Long for the following reasons: a visit to Gethsemane, and the Garden Tomb, and Mark's House, and getting to know a Holocaust survivor

*Hey, this was going to be a letter to my mom but I thought I'd let it turn into a mass email (the thought occurred halfway through, perhaps?), and journal and whatever. Well, this is more just tale relating style. Maybe I should blog more this way. I'll put this on my blog too. Anyway, here it is, if you've ever wondered what it was like to wander around Jerusalem. And sorry Mom, that this started personal and then I meant to tell you about it and had it change and never got around to making it personal again at the end--I'll just tell you soon. Bent

Mom,

Thank you for the email and update :). I wanted to write you a big response so I didn't write right after I read it, but now I think I gotta just reply as well as I can.

Yesterday was wild/awesome. Sunday is our free day, which is really, really weird. It's weird when Church hits you right after you are in school (as in no day between routine work/school and church), and it might be even weirder on Sunday when you're lost, running on the rooftops like Aladdin trying to get back before sundown because East Jerusalem is dangerous--which is what we did yesterday. The Kidron Valley (spelling?), is on the east side of the old city of Jerusalem; the Jerusalem Center is on the Mount of Olives (or Mount Scopus, if you're Jewish--or talking to a Jew :). Gethsemane is within walking distance of the Center. It's about a mile to the south, just south of the Orson Hyde Memorial Garden (or whatever it's called: he was the Apostle who dedicated the Holy Land for the preaching of the Gospel in the 1800s). The caretaker at Gethsemane lets Mormons in a private part of the garden--the main part is fenced off and commercialized--because the students before us were so stellar. We had a neat chance to meditate in there for awhile on last Thursday or so. We read in the Gospels about the Atonement, then 3 Ne. 11. It was cool to feel not just the sense of a deep price being paid but the reward coming which had made it all worth it--it was cool to get out of that slump that most of Christianity seems to still be in, all those pictures of "The Passion" etc. that are so disgustingly painful and dreary. Afterwards we sang a few hymns and it was wonderful. "Alive"--that's about the coolest word I can think to describe a church, and it's cool that that's the most prominent feature of ours--well, "true and living," but maybe those are the same thing.

We also went to the Garden Tomb--on Sabbath (Saturday). There were some hilarious and irresistibly winning old British men running tours there. So cheerful--and they'd (at least our guide, whose name was Roy) testify all the time. "But the tomb is empty now--Amen! Right?" Then he told some joke about how Joseph of Arimathea's wife was upset with him for giving away the tomb and he said, "Don't worry darling, it's just for a couple days!" We laughed, then he answered, "It wouldn't be funny if it hadn't been." Hahaha. Later I overheard another guide talking about how he still used feet and miles etc. (He was pretty old.) "If the Lord would have wanted me to use the metric system, he'd have had ten disciples!" They were quite a hoot--over and over and over.

It turns out scholars believe the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to be the real resting place of Jesus during those three days after his crucifixion, but all the videos we use are of the Garden Tomb, which is still a possibility, because it's so much more beautiful. I think I actually heard once about President Hinckley or someone saying, "It was here," but that might have been on where he was born. Not sure.

Regardless the coolest part was actually singing hymns after. I'm not sure why it was so cool--several reasons, I guess. It was cool to be singing there, but I think the coolest part was being there and realizing that it was the singing, it was the hymns, that really made the experience--those things that I've been doing all my life, they're the things that really bring the power. It doesn't matter where he died; it doesn't matter where I am--where he died or not--it just matters if he has my heart with him or not. We just sat there and sang--for about 40 minutes. Hymn after hymn after hymn. He is Risen. I Believe in Christ. I Know that My Redeemer Lives. In Humility Our Savior (mine). Nearer My God to Thee. Be Still My Soul. Other tour groups just stopped to listen. I really felt like we were teaching, even though technically we're not supposed to, and technically we weren't. But maybe the letter of the law isn't the most important way to reach a people anyway. If the Spirit of the Gospel is the most important thing to follow, maybe it's also the most important thing to convey or to share. I feel like all who heard that will know there is a people out there who worships God in sincerity, who believes he lives, who are happy. I do not know that I am worthy to be one of the few people who gets this experience, but I knew I was supposed to come and am doing my best to experience it all in gratitude and awareness. I wish, like Elder Holland, that everyone could come here. I'm glad, as I said earlier, that not everyone needs to to find the best part of the Gospel, to know the truth, to feel alive. I noticed a man sitting on the bench as we were singing. He stayed the entire time, just watching us. I felt sort of like a beacon, right then. This guy is seeing something that maybe he's never seen before. Maybe he's been wondering what more he could find. I certainly felt like I was living life right then. It's like Ulysses says in my favorite poem of all time (Ulysses, by Tennyson): "As though to breathe were life!" We were doing more than breathing.

And the gardens were just beautiful anyways--I would have loved it even if it hadn't been in the Holy City. I never suspected there would be so much green growth here. Turns out, winter is the rainy season here, so we scored the most beautiful time of year. That's something that really matters to me; I don't know why, I just really feel elevated when there is a lot of natural, flourishing life around me. Maybe that's why I love England so much. It just feels right. Anyway, it was really nice to find some of that here.

It was green in the Kidron Valley, which Jesus crossed on his way over to Gethsemane. I plucked a twig to bring home. The part that's cool is that seeing that these sites exist shakes you up at the scriptures--"Wait, the Kidron Valley is real. So the stuff the Bible says happened here..." The Bible ceases to be abstract, it ceases to be theoretical, or fictional. The places become real, so the events, tethered to that reality, become more real themselves. They're not just stories; they're History. They happened. Man that's cool.

A Holocaust survivor came and hung out with us last night. Rather, he spoke to us for an hour--he's 92--then couldn't tear himself away to go to his world-class piano concert, "because he loves people," as his caretaker said to us. We weren't just holding him hostage--he held us. He was a darling old guy with windy white hair and a nose that drooped a little when he smiled, which was usually. He told us his story for an hour, then said he wanted to keep talking with us after if we had more questions, and would just go to the concert late. It came and went. All he wanted, he said, was for everyone to believe in God. "I don't care what you call him, just believe in him," essentially. It was amazing to me. He had been to both Auschwitz and Dochau. I have been to Dochau. It all flashed back through my head like a very morbid nightmare. This guy, Elias, the loving, merciful, energetic jokester had been there--he had been there when it was Dochau. It was a moment of horrible truth when he first told us he'd been sent there (to Auschwitz first): he said it, then he reached for his sleeve. I knew what it was. I just thought, "No. No that can't be real." But it came--the deepest, darkest scar you've ever seen: it was green. "B 1259." That's who he had been. "I just want people to know what happened," he repeatedly said. "They have to know or they won't learn." He was an amazing man. Apparently he'd always been able to forgive the Germans--as his friend, Brother Allen, our doctor, told us--even when he was in the camps. We looked to him for an explanation and he just said, "I love people. And it happened, there was nothing I could do about it, so I moved on." It was pretty wild.

It was wild to see the other side. It was wild because I've seen so many instances of Israeli (seeming) unkindness here in the Holy Land. "Settlers" will move into Muslim neighborhoods, essentially just because they can, to slowly and unviolently push their boundaries further--it's essentially the war being continued covertly. And it's not like the Muslims were the ones to kick out the Jews in the first place, either--we didn't take Israel from the aggressors and give it "back" to the Jews; we took it from another innocent people and gave it to an earlier (innocent) one. There are too many good men on too many sides. Things are black and white, but there are three dimensions. One side of Judaism is greedy; another never for a moment didn't forgive the Nazis. One side of the Muslims here is violent; another is warm, humble, and hospitable, and watching what is their homeland (and Holy Land) too, now, slowly being stolen while talks of reconciliation are dragged out. What would I do if everyone I loved and everything I held sacred was being threatened, being slowly being stolen away, blatantly, in a "legal" way that was, at least in terms of the spirit of the law, infuriating--and I was helpless to counter it through legal ways? I don't know. I guess I'm just saying I can see much better where they're coming from. If only they could work together: but it's just like in Gandhi where the Muslims and the Hindus couldn't trust each other: sad. And hard.

Ok, well I've turned that into a rambling soap box for far long enough. What I also and actually originally wanted to say was this: we met a tribe of 7-year-olds playing in the Kidron Valley north of the Silwan Village on the East and City of David on the West (both of which are very, very Muslim, and have been for many, many years--kind of a surprise, to think of the City of David like that, huh?). There was a ridge about 1/3 of the way up the green valley's slopes. We had just passed (Dan King, Alyson Shamrell, and I) Absalom's Pillar, and finished reading his father, David's lament over him: "O Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son. Would that I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son." Powerful. I always wondered about that. I just don't know if I can see a murderer-never-to-see-the-highest-Heaven ever feeling like that. Maybe he's not as lost as we think. Maybe he is, but I hope he isn't. I really hope he isn't. We saw his tomb later that day too, and read 1 Sam 17:45 (paraphrased): "And David said unto the Philistine, 'Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a shield, and with a spear, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel whom thou hast defied. This day with the Lord deliver you into my hands...and David hasted to meet the Philistine..." So cool. It was a holy site, the sign said. Jews were praying there and touching posts with scriptures on them as they left, and wearing phylacteries (I can't recall if those are the things on their foreheads or wound around their arms--either way I saw both).

Ok, anyway, the Lord of the Flies crew there in the Kidron. It looked like they were committing arson. Turned out they were roasting potatoes and sweet onions on a fire that may have been somewhat or muchwhat started and sustained by burning trash. They called us down and we went to hang out, even though we're not supposed to have any real contact with kids now because of H1N1 going around (hideous--I was so excited for meeting kids on the street and hanging out with them, talking to them in Arabic, playing soccer, etc.). We decided to make it really, really quick, and avoid contact. First thing that happened was they swarmed around us all excited and their leader offered us a mostly peeled onion. Here, there are several layers left, tall white American "Onion boys" (or whatever Donkey calls Shrek). I couldn't believe how nice it was of them. We tried to take a picture with them and one kid jumped up yelling, "No NO NO" for a reason we couldn't at all tell why. "Shekel! Shekel!" they started chanting. Oh. Yeah. Now it makes sense. So we gave them one (hardly anything, but two of us really didn't have anything), but when we tried again they still shout-protested "No!" or at least their main PR guy did. So, out of respect for the rural lifestyle of the indigenous (7 yr old) Kidron people, we decided not to take pictures, in order to preserve their natural, unexposed state. We laughed and thanked them then left.

We also stumbled onto Mark's house, just within the Old City's wall, on the south side of Jerusalem. Totally random. We were winding down whichever street looked most aesthetically pleasing to us, or exotically arabic and aladdin-esque. When I read the sign though it hit me: "Mark's House" and above it: "The Upper Room." Whoa. I know what happened there: and the scene from The Lamb of God flashed through my head. The Last Supper. That was where Jesus instituted the Sacrament. Wow. Wow. It wasn't like most of these places. It actually looked less like the video than you could imagine; it was probably one of the least correct looking places I'd seen or been to here, but it felt better than most, or almost all. I don't know why. But just as soon as I read that sign, I felt it. A man gestured us into the service that was just concluding there. Men left. We read the account of Jesus washing his disciples' feet sitting on benches in the back of the church. The father patiently waited, apparently (I wasn't sure what he was up to), and then left too when we were done. "Not my feet only but my hands and my head also." It is so cool to reconsider every single story in light of a physical reality, the physical reality of the place where all of it happened.

Too cool.

Well I must go, but I rather wish that all of you could come.

Love,

Bentley