The Crossway

by Guy Stagg

  The village was dark now, the grass in the orchard damp. Even though the baseball game had ended, the field was awash with light, glossing the dew on the door to my tent. As I shook hands with David, I could smell woodsmoke and leafmould at the edges of the night, and see a misted moon rising above the branches. Then I ducked inside, dug through my rucksack, and took out a copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress. I had carried the book from Canterbury and tried several times to read it. Though I sympathized with the hapless protagonist, I was put off by the self-righteous narrator. But David’s description moved me, because I understood his desperate desire to walk free from the past, carrying his sins like a burden on his back. So I slipped into my sleeping bag and began reading again.

  The Pilgrim’s Progress was published in 1678 and provides a coda of sorts to the story of medieval pilgrimage. Although the Reformation should have ended pilgrimage in Protestant countries – along with relics, indulgences and belief in Purgatory – Puritan preachers still relied on the metaphor of sacred travel. Bunyan’s book is the best-known example, using the journey to the Celestial City as an allegory for the Christian’s passage through this life. I was surprised that David mentioned the text, but I knew that it was popular in America. At the end of the seventeenth century, while Puritan colonies spread through the country, two books could be found in every household: the Bible, of course, and a copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress.

  During this period Bunyan’s severe, self-reliant faith was married to something more hysterical.

  After the Reformation, the increased attention paid to Scripture, and the literal reading of Biblical passages, renewed popular interest in eschatology. There was a growing sense among Protestant sects that the end times were not some distant allegory, but an imminent reality. The Pilgrim Fathers carried this conviction to America.

  In ‘A Model of Christian Charity’ – John Winthrop’s famous ‘City upon a Hill’ sermon from 1630 – the future governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony compared his fellow emigrants to Israelites, escaping bondage in Egypt to cross the desert in search of freedom. By eliding the New World and the Promised Land, Winthrop not only looked back to Exodus, but looked forward to Revelation.

  Millenarian theology makes a mirror of history. What started with Creation will end with Apocalypse. Thus, if contemporary events echo the Old Testament, the end times must be near. This was why Winthrop’s contemporary, John Cotton, argued that the Puritan migration to New England was a necessary step before Judgement Day. The next step, according to his close friend and fellow minister, Increase Mather, was for the Jewish people to gather in Israel and convert to Christianity. In this way, the apocalyptic fantasies of those Renaissance explorers survived into the modern era.

  Winthrop, Cotton, Mather – these were the founding intellects behind the Puritan project in America. Although the sect’s influence waned in England, it remained an important presence in religious life across the Atlantic, and vital to the idea of American exceptionalism. For some historians the national myth began in that dizzying moment when a few exiles on the edge of an immense landmass bound their fate with Israel’s.

  To a modern audience these eschatological theories seem at once paranoid and preposterous. Perhaps, however, the longing for apocalypse is something hopeful, because when the end draws near what we love becomes more precious. Or perhaps it is an epic form of that more basic religious impulse: to stamp the everyday with lasting consequence. According to one apocalyptic tradition, as history comes to a close we shall return to the Garden of Eden – and maybe Stan was waiting for that promised moment when Creation is finally perfected. Of course, once the truth of prophecy is plain to see, once heaven burns bright upon the earth, there will be no need for belief. So the Second Coming means the end of religion too. Yet, lying in my tent that night, what I felt was not hope, not fear, but pity. Stan was a long way from home, exiled on the edge of an immense landmass, and desperate to see Paradise before he died.

  On Friday morning I entered the Judean Hills. That evening I reached a monastery on the outskirts of Jerusalem called St John in the Desert. I was hoping to spend the night, but when I arrived one of the sisters explained that no men were allowed inside. Instead she gave me a bag of food – apples, pitta bread, tinned sardines – and told me about the time she walked from Marseille to Rome. When her pilgrimage ended, she decided to become a nun.

  St John in the Desert was built on the side of a hill, below a village named Even Sapir. From the village’s highest point I could see Jerusalem extending to the east. As the sun went down, streetlamps pierced the darkness and headlights poured liquid along the roads. The Old City was twelve kilometres away, but I did not wish to end my journey at night, so I ducked into a gully and found a quiet spot to camp.

  Next morning, a little after four, I was off.

  For the first hour I followed untidy footpaths onto the Mt Herzl ridgeline. The landscape looked ancient in the dim dawn: terraced hillsides, sloping orchards and villages of piled stone. By five o’clock the stars were smudged and the night was washed with grey.

  A wide road topped the ridgeline, two lanes one way and three lanes the other, with twin tram tracks running down the middle. This was the Herzl Boulevard, which formed the western border of Jerusalem. Office blocks and apartment buildings lined the road, all built from the same pallid stone – sometimes pinkish, sometimes yellow, and sometimes an off-white shade like linen. The air was clear, dawn stripping the dead skin of the night and sharpening the city’s outlines. When a band of daylight lifted the horizon, it caused the walls to shimmer, the windows to shine. Then the daylight raised the rest of the sky, solar panels flashing and satellite dishes blinking. I kept repeating the same phrase to myself – the Celestial City, the Celestial City – until the sun came up and I lost my way.

  From Mt Herzel the route dropped towards a motorway and climbed into a neighbourhood of public buildings shaped like monumental rubble. I was walking fast, but there was still no sign of the Old City. I turned left, turned right, circling fenced compounds and walled campuses, or marching up avenues of government offices. I doubled back on myself once, twice, one more time, until eventually I arrived at the Knesset – the Israeli parliament – a flat-roofed slab of tawny stone with pillared sides. It sat on a rocky hill sprinkled with shrubs and was empty that morning except for the police standing guard at the gate. When I asked directions, they could not understand me, and though I repeated the question until I was panting with frustration, they simply patted my shoulder and pointed me back.

  Another hill rose up beyond the parliament, its base banked with apartments, its slopes stacked with towers. These neighbourhoods were set tight together, the streets between either steep or winding. The buildings at the top were wider spaced, each one tagged with a sign – the Van Leer Institute, the Shalom Hartman Institute, and the president’s official residence. Next to them were rows of stone villas, their gardens bursting with palms, their balconies strung with bougainvillea.

  The place was awake now – traffic in the roads, joggers on the pavement – and from open windows I heard the babble of televisions and the shrieking of children. By this point my rucksack hung off my shoulders, the padding fallen away from the broken frame and the skin on my back beginning to sore. Though I traipsed down avenues of offices, down avenues of apartments, the Old City seemed no closer.

  Some time after seven I joined King David Street, which lifted through playgrounds and parkland towards the stepped shell of a modernist hotel. On the right of the road was a stubby column of stone with shuttered blades pinned to the cupola. It was a windmill, a tiny Kentish windmill.

  The windmill looked out on one last hill: Mt Zion. An abbey occupied the summit, four towers buttressing the church and a fifth tower rising from the cellblock. Its walls were striped with blue stone, its dome a cone of blue metal.

  The Valley of Hinnom fell away to the south, desert-coloured buildings tumbling from its sides. To the north ran the wal
ls of the Old City, a shelf of rock three or four storeys high, divided by watchtowers and crested with battlements. Behind the battlements I could see clustered spires and minarets.

  Fifteen minutes later I was standing beneath the walls. In places the stone was enamel-smooth, in places textured like porridge. A paved walkway ringed the site, which I followed as far as the Jaffa Gate.

  When I reached the gate, I knelt to take off my boots. The paving was still cool from the night, its surface weathered soft by fifty centuries of footfall.

  Lacing the boots around my neck, I stepped barefoot into the Old City.

  The Tower of David reared up on my right, great banks of masonry securing the citadel. Hotels and gift shops filled the square beyond, where a tour group dressed in floppy hats were gathering. I imagined striding up to shake their hands, crying out that it was over, it was finally over. But I was too stunned to speak, so instead I slipped my rucksack from my shoulders and lay on the floor. When I looked up, the dawn sky had given way to bright blue. The sun was bright, the air bright, the buildings gauzy with light.

  Glance at a map of Jerusalem’s Old City and you will see a lopsided square split into four uneven quarters. Top left is the Christian Quarter, top right the Muslim Quarter, bottom left the Armenian Quarter, and bottom right the Jewish Quarter. Temple Mount straddles the eastern half, while the Church of the Holy Sepulchre floats somewhere off-centre.

  I spent my first days in Jerusalem wandering the warren streets of this square, between churches and chapels, monasteries and convents, synagogues, mosques, museums and tombs. As I roamed round I felt a growing sense of disappointment. I knew that thousands of pilgrims arrived in Jerusalem each week, yet I was hoping for some kind of welcome. My imagination had conjured up trumpets, banners, fireworks and parades, but the real city was too preoccupied to take notice, its focus fixed on the competing rounds of worship. Alone I could pretend my journey mattered. Here I was just another pilgrim.

  Every building was the same colour – a mixture of milk-white and honey-yellow stone – which made it easy to get lost. Yet I could always guess my position from the people around me, because each quarter drew its own pilgrims: either shouldering wooden crosses and processing towards the Holy Sepulchre, or bowing capped heads while they approached the Western Wall, or queuing outside the Dome of the Rock at one and four and six o’clock. Standing among these pilgrims, I was reminded of Easter in Rome: any devotion overwhelmed by the drama and display.

  In the Christian Quarter I often noticed a man in a cotton tunic and woollen stole pacing behind the processions. He had long brown hair and a brown beard brushed with grey. His face was chubby, his feet bare, and his belly tied with rope. He looked like Jesus, like an overweight Jesus.

  The man’s name was James. This is his story:

  James was born in Detroit in the early 1960s. Growing up, he felt drawn to saints such as Francis of Assisi – saints who gave up everything for faith. Aged twelve he converted to Catholicism, but during his teenage years he forgot about the Church, growing interested in New Age spirituality instead. However, as a young man he became depressed, and his depression did not lift until he realized that only the love of Jesus could save him.

  Then he heard about the Miracle of the Sun. ‘It was in Fatima, in Portugal, during World War One. Three kids kept having visions of Our Lady, but they were just shepherds, and nobody believed them. One day they asked the Virgin for help, so she told them to gather a big crowd together. Thousands of people came – thirty, forty thousand – believers and non-believers, all hoping for proof. And they all saw the same thing. Midday the sun drops out of the sky and falls towards the earth. Then it sits on the horizon, getting bigger and bigger, spinning round and changing colour. And all the scientists and journalists – they all saw it too. So now they had to believe.’

  In his twenties James joined a Catholic movement devoted to teaching people about the Virgin Mary. But the whole time he felt dissatisfied, as if God was calling him to something more.

  Aged thirty-one he gave up his possessions and began living like a pilgrim.

  ‘At the start I had normal clothes and a backpack with some essentials, but pretty soon it got stolen. I took it as a sign. Jesus lived off charity, so why couldn’t I?’

  Since then he had gone without money, a sleeping bag, or even any shoes. And it worked: ‘I’ve been to Ireland, England, Belgium, Holland, France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Spain, Germany, India, Canada, the whole United States minus Alaska and Hawaii, and all through Mexico. Twenty-two years a pilgrim. Mostly I travel on foot, sometimes preaching, oftentimes just worshipping. The last few summers I’ve spent in Jerusalem, right here in the Old City. I’ve got a deal with an airline that lets me fly for free. Plus I’ve got a friend who lends me clothes for the flight. And I get invitations to visit places and preach – but never for money. People ask me to eat with them, ask me into their homes.’

  Three days was the longest he had ever gone hungry. How he stayed so plump, I never found out.

  I met James on Sunday afternoon and several times more that week. Each time he asked how things were going, and I would tell him that I was still getting used to Jerusalem, to the cramped lanes and sunken passages, to the hordes of tourists and mobs of pilgrims and the shrines grown hectic with half the world’s believers.

  ‘But how’s it going spiritually?’ he would ask.

  What could I say? Even though Jerusalem was built from ancient stone and set upon ancient ground – even though time was heavy here – I noticed only the city’s shining surfaces: the busy streets and jumbled buildings. Yet I encountered little sense of the sacred – that threadbare hint of something big beyond human spectacle – and doubted that my life had been transformed by reaching the city. So I replied with a hopeful phrase or two – ‘Still searching!’ – while James repeated the words, ‘Praise be, praise be.’ Then he started discussing himself again.

  One afternoon James listed his recent media appearances. A few months ago he was interviewed by the BBC. Before that he had featured in Time magazine, appeared on Good Morning America and been profiled by several newspapers in the States. He even starred in a documentary called The Jesus Guy. ‘You know, people see me walking round, they say: Hey, d’you see the Jesus guy? But I don’t think I’m some kind of Messiah. I’m just trying to stick to the example the Good Lord gave us.’

  Another afternoon he told me about the city’s secret places. About a ledge halfway up the Mount of Olives, where you could spend the whole night hiding. And a balcony above King David’s Tomb, where you could pray all day without being disturbed. And the graveyard behind the Western Wall, where you could shelter for hours among the open tombs. And the crypt below the Chapel of the Holy Face, where you could sit in the shadows without ever being seen. As James listed these places, he sounded like a fugitive, and it was easy to imagine him shuffling between sanctuaries under cover of darkness.

  ‘But my favourite has to be Deir Es-Sultan,’ he concluded.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘The Ethiopian Monastery. Right on top of the Holy Sepulchre.’

  ‘Show me.’

  So James took me to Chabad Street, a souk running south from the Damascus Gate, dense with stalls and teeming with people. I followed my guide past ranks of leather belts with metal buckles, screens of plastic sunglasses on wire grids, pyramids of baklava with dustings of powdered pistachio, and rubber armbands fastened to rusted girders. In places we crossed through vaulted chambers containing windowless restaurants, lightless cafes, dingy barber shops and shabby hotels, as well as toyshops, shoe shops and shops selling nothing but baby clothes. Elsewhere the street was covered with corrugated roofing, making the passages dim, the voices loud, and the air rich with the smell of spices.

  Midway along there was a break in the stalls and a staircase leading up to a green gateway. The gates opened onto a flat rooftop, a Coptic chapel on the right, its interior gaudy with icons, and a courtyard of cell
s on the left, their lumpen walls built from adobe and mortar. I followed James into the yard, stepping over clipped lengths of cable and folded metal chairs. Though the cell doors were padlocked, I noticed a crumbling sink behind a plastic shower curtain and a makeshift kitchen behind a smoke-stained blind.

  James’s woollen stole was hanging in one corner. ‘The Ethiopians are friends,’ he told me, pulling down the fabric and draping it over his shoulder. ‘The other churches won’t let them inside the basilica. That’s why they live on the roof.’

  He went on: ‘Of all the places I’ve visited, Jerusalem must be the least kind. It’s proof of the world’s sickness when our holiest city shows so little Christian compassion.’

  As we sat near the compound entrance, a pair of monks passed by. They were very tall, very thin, wearing strappy leather sandals and habits of grey serge.

  James greeted them, but they made no reply. Once they were gone, he said: ‘You know why the Franciscans are custodians of the Holy Land? At the end of his life St Francis visited the Sultan of Egypt, who was ruling over Jerusalem at the time. The sultan was so impressed by the saint’s poverty, he gave the brothers control of all the Christian shrines in his kingdom.’ James fingered the tied rope round his waist, framing the next sentence with care. ‘Although, to tell the truth, I don’t see much of St Francis in the Old City any more.’

  I asked him to explain.

  ‘One of my favourite places to pray is the third station of the Via Crucis – the crypt chapel with the Blessed Sacrament on show. But this year I was told I couldn’t worship there.’

  ‘You were banned?’

  ‘Well, like a lot of saints – like Francis of Assisi, like Thérèse of Lisieux – when I pray, I repose. So I went to the crypt to worship because, you know, I don’t have a bed or anything. Just because I’ve got my eyes closed doesn’t mean I’m not praying – a lot. But someone complained – said it was disrespectful to the host – told me I couldn’t come back.’