Everybody's crazy

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4/25/10

“The word of the LORD which came to Jeremiah the prophet against the Gentiles;”

- Jeremiah 46:1

I visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher yesterday.
Yes, like any good Jew in Israel, I went to church.
My non-Jewish friends from New York are in town this week, so my wife and I showed them around Jerusalem… and the coolest play that’s also free and open on Saturday and interesting to Gentiles—a church!
They’d already seen the Western Wall…

First of all—The Church of the Holy Sepulcher covers the spots where (get ready): Jesus was crucified, removed from the cross and placed on a slab and prepared for burial (called the Stone of Unction… what’s your function?), the cave in which his body was placed, and of course… the place from which he ascended to heaven.

Wow! That’s a lot of stuff for one spot! I’ve said it before: It’s a microcosm of Jerusalem. There are literally thousands of miles of dirt on this planet, why did three major religions have to choose ONE CITY for their most important events!
Thank you, Hindus, for keeping clear of the Middle East.
One less head ache.
Okay, so we explored the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
First thing I noticed—in the wooden frame surrounding the cave in which Jesus purportedly (great word) disappeared and then rose to heaven… in that wooden frame—people have stuffed notes and bits of paper. I assume they are prayers. Which tickles me to no end!
I mean… they are CLEARLY ripping off the mystique of the Western Wall! But we Jews are CLEARLY smarter. I mean, if a big, bad wolf comes along and huffs and puffs… the Jews’ notes will stay put in the Western Wall, but the Christians’ notes’ will be blown down in the wooden surroundings in the Church of the Holy (as one dumb American tourist I heard called it) “Spectacle.”
But we did get to watch a traditional Christian ceremony… I couldn’t tell you what it was, maybe Greek Orthodox or Armenian… but they bowed all the way to the ground… which reminded me of my tour guide in Cairo, Egypt. I told him that several men had dirt on their forehead. He said, “It’s because they are muslim and pray five times a day, and when they pray they bow their heads to the ground, so it’s a way of showing people how religious and pious they are.”
Interesting.
Reminded me of high school—I attended an all Jewish high school, most of the boys wore kippot all day long, and once a year a few Catholic teachers came to school with “shmutz” on their foreheads… for Ash Wednesday. People like to declare their religious beliefs.
Everywhere. Regardless of religion. People are proud of what they believe. As well they should be. But we get into trouble when we start saying, “EVERYONE should believe what I believe!”
But, as a Swedish tourist told my wife in a youth hostel in Eilat last month, “If you think what you believe is right, wouldn’t you want EVERYONE to believe the same thing, too?”
Touché, Swedish tourist.
But that is one of the best things about the United States:
Everyone is allowed to believe whatever they want, as long as they don’t infringe on anyone else to believe their own crazy ideas.
A dude was nailed to some wood and then rose from the dead and so we eat crackers and wine … and THAT’S religion????
A dude received a couple pieces of stone on a mountain and thousands wandered the desert, then settled in the Middle East … and THAT’S a religion????
Vishnu has six arms and an elephant head… and THAT’S a religion?
Mormonism???

It’s all nuts! But guess what… that’s OUR PEROGATIVE!
Leave everyone to his/her own devices, and as long as they don’t bother anyone else, so be it!
And if they HELP other people, THAT is the best thing about religion.

“Come on People now, Smile on your brother, Everybody get together and love one another right now”
-The Youngbloods, 1967
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