The Wailing Wall

Looking back at a wonderful part of our pre-COVID travels…

Pilgrim on a Long, Long Journey

It’s been called the Wailing Wall or the Western Wall. For about 50 years I believed it was the remaining western wall of the 2nd Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple was rebuilt by King Herod in 37 B.C., hundreds of years after the destruction of Solomon’s Temple by Nebuchadnezzar’s forces. However when the Temple was destroyed in its entirety by the Romans in 70 AD, there was not a stone left standing of the building itself. That was the nature of their warfare, nothing left to chance.

This year, in the first two months of April my spouse and I toured Israel. The guide noted that the Wailing Wall was a retaining wall. In other words with the quite, hilly city that is Jerusalem the original Temple building sat on a high hill. It then had a courtyard. At the western end of the courtyard securing the soil on that…

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A Little Good

“It seems to me like stealing, for men and women to live in the world and do nothing to make it better.” Sarah Orne Jewett, the late American novelist.

I like to think most of us will leave the world a better place for having lived here. It is a place of great beauty and eye-popping horrors. Yet, somehow, by the grace of God, goodness survives in a world of hurt.

By a twist of fate, you and I are both survivors. Our forebears survived to childbearing age. Some of them left their homelands before massacres, purges, and/or mass murder. 

You and I have made it to this point through the COVID-19 crisis that has taken over 1,000,000 American lives, many more worldwide. Let’s listen to what Lincoln called our better angels and act on their advice.