A Ladder and Turtles, Jacobs`s Ladder Parsha

Like in a can you find it picture, how many ladders, and how many turtles can you find?!

The flaming yellow leaves seemed to be bursting over the top of the ladder

He dreamed:  All of a sudden, there was a stairway set upon the earth and its top reaching to the heavens--and behold, angels of God going up and down on it!   

---Genesis 28:12

 

When I saw so many ladders recently on my travels in my days, I realized it is timely to write a post about the Parsha Vayetze, the parsha that includes the story of Jacob's ladder.

This week is already past the Parsha Vayetze and Jacob`s ladder, but even though it has past I still keep passing by ladders in my days and even had a perfect encounter on a ladder (not pictured, this story is from another occasion with a ladder)  When it happened, I was so engrossed in being in the experience and being on the ladder,  that I only realized after how it fit in with this weeks reading!  Hence, no photo but just these words to mark the occasion.  Two of us were on either side of a ladder going up and down putting up a `backdrop`of a girl with a Mt. Fuji dress and a Bear with a Jerusalem shirt...if I had a photo of me holding the life sized drawing of a girl, and another helper climbing the ladder to put up the fountain of water and the bear, and then me going up and she going down....can you see how that would have been just perfect?

Well, there was another photo too that I didn`t take.  After seeing these ladders by the castle today (pictured above), I was invited to sit down in a corner near the Castle gate, and have tea and coffee with the ones who were going up and down these ladders.  Really you aren`t going to believe this, but its true, I didn`t take the photo again because I was so engrossed in being in the experience, and being invited for coffee with the ones who had spent all day going up and down ladders...in the week of Jacob`s ladder Parsha...but I will just tell you that the coffee was so perfect and I am one who usually doesn`t eat sweets, but the sweets they gave me I ate and they were so delicious.  One was a bun with white bean paste, and another was hand baked senbei (rice crackers) dipped in Miso and baked with citric yuzu. 

After the coffee, my host on the makeshift  seats made from upside down cartons insisted I have tea.  It was tea that was made from water from the spring!  `Waki-mizu` in Japanese, my host said.  You have to know a little backdrop, that I have been consumed with `waki-mizu`, spring water, and as you know , wells, for the past few months at least.  So even as I ordinarily would decline a cup of tea after a perfect cup of coffee, I accepted the tea made from water from the spring.  And from a Beppu spring yet!!

After the encounter, I realized I didn`t even take a photo but there were the miso senbei (a kind of sweet made from miso ) that I was given, so I took a photo of the senbei as a concrete reminder that it really happened, and it wasn`t just a dream.  Just to remember that sometimes we really do encounter strangers who may just be angels!  I think at those moments its sometimes good not to take a picture, because if we meet strangers who are angels, they are usually worthy of giving our full attention to!!

the pile of  miso senbei that he gave me

Jacob woke up from his sleep and said, "Undoubtedly ADONAI is in this place---and I was unaware."  So he was afraid and said, "How fearsome this place is!  This is none other than the House of God---this must be the gate of heaven!" --Genesis 28:16~17