The Background for this Blog.

In the Sacred Heart of the Old City, are found the Western Wall for the Jews and The Dome of the Rock for Muslims.

Greetings!      Salaam!       Shalom!        Peace!

As a little girl, in my 2nd grade Weekly Reader, I learned that there was a new country in the world called Israel, and that it was going to have it's capitol in the Holy City of Jerusalem, that I had seen pictures of in my Bible in Sunday School. But Jerusalem was not only going to be the capitol for the people of Israel, but it would be an International City of Peace, which would welcome all people equally, no matter what their race, religion, nationality, caste or creed. I thought it was such a wonderful idea to have a place like that in the world and I vowed that someday I would "go up to Jerusalem" as Jesus had done so many years ago, and celebrate this wondrous place.

An Ancient Map of the Old City.

By the time I was in 4th grade, I had decided to either become an Egyptologist or a Middle Eastern Scholar, but it wasn't until the summer after my Freshman year in college that I actually took my first airplane trip, which bumped me across the Alps in a thunderstorm and put me down first in Egypt and later in what was then "Trans-Jordan," with its Western border running through the Old City of Jerusalem. I was elated to finally get to the Holy City and walk on streets where Jesus walked. In those days, the Old City of Jerusalem actually looked a lot like the pictures in my Bible, with domes and flat roofs on homes and churches!

However, I was sadly shocked to discover that my vision of Jerusalem as a city for all, somehow had not proven to be what was going on there. I met hundreds of children who lived in squalor in the refugee camps who came running ran to us shouting "Kennedy, Kennedy"–for this was the summer after our beloved US President had been shot, and the people of the Middle East were in deep shock and grief at his loss, since many believed that he would help to change the world (including their situation) for the better. I was dismayed to see how they lived and wondered at the causes and if there was a solution for their plight. But as a young Mid-Western farm girl, never having known either a Jew nor an Arab nor a Muslim, I didn't exactly feel qualified to offer any suggestions. So I just felt sad, and vowed I would return one day to see if I could help find a solution.

The Separation Wall keeps people from meeting one another.

Finally, in the winter of 2003-2004, I returned with 100 other women from around the world on a Women's International Human Rights March, where we assumed that women meeting women, might be helpful. It was a terrible time, with the hopes for the "Oslo Accords Peace Process" in shambles, the 2nd Intifada wending down, and the "Separation Wall" going up across endless miles to keep the people who called themselves "Palestinians" and the people who were then in control of the land, called the Jewish "People of Israel" from having any access to one another. Emotions were running high and many people on both sides had been killed. 

That City of Peace that I had imagined, seemed very far away, indeed.

The homemade meals are delicious!

In the fall of 2011, I had the opportunity to return, once again–this time in training as a Western Tour Guide for a new international initiative called "Abraham's Path" which hoped to create a walking path along the approximate route that Abraham/Ibrahim as the Father of the three monotheistic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) had brought his people out of the "fertile crescent" into the land now called Israel and the West Bank or the Palestinian Territories. On that trek, we walked in Jordan and through the hills and valleys of the West Bank to Jerusalem, with visits to Bethlehem and ended in Hebron (where Abraham and his family members are buried). On this journey, we generally stayed in family homes or monasteries along the way, getting to know the daily lives and stories of the people who so generously hosted us.