I didn’t catch Dennis’ last name. And he didn’t even ask mine.
Even so, there Dennis was, on duty, at 7:40 AM…to open up and welcome me (plus about 35 other strangers) into the Fellowship Hall of the Peace Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chester yesterday.
This much is clear: The Annunciation has been good to Nazareth.
As a rule, beets would not make my Top 10 list as I “choose my way through” a food buffet. But something about these beets seemed to be calling my name – perhaps because I’d been in-country less than 24 hours. “When in Galilee, do as the Galilleans,” I figured.
I had a lot to learn about local food, I discovered on Day 1 of our pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Starting with these “beets”… that turned out to be pickled figs.
Just about every day, I drive along “St. Joseph Lane”…on the way to encountering my Lord in the Eucharist at daily Mass.
Our recent trip to the Holy Land gave me the chance to saunter along the “real” St. Joseph Lane…and in doing so, to encounter a delightful new dimension in my relationship with this Emmanuel, God-who-walks-among-us.
Perhaps Peter should have traveled by taxi up to the top of Mount Tabor. That experience certainly would have kept him from falling asleep.
Just for fun, I checked my pedometer for our ‘travel’ day: It reads 11,598 steps.
No wonder, then, that it feels like I walked half of the way home from the Holy Land.
Imagine my surprise to discover there’s a shopkeeper on St. Mark Street in the Old City who knows me by name.
I did not expect to encounter dancing when we made our visit to the Wailing Wall today. But there it was…
…at which I praise the Lord, on the sixth anniversary of my blog of ‘found spirituality’…
The queues to venerate the Calvary grotto have been impressive each time we’ve visited Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
But they couldn’t hold a candle to the line of people we encountered today in Bethlehem…waiting to see and touch the star that marks the place of Jesus’ birth.
With Us Still 
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