Faith

The trouble with the Truth is you don’t hear it all that often and when you do you don’t believe it. Most people hope Truth will hit them smack in the head like a mallet. Rarely is it like that. More often Truth pokes its head up from a swirling ocean of lies only to be swamped once more by huge waves of untruths generated by self-interest and fear. So in the end Truth settles for a comfortable compromise between distorted fact and personal opinion. It may not be the truth but on a good day personal opinion maybe as comforting as a blanket during a horror movie. All of us have personal opinions. Most of my opinions are spot on. Unfortunately most of yours are bullshit but I’m a tolerant man. 1

There have been wonderful examples of Truth waging a pitched battled with personal opinion and coming off second best. Bill Clinton springs to mind. Splitting straws between sex and a blowjob must have had couples arguing all over the world. I for one have never heard of a platonic relationship that involves giving head. Of course it is just my opinion though you could maybe use it as a guide when facing some tricky moral dilemmas of your own.2

There is always an opinion and whoever has it will always believe they hold it with the Truth. I heard once that my ninety-year-old neighbor was having an affair with the ninety seven-year-old man from across the road. Having pooh-poohed the rumor out of hand I watched the old girl one day as she slowly crossed the road, plastic hips and frame, over to his house. He was mowing his lawns in brief running shorts hitched up to his neck seemingly oblivious of his grizzled testicles being strangled to death as they poked out the side. She eventually made her way to him, shot an arthritic claw up the inside of his leg and gave his foliage a quick rearrangement much to their mutual amusement. I on the other hand wanted to vomit. 3

The Via Dolorosa, Walk of Sorrow, is the 14 stations of Christ’s last walk from judgement, wandering, stumbling under the weight of the cross, nailed to the woodwork then killed and chucked in the crypt. This walk to Christians is a pilgrimage like herding around Mecca for the Muslims. The Way of the Cross is not meant to be a work of learning. It’s a devotional exercise, by which men and women can use to make contact with God and that is exactly what the very devoted do. Pilgrims wander down narrow alleyways of Jerusalem in a near state of out of body experience to adore Him, to thank Him, to increase their love for Him. Taking on the sufferings of Christ is a particularly favourite. Faith; that’s all you need! For starters you don’t have to believe Christ actually went along this exact route to his death which is just as well as the real path is estimated to be about atleast ten feet below the current streets. 4

These fourteen stations are significant moments in Jesus’ version of ‘dead man walking’. These include starting out along the cobbled road at the Antonia Fortress, close enough to where Pilate judged Christ. Station two is the Franciscan Flagellation Friary. As the Roman soldiers whipped Christ so too did the Franciscans think it a good idea to give themselves a good flogging and built a little chapel for their “Thrashfest.”  From there a pilgrim passes under the "Ecce Homo" Arch where Christ stumbled, fell to the ground, up again thanks to a heavy reminder from a Roman soldier’s whip that there was still a way to go. Jesus eventually caught up with his obviously distraught mum as she looked at his hernia producing cross,5

“How are you doing son?” 6

“Not that well Mum but thanks for asking?”7

Simon from Cyrene helping Christ when he stumbled and Veronica wiping the brow of Christ as it naturally was getting a bit tough at times dragging an enormous cross down the road. At nearly every station along this walk there appears a small chapel, usually built by the Franciscans devoted to these small but significant moments. There are scrawls of graffiti over these ancient walls while nearby a vendor is selling religious icons to the passing traffic. By the time you get to the seventh station you are actually in a market place of Old Jerusalem amongst Jewish, Moslem and Christian traders alike. You can buy a crucified Jesus from any one them. At the eighth station there is a stone embedded in the wall of the Greek Monastery of Saint Haralambos that has a Latin cross and in Greek the words "Jesus-Christ conquers.” To those who are sceptical it was difficult to believe Christ was in any conquering mood by this stage of the walk. Priests, nuns and devotees alike line up at this spot reflecting on the passion of the Lord while some Arabic kid tried to sell me some beads. There was one thing we had in common with the walk of Christ. Jerusalem is still wall-to-wall soldiers. It must be one of the most heavily guarded and patrolled areas on the face of the earth and it is almost impossible to walk twenty metres without bumping into another UZI rifle. Personally I don’t know how the pilgrims can concentrate as it starts getting busier than Time Square on New Year’s Eve. At every station I could hear someone uttering, 8

“We adore Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, and bless Thee because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.” 9

I was distracted only by the half price bargain of the Pope on a rope Holy Redeemer soap. The ninth Station is home to Ethiopian monks. Most seem to be sitting on the steps, bored shitless waiting for you to come by or waiting for the port cabinet to open. 10

Now the next phase of this journey was my fault… and Hollywood’s. 11

I was raised on the sight of Ben Hur and watching Christ stuck up there on a wind swept hill, finally dying and setting off an earthquake. I turned the corner thinking I was going to see a hill with maybe a plaque on it. “This is the spot!” I wasn’t expecting to see the Church of the Holy Sepulcher owned by the Greek orthodox, tenanted by the Catholics and visited by everybody. Making my way up the stairs as 12

“We adore Thee, O Lord Jesus…” was now hitting a fever pitch by those around me I was shocked to discover that Christ was crucified on the first floor of the Church…twice. He was nailed once on the Catholic side and again on the orthodox side, which looks like a lantern stall in the market place. The old orthodox priest, lifting up a piece of cloth to reveal the earth below, explained that the crack in the rock was from the earthquake when Jesus died. True faith would have you in absolute raptures over that. True cynics on the other hand may leap to an entirely different conclusion. So Christ was taken from the mosaics, candles, lanterns and incense of the first floor downstairs to the crypt or Holy Sepulcher, which is smack in the middle of this church. Every nook and cranny in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is dedicated to something. Chapel of the Franks, dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows and Saint John, Chapel of the Nailing to the Cross, Chapel Stabat Mater, Altar of the Crucifixion, Chapel of Derision, Chapel of The Division of The Holy Robes, Chapel of St. Helena, The Place of The Cross Finding, The Chapel of Adam, The Chapel of Angel, etc, etc… 13

After Christ was crucified his body was anointed on the way to the Holy Sepulcher. His body was laid out on the Stone of the Unction.  Bought up in the Sunday school lessons of St.David’s I was under the impression that Christ was covered head to toe in cloth and put into a cave. There he stayed for three days unable to leave because there was a huge boulder blocking the front door and the small problem of being dead. This boulder was considerable so I was taken aback to discover its now the size of a shot put sitting in a glass case in front of Christ’s tomb, preventing any more shrinkage from the billions of devoted kisses its received over the years. I stood in a long queue waiting to get into the Aedicula and see Christ’s tomb with all the other pilgrims, mainly priests, nuns and the loud American tourists in front of me who were having a slight difference of opinion as they shuffled closer to the entrance of the crypt.14

“This is a whole lot of crap!” whispered the husband in a deafening roar almost as loud as his Hawaiian shirt. His wife cringed,15

“Oh Harry you are embarrassing us!”16

“Jesus this must be a money spinner!”17

“Harry don’t use that language.”18

Now the entrance of the crypt is built so that you have to just about be the size of a hobbit when you are forced to stoop and squeeze in through the tiny entrance. Once in the natural reaction is to straighten up causing many a pilgrim to be smacked in the head by a dangling Orthodox lantern. After the Franciscans had thrashed themselves to a near stupor, getting a cranium cracker must have been icing on the cake. I think this happened to Harry as I could hear him growling from inside the crypt,19

“Jesus Christ!”20

“Oh Harry how could you be so embarrassing?”21

“God woman! I think I’ve got concussion!”22

“That’s no excuse for blasphemy in this of all places!”23

The inside of this crypt is a surreal experience for as garish and golden as the whole thing is you cannot escape the fact that you are surrounded by people who deeply believe. The renovators have gone mad creating something that is so over the top even Jesus would probably blaspheme. A Greek orthodox priest asked for a collection as he indicated where Christ was laid to rest and smiled looking bored and cooped sitting slouched in the corner. The two Americans left the crypt barely married as Harry disgraced himself one more time by first trying to take a photo inside the Holy Sepulcher and then loudly stating to his wife it was more likely the resting place for King Tutankhamun or Liberace than Christ! In a contrast of beliefs with Harry still muttering you could see something like that at Las Vegas and two nuns entered the crypt after me in a state of ecstasy, shedding copious tears of joy as they repeated, 24

“We adore Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, and bless Thee because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.” 25

Faith! It’s a cold world without it and a dangerous place with it. 26

No sooner had I left the Church a man tried to sell me a watch. With a little faith I might have picked a real bargain, snaffling that genuine Rolex for only twenty-five dollars.  27

By David Peter Robertson28