Saturday, April 21, 2018

Heading South on Saturday Morning

Saturday,shabbot. Our pilgrimage group left Tiberius on Saturday morning.  We were ultimately headed for Jerusalem, but we had many stops on the way. 
After breakfast I had one last look at the Sea of Galilee.  Such a beautiful lake, every time I looked at it.  The Golan Heights are on the other side.
Our hotel had a "beach." These are the beach chairs.
They look like a baby stroller to me.
The  beach was closed.  This is probably the only beach on the Sea of Galilee.
I was trying to take pictures of birds.  I think I could paint this.  The Sea of Galilee. (I a not much of an artist.)
Our first stop was Mass and a visit to the home town of one of Jesus' friends.
First thing on Saturday morning we headed up the road to another lakeside town, Magdala.  Home of Mary Magdalene.
The work on digging the place up is newer than some of the other sites.  This was the synagogue.  Probably a place Jesus taught.
Synagogue in the morning light at Magdala.
Imagine how it must have looked.
Good that they built out of stones, because there was a lot to dig up.
Probably houses in Magdala.  I saw too much of this to remember specifics.
An olive tree at Magdala.
This is the inside of the church where we had Mass. The altar was a boat. And the window beyond looked out at the Sea of Galilee.  And as was pointed out to us, the ceiling of the church also looked like a boat turned upside down.
The marble used for the floor looked like water.
After mass we got to walk around behind the altar.
I have never seen marble like this.  It was amazing.
Around the church were illustrations of the apostles.
The altar boat had a cut out for the priests to say Mass.
In the basement of the building was this amazing painting.  See the bleeding woman touching Jesus clothing?
The stone floor was supposed to be from Roman times.
There was an Irish priest who showed us around.  He said that the site was dedicated to the genius of women.  There were pillars with names of women from the Bible.  One pillar was left blank for us to imagine all the women in our lives.  This photo is part of the mural on the ceiling.
If we had more time, I would know something about the site because they had some display signs.
Magdala was famous for smoked fish.
They are building a hotel and conference center.
Someday there will be meetings there in Magdala.
And like the most famous resident, Mary Magdalene, we were headed south to Jerusalem.
The hills we passed had caves where the Jews worked to try to overthrow the Romans after Jesus' day.  But these hills also were where Jesus walked when traveling between Nazareth and the area around Galilee.
See the caves?
Our guide told us that it was about 40 miles between Nazareth and Galilee.
On our way to Gideon's spring we saw Mount Tabor in the distance and to the far left, Nazareth.
This spring is associated with the scripture about the dry bones that came to life.

And this was the spring, back in a park which luckily was open on the sabbath.  It wasn't yet lunch time.....and we were on to the next site.

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