Water and stone

We arrived in Tel Aviv ten days ago, jet-lagged and weary. We drove to Caesarea Martime. And walked into wind, sun, stone ruins of Herod the Great's palace, and the wind-whipped Meditterenean. Waves washing around rocks and ruins. Carved stone. Cut stone. Cisterns and channels for fresh water, and magnificent ways to delight in the sea.

Little did I know how the motifs of stone and water would shape my journey. I picked up rocks from almost every place we visited. I have as yet unidentified pictures of hills and mountains and valleys, the big rocks. And the Mediterranean, the Sea of Galilee, the springs and cisterns and wells and channels and dried streambeds and mud and waterfalls and the Dead Sea.
These formed people's across time. Stones for housing and streets, palaces and shrines, terraces and memorials. . . For stoning and battering and keeping people apart.  Water for survival, for ritual baths, for delight. . . And floods and storms and pitched battles over access to water.
Visible geological strata, showing how earthquakes and glaciers and volcanos shaped the foundations of many layers of civilization.  Pockets of green on brown earth, suggesting a spring.  I pick up sandstone in Caesarea Martime,  volcanic rock at Chorazin, pebbles and tiny shells from the Sea of Gaillee's beaches, a pale rock with red lines from Megiddo,  a red rock from Masada, salt from the Dead Sea, limestone from the streets of Jerusalem.

I've been marking myself with holy water more than I ever have before. Of course, I have rarely been in so many churches in so few days, but isn't usually my practice.  I'm seeking renewal, and transformation, and I understand the gift of water in the desert more profoundly than ever. The Spirit of God moves across the waters.  The church of the Visitation, in Ein Karem, the Judean countryside, had mosaics of seahorses and jellyfish and sea stars! Fish are all over too.

The Via Dolorosa with stone steps worn smooth led to carved stone churches and, in the Holy Sepulcher, caves that ended for me with dirt of the floor, the disintegration of stone, obliteration, death. . . And began again with holy water, sun in the church courtyard, a water bottle, prayer and a song.  Then a visit to the well at Samaria--Jacob's and Rachel's and the woman who told her village all that Jesus had done.

All of creation groans in travail--I see centuries of interaction between stones and water and humans and plants and animals to create, with God, weal and woe. And the marks of  civilization for thousands of years are layered in the dirt, and present day peoples pay more attention to how to conserve water and talk around water coolers and live into the water of eternal life, gushing and sustaining and renewing the face of the earth.
Allison