Peace, Brotherhood, Goodwill

A place of perfect serenity, where the three religions born in the Middle East converge on the holy city of Jerusalem, praised in singing verse and sublime song; beloved and cherished fabled city of yore. Judaism claimed Jerusalem as the site of its hallowed belief in monotheism, a single, all-powerful, all-seeing, God whose will must be done. And yet so did Christianity whose Christ figure claimed to be the living son of God, and who preached and prayed and died there, for all of humankind.

Wait, there is Islam, for it too with its sacred belief in the city's singular presence through the Prophet Mohammed's identity as Allah's messenger claiming Jerusalem as its own. And what does that omniscient, omnipresent, patiently long-suffering Spirit do to solve the dilemma of three claimants, variants on His holy presence, direction and demands? Like any indulgent yet disciplinary parent, sighs and leaves it for them to figure out for themselves.

Despite which, they do not, they squabble, they claim and counter-claim, threaten and badger one another in the hope that a millennium or so will tire the other to relent and forego claims to ownership. Could not the children live in some semblance of harmony in their Father's Mansion? Passions, emotions, enmities conspire otherwise. They are but feeble imitations of their progenitors, above all their Creator.

The authenticity of the original claimants is not to be denied, yet some among them will, for the sake of peace and harmony, submit to the unthinkable; dividing their sacred city "If I forget thee Jerusalem..." ("If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither, let my tongue cleave to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy."). A sacrifice distinctly unpalatable to others.

To those who, having enjoyed a long period of stewardship over the holy city - and who chose to deny Judaism access to its holiest of holies, the assertiveness that the city is theirs too, and that portion which they claim, hosting the third most sacred site in Islam, must be ceded to them or the threat of ongoing bloodshed will become ineffable reality - nothing but division will suffice.

To those who venerate the holiness of ancient legend of Roman antiquity where there was no particular singularity in crucifixion as a common cure for insubordination or criminality, the city glows with a vast penumbra of God's blessing, that very place where He allowed His living son's mortality to become forfeit for the tutelage of a stubbornly unbelieving, earth-centric population. Knowing His son ascended to His side, the people relented, embraced Heaven and rejected Hell.

And as Arab battles Jew in a never-ending cycle of violence and bloodshed, so too do the Protestants, the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox contingents in the church of the Holy Sepulchre disdain and bitterly resist one another's rites and rights.