Tuesday | October 30, 2007

The End of How

This is how we cross the line.

We walk, flippantly, past the soldiers. On their side of the street, we wait for the red to turn green. You begin to see discrimination even in the length of the lights, here. On the other side of the street, they no longer care about us. We dodge cars, ignore the signals, walking, talking, crossing.

How to greet these young men and women in drab green, guns hung casually at their hips? Do we say hello? A nod? A glance? A poorly pronounced Shalom?

This is how we find balance--any way we can. This is how we try to humanize a dehumanizing situation. Do we ask the soldiers to help us harvest olives? To put our heavy bags of olives in the back of their olive green armored vehicles? Do we pray? Do we forgive? Do we follow Jesus? And if so, what does this make us? Anti-semites? Anti-Muslim? Anti-other? How do we define ourselves?

This is how we argue--impassioned, over wine, in the guest house.



This is how none of it matters, when another house is demolished, another olive tree cut down, another enemy made.



This is how I doubt myself--aggressive, keep on the move, never let them see you weak.

This is how Christ comes to me--broken, angry, violent--saying, "I have come not for the righteous, but for the sick."



This is how we hurt. This is how these walls of division are raised. This is how humans become objects and profiles and numbers and......

and



this is how we try to put an end to how.



At training, one of our presenters told us a story about her grandfather's house. She said that in his house, you were never allowed to cut bread, only to break it. She always thought this was an eccentric tradition, but she never asked. Once, when she was older, she finally questioned her grandfather about it. He told her this: "When you cut bread, you create neat, straight, definite lines between what is yours and what is mine. When we break bread, it is messy. Part of yours is mine, and part of mine is yours."

"In my house," he said, "there are no neat lines between us. Some of what you are is always a part of me, and some of what I am is always a part of you."




Let us break bread together, on our knees.
Let us break bread together, on our knees.
When we fall on our knees, with our faces to the rising sun
O Lord, have mercy on us.
Posted by David at 15:15:38 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Monday | October 29, 2007

Update, or something...

Wow, it has been way too long since I've updated this thing.

I'm going to post an excerpt from a recent email update to my fellow Mission Interns and US-2s, who are scattered all around the globe. I hope they don't mind. I hope you don't either.

I'll try to do a better job of keeping this updated on a more regular basis, with a bit more detail. There are a couple of things that need more time. Like, me crossing the Green Line to go to work everyday. Or the tanks being towed through Shu'fat. Or olive picking.

There is way too much.

Here goes:

"I don't even know where to start with this one. The past month has been...so much. So much.
I travelled to the Golan Heights with a group of women from Sabeel Nazareth and Sabeel Jerusalem. I saw the minefields, the tank with its gun pointed towards the Syrian border...waiting. I walked through the bunker made into a National Park to commemorate the Israelis victory over Syrian forces in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. I heard the narrative, hauntingly familiar, of brave soldiers fighting off the barbaric enemy. And realized that this country is at its most disturbing when it sounds...just like mine.

I sat on a bus as we drove through the valley of Megiddo, where Armageddon will supposedly happen. I saw Mt. Tabor, the mount of transfiguration. I drove through Nazareth, no longer the tiny hamlet of Jesus' day, but an overcrowded city, with a new city only for Israeli Jews built above it, called Nazareth Illit (Upper Nazareth). The racism there is in a way tougher to deal with then in the Occupied Territories--it is more insidious, more a background tension then the in your face violence of occupation.

I sat in the office in Nazareth for a week, feeling useless, sick, and alone.  

I travelled to Jericho with the Sabeel young adults. I sat, uncomprehending, as they argued about relationships in Arabic. I laughed at the contrast between the swimming pools of the Jericho Resort Hotel and my mental image of the West Bank.

I travelled with the Sabeel Fall Witness Visit. I helped shepherd 60 internationals, mostly senior citizens, from 8 different countries, all around Israel and the West Bank, to tell them about occupation and the challenges of the Palestinian Christian community. I travelled to so many places that the State Department tells me not to that it's almost ridiculous to list them. I sat uncomfortable in the midst of an armed escort in Nablus. I walked the streets of Hebron with CPT, and prayed as I stood on the roof that Tom Fox, my hero, had done yoga on while he was with CPT there. I cried in front of a demolished house in East Jerusalem. I ate ice cream at the Quaker meeting house in Ramallah. I listened to the fighter jets thunder over the isolated village of At-Tuwani, which needs a CPT presence just to allow its children get to school without being beaten by settlers. Grown men--Americans, many of them--so convinced of their God-given right to the land that they will attack children. I was annoyed by the crowds at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. I was given to much to do and nearly had a break down the last night because none of the other volunteers were helping me out. I worshiped in a Melkite Greek Catholic church. I roomed with a Norwegian pastor. I realized I didn't really know how to spell Norwegian.

I picked olives on the Mount of Olives. I picked olives near a military checkpoin outside of Bethlehem, with a group of 40 'alternative tourists' there with the YMCA's Joint Advocacy Initiative, and with the Sabeel young adults. We moved on to the Greek Orthodox assisted living community in Beit Sahour, and climbed massive olive trees, 20 feet high, hundreds and hundreds of years old, to get to the olives at the top. (To get Palestinians off of their land, settlers destroy their olive trees. The Wall has destroyed hundreds of olive trees, which might take 400 years to get to full maturity). We laughed and sang and, in some cases, bled from scratches. And I laughed that climbing that olive tree was probably the most dangerous thing I've done in the slow motion war zone of the West Bank (Gaza is not slow motion. Gaza is under siege. I can't get in, but more importantly, they can't get out).

I've moved into the Lutheran World Federation guest house on the Mount of Olives. I walk to work now, 45 minutes through the Hebrew University complex instead of taking the bus. I walk past Hebrew, and people assume I'm a student. Then, I pass the university, and now I am at Rd 1, the Green Line legally seperating Israel from Occupied territory, but controlled completely by Israel. Now, people assume I must be a settler..but why aren't I wearing a head covering? Then, I cross the road, and now, as soldiers look on, I am an anamoly. What is that white boy doing walking into Shu'fat, a Palestinian neighborhood next to a refugee camp, where I work? The road I cross was graced, tonight, with the presence of three M-1 Abrams tanks being towed through Jerusalem. My tax dollars at work.

I pack boxes at work. I write letters. I help plan an international conference, a young adult conference, our next witness visit. I go to meetings.

Houses are demolished. People are harrassed at checkpoints. We all struggle to keep our eyes on the God in all of us, instead of on the dehumanization that this Occupation inflicts--on people on both sides of the gun, both sides of the power, both sides of the Green Line.

This land cries out in pain, friends. Please pray for peace here, a just peace. Pray that the upcoming November peace conference won't be the charade that we all think it will be. Pray that the settlement construction will stop, that the construction of the wall will stop, that the dividing lines between us will be broken. Pray for the children of At-Tuwani. Pray for the Israelies of Sderot, where makeshift rockets fired from Gaza fall. Pray for this place. Pray for me.

It's how things are here--fragmented, confusing, and painful. But there is so much hope here. For these people, just staying here, just staying in their homes, in their land, is an act of nonviolent resistance. It is the epitome of what the movement in Latin America chose to call nonviolence--'relentless endurance'"




 
Posted by David at 15:51:54 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |