Southern Wall of Temple Mount

Oh go on indulge me, I won't be writing this much longer on account of me not expecting to have daily adventures. Of course I'm still on sabbatical but only till the end of August. What? only a three month sabbatical - says one Israeli academic who's moving to London for his twelve month sabb. What? says the RC Priest from St Anne's: only three months! And so on. It turns out that lots of other jobs and nations do this all the time. Like the Australian Civil service (3 months).

In the Ha'aretz weekend paper (think Guardian) there's a story of a woman arrested for reading from the Torah (first 5 books of the bible) with other women at the Western Wall. She's part of a Women on the Wall prayer group. There's even a court order against women doing this.

Lucy & I walked to the Southern Wall of the Temple Mount. You know the way some people like kissing icons, well this is as equivalently close as it gets for me.

This is exactly where Jesus walked. Another Ground Zero moment only more so. If we're playing Top Trumps then it would beat the Holy Sepulchre. I don't actually kiss the ground, too many pigeons have been here already, but this is it. So we sit and pray and look at the view which is similar and different to Jesus'. (Pic above of Lucy standing on the bedrock step for walking into the Temple in Jesus' day)

Then round to Gethsemane where some pilgrims are singing in Chinese the Taize Bless the Lord my soul. Suddenly the church is empty. We had the place to ourselves and a nice monk who wasn't shooshing us out.

This is a useful picture of what not to do in Church. They don't want flowers left and would rather you didn't cycle about in here. Pic below of Lucy alone in Gethsemane.

Up into the Old City for a posh Fallafel and Schwarma (£9 each). Its gone 5pm, all the Churches are shut except the Holy Sepulchre so in we go and now for the first time in 30days the queue for the Tomb is ok.

Today is a high scoring day for touching Ground Zero places. marvellous.