Praying...and being a tourist

We woke up very early this morning to go, see and pray at the Western Wall. The Western Wall is the still remaining wall of the second Jewish temple, and considered the holiest site for modern Jews. Thursdays are one of the days that boys have bar mitzvah at the wall, so the place was teeming with families and 13 year old boys coming for the ceremony of manhood.

As I went into the the area next to the wall, I was given a yarmulke and went to the wall to pray. At first, I didn't know what to do. There was an orthodox Jewish man next to seeming lost in ecstatic prayer, rocking back and forth, and chanting. I wondered whether I belonged, was this not my faith tradition, and I should just go, what to do...I felt like a tourist! But, then, I saw a tiny slip of paper, with a prayer on it sticking out from the wall in front of me. It said "love to all." Somehow reading that prayer, left by some other visitor, rearranged my inner anxieties and allowed me to submit to the moment. To, in a way, submit to God. I felt the smoothed stones before me, where thousands had prayed before. I could feel the energy of the holy, almost like it pulsated through my fingers, and into my soul. Psalm 33:22 ran through my mind

Let your loving-kindness, O LORD, be upon us, *
as we have put our trust in you.

I then was able to truly pray...I prayed for my family, for my church, for people I know, for peace around the world, peace in this place. And then the sounds around me stopped, and I was just there. My head placed against the stone wall, where thousands had prayed before. I felt so small, yet so loved by God. I left a page of prayers stuck into the wall, into the hands of God's loving kindness.

When I stepped back from the wall, one of my fellow travelers pointed out a dove sitting on the rock above. A sign of the holy spirit and a sign of peace.

And then I was a tourist again, on to another site...another gift store, another place to take a photo.

Later in the day, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the place that marks the place of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, I saw a wall with crosses carved in it. I realized that crosses has been carved into these walls by visitors for almost a thousand years. Pilgrims, tourists...

A friend of mine told me that tourism is about going and seeing, pilgrimage, is about going, seeing and returning changed. How this experience will change me is still to be discovered, but one thing I am sure, my faith will never be the same.