Jerusalem, I’m searching again inside your walls, searching for the heart that matters.
Through the quarters that divide you, I follow your arteries, lined in stone. These stones, softened by the footsteps of the faithful, who for so many years have walked these same stones as I do now, searching for something between the shadow and light filtering through you. Searching as I am.
This light, the kind that softens cracks and crags, that smooths the wrinkles in our skin, iridescent, incandescent… I take a picture (it’ll last longer.) Because before us, all of us on all sides, there widens this abyss in darkness.
Jerusalem, how hard it is to look you in the eye during days like these, during days like these when I can hear the echo of a rocket boom from still too close. During days like these when a tiny moth landing on the tip of someone’s nose can start a riot. During days like these when rough hands reach for loose stones, clenched in trembling fists.
These stones abide while we filter through, ephemeral, our moods shifting in faith, in fear.
And yet through it all, as we pass, I know this to be certain: These stones, stoic and smooth, stand in testament to all we have built, our three faiths combined. And yet, these stones are not holy, rather the holiness is in those who walk them.

Nuns helping one another up slippery stones near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Photo by Sarah Tuttle-Singer

A mother and child in the Muslim Quarter looking for a Hello Kitty t-shirt Photo by Sarah Tuttle-Singer

An ultra-orthodox Jewish man on his way back from praying at the Western Wall Photo by Sarah Tuttle-Singer

“May we meet only on joyous occasions!” A family celebrates in the Jewish Quarter near the Western Wall Photo by Sarah Tuttle-Singer
You can see more photos from Jerusalem here.