet there’s a lesson that can be gleaned from all this…

“On to Jerusalem!”

“An exercise in spiritual ripening…“

On my “mission from God…”

“Hey pal, tell that to Moses!”

On a better way to spread the Gospel…

“Am I going to live to be 141?”

Something to look forward to…

I’m back from my Rideau pilgrimage…

On the beginning of Lent – 2018

It pays to read and study the Bible!

“Hola! Buen Camino!”

There’s No Place Like Home!!