Shabbat Shalom!

I'm not going to lie, this whole church-on-Saturdays business is really weird. I called home tonight (morning at home) expecting everybody to be getting ready for church... and then I remembered. Bizarre. :P

It's been pretty busy the last couple days. We went to the Western Wall last night (known also as the Kotel, or the Wailing Wall), and it was... well, it was an adventure. Before we went, we had a little orientation with one of our professors who told us to wear scarfs over our heads as a sign of respect, assuring us that we wouldn't stand out as much that way. Well, we don't want to stand out, right? Luckily, almost all of us have bought beautiful, bright colored scarfs in the city at some point, so we covered our heads and off we went. We all walked into the women's worship area together (they divide the men from the women when you go to the wall), and we soon noticed that we were some of the only people with our heads covered. We were also basically the only ones wearing jeans and t-shirts--most people were dressed in Sunday clothes, and almost everybody was wearing black. Hmm. Eventually a lady came up to us and asked us if we were married. Looking at each other, we agreed that we definitely were not (yet). The lady proceeded to tell us that only married women cover their hair here, and we would blend in much better if we took them off. Oops. We later found out from another lady that only Muslim women tie their scarfs in the front--Jewish women tie them in the back. Well, we've only seen the Muslim women wearing them in the city, so all of us had tied them in the front. To put it in the words of one of the ladies who approached us: "I wondered what all of these married American Muslim women in brightly-colored scarfs were doing at a Jewish holy site on the evening of Shabbat." So much for fitting in.

It was quite the experience, though. There's really not a lot of wailing going on, so it's kind of a misnomer. Instead there was a lot of dancing and singing. Well, there was dancing and singing on the men's side, at least--the women were a bit more somber. Apparently it's some Jewish law that women can't sing louder than men because women are holy and pure and men are basically animals, so being rowdier than the men distracts them from trying to think holy thoughts. We were able to dance and sing on the plaza above the wall, though, so we got a group of Jewish girls traveling to Australia to teach us a song. So, even though I think the guys had more fun than the girls (seriously, I saw some of them on top of each other's shoulders dancing around in their worship area!), it was still really neat. We're going this Wednesday as a group to go through the Kotel Tunnels that run underground along the Western Wall (because it goes pretty deep), so that'll be cool, too.

Today I went to the Garden of Gethsemane. I think it's probably my favorite place I've been so far. A lot of holy sites are stuffed with tourists and topped by gargantuan churches, like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Even though I don't really think that's where Golgotha is or that that's where Christ was buried, I don't understand why you would take that hill and build a huge, gaudy chapel over it. I understand the need to mark holy places so they're not forgotten (it's the reason Constantine's mother was brought over to find the holy spots in the first place--because they were starting to pass out of memory), but I don't see the need to entirely cover them. Gethsemane's different, though. Next to it is the Church of All Nations, which is actually relatively small and understated, but still very beautiful. The garden was a little smaller than I thought it would be, and it's not kept or landscaped in quite the way I would do it, but I really appreciated its simplicity. There's also a private part of the garden that you can go to (if you're willing to pay, of course) that looks a lot more like what I always imagined, and we're planning on paying for that next time. It's a little more quiet and secluded, too, since the main garden that everybody can walk through is right next to a road and is pretty noisy.

Still, sitting in the main garden, it's easy enough to block everything out. I think most of the Christian world doesn't quite recognize the significance of what occurred in Gethsemane, so it wasn't full of tourists, or incense-bearing priests. In fact, for most of the time it was only us BYU students and the gardener there. We sang some hymns together, took a couple pictures, then separated to read scriptures, write in our journals, and think. It was a great way to spend a shabbat afternoon, and I can't wait to go back, though I think we're actually doing the Garden Tomb as a group next week. Not that I'm complaining, of course--I'd like to see that place, too :)

So I really am kind of curious about how many people are reading this thing, since I've pretty much lost track of everyone who's been given the link. Do you think we could do a roll call or something? Just leave a quick little comment or something--I'd like to know who I'm talking too :)

Well, even though it's over here, the sun shouldn't have set where you are yet, so shabbat shalom! Have a peaceful Sabbath, and laila tov (good night).