From Walmart during the holidays to the Via Dolorosa
This is the first post in a series inspired by a recent pilgrimage to Israel-Palestine.
The holiday shopping season is on! By the time you read this column, we’ll have survived Black Friday, Shop Small Saturday, and Cyber Monday.
Not a fan of crowds and chaos, I didn’t take part in the buying frenzy until Sunday when several needs took my husband, Doug, and me into one of the area’s Big Box stores. Thirty minutes later, after using a bag of birdseed as armor, I collapsed into our pickup, vowing no more weekend shopping until January.
An earlier conversation with a friend about the commercialization of Christmas came back. Not a man of faith, he still bemoaned the season’s apparent loss of meaning. The season is all about dollars and stuff, he declared.
My head nodded in agreement, while also realizing that there’s more to the story.
Earlier this month, I’d also felt the need for armor while walking the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. The route lived up to its name – sorrowful road or way of suffering. The Via Dolorosa runs through the Old City in Jerusalem and is believed to be the path that Jesus walked from Pilate’s judgment to the crucifixion.
Today, 14 Stations of the Cross along the route represent significant events described in the New Testament. Many of the stations are churches such as the Chapel of Condemnation where Jesus was sentenced to death and the Chapel of the Flagellation, where he was beaten by Roman soldiers.
The Via Dolorosa ends at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which includes an area celebrated as Jesus’ tomb.
Pilgrims walking the Via Dolorosa are urged to dress modestly with shoulders and knees covered, especially inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That seems most fitting. The experience should be met with reverence and respect.
Preparing for the pilgrimage, I’d spent time immersed in scripture, research, and prayer. I thought I was ready, but little signs along the way suggested otherwise. Our guide cautioned us about protecting valuables. That made sense; it would be crowded.
Then, she also advised us to be wary of some shopkeepers.
Shopping? On the Via Dolorosa?
Oh, yes! Pilgrims apparently have money to spend and, to say the Via Dolorosa has been commercialized, would be an understatement of significant proportions.
When one vendor jumped in front of me, waving scarves, and suggesting I could have five for $20 U.S. dollars, then, when I shook my head, five for $10, I knew this reverential experience was going to take a different shape from any I’d imagined.
Distractions are many along the Via Dolorosa. You can buy scarves – lots of them, many beautiful. There’s also jewelry, leather goods, woven rugs and bags, olive wood products, cheap T-shirts, and trinkets of all kinds. Vendors will eagerly sell you fresh pomegranate juice or tasty Jerusalem bread. (Both get a double-thumbs-up.) And, if your stomach rumbles and you want a full meal, there’s no shortage of options.
The shoving and pushing doesn’t always end inside the churches. Just like when lines form outside a retailer that’s got the remaining dozen or so of this year’s must-have sensation, people will grab you and try to move you to get a quicker two-second glimpse of the tomb site. Our guide was constantly urging us to form a tight impenetrable block in the line. Still, someone grabbed one of the men in our group. We held firm, and no one was hurt.
Using defensive football blocking techniques on the Via Dolorosa was not among my preparations.
Moments of discouragement and disappointment threatened to overwhelm me. More than once, tears welled up.
But, along the way, I also watched a man give his arm to a woman walking unsteadily on the uneven cobblestone road – one of many acts of kindness that could be easily overlooked but persisted through the crowds and chaos.
Walking the Via Dolorosa is a metaphor for living.
Distractions are plentiful in this life. Plenty of folks are waving scarves in our faces. They’re just more often doing it through TV commercials – often for $19.95.
Pushing and shoving can take lots of forms too. Maybe it’s subtle pressure to take on a project you really don’t want to do or vote a certain way or name your child after a long-dead ancestor.
Sorrow and suffering are plentiful and dominate the headlines. That acknowledged, kindness and love are abundant too. Watch carefully and you’ll see so many people offering their arms, hands, and good words, striving to make negotiating the Way easier. They’re trying to follow in the footsteps of the one that the Via Dolorosa remembers and heed the new commandment he gave a short time before making the way to the cross: “That you love one another.”
As St. Paul suggests: May our armor be that of Light.
Mind the Light, flicker or flame.
— Stephanie Nichols
Minding the Light 