My Own Private Gethsemane

This morning it became familiar.  I left the hotel at 5:30 and ran down past the windmill to the street below the southern walls.  Tried to take a shortcut up the hill but two dogs met me and I let them have the space.

Around the city to a garden on the Mount of Olives.  Let's call it Gethsemane.  I did.  Olive trees on white limestone.  A rock too perfectly-sized and placed to be THE rock at which Jesus prayed, but I knelt there anyway for morning prayers.  The rising sun lit the Dome of the Rock and the eastern walls of the Old City.  It was pure and lonesome.  Indelible.

Back across the Kidron Valley and once again through the Lion's Gate, up the Via Dolorosa.  Wandered over to the Jewish Quarter and got lost in the warren.  Emerged on a roof top to see churches, minarets, and synagogues all around.  Then home to the hotel.  I know the way now.

about 4.5 miles
1:10:00
easy run