There’s a town crier on every corner of the world’s stage—animated, influential, convincing—demanding attention. In this age of high-tech communication, competition is fierce. Occasionally, these sounds drowned out my own voice—even more frustrating—my heart.
With so many voices, sometimes, I don’t feel heard. Since I want family and friends—or occasionally anyone that will listen—to know my thoughts, I speak louder, more forcefully.
There are a lot of town criers where we live. Wayne and I just moved to Jerusalem. From our living room and kitchen windows, we have a broad panorama of Mt. Zion, Mt. of Olives, and the Arab village, Silwan.
Wow—Mt. Zion! That’s what I think every morning when I open the shutters. I sit on the veranda and drink morning coffee and pinch myself.
King David called Mt. Zion the perfection of beauty where the presence of God of dwells. He also wrote that God loves the gates of Zion and has chosen it, and from there, The King will rule the nations. Imagine… Zion is the joy of the whole earth…the place where God’s fire burns.
Mt. Zion is lackluster and only a hill. The slops descending into the Hinnom Valley are arid and brown with a few roughed dirt roads that wind around. The Pope’s Way (built after Pope Paul VI’s visit in 1964) is close to the top and a few ancient olives trees are scattered throughout. Hotels, parks, restaurants, an amphitheater, and cinema dot the landscape at various levels.
It is a place of historic significance and blessed hope to the Jew and Christian. Before Jerusalem was united in 1967, King David’s tomb was the most revered place to pray, because Jews could not get to the Western Wall. Christians have honored its geography and symbolic meanings for centuries.
Perched on top of Mt. Zion are the Dormition Abbey, King David’s tomb, the gravesite of Oskar Schindler, and the Room of the Last Supper—each claiming its place as “king of the mountain.” But no owns Mt. Zion. It belongs to those that embrace its meaning and worship its Creator.
Sound resonates here without microphones or amplifiers. At night, the town criers of Mt. Zion pump music into the air with classical and pop concerts, weddings, bar- and bat-mitzvahs, festivals, or parties—occasionally several at once.
During the day, there are different sounds—the routine noises from the people that live here. The Dormition Abbey rings its bells every few hours during daylight. Both the close-by Arab villages broadcast Islamic prayers from the minarets at various intervals. During Ramadan, the loud beating of drums with eerie chants echo through the valley and up the mountain at three in the morning, waking the sleep of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, even atheists within earshot.
We hear the music and booms of fireworks from nearby Arab weddings. Sirens wail through the valley twenty minutes before the Sabbath, a warning for all Orthodox Jews to return home. They also signal times of memorial or impending danger.
Packs of starving dogs run wild on the hills and valley—snarling, barking, and howling—claiming the territory as their own. Their deprivation drives them to meanness, wayward beasts suffering from a dreadful lack of human kindness, food, and water. Continue Reading »
