Mother of All Road Trips (XIX)* –  Pilgrim Treasure On Side Roads and Byways

To ‘pilgrim’ means to travel watchfully, expectantly.  And sometimes with tears. As it happens, the pilgrim’s reward is rarely in the intended destination but rather in stumbling on something unbidden along the way.  That something, that random encounter, can occasion healing, forgiveness, insight, even laughter or promised blessing.

Sacred pilgrim destinations surrounded us everywhere in the Holy Land.  And nearly all announced with grandeur and baroque opulence that someone got there before you.  Minarets, arches and masterworks, the scale of tumbled stones and centuries await at the end of every beaten path.  Whispering guides and attendants usher the pilgrim past the sacred spots encrusted with jewels while candles flicker to the chant of monks or to murmured prayers. 

The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is just such a place.  But the staggering story of Heaven come to earth may not spring to life for the pilgrim until reaching the cobblestone alleys outside where a stray donkey wanders by followed by a flock of bleating Bedouin sheep.  That may be sufficient to bring the pilgrim to sudden wakefulness and tears.

Or take the pilgrim examining an olive creche set in the marketplace, as we did, who might learn it was in that hard-scrabble place of haggling and dickering that Bedouin elders once came, whispering that they were in possession of scrolls for sale, scrolls uncovered by shepherd boys in caves overlooking the Arabah.  How could they have known that those Dead Sea Scrolls, handed over for a paltry $28, would touch off an earthquake in the world of sacred writ?

Back in Jerusalem we called at Al Aqsa, the Dome of the Rock.  It was the very year they renovated the dome with gold leaf, burnishing the lead exterior of earlier times.  It shone now as the landmark by which Jerusalem is recognized around the world.  Beneath that dome lay the naked Foundation Stone from which it is said the creation of the world began and from where Muhammad took his night journey to heaven.  So compelling are the stories clinging to that stone, that King Solomon had earlier fashioned about it the glories of his temple that still resound in myth with psalms, trumpets and cymbals.  And historians surmise that Judaism’s sanctum sanctorum, the Holy of Holies, rested on that rock foundation.  Little wonder that such a raw scrap of real estate should hold in thrall the religious imagination of half the world.  But outside, the Western Wall of massive stone remains a remnant of that Jewish past where desiderata commended daily to scraps of paper are slipped into the rock seams as prayers too sacred even to be voiced.

And then there is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Christian world’s greatest pilgrim destination.  So treasured is that turf, so besought, that it has touched off not seasons of grace and harmony, but centuries of conflict, a legacy of enmity that still stalks the world.  That state of living at daggers-drawn has poisoned not only the meeting of different faiths, but also relations within the household of Christian believers.  That niche in the storied rock, like some rich Ottoman halvah, is carefully partitioned between rival claimants.  The Roman Catholics, the Armenians, the Syrian and Greek Orthodox, the Egyptian and Ethiopian Copts all guard their prerogatives of time and place, sometimes resorting to outright brawls necessitating police intervention.  Which, of course, suggests that the power of love to make peace, may only be seasonally present.  

But it has not entirely fled, it seems.  That power makes a disguised appearance just as you leave the basilica.  There, in mundane garb, may sometimes be seen members of two Muslim families who play a remarkable role at this pilgrim site.  They are the custodians of an old iron key to the portals of that last word in Christian church.  Saladin, the Kurdish sultan who checked the Crusaders’ successes 900 years ago, knowing, perhaps, how Christians sometimes fell to quarreling, named the Joudeh and Nuseibeh families as Muslim custodians of this holiest of Christian sites.  Their generations have come for centuries to unlock the great doors as the sultan commanded, praying all the while that the devoted horde of seekers will find inspiration and peace, while sometimes easing the quibbles of the occupants within.

Build a cathedral around that. Such faithful and unassuming service could hardly fail to inspire pilgrim tears and godspeed the seeker with resurrection clarity and gratitude.  There be the real jewels of spiritual life.

That cobblestoned, pilgrim way now led us north through the Damascus Gate to other byways in Syria, Turkey and the Balkans beyond, the pressures of time weighing heavy to make scheduled departures in faraway Rotterdam.   

 *This Traipse series, ‘Mother of All Road Trips’, recounts an overland journey by car including four school-leaver chums in the summer of 1965 traveling from Karachi (Pakistan) to Rotterdam (Netherlands), a journey that would be almost unthinkable in our times.