Rock Polishing

            There’s a chunk of rock in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem that is said to be the stone upon which Jesus’ body was anointed with oils after the crucifixion.  It is a polished rectangle about five-and-a-half-feet long, two-and-a-half wide, and about two high.  The polished part comes, most likely, from its having been touched by thousands (or possibly millions) of pilgrims over the centuries.

            The Church of the Holy Sepulcher has three stones of holy origin that you can touch if you ever find yourself there after having signed on – accidentally or on purpose – for a religious pilgrimage.  The first one is where Jesus’ cross is thought to have stood – Golgotha.  There’s an altar built up over it, but you can kneel down and squeeze into a hole under the altar, where, in turn, you can put your hand into another hole, the one where the cross was seated, and feel around.

            I’m afraid that when I did this, I was thinking less of the religious implications than of a scene from Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” where the young protagonist must reach blindly into a box where he may or may not be stung by a really viscous alien scorpion.  Or maybe I’m thinking of “Flash Gordon.”  Either way and fortunately, nothing attacked me as I rubbed my hand across the smooth granite under the altar, doing my part to add to the smoothenessing.  Besides, I suspect that the priest-monk-janitors at the CotHS have a pretty comprehensive alien-scorpion-vermin extermination plan.

            The middle stop on our tour of pettable rocks was the previously-mentioned Highly Revered Stone.  “Highly Revered Stone” isn’t what it’s actually called, of course, but I don’t remember the exact title and suspect that dubbing it the “Really Shiny Stone Slab Mentioned in the Bible Back When the Stone Was Less Shiny” is more than a wee bit heretical – it’s also a very long name and not very good for writing quickly on postcards.  In any case, here travelers can place items upon the stone that they wish to have blessed, or they can just kneel, touch the stone, and pray; or, actually, they can do both.  I wanted to get my collectible Jerusalem shot glass blessed (certain of my friends would have appreciated this as a gift), but the chaplain that was traveling with our group looked so horrified when I mentioned this idea that I decided not to.

            Even without my heresy, however, one guy was still getting his car keys blessed; and we’d also heard stories of a woman blessing a handbag.  I settled for blessing some other gifts I’d picked up at the obligatory Tour Mercantile Stop.  All tours have these, by the way, even if the Tour Stop is just a sad-eyed kid selling rocks – uh, no, really: kid selling rocks.  It happens.

            Back to the subject at hand, the third hand-polished rock in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is a bare stone platform inside Jesus’ tomb; said tomb itself boxed up inside an ornate façade of gold and filigree.  This one was hard to get to, not because it was guarded by church ninjas whose sole job was to prevent heretical travel writers from peeking inside, but rather because of the sheer number of people waiting in line to do so.  Don’t get me wrong, though, there were indeed church ninjas – dark-garbed priests with long robes and almost-as-long beards who, I am fairly certain from having watched a bunch of Tom Hanks movies based on Dan Brown books, also knew all sorts of exotic martial arts.

            We dared the line anyway, even as closing time approached and the tour guide began to panic – not an unusual occurrence among tour guides.  Finally, the ninjas let us in.  We had to kneel going through the small entryway, then we were there: a small room with austere artwork in sharp contrast to the elaborate golden façade outside.  A stone platform was on prominent display against one wall.  We stood and considered it for a moment.

            What struck me was how surprisingly quiet it was inside the tomb.  I won’t go so far as to say that the silence was tomblike (ohhhh, I really, really, really want to), but outside, the murmur of pilgrims and the iteration of priests and the exhortations of tour guides had all combined to create a constant, muddled, background thrum of noise the presence of which I had taken for granted until it became blocked by five feet of solid-stone soundproofing.  For only the second time in Jerusalem, the first time being after a very good meal -- mmm, hummus, lamb, and grilled potatoes – I felt an actual sense of peace.

            Then someone had to touch the platform, of course.

            We stood a while longer, blinking, contemplating, and touching, until the church ninjas started fidgeting outside the door, making strange slashy motions across their throats and miming some impressive karate kicks.  Getting the hint, we finally left the tomb and started making our way back through the church to the outer courtyard.

            Along the way, we passed by the Stone of Anointing again (which is what I found out it was really called).  I looked longingly at the slab, but the doors were closing and the chaplain was still lurking somewhere nearby, so I didn’t pull the shot glass out of my satchel.

            There were, however, still people there as we left, getting things blessed and touching the stone reverently, doing their part to keep it polished to a glossy sheen.

            If only the volatile political situation in the area – fights over possession of these and other holy relics and sites -- could be kept as smooth.