Bethlehem Battle of the Churches over Clean Up Chores

This CNN article reports on a brooms-and-stones scuffle that erupted between priests at the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem when priests and cleaners of one sect tried to clean some turf that belonged to another sect.

The story reminds me of what they used to do in Edo and later downtown Tokyo. Every day each household in the nagaya, the one-story longhouses of the commmon people, would sweep the stretch of the alley concourse in front of its dwelling and splash a little water around to keep down the dust. The proper etiquette if you were doing the sweeping before your neighbor was to go slightly, but only so slightly, beyond your particular patch of street (the median line with regard to your front-door neighbor, the perpendicular line between the two neighbors to the left and right). In fact, I think that this is the way it still works.

Having written this, I’m still not sure what the lesson is here for the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches, or even that there is one. So I’m letting the Cryptic take this one.

Have a nice day.