Postcard from Jerusalem, IV

I remember that the very first book I read in college was perhaps the most difficult book I had ever read in my life up to those 18 years of living. At June Orientation, as I signed up for classes for that upcoming autumn, effervescent Heidi—a June Orientation volunteer, and soon to be an idol of mine—mandated that I take this course from Dr. Walter Eisenbeis, a well-known and beloved elder statesman professor at Denison. The course was called “Thinking, Believing, and Understanding,” and it would be one of those courses you remember forever. It made you think. (Duh! The first word of the course title alone screamed that!!)

So the first book in college was a slender volume under 200 pages entitled The Idea of the Holy. Eventually it struck sparks. At first, I didn’t know what was going on though. As I followed my assignment, this author, Rudolf Otto, spun out fancies about what the concept of ‘holy’ meant. I wasn’t sure what was going on. It had no real narrative, and as far as I could tell, it had no facts. It was obvious to the tender, callow college student that I was that this was not a casual or quick read. As we began discussing it in class (Umm, how do you take notes about a non-narrative, non-factual tour of the ineffable???) I started—just started—to get a grip that Otto was attempting to think about, wonder about, and understand what ‘holy’ meant. As 18 year-olds we were supposed to chew on this sinewy theology.

As that long week of discussions went by, I gathered that one was supposed to think, and devise, one’s own understanding of what ‘holy’ was. Good heavens! And then we had to write a paper about it? There was no beginning, middle or end really. Slowly it dawned on me that Otto embarked on a paradoxical task of describing the incomprehensible qualities of God. (Of course when had I ever had to wrestle with such thoughts before?) Rudolf Otto created the word “numinous” to stand for the sense of a divine presence that is hidden and operates beyond rational understanding. Otto also coined the term “mysterium tremendum” as he examined the emotional responses—the awe and the dread—of humans as we encounter God in his holiness. I remember that Otto didn't reject the rational, though. Without rationality, he says, we can’t have belief, only feelings. In his view of religion, the rational and non-rational interpenetrate each other like the warp and woof of a fabric, which can't be separated without destroying the very garment it makes. He points out several times that fully understanding the non-rational conception of god deepens our rational religious ideas.

I haven’t re-read that book in the 25 years since I was that tender, callow freshman, but Dr. Eisenbeis’ entire course has never quite left me. I have said that it was the first course that really made me think, and it humbled me, before it allowed me to “conquer” it. The themes of Rudolf Otto’s book coursed through my brain during that trip to Jerusalem a few weeks ago. It was as if I finally understood what those phrases, “mysterium tremendum” and “numinous” might mean—and I had to create my own understanding. Here is a line I read from an Arab scholar—the line was on the wall of my hotel in East Jerusalem:

In you is my Paradise and my Hell;
And in you is my reward and my punishment.
And blessed is he who visits you!
Again, blessed is he who visits you!
--Al Fazari, early 14th century from
“The Book of Arousing Souls”

The ultimate Jerusalem walking tour is, of course, the Via Dolorosa, or “Way of Sorrows,” the route that is believed to trace Jesus Christ’s path as he carried his cross to his crucifixion. Over the many centuries, Christian pilgrims have journeyed past the “Fourteen Stations of the Cross” to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to see the golden socket that held Christ’s cross, the crypt where he was laid, the stone where his body was anointed, and the tomb from which he triumphed.

It is a walk that is easily done on one’s own, but it is much more interesting to follow a group of pilgrims, many of whom carry actual crosses, struggling to understand that holy journey. Each of the fourteen stops is marked by something that happened on Jesus’ walk (receiving the cross, or stopping to mop his brow, lean on the wall of a shop) and it is indeed interesting to walk behind a group and sense their desire to re-create this walk of sorrow. The last five of the stops are inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

While the Dome of the Rock glistens and the Western Wall wails, the holiest Christian site in the Old City passes in quiet, somber-like reflection on the last hours of Jesus. For the past 16 centuries (again, thanks to Helen who identified so many of these holy sites) pilgrims have arrived at this spot from every corner of the globe, and while it may not look particularly regal, the pilgrims’ tears, laments and prayers have sanctified this spot.

It is a little strange since it is said that Jesus was crucified outside the city, but in the 2000 years since, Jerusalem has evolved, this once-empty plot known as the “place of the skull” was eventually incorporated into the city.

As a white-bread Protestant from the mid-west, I didn’t see anyone who looked like me inside this Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I saw plenty of people however—it was a United Nations-esque pilgrimage site. I saw Serbian orthodox monks and Ethiopian monks and a group from somewhere in Latin America and a group from Southeast Asia, et cetera. I made my way to a corner so I could take it all in and watch the reactions to this annointedly holy place.

The 10th station of the cross is at the rock where it is said that Jesus was stripped of his garments. The 11th station of the cross is at the place where it is said that Jesus was nailed to the cross. The 12th station of the cross is at the spot where it is said that Jesus died on the cross. The 13th station of the cross is on the rock where it is said that Jesus’ body was taken from the cross. And the 14th station of the cross is at the place where it is said that Jesus was laid in the Holy Sepulchre.

The pilgrim groups, attended by the many costumed nuns and monks and priests, seemed to feel the numinous quality that Rudolf Otto had described.

I wasn’t sure what I thought about it. I loved being in this place and taking in the worship and devotion. But as that self-declared white-bread Protestant from the mid-west, we don’t put the same stock into each cleft of a rock and supposed historic spot. In fact, one of the most marvelous insights I enjoyed during that long ago class with Dr. Eisenbeis was his challenge about bible stories. Do they need to be real in order for you to believe? What if they were myths? He didn’t pose those questions until we had a couple of those Otto-like books under our belts, but the questions soared like rockets in the classroom of Knapp Hall. Yeah, what do we? What if? Do the actual spots provide the basis for our faith? Do they enhance the faith?

It was clear that for these pilgrims they were on holy ground. It was a verifiable fact for them as they kissed the rock, spied the earth, touched the hollow, and felt the doorway. But this tour allowed me, traveling alone, to wonder about holy ground, and what made a place holy. It could be in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, but maybe it could also be on the stage at Charlotte Latin School or Hackley, or in that classroom discussing a Vermeer or John Locke passage, or in the kitchen at 2460 as we four reminisced.

My trip to Jerusalem took me back—thousands of years to Abraham’s path, and also 25 years to Denison, and also home to that white house on the hill in Cincinnati—and points in between.

When I first encountered Jerusalem I dwelled on the tension I felt. But maybe ‘tension’ is too facile a word. I think what Jerusalem became for me was a sense of hunger.

There are as many different ways to be hungry as there are people reading blogs on the internet. There is a hunger for love, for acceptance, for more land, for more money, more trophies, hunger for a better job, for a better body. There’s that hunger for forgiveness, for acceptance, for finding a holy place.

But underneath them all, when you get down to the bottom of the hunger, when you get down to the bottom of Jerusalem, isn’t it always a hunger for God? A hunger to stand face to face with God, a hunger for God not to look away, a hunger to hear those words: “I love you! You are my delight. You are my beloved.” That is at the core of Jerusalem, as I understand it.

The sources of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim attachment to Jerusalem are deep and complex. The centrality of Jerusalem in Jewish life is reflected in the vow uttered by Jews on religious occasions: "Next year in Jerusalem.”


If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand wither.
May my tongue stick to my palate
If I do not remember you,
If I do not exalt Jerusalem
beyond all my delights.
--Psalm 137:5-6