This God is my God, this God is your God...

We took that infamous right turn at Amman and headed for the King Hussein Bridge, where Israelis are kind enough not to issue the stigma involved with a big red stamp in our passports, and where the Jordanians still don't really believe Israel is in charge of the place. Which is to say, in their eyes Palestine is not Israel - they don't stamp you out either. Beautiful news for a traveler on his way to another arab state who hates this returned exile called the Jew.

Arriving in Jerusalem, we find mostly the familiar - streets lined with Falafel and homos (hummus) stands, brown faces packing streets, and crammed small alleyways in the old city. Yet even as the rational side of the mind looks for change, the senses ease along with the stagnation - a bus ride of less than 100 km should not make Jerusalem a different universe than Amman.

But of course the differences do exist, as a short walk out of East Jerusalem exemplifies. People stop on sidewalks simply because the little lighted man in front is red instead of green, and further on clothing morphs to black suits and hats, and facial hair turns from beards to locks adorning cheeks like streamers. It can hardly be said that the Orthodox Jewish Quarter welcomed us - signs stream from the walls pronouncing that our simple presence there is interfering with the education of their children in the ways of God and his Torah - and for the love of crap will we please think twice before bringing tour groups through to reduce a way of life to a tourist triviality to be photographed. Fair enough.

We reveled in the opportunity to make use of the first functioning kitchen at our disposal since June to make, well, pancakes. Pankcakes wrapped around hot dogs, pancakes doused in delicious "American Kitchen" syrup, Pancakes with strawberries. Oh, how my mouth waters even now at the thought of those pancakes - like flat little patties of heaven.

Which is fitting - heaven that is. We awake fairly early, but by no means before the cocks are doing their thing, and the old city grabs us. The shops are still nothing but steel fronts, gates pulled down to keep the strange passer by out. The old stones are quiet still, save the rumble as a fruit wallah (India lives on inside me) barrels down staircases with nothing but a tire as his cart's moderately effective brake. We wander aimlessly, and converse nonchalantly as most of our travels happen. Nothing too special.

But then it strikes us, or rather we strike it, or both. We hit a station of the cross, and my mindset morphs to the now. The present. To silence to beam it all to the soul. This cross in which I do not "believe" in the sense of the word, but which means so much to me if for nothing but history. The cross that I grew up dreading through elementary school while looking forward to fairy-tale perceived readings on Friday afternoons. The stations I lamented learning every year about this time. Jesus' city had come to my life in person now - and it meant the lands of learning about new religions had merged, at least somewhat, with one that I personally know.

So I walked silently through the streets and tried to merge myself with the essence of the place and its meaning. At one station, a nun sat silently working - cutting pasting drawing on crafts of some sort, as we submerged to a small cavernous chapel to celebrate and lament another stage of the understood progression. And for a few small moments, I found myself somewhat unquestioning - returning to my roots and what I was told.

I emerged. The shutters opened, and trinkets for tourists of oil lamps, tapestries of the same sort as Pakistanis had called their own, Nargilehs, and incense all called that this was little different than the pilgrimages in the Himalaya, in the Far East, in Jammu. Simply because I knew this story before, and more in depth, does not mean it is insucceptible to the calls of "looking is free," "cheap price," and "better for you" do not cease. The religious who come to the Via Dolorosa do not sit in a deeper piety than the rest of the planet, and they do not respect the place as I would have them. This supposed holy route of death is not immune from throngs of unknowing, non-intimate humans - many of them practitioners of their own faiths only in words. The fact that the Arabic calls to prayer were replaced with Southern Texas drawls spouting "Are we still on the road Jesus walked on, honey?" did not give the place a higher charm. I realized, for the next of countless times, that the change I briefly felt was truly within me, and not a function of holy location.

Nevertheless, the idea is strong in Jerusalem, and the wholly compassionate and dedicated do prowl the streets - just more quietly than their spiritual tour group counterparts. We entered the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and a calm came back. I stared at the site where believers say He was crucified as Greek or Eastern Orthodox chants filled the caves and hallways. I reveled in a moment of self, and a moment maybe not of Jesus himself, but of what any place like this can bring to the world.

Then, on the way out, I saw a few more of my countrymen roasting a few trinkets and medallions on the stone where He was said to have been laid after death in the hope that somehow this meager act of "faith" would save them, while a few truly devout laid their heads down upon it and in silence felt something. I exited.

I ate pancakes.

At the Western Wall, I found my silence once more, and tried to contain my urges to photograph the newest unknown, non-understood phenomena in my life. I leaned my head in amongst the prayers and requests stuffed between the remains of the second temple's old stones, and I felt a little too. But not too much, as some understanding (though not too much) seems to be a requisite of belief and feeling. Instead, I marveled a while at what I did not know, and at how far I have come. I could end my trip right now, I believe, with more memories of more places than many people are lucky enough to receive in a lifetime. I have truly lived on this trip, and have truly grown. But to endure more change is a sometimes tedious task - something like striking a chord of the omnicient tune only to continue plucking strings randomly. Then, though, that's why these pilgrims have set their sights on this homeland - they see their chord, and see little need for a change in tune.

In our glorious Faisal Hostel, we mingled amonst the murals of "how the revolution will happen" and with the Western Activists flown in as all but mercenaries in the Palestinian Cause. They are travelers who have found their cause, and though it might be outside of their realm, and outside of what they know, it has provided the opportunity to dedicate themselves to something without giving up their radical lifestyle. On Al-Jazeera television the next morning, we watched one of them hold back his smile while being pushed back by the army in a protest.

Then we went onward - to the Dome of the Rock, where I realized in the courtyard that spoon and can of beans would not make their appearance. I realized that my knowledge of this site, and of the first and second temples' destructions, and of the third temples still vague involvement in foretelling Armageddon stemmed almost exclusively from Tom Robbins. Somehow, though, I found solace not disappointment in that fact as the supposedly pious ahead of us had come with their church, but did not know why they had been brought to this temple mount. As I walked the open area surrounding the rock where Abraham was willing to sacrifice his child (supposedly), and where Muhammad ascended to heaven (supposedly), and where Jesus will make his second coming (supposedly), I found awe again in the trivialization of it all. This symbol of immortal existence captured hundreds of time on Olympus digital cameras - the irony does not stop with the pun.

After yet another random rendezvous with home as Brian Buller emerged in Jerusalem, we hopped a bus to Tel Aviv for the cosmopolitan secular counterpoint to the melting pot of piety in Jerusalem. A couple that I met in Burma kindly took us in, and we have reveled in comfort for a few days now. Though the falafel and hummus are nowhere near as novel to us as to their usual visitors, their zeal in welcoming us to their world is overwhelming and wonderful, and a welcome change from the norm of dirty hotel rooms. Oh, and wine is delicious.

Today, we saw our very first bomb-disarming robot, but you might be as surprised as we that such events do not dominate in this uber-modern skyscraper city on the Mediterranean. Life here continues - and the melting pot of Yemenites, Americans, Europeans, and, yes, Arabs is welcome.