{"id":1594,"date":"2018-03-09T22:01:12","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T20:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/?p=1594"},"modified":"2018-04-23T21:56:16","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T18:56:16","slug":"little-town-of-bethlehem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/2018\/03\/little-town-of-bethlehem\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Town of Bethlehem"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Church at Shepherds’ Fields<\/p><\/div>\n

March 9, 2018<\/p>\n

Today we spent the day in Beit Sahour and Bethlehem. Beit Sahour is a town just outside of Bethlehem and the location of the Shepherd\u2019s fields. Literally, Beit Sahour means \u201cVigil of the Shepherds.\u201d Mostly, this land was used by shepherds and their flocks and shepherds always had to be vigilant. This was the site of two historical moments in the Bible. The first, in the Old Testament, Ruth meets Boaz. From this lineage comes David and Jesus. The second, is the angel announcing the birth of Jesus to the shepherds in the field.<\/p>\n

The church located on\u00a0this holy site is incredibly\u00a0beautiful, the dome above the church is full of holes\/windows so that light is constantly\u00a0streaming in, creating the effect of the angel descending to earth.<\/p>\n

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Dome above the church letting the light in.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The caves located at the site are also beautiful, being the same caves as were used 2000+ years ago. Not to mention, they are naturally occurring.<\/p>\n

It really was a day of Jesus\u2019 birth, because after the fields, we visited the Herodian (palace of King Herod the Great). It was from this palace that he decreed all infants in Bethlehem under the age of two be slaughtered so that a new King couldn\u2019t dethrone him. Herod built this palace to be a paradise, with hot baths, cold swimming pools, gardens, and two palaces.<\/p>\n

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Remnants of the Byzantine farming community.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

He even had a hill made for his palace to sit on so that he could look down at Bethlehem. To this day it is still known as \u201cthe paradise\u201d by locals. Several hundred years later, the Byzantines came and made a farm community in the remnants of his palace.<\/p>\n

During lunch we talked with Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, President of Daral Al Khalimah University. He has worked hard throughout his professional and personal life to build bridges between Muslims and Christians.<\/p>\n

Note: he will be coming to Minneapolis, MN May 17-20th\u00a0with a delegation who are bringing Palestinian culture and art to Westminster Presbyterian, the experience will be open to the public.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Star Street in Bethlehem<\/p><\/div>\n

As I\u2019ve stated in at least one previous entry, less than 2% of the population in Israel-Palestine is Christian, most of them are in the West Bank. However, Christians are an important part of the fabric in Palestine as they are mostly responsible for the healthcare and hospitals, schools, nonprofit organizations, and several are political leaders as well.<\/p>\n

He went over more details of the situation and the conflict for us in a much more visual way, which was helpful, but then spent a great deal of time talking about the solutions.<\/p>\n

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Church of the Nativity, St. Catherine\u2019s<\/p><\/div>\n

The belief of Raheb\u2019s work and the work of the University is that hope can still be found by educating the new generations of leaders in Palestine to be peacemakers. He told us many stories of students that he\u2019s worked with who have gone on to change their communities, and even Palestine or the Middle East. They have started the first female soccer team in Palestine, who went on to create a national team, and finally to become a part of FIFA; they have also developed the first ever network of seminaries and Muslim religious colleges throughout the Arab world.<\/p>\n

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Icon of Mary breastfeeding Jesus<\/p><\/div>\n

Finally, we ended our day in Bethlehem visiting the Church of the Nativity and the Milky\u00a0Grotto. We were able to go into the Church of the Nativity: St. Catherine\u2019s, but not actually see the site of the birth. However, much like the experience in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, there were so many people lined up to look at a spot on the floor \u2013 which is now marble and enshrined. There was a 3 hour wait. The Milky Grotto was very unique and I\u2019d never heard of it. The story goes, that on the way to Egypt Mary had to stop and feed Jesus. They pulled off to a small grotto and she fed him. As she did, a drop of her milk spilled out and when it hit the rock, the whole place turned white. Hundreds of people travel here daily, including many couples experiencing infertility.<\/p>\n

The most notable thing about this site? All of the art and icons including exposed breasts. I\u2019m sure it\u2019s a sight I\u2019ll never see again \u2013 at least in a Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

Overall today was very relaxed. It was so nice to have a calm day after the chaos of yesterday. It gave me time to rest, think, and enjoy being here. So much less to right about today!<\/p>\n

\u00a0~ Monica Shaffer<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

March 9, 2018 Today we spent the day in Beit Sahour and Bethlehem. Beit Sahour is a town just outside of Bethlehem and the location of the Shepherd\u2019s fields. Literally, Beit Sahour means \u201cVigil of the Shepherds.\u201d Mostly, this land … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-march-pilgrimage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1594"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1610,"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions\/1610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.livingstonespilgrimage.org\/lsp-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}