Today's itinerary ended up being changed at the last minute! Today - Friday - is the last day of the Muslim Holy Month of Ramadan, and over 400,000 Muslims headed for the Temple Mount to celebrate the last Holy Day of this profound time. As a consequence, most streets around the Old City were closed to vehicle traffic because the Israeli authorities wanted to make sure there was no trouble. There were armed Israeli police everywhere, and we simply would not have had access to the sites we intended.

So we learned something important for our faith - what Jerusalem was like at Passover in Jesus' time. In the first century Jerusalem's population was about 30,000. At Passover (and the other two festivals, Pentecost and Booths) upwards of 150,000 pilgrims showed up. So did a couple of Roman cohorts - about 500 men in full battle armor - to keep the peace. And the Roman Governor, of course - and the message? "Don't mess with us". Seeing the same message sent 2,000 years later was enough to give some of us goose-bumps! And tomorrow, when we walk from the Mount of Olives down to Gethsemane - reminiscent of Palm Sunday with it's peace-based counter-procession by Jesus to the "Don't mess with us" war procession of Pilate - we will remember.

So this was a gift to us - irritating, but informative.

So what did we do? We went to visit places outside of Jerusalem. We visited the cave in which John the Baptist was said to have been born.

















We visited Bethlehem itself, and another cave, the cave where Jesus was said to have been born.

In that process we had some wonderful encounters - each involving singing. The Franciscan chapel at the Shepherds' Field wasl designed to resemble the shepherds' tent and has wonderful acoustics. And so we sang! We sang "Silent Night". Another group - from Puerto Rico - came in as we were singing, and when we were done they began singing "Silent Night" in Spanish. Gradually our group began humming along - a profound and moving experience of Christian fellowship.

And - of course - we went into the cave below the Church! Caves, as we are discovering, are really central to our faith.














From there we went to Bethlehem proper, and Manger Square, to visit the Church(es) of the Nativity. Like many sites in the Holy Land there are actually two Churches attached to each other - Eastern and Western rite Churches (or, to put it another way, Orthodox and Roman Catholic).














Both churches share the Cave below each which, it has been claimed from the 4th Century, is the birth site of Jesus.














Once again we sang carols in the cave, and once again another group - this time Russian Christians - responded with another.

So the overwhelming feeling of this day was ecumenical - of Christians coming together from all over the world and celebrating our common faith - what a joy.