{"id":1164,"date":"2024-01-01T17:29:21","date_gmt":"2024-01-01T22:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/?p=1164"},"modified":"2024-01-01T17:29:47","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T22:29:47","slug":"its-complicated-in-nazareth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/2024\/01\/its-complicated-in-nazareth\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Complicated"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

On News Year\u2019s Day everything seems simple \u2013 what could be simpler than 01\/01 \u2013 but in fact \u201cit\u2019s complicated.<\/strong>\u201d\u00a0 Full disclosure.\u00a0 I have not seen the movie, and when I use the phrase I mean something more than rom-com tropes.<\/p>\n

I mean that no slates have been wiped clean, no pages have been turned; what was true yesterday is true today.\u00a0 and what was true centuries ago is still true, driven home to me nearly a year ago.<\/p>\n

Now, When Was I?<\/h3>\n In my last post, I was in Nazareth if you recall; a place that is nothing like it was 2000 years ago and yet is a witness to that time and more.\u00a0 If ever there was a place where the saying \u201cIt\u2019s Complicated\u201d applies it is there.\u00a0 So let me tell you more about my brief stay:<\/p>\n I was told this is the largest Arab city in Israel, the population of which is 75,000.\u00a0 Arab usually means Muslim but also Christian.\u00a0 The oldest Christian communities are Arab, and by Arab I mean Palestinian, which signifies those who were, or trace themselves to, the non Jewish residents prior to Israeli independence.<\/p>\n Being in a place where Arabic is the language, where the culture is Arabic as well, I can begin to imagine how complicated, and how hard it is, to be the minority in a land where you and your ancestors have lived for centuries.\u00a0 I think of my New Mexican brother-in-law whose surname is Spanish and whose ancestry is Spanish and Navajo, whose ancestors lived here before it was US, or Mexican.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s Complicated<\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0 Way complicated.<\/p>\n Faithful are the Wounds<\/h3>\n Those words from Proverbs are enigmatic and prophetic.\u00a0 However much I believe Israel must exist, because its history is one long tale of tolerance turned to resentment turned to persecution turned to expulsion turned to extinction, I cannot then deny the pain and loss to those displaced by the war that was the price of Israeli existence.\u00a0 In my search for my supper the night before, I passed a wall painted to remind visitors (it was all in English, not Arabic or Hebrew) of the Nakba and further pains.\u00a0 Boy is it complicated<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The next morning, a young woman at the hostel desk, who has lived in several US locations but is native to Nazareth, gave me advice on where to explore today.\u00a0 My Fodor\u2019s was not as complete.\u00a0 She was only shy when asked about life for her and her people in Israel.<\/p>\n It\u2019s All Downhill from Here<\/h3>\n Retracing my evening walk, I went to St. George\u2019s Orthodox Church of the Annunciation<\/a>, where those Xmas decorations were.\u00a0 Recalling other old churches in Istanbul and Italy, you step down not because that is the plan but because older buildings were literally lower than newer ones.\u00a0 Each is built over and around the previous one.<\/p>\n The stones around the entry door are carved with \u2018kilroys\u2019 dating back decades.\u00a0 A table with burning tapers is right inside, along with a sexton who is in charge of maintaining quiet and preventing indecent clothes from coming in.\u00a0 When I sat in a pew and crossed my legs he was cross at me and signaled to uncross.<\/p>\n A group of American Protestants occupied the lower vaulted level where Mary was visited by Garbriel.\u00a0 The group begins to chatter after the preacher concludes and the sexton all but bellows, \u201cSilence.\u201d\u00a0 And he got it. Once they left there was room to go down into the low vault with an iron fence protecting an illuminated grotto which I gather is \u2018the spot.\u2019<\/p>\n Forgive my scare quotes<\/h3>\n******** ** All claims to know where ancient events took place need to be taken with a grain or two of salt.\u00a0 Most of those claims date from centuries after the event.<\/p>\n ** Our own \u2018Plymouth Rock\u2019 rests on the story conveyed by oral tradition, that began with a 94 year old man whose grandfather came on a subsequent voyage than the Mayflower, and was told that was where the Mayflower landed.\u00a0 Imagine similar reports in days before printing.\u00a0 Yep, complicated.<\/strong><\/p>\n ** ********Another fellow, also waiting for the reverent crowd to leave, came into the vault when I did and all but washed himself in water from a large tin that I presumed was collected from the spring underneath.\u00a0 I rinsed my hands as well, a gesture of respect more than piety, and went back outside.<\/p>\n Mary, Mary Quite Contrary<\/h3>\n******** ** ********I now headed to another site of the visitation (there are in fact three in town) this one having the best historic claim based mostly on location than records.\u00a0 That would be the Catholic one. The two are separated by no more than a quarter of a mile.\u00a0 However, they are widely separated in time.<\/p>\n But first I went past the site called Mary\u2019s well<\/a>. This is a public fountain, and at some point was a bathhouse. That turned out to be more accurate than they knew. Underneath this area, as recorded and reported elsewhere, are the ruins of a Roman era bathhouse. Today, it is a small town square, but the well has dried up apparently, because the taps are not running.<\/p>\n From here, I walked toward the Franciscan Basilica of the annunciation, which took me beside an old small Muslim cemetery.<\/p>\n I can never resist visiting a cemetery and spent a good 20 minutes wandering among the graves.\u00a0 In Islamic tradition the above ground part forms a flower bed.\u00a0 Being on a steep hill, the graves form terraces and warrens not unlike the houses.\u00a0 Plants spill out into the narrow concrete paths.<\/p>\n Back onto the street, I pass a spice merchant the desk woman noted.\u00a0 What would I want with spices, though, except to enjoy the heady aromas wafting out?\u00a0 Workshops are along the way: women\u2019s clothing, hardware, metalware.\u00a0 This is not the tourist area.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the Church, there\u2019s the Synagogue?<\/h3>\n********** ** I detour again due to the recommendation of the woman at the hostel, to the \u201csynagogue church\u201d supposedly where Jesus read from Isaiah and pronounce that the prophet\u2019s vision was fulfilled.\u00a0 That stirred things up a bit if you remember the story.<\/p>\n ** Is it the place?\u00a0 It\u2019s complicated<\/strong>.\u00a0 Nothing of first century Nazareth exists today except claims and stones.\u00a0 I nonetheless went in and found a Melkite Catholic Church that was closed, but the \u2018synagogue\u2019 open.\u00a0 Plainer than the one I visited earlier, there was just an altar behind which was a mosaic of Jesus preaching in the synagogue.<\/p>\n ** **********I sat for a while in the quiet, appreciating all that I could not know, until a little American family of three came in and so let them have their moment.<\/p>\n Simply Complicated<\/h3>\n********** ** **********Nazareth was Islamic for centuries, Christian before that.\u00a0 Before that it was Jewish.\u00a0 In 1948 Nazareth was a majority Christian town, but is now majority Islamic because so many Arabs in the Galilee were displaced and made their way to Nazareth, which is what made it a large city.<\/p>\n The narrow and crooked streets visually express the serpentine history that has wound through this town.\u00a0 Down on Paulus Hashishi Street, which I mentioned last time<\/a>,\u00a0 Russian signs lure pilgrims to buy tchotchkes.\u00a0 Turkish invites people to eat humus and cimit, and always with Hebrew and often with English available.\u00a0 In Nazareth everything is complicated<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On News Year\u2019s Day everything seems simple \u2013 what could be simpler than 01\/01 \u2013 but in fact \u201cit\u2019s complicated.\u201d\u00a0 Full disclosure.\u00a0 I have not seen the movie, and when I use the phrase I mean something more than rom-com tropes. I mean that no slates have been wiped clean, no pages have been turned; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4842,"featured_media":48,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,9],"class_list":["post-1164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-nazareth","tag-new-year"],"yoast_head":"\nIt's Complicated<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In Nazareth, Fred experiences the complicated truth of history, where different stories lie atop each other and even collide.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/2024\/01\/its-complicated-in-nazareth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It's Complicated\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In Nazareth, Fred experiences the complicated truth of history, where different stories lie atop each other and even collide.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/2024\/01\/its-complicated-in-nazareth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pilgrim Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/fred.wooden.5\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-01-01T22:29:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-01-01T22:29:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1635\/2022\/11\/pilgrimlife_HS.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Wooden\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Wooden\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/2024\/01\/its-complicated-in-nazareth\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/2024\/01\/its-complicated-in-nazareth\/\",\"name\":\"It's Complicated\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2024-01-01T22:29:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-01-01T22:29:47+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/#\/schema\/person\/2828d1f03cbf1d49cd7aa4cb0ebfdda2\"},\"description\":\"In Nazareth, Fred experiences the complicated truth of history, where different stories lie atop each other and even collide.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/2024\/01\/its-complicated-in-nazareth\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/2024\/01\/its-complicated-in-nazareth\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/2024\/01\/its-complicated-in-nazareth\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"It’s Complicated\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/\",\"name\":\"Pilgrim Life\",\"description\":\"Follow Fred through time and place as a literal and figurative pilgrim who finds wisdom in failure and beauty in confusion.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pilgrimlife\/#\/schema\/person\/2828d1f03cbf1d49cd7aa4cb0ebfdda2\",\"name\":\"Fred Wooden\",\"description\":\"Fred (technically Weldon Frederick) Wooden is a late life author, because he spent over forty years as a clergyman in six churches spread over five states. 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