Rites of Passage in the Eternal City: what will survive of us is love
What’s the best way to attend a wedding? There must be a better way if, like me, you don’t particularly enjoy getting poshed up all day, making small talk with people you barely know, sitting ramrod-straight and getting up and down throughout the ceremony. Then of course you can virtually guarantee you will have the worst table by the kitchen at the wedding breakfast and like it or not you will put your foot in it, somehow with somebody, after a few drinks.
Do you ever wonder what it would be like to attend a wedding and not go through all that rigmarole, to just relax all the way through? Especially during the best part: when you see the bride come down the aisle to be given away by her parents, about to start a new life with her partner.
This Monday I “attended” just such a beautiful wedding and, I think, in the best possible way! Let me explain…
It was 6 pm and the sun was setting behind the pale honey walls of the Old City of Jerusalem as Mount Scopus lay in the distance. I was standing high up on the balcony of our hotel watching a wedding scene taking place on the terrace below. I could see the hustle and bustle of lorries and cars still thronging up the hill beyond as they entered the Old City through the Jaffa Gate. Alongside the gate stands King David Tower and there were still lots of tourists walking around the old Roman walls during this cooler part of the day. I could see churches, synagogues and mosques spread across the city on rolling hills. Somewhere in the distance out of view is the Western Wall, all that remains of the Jewish Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD and which stood on Temple Mount, the holiest place in Judaism. The wedding below me was taking place under a canopy facing towards the Western Wall.

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