Thoughts on Advent; Life is Vast & Wonderful; Thia is home

This past week has been overwhelming: anatomy lab exam (cumulative), biochem presentation prep; finishing ceramics things; Christmas parties, etc., etc.

And on Saturday Thia came back from South Africa. So many stories shared already, so much left to hear.

Today at church we were focused, of course, on advent. On waiting; on what we are waiting for. It was a good morning, and what made it even better was that after the service was over my home group presented me with a basket of food - cookies and an orange and coffee and tea and pretzels - a Christmas present and finals care-package all in one.

I know lots of people who are critical of church & have been hurt by churches; I am sometimes one of these people. But I am beginning to see (and to know deep in my bones) the ways in which it is possible to become part of a family (even when your family is far away) through a community of faith. I love Early Church. I feel loved there. My Advent prayer for this afternoon is that as we wait in expectation for a future redemption we do not settle for anything less than striving to live into the Kingdom of God now.

Break is officially over

i'm back to working on biochemistry things. yay.

actually, i am typing this in the analytical chem lab because i really don't want to start making my ascorbate peroxidase reaction buffer. >:|

yesterday when i got back to EMU i had ramen noodles and a poptart for supper...living in an apartment makes me appreciate home more.

i'm starting to feel like the only thing i blog about is church

...but i feel like it is more interesting to read about than, say, the hours per week i spend doing organic chemistry or reading paradise lost.

anyway, i was at the early church today and i knew it would be an awesome morning as soon as i stepped through the screen door and heard jason singing Farther Along. (i was completely right. it was an absolutely beautiful church service).

things that i loved this morning:

ron's prayer: help us to hear Your word so that we can be changed.
the paper globes hanging from the ceiling, like multi-colored jellyfish.
an understanding of the necessity of silence - the way that we had time this morning to sit in silence and to greet our neighbors.
the old man with filmy eyes and damp fingers who grabbed my hands when i went to the counter to get coffee.
little children; the boy who played the drum while lucas was singing.
the trisagion remix (love, love, love. holy immortal, have mercy on us).
walking into the service this morning and hearing 'farther along.'
jason praying for oppressed women.
someone prayed for syria during the Prayers of the People.
conversation during lunch with an EMU grad who had taken classes with some of my professors
connections with lessons from my cross-cultural - martin said that we can take risks because we are not afraid of death. he said, i don't want to change what Jesus said, but maybe we can read it like 'You cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless you are like an adolescent.' 
the thought that our waiting for a future redemption should be something full of hope.
singing 'I bind my heart this tide.' mmm hymns.
all of the men with beards. they make me smile; i think because i feel like i'm stepping back in time or something...
beautiful people all around me.

question from church

i haven't been to the early church recently because first my bike tire was flat, then i went to PA for the weekend, then i slept in, then it was fall break. but i went today and after the service we circled around the room and joined hands and each person said something they were grateful for. a man standing near me asked if i was new and i laughed and said that i am an occasional attender of the early church. he smiled at me and asked, did you find what you were looking for this morning? 

and right then was when the grateful-circle started, so i just smiled back at him and nodded, but his question kept banging around in my head all during lunch and my bike ride home. what was i looking for this morning? do i even know? how will i know when i find it?

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

this weekend has been so nice. it started snowing last night and my apartment was bright and warm, full of laughter good food and heated discussion (we had friends over for dinner). then this morning i slept until around 10:00 and then refused to get out of bed. and then erika and i invited joel over for pancakes - we needed his contribution of milk, so it was only fair...- and i just went to see The Importance of Being Ernest and tomorrow is church and homework and probably more stress than today but anyway this is a good weekend.

also i have pictures:

                                                                            Snow!

                                                                          my living room

                                                                                my kitchen

the view from the front door

i should be sleeping right now

but it is almost fall break, so whatever, i can deal with a little lack of sleep.

i found an online copy of a C.S. Lewis essay (http://www.audiowebman.org/bbc/books/articles/cslewis.htm) and was sidetracked - i was all ready to go to bed and then while i was drinking my cup of tea i got online and of course i stumbled across something interesting. here is my new favorite quote:

"It would be difficult, and, to me, repellent, to suppose that Jesus never asked a genuine question, that is, a question to which he did not know the answer. That would make of  his humanity something so unlike ours as scarcely to deserve the name. I find it easier to believe that when he said "Who touched me?" (Luke 7:45) he really wanted to know."

to borrow a line from cornell west,

race matters.

i'm taking a class called 'history of recent america' and this week the lectures are focused on the civil rights movement. today my professor's lecture ended with a brief history of harrisonburg.

in the late fifties, as integration was being pushed by the federal government, most places in the south massively resisted. in virginia, the resistance to integration took a less violent approach than in alabama or mississippi. less violent; more sneaky. a federal program was giving money to cities at the time for 'urban development' programs, and harrisonburg quietly and calmly designated the african-american neighborhood 'blighted' and demolished over 63% of the homes owned by black residents in the city. these people were then displaced to the newly built projects outside of harrisonburg.

mark, my professor, went on to explain how before the destruction of the african-american neighborhood, about 12% of harrisonburg was black. the figure now hovers around 3%. there used to be a black bank, several businesses, a community center, and homes that all belonged to the "black neighborhood." since the late '50s, most of the people from that community have moved to washington d.c.

of those who stayed, a de facto segregation remained. the old school that the blacks used to go to was closed and a new one was opened in the projects. the students remaining in harrisonburg went to schools that were predominately white. mark has had students in his history classes do research papers on this before, and in looking through old yearbooks, EMU students have found that in the original black school, there were vibrant extracurriculars. a debate team, art programs, theater... and yet an interesting thing occured when these students were shunted into the majority white schools where most people supported segregation. there were no black students in any extracurriculars except sports.

i look at EMU today - my impression, and one that i know is shared by a lot of people, is that many (not quite most, but nearly) of the athletes at EMU are black, and most of the black students at EMU are athletes. the racial attitudes of the 50s are still shaping my daily reality, still affecting the lives of my peers.

and i learned this week about the way that so often today we talk about the civil rights movement and end in 1963, with Dr. King's speech in Washington. i have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. and yet things didn't end in 1963. there was malcolm x, there was the black panthers, there were race riots and mobs and civil rights workers killed in mississippi, in alabama, there are people still missing and men who walked without a trial; there was the cold war, there was the race to the moon, there were escalating protests against the vietnam war and i saw the statistics today, projected on the screen - america growing richer, the middle class growing, and the african-american population growing poorer. nationally, even though they made up less than 12% of the population, they made up over 50% of the prisoners. as mark said, 'i'm not surprised that middle schools and high schools end the civil rights movement in 1963. because after that things got complicated.'


all of this to say: race matters. and so i am happy, excited... relieved, in a way, to be able to say that this week i could listen to sehba sarwar and leymah gbowee as they talked about listening to people across divides; the power of forgiveness; the need to see other people as worthy of love. tonight i went to the screening of leymah's film pray the devil back to hell and afterword she spoke to the audience about what the war was like in liberia. the terror people lived with, the violence directed against women and children, the hunger. it was a powerful speech, challenging, and when she finished speaking we all rose to our feet. mostly caucasians, but also asians, hispanics, african-americans; we all stood together and applauded for this beautiful soul, this wonderfully crazy west african woman who believes that good people working together can push the dark back before the power of the light.

i am happy-exited-relieved. and i am hopeful. i am hopeful because an african woman with very dark skin spoke with authority in harrisonburg where less than 50 years ago people who looked very much like her were forced from their homes and called nasty names. tonight we stood for her and applauded.

we are learning to see with clearer eyes.

Sehba Sarwar

This evening I went to the second Writer's Read of the fall semester. The speaker for the evening was Sehba Sarwar, a Pakistani woman who is a poet, artist, novelist, activist, wife and mother who lives in Houston, Texas. I was lucky enough to have been invited earlier in the week to sit at the head table with the head of the Language&Literature Department, as well as Sehba.

She was wonderful, a bright and shining person who spoke thoughtfully and listened well; she read more of her fiction than her poetry, but one of the poems she read lept off the page and into my heart and I found it online when I got home. Here it is:

I-10, a ribbon stringing across the southern borders
Of the USA (los estados unidos de américa),
A freeway racing parallel to curling barbed wires and military lights
Across which are homes much like the ones on this side
Maybe more decrepit, maybe more dusty
But maybe more in touch with the sand, the earth, the cactus
And the lives lost.
I have seen the barbed wire along the rio grande between el paso and juarez
And I have heard of guns, walls and barbed wire in ramallah and jerusalem
And I know of AK47s and kalashnikovs and military checkpoints
Along kashmir, baluchistan and sindh,
Borders where sisters wait hours to see their sisters
But then are turned away.
More than anything I know children live, sleep and eat and roosters crow
On every side of the silver wire-ribbons that cut across the globe
Piercing our skin to draw blood
Forcing us to forget
That one day we will cry together when our mothers pass away.
Mera naam sehba hai
Munjho nalo sehba ahay
Mi nombre es sehba
And I don’t need to tell you, on any side of I-10
Or you, anywhere along the sharp wire ribbons that divide earth
I don’t need to tell you what I just said
Because you know on every side of the border that you-we-us-I are the same.
So put down your gun
Tear the ribbon and wear it like a roman crown over your head
And join us in los estados unidos de americas y mundo aur dunia
To build bridges and destroy walls.

-Sehba Sarwar

reminder of life

Today in chapel Linford was the speaker, and he was talking about things that reminded me of my cross-cultural. I've attached the podcast of his message below:

http://emu.edu/now/podcast/2011/09/28/do-not-get-into-a-boat-with-jesus-if-you-want-to-stay-dry-linford-stutzman/

I highly recommend listening to it - it is only about 20 minutes and he has great things to say.



This week EMU is focused on missions, and today in chapel there were people from different missions groups visiting campus. After chapel they were set up in the Campus Center and then representatives also ate lunch in the cafeteria, holding conversations with students. I was lucky enough to eat lunch with some students from my cross-cultural, Linford, Janet, and a man from Our Community Place, which is the community center that meets in the building of the church I attend. We had a conversation that lasted about an hour and a half about lots of things, including whether or not international missions is a good thing, the difference between evangelism and development work, questioning whether programs and money impede or help spread the gospel, what that word "gospel" means, how to read the Bible, symbology on EMU's campus (we have, for example, a statue of Jesus washing Peter's feet, but not a cross), the way scripture felt different to me in Israel than it does in America, how to remove the threat of violence from the concept of conversion (and whether this is possible), the idea that Jesus should always make us feel uncomfortable - my friend Tim asked, "have we become too comfortable with the idea of a peaceful Jesus?", the pervasiveness of the false dichotomy of dualism- the separation of mind and body... my list could go on and on. It was so wonderful to be among other people who are asking some similar questions but also have some answers, or at the very least some faint stirrings in their spirit pointing them in certain directions. It is good to be in community, to join with Jesus and people, to practice listening, to learn.

school is like a school of piranha's...

...it EATS YOU ALIVE!

I absolutely adore just about every class I have this fall (Biochem is a little strange right now in that it is mostly still vague, confusing and stressful. but it will clear up soon, i hope). But I am so busy! I feel like I literally have no time to rest. And I've already missed an assignment this semester (ok, that admittedly was due to miscommunication and my professor gave me a chance to turn it in late) and I've already cried in a professor's office (she was really nice about it) and I'm starting to wonder oh, dear, what have I gotten myself into?

But I have some really good friends here that are helping me through it, and I look forward to my days. So that's good.

If my blog posts are few and far between, though, that's why.

Church :)

This morning I biked to the Early Church and got there are few minutes early, just enough to get to have a brief conversation with someone who goes to church there year-round. And then my friend Taylor sat next to me when he arrived, and then we sang the trisagion remix (it is so nice to have people know you), and then the sermon was about communion (the mystery of the sacrament, the miracle of it), and then we had communion and I stood around a table with 8 people I didn't know and recieved the bread, the cup, I passed it on, and then we had prayers of the faithful and I said God, be with my friend Thia who is traveling in South Africa. Reveal yourself to her. We pray to the Lord and all around me voices echoed Lord! Hear our prayer!

The trisagion, for those of you who don't know, is an ancient hymn that is commonly used in Orthodox and Catholic churches. The text of it and a melody is in one of the hymnal supplements. The words are:

Holy God

Holy Mighty

Holy Immortal

Have mercy on us

The Early Church has taken the words and created a new melody for it - if you search YouTube for the trisagion hymn, you will see that traditionally it is a sort of slow chant (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPgT7--3Q0E). I happen to think that the orthodox way of singing it is beautiful - we just sing it differently. A lot of life, hand drums, everyone just sort of adding their own harmonies, sometimes just singing over and over have mercy on us, have mercy on us.

What a mystery it is: that what was unseen and eternal became visible, taking the form of flesh and blood; that Christ invites us to take the mystery and miracle of his incarnation into our bodies; that we can pray to the immortal, mighty God to have mercy upon us. Thank you, God, for mystery and miracles. Amen.

3rd year of college

My life just got a whole lot more difficult.

As I've done every fall, I will give a brief overview of each of my classes...

Organic Chemistry: is going to be difficult but interesting. Also, out of my science classes, probably the easiest. (that is a terrifying statement!) My lecture is being taught by an adjuct prof this semester, because Dr. Tara Kishbaugh is on sabbatical this year. The new professor is British, which definitely makes listening to lectures more pleasant. :) My lab is taught by Matt Siderhurst, who I had for Gen Chem II and the lab section of Analytical Chemistry.

Mammalian Anatomy: This class is SO SCARY. We began our dissection on Tuesday, before we had even begun any lectures. My lab section is 8 people, with two cadavers. There is a ridiculous amount of stuff to know. The first day, to know where we were supposed to cut, we learned these places/parts on/of the human body (among other things) - external occipital protuberance, mastoid process of the temporal bone, vertebra prominens (C7), crest of the ilium, spine of the scapula, inferior angle of the scapula, acromion, crest of the illium, T6...

Biochemistry Seminar and Research: I have to develop a research project and do it. Help!

Love & Politics in Dante and Milton: Maybe I should have been an english major. :) I really like this class - we are reading Dante's Inferno right now, and already after only 2 hours of class I feel like I've started to see some things in new ways. Tuesday night we talked about Dante's love for Beatrice changing his whole life, making everything else more beautiful. Kevin Seidel, my professor, asked "What is the civic duty of love?" How can we rethink love as more than something between two people, but as a powerful force with the ability to reshape entire communities?

History of Recent America: really cool class talking about 1941-the present, using lots of media (magazines, advertisements, propaganda films from the 40's, 50's, etc. I haven't taken a history class at EMU yet, but I think that this one will be relatively easy to enter - that is, I don't think it will be a problem that I haven't studied much history.

Ceramics: I won't have this class until Monday. But I'm predicting it will be a lot of fun.

transitions

I have six days left at camp hebron this summer.

That sentance shocks me. I have been through orientation, been a counselor for five camps, worked in the kitchen, spent a week at the beach, and I have one week left. And that's it - then I am getting ready for school.

I don't know how, yet, to process the last six months of my life. Leaving the States to fly to the Middle East, witnessing beauty and tragedy, normal life and revolutions, calling out marhaba! kifek? to people in the streets of Beit Sahour, eating a Shabbat meal with two Jewish families, praying in the church of the Holy Sepulcher, planting grape vines in the West Bank -

and then coming back to work alongside people who have never seen the sun set over Jerusalem, who do not know what it is like to descend the cliffs of Arbel looking over the Sea of Galilee, who have never watched the news in Beirut with a quickening heart, hoping, hoping that peace will win, that democracy will take root, that revolution will spill into Damascus; coming to work alongside people who do not carry the horror of knowing that what you hoped for is coming to pass, that revolutionary things are happening and people are dying and you could leave, because you are wealthy, because you are lucky, blessed, because you are American -

and friends of mine are working in Colombia, are giving two years of their life to seek out the heartbreak, the ugly, the pain of a new place and breathe life into it, bring redemption, hope, Jesus into it -

and I am here. loving kids and their families and singing silly songs and planning devotions and eating pizza and swimming in a swimming pool that so many syrians, egyptians, palestinians, jordanians can only dream of. i am here and what is my purpose, what am i doing -

it is difficult. beyond difficult; perhaps the hardest thing I have ever done. trying to sort through the emotions, the memories, knowing I need to be present now, that I have been asked by leadership here (and by God) to throw myself wholeheartedly into loving people here.

I am still confused about so many things. And I don't know when, if ever, I will come to the place where my questions will find their answers, where I will feel like at long last, to use music terminology, the suspension will be resolved.

But I am able to testify to this: God is in the transitions. I've felt like I've gone through whiplash the last few months, and it's been painful. Through it all, though, I know I've never been alone.

camp hebron

It's been a long time since my last blog post. I think this is because I have been having a hard time figuring out how to put my experiences into words. The things I have seen, the thoughts I am having are big and messy and don't feel like they fit well into a coherent format.


So now I am at camp, after a month of sleeping and reading and hanging out with people who are important to me, and it is only about a day and a half until I get my first campers of the summer and I am SOOOO excited. It is crazy to realize that I am here; that I am not in the Middle East, or at home, or at EMU, but back at camp hebron after a full year of school.


On Thursday the staff had a footwashing service and one of the counselors prayed for me: she said, God, thank you for the complexity of Emily's heart. I heard that and felt free; that it is okay for me to feel confused and overwhelmed and torn between worlds right now. God looks at the complexity of my heart and smiles; takes pleasure in the intricacies of creation.


Here are some things I am hoping for this summer:
hikes through the woods
catching lightning bugs with 8 and 9 year old girls
letters from friends and family
baked oatmeal
explorations of the Bible

Rome

since the last time I've updated my blog, I've been in two countries, sailed between two ports on a ferry, heard multiple languages, contemplated the rise and fall of the Roman Empire as well as the way Christianity got mixed up in that, followed Paul from Israel to Athens to Rome...

so much. too much to say. (also too much when internet costs 0.5 Euros per 15 minues).

but I am in Rome, and I have explored the Forum, the Coliseum, the Vatican, the Trevi Fountain, and there is more still to see. I could spend a month here and not run out of new things.

Anyway, this might be my last blog update before I get home. I will see you all soon!

last update from Israel

It is currently 9:50 pm here in Nazareth and I am about ready to get into bed. In three and a half hours I will be waking up to carry all my stuff to a bus that will take us to Tel Aviv and the airport. In about 11 hours I will be in Greece! Tomorrow I will get to walk through Athens!

Today I worked again at Nazareth village, helping to prepare a "first century meal" for some visiting tourists. Afterwords I walked with Joel to the Church of the Annunciation - which, by the way, Justin Beiber visited today (a few people from our group were at the church at the same time he was).

Now I am all packed and ready to travel - but not quite ready to say good-bye to Israel or the middle eastern culture that I have grown to love over the past three months. In any case, while everyone back at home is sleeping tonight I will be going through security at the airport. (My cross-cultural isn't ALL fun and games) :)

 It is with gratefulness for the experience I've had so far and with a prayer for peace for the people I am leaving behind that I end this stay in the Middle East. Shalom!

hiking the jesus trail

tomorrow morning i am embarking on a four day, forty mile journey from nazareth to capernaum, following the route that jesus followed during his ministry. i will be stopping by pretty much every place that jesus is recorded as visiting. here is a list of things i am expecting:

mud
pita and peanut butter
blisters
wildflowers
funny stories
meetings with interesting people
culture shock (we are passing through arab, druze, and jewish towns - all within just a few miles of each other)
exhaustion
encounter with jesus


i think that my time in the galilee has to be among the most interesting of all the time i have spent in israel. spending time in nazareth is giving me a new, deeper understanding of who jesus is. for example, today nazareth is struggling to come out of an economic depression - after the last intifada, there was basically no tourism to this area. Nazareth is the largest arab city in israel and there is a definite sense among some people in israel that this part of the galilee is out in the middle of nowhere: why would anyone want to travel there? it reminds me of the story from john -

“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. "Come and see,” said Philip.

i am hoping that the next four days will give me a whole list of insights like this. :) so - it is with great hope (and a bit of trepidation for the blisters) that i think of heading off on the trail tomorrow.

Nazareth

it comes to this: my last week in Israel. my last week in the Middle East. My (sort of) third to last move of all my stuff.

But I am not going to think about leaving. I am living in the present, and in light of that resolution, let me tell you about Nazareth.

Basically, we are staying smack in the middle of the "Old City" part of Nazareth. The streets are incredibly narrow and winding, and so, so, SO confusing. I learned today that they were built on donkey trails...people knew donkeys would pick the easiest path up a hill, so they built their roads on donkey paths.

Lets just say that donkeys don't place much value on straight lines.

Anyway, we are staying in a guest house affiliated with the Jesus Trail, and it is wonderful. The architecture of the place is beautiful - arches, an open courtyard, tall ceilings, marble floors and heavy wood doors. We are spending the first part of the week volunteering at Nazareth Village, which is a replication of a first-century village. It is pretty awesome; as an example of the extreme awesomeness, tonight we ate a first century meal and got to bake pita bread over an open fire. Mmmmm.

The end of the week will be spent hiking the Jesus trail - 40 miles over 4 days. I am really hoping it doesn't rain (last night it absolutely POURED and one of my roommates sprang out of bed at 6 am because water was leaking all over her pillow...)

I am still so excited to be here - there is so much left to see and do. (But yes, I do miss people at home) :)

Shalom! and goodnight.

kibbutz

yesterday was one of the saddest days of my trip (after the day we left damascus and the day we left beit sahour): after lunch, we left Jerusalem. :( Our whole group schlepped our luggage from Ecce Homo out St. Steven's gate and we crammed on a tiny bus (A VERY TINY BUS) and headed north to a kibbutz. We are staying here for a week, learning more about modern Jewish/Israeli culture.

last night, after we arrived, we heard from a couple who lost their daughter in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv 15 years ago. They are active doing peacebuilding work now; their story was so inspiring. They don't have to do any of the things they are doing, but they choose to speak against violence in their daughter's memory.

We also had a mifgash (facilitated meeting) with four IDF (israeli defense forces) soldiers after supper. That was also extremely interesting.

Today we are hearing lectures on a variety of topics, from peace-building efforts occuring in schools to the history of the Zionist movement.

I will continue to update my blog this week as I am able. :)

luke 13:34

some of you may have heard that there was a bomb in the central bus station of jerusalem this week. (if this is news, don't panic - everyone from my group is fine). it is crazy to think of it, how people were injured in the blast and someone, at least one person, has died. 


it is strange, maybe, but I don't feel afraid. every day here I walk through the old city and rub shoulders with people from around the world - Christian pilgrims from Italy, Russia, the Ukraine, England, Spain. Local Arabs, both Christian and Muslim. Hasidic and Orthodox Jews. Every day I see these people and almost always they are polite, kind, funny, interested and interesting. in the face of THAT reality, it is difficult to even believe that there are those so full of hate they would seek to kill civilians. 


no - I do not feel afraid. and for even more than the fact that I have seen so much beautiful humanity. it is also because I have that promise that cannot be shaken; that I know I am resting in the hand of God.




I have been thinking of Luke 13:34 this week:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing."

I imagine Jesus looking over the city of Jerusalem 2000 years ago. Think of it; how similar it is to now. People who love and people who hate, people who are seeking truth, people who are lost, misguided, alone. I imagine Jesus looking over this city today, and I know his heart is still breaking. I know the heart of God is still longing to gather his children together.

Uncomfortable thought

this blog post is uncomfortable: uncomfortable to think through, uncomfortable to post, uncomfotable to read. but it is true, or one piece of truth, and I need to write it, and you need to read it.

About a week and a half ago a family of Jewish settlers were found stabbed to death in their home in the West Bank. I don't know how much press this has recieved in the US, but I think pretty much everyone in Israel and Palestine has heard about it. The family was from the West Bank settlement of Itamar, which is a Jewish settlement built illegally on Palestinian land. The people killed were a couple and three children. It is horrible; I don't even know how to wrap my mind around the fact that an entire family here is dead, that there are grandparents who lost grandchildren, that someone's best friend has been buried... It is a tragedy, plain and simple, and the community suffering now has my prayers and sympathy.

And yet this is not the whole story. Let me tell you another piece of this story, a bit of truth that is not ever going to be picked up by the Israeli news, that is never going to be reported in the New York Times or the Washington Post.

Three of my friends went back to Palestine over free travel. While I was hanging out on a Turkish beach earlier this week, they went back to Beit Sahour, Bethlehem, and Hebron. When they traveled to Hebron, they sat and drank tea with a Muslim shopkeeper and his son and talked for a while.

Here is where things get uncomfortable for me: One of my friends told me she asked to use the son's cell phone, and when Muhammad handed the phone to her it had a picture of a little boy on the screen. She asked who it was, and he told her it was his nephew. And he asked, did you hear? About what, she asked, and he told her that after the murders in Itamar, his nephew was walking alone at night and never came home. They found his body in a cistern, later.

He was killed; retaliation, an eye for an eye. He was seven years old.


Two nights ago I was sitting in the lounge of the hostel I'm staying at, writing in my journal about my experiences during the past week. A man I didn't know walked past and asked me what I was writing about, and when I told him just about my experience here, he said, oh, let me tell you about mine. It's sick. I didn't understand what he meant and asked him to explain himself, so he sat down and we ended up talking for over an hour. He is a Palestinian who works here at the hostel, and this is how he explained what he meant:

People here are sick. People on both sides; Israelis, Palestinians. It is sick what they do to each other.


It breaks my heart. There is no moral high ground here. Each side has wounded each other and said the other side started it. It is like they want to wound each other the same amount, as if to make it fair. But how to you judge the amount of pain one human inflicts on another?

I've heard from some of my news-following friends here that Sarah Palin is visiting Jerusalem and that she has been criticizing the current US administration for not supporting Israel enough. I just want to ask you, my readers living in the US, to consider the fact that there is pain on both sides of the wall. There are injustices perpetrated from people on both sides to those on the other - just realize that sometimes it is harder to see the humanity of the people whose voices aren't picked up by global media.

That's why I needed to write about the little Palestinian boy. No one is going to read about his death, no one will remember him. His death may likely serve as a catalyst for yet more violence, and the world will never know it -

and so I am serving now as a witness, a witness to the truth that there is pain everywhere, death on both sides.


God, 
I pray that you will be showing people everywhere that human life is precious, that people are created to be like you, made in the image of you. Show us how to see, open our eyes.
Amen.

Turkey

so I got to go to Turkey this week - pretty sweet. I spent my time there in the city of Antalya, which has a beautiful old city and harbor. Basically, my time was spent walking around and looking at the beautiful mountains that come down right into the Mediterranean Sea; laying on a stony beach; hiking down cliffs into the sea; eating Turkish food; reading good books... also i got to drink Turkish coffee in Turkey. :)

and now I am back in Jerusalem for another week. we are celebrating Purim this weekend - I've heard that it is basically like Mardi Gras in New Orleans...one day when religious Jews go crazy. I'm not quite sure what to expect.

I realized that as of today I have less than six weeks of my cross-cultural left. :( So, SO SAD. Meh. But I suppose there are some people who will be excited to see me come home...

leaving jerusalem (for a little bit)

tonight is my last night at JUC. Nooooo!!! I love this place - I am starting to wish I had about 40 lives - there are just too many great things to do in the world. I would love to come back here and study Biblical geography for more than 2 weeks.

The campus of JUC is beautiful. The whole school is within a fence with a gate and there are flower gardens outside. The lawn has huge old trees and the stones of the pathways and buildings are the pale cream and pink
"jerusalem stone" - a really nice hard limestone.

My room has four girls in it - I have a top bunk and it reminds me of my room from EMU. The bed is pushed into a corner and right below the lip of the top of my bed is a windowsill. The walls are really thick - thick enough to sit in the window and read or journal. It is absolutely lovely.

we learned that the JUC building was important in the 1948 war ~ there is a cable running from one part of the building down Mount Zion (I forget what was on the other end). The school was apparently part of the front lines against the Jordanian army and the cable I just described was used to send messages without getting people shot. Israeli children learn the story the same way that American children learn about Paul Revere.

There is interesting history like that everywhere you turn here; you can't sneeze without stumbling upon an ancient temple or knocking into a building that played an integral part of recent history. it's crazy!

well - i'm off to turkey in the morning (5:30 a.m. to be precise) so i better sign off and get some sleep. :)

the galilee

this past week i have been trekking through the northern part of israel - around the sea of galilee, north to caesarea-philippi, and east to the golan heights.

at this point of the trip i am just like: wait. wait wait wait. what? i'm seeing the sea of galilee? and then it becomes AHHHH WHAT I'M SWIMMING IN IT?!?

the AHHHH is both because it is awesome and because it is cold.

in reading Linford's book Sailing Acts I learned that the man who normally teaches this class at JUC, Dr. Paul Wright, has a saying: in order to understand the Bible, you must read it with your feet. We have a different instructer this year, so I haven't heard those exact words, but I definitely believe they are true. My understanding of scripture and who Jesus is, the why of it all (why in Galilee? why fishermen disciples? why Israel at all?) ... all of these things are becoming clearer.

I have a test tomorrow, so I should probably sleep. :) Goodnight!

JUC continued

I don't even know how to start talking about JUC. There is just way too much.
I guess I could make a list?

-Old City of Jerusalem
-mt of olives
-mt scopus
-bethesda
-shiloh
-herodium
-azekah
-beth-shemesh
-ashkelon
-en-gedi
-qumran
-dead sea
-madaba
-beersheva
-arad

-the bus breaking down

this was - basically the result of about 4 or 5 days "in the field" (not classroom lectures). yeah. that's why i can't figure out where to start...

okay. i'm just going to pick three things and talk about them, and that will be that.
1. Ashkelon! the port city that in biblical times belong to the philistines. from ashkelon you can just barely see gaza - linford writes in sailing acts that it is cheaper to dock your boat in ashkelon than anywhere in israel because people are scared of gaza. i enjoyed my time there; we got to swim in the mediterranean (and it was lovely!) as well as briefly visit the stutzman's boat.
2. shiloh. this is the place where 'the lord first dwelled' and apparently there was a temple built there - not just a tabernacle. we read the story of samuel at shiloh and i enjoyed the morning spent there immensely. we explored some ruins that may be from the shiloh temple and they were absolutely covered in small, bright red flowers. it was so, so beautiful.
3. we've begun playing a game with a little stuffed hedgehog named Bob. Bob has a clip attached to his head, and our game is to try to attach him to someone's backpack without them noticing. If they don't notice, you win! and if they do, you get Bob back to try again on someone else.

also, the bus breaking down really isn't as exciting as it sounds. basically, we were driving up a hill when the bus shuddered and died. we got off the bus and started walking and then the bus magically started working again. we were all excited and thought it was fine until after we left whatever site we were currently at - and then we got stuck right before an intersection. so we sat through several cycles of lights with our bus driver calling people on his cell phone and trying over and over again to turn the bus on. at last it worked (sort of) and we limped through the intersection and pulled over to the side. and then we finally kept going only to die in the MIDDLE of another intersection, after which we all piled off the bus and just walked to Beth-Shemesh. Our poor bus driver, Muhammad, got under the bus and fiddled around with things and actually got it to work! so that is the bus breaking down story.

jerusalem university college

i'm studying at jerusalem university college (JUC) for the next two weeks, learning about biblical geography, history, archaeology and other cool things like that. probably the best thing from the first three days has been going through hezekiah's tunnel in the old city of jerusalem. for those of you who don't know, there is a long, winding tunnel wandering beneath the old city that was carved through rock during king hezekiah's days. it is an amazing feat, considering it was finished long before radar and computer technology existed! while we were trekking through the tunnel, we sang songs like "in the rifted rock" and "we're marching to zion." it was pretty great. :)

my schedule while i'm here has so far involved being in class from 8 am through 12:00, then an hour for lunch, then walking through the city looking at archaeological sites until 5 or 6 pm. tomorrow we are starting at 7:00 and taking a bus to a site somewhere outside jerusalem. this will probably be the norm for the rest of my time here - in fact, next week we are actually taking a bus to the galilee and spending three or four days in that region (i think we are staying in a youth hostel).

right now i have taken a book from the JUC student lounge - you will never guess what it is. Sailing Acts, the book Linford wrote! I am about 110 pages into it right now and it is so good! if any of you get a chance to read it you definitely should.

i've pretty much decided that the stutzmans are the most interesting people i could possibly hope to meet. i feel so priveledged to have them as my cross-cultural leaders. they are always so ready to jump into new situations and take on new ideas - i love it. when we went through hezekiah's tunnel they were telling us about the first time they went through in the 70s before it was made into a nice, safe tourist site. the water in the tunnel comes from a natural spring that, if unregulated, can gush out with water and the level of water in the tunnel can change. when we went through this week, the water was only up to our shins, but when they went through that first time, it came up to linford's beard. at times the ceiling of the tunnel is only about four feet above the floor of the tunnel - and they went through using candles!!! crazy.

tonight i still have to write my impression journal for the day (i get graded on these - yes, i DO have homework in this cross-cultural!). i guess i will go do that. :)

my birthday!

today i woke up in beit sahour and realized that about 2000 years ago jesus was born within five miles of my house.

i have been trying to understand the significance of this all day - that i am celebrating my birthday in the land of jesus' birth. on this day i have seen bethlehem and jerusalem, where christ was born and where he died.

actually, this is something i have been thinking about throughout the past month or so, it just hit me in a new way today. ~ the importance of the incarnation in my faith. how important it is to me that i could have met God on the road to jerusalem, that he walked in the judean hills, that he knew the burn of muscles from hiking through wadi qelt, the scent of sweat rising from a group of people ... it is hard to explain, maybe, but basically being in this land that for some reason is important in a real, eternal, mysical, crazy way to the story of humanity and God and redemption and love and life - being here is making me love the incarnation. it makes me love that jesus had a body that probably ached at the end of long days (maybe he helped clear fields of rocks like I did at Tent of Nations; maybe he helped his father plant some grape vines like i did that day). i love that jesus lived in a place with thorns (i still have a few thorns in my hands from clearing the field of rocks) and that he didn't shy away from pain. i love that i can envision my savior with the dark hair and expressive eyes of the people who live here; that when i pass an arab man on the street i can think maybe jesus looked like that. i think this is why my faith is secure. because i have found this piece of a crazy, hard, strange religion that i love and that helps me understand the weird parts (like, for example, the old testament stories i blogged about last month).

anyway, today on my birthday, i was thinking about how jesus was born, just like me, and he was born in an actual place. and i am in that actual place. today i saw bethlehem and tonight i walked through jerusalem where he walked and where he died and - ahhhh it is just so, so crazy-good and startling and shocking and i-don't-know-what-to-say-about-it-awesome.

that was my birthday.

--
also on my birthday:
-a super huge and delicious breakfast on my last morning in beit sahour
-a happy birthday song on the bus as we left palestine and entered israel
-arriving at Jerusalem University College (JUC)
-exploring jerusalem
-a birthday party after supper which included:
*baklava and a cake-thingy with two candles
*another happy birthday song
*a gift from janet and linford - they have a tradition of giving students with birthdays on their cross-culturals a cross from the place they are in. so i got a cross to put on a necklace that is from jerusalem. :)
-skyping my parents
-gmail-chatting with thia

and now all that is left is getting a really good night's sleep: my birthday was completely awesome and will probably be one of my all-time best, but now i am totally exhausted. :) so, goodnight.

further information

i realized today that some of my readers might not know much or anything about the israeli occupation of palestine - so for those of you who are interested in learning about this issue (and/or want to talk to me about it when i get back) here are some resources for you:

1.) a documentary about the occupation. we watched this while living in beit sahour and it is available for free viewing. i highly recommend watching it to get an idea of injustices done to palestinians.
http://www.occupation101.com/multimedia.html

2.) the open letter to MCUSA congregations about Israel/Palestine.
http://www.mennoniteusa.org/Home/NationalOffices/Peace/HolyLand/Openletter/tabid/1156/Default.aspx

3.) a super awesome amazing book that i wish everyone would read before i come home... ;)
http://www.amazon.com/Lemon-Tree-Arab-Heart-Middle/dp/1596913436/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298755253&sr=8-1

a psalm for palestine

this psalm has been in my thoughts a lot this week. the text is most of psalm 55.

My heart is in anguish within me;
   the terrors of death have fallen on me.
Fear and trembling have beset me;
   horror has overwhelmed me.
I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!
   I would fly away and be at rest.
I would flee far away
   and stay in the desert;
I would hurry to my place of shelter,
   far from the tempest and storm.”
 Lord, confuse the wicked, confound their words,
   for I see violence and strife in the city.
Day and night they prowl about on its walls;
   malice and abuse are within it.
Destructive forces are at work in the city;
   threats and lies never leave its streets.

If an enemy were insulting me,
   I could endure it;
if a foe were rising against me,
   I could hide.
But it is you, a man like myself,
   my companion, my close friend,
with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship
   at the house of God,
as we walked about
   among the worshipers.
 
 As for me, I call to God,
   and the LORD saves me.
Evening, morning and noon
   I cry out in distress,
   and he hears my voice.
Cast your cares on the LORD
   and he will sustain you;
he will never let
   the righteous be shaken.
   ... as for me, I trust in you.



-----

The other day we met before our morning lecture to process some of what we have seen and heard during our week in the West Bank. A lot of us are angry at the US and at the Israeli government for the unjust policies that are really negatively impacting normal Palestinian families. A lot of us are shocked at how the occupation works; at how the reality of life here doesn't match up with what we have heard on the news; a lot of us are reeling at the thought of leaving our families on sunday and entering Israel. We sort of feel like we are being thrown all around, having to make sense of it all. And it is very hard.

Linford said something that morning that I think is really wise, and something I want other people to hear. He said - we have been taught, in America, in our Christian faith, that if we are following God we will either not have problems, or we will be able to solve our problems.

He paused and let us think about that, and then said - neither of those ideas are true.

---

It hurts to think that, doesn't it? But it is true. The way to fix Israel/Palestine is to go back in time: back about 70 years would be a good start, but the crux of the matter is a lot further back. whenever it was that people first had a break in their relationship with God is the root of it all. what is the occupation, after all, besides selfishness, malice, lies (expressed on a large scale)? don't i suffer from the same soul sickness as the settlers? or - oh, here's a thought - don't i suffer from the same soul sickness as the suicide bombers?

---

I am a Christian. I follow the teachings of the Christ, the Messiah - Jesus. I love the world God created. Despite all of that, I must admit that there are problems in the world - there are problems in my life - and I can't fix them. Oh, that is hard ~

and look at the psalm. It says, "if an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it...but it is you, my close friend..." The psalm says that the situration is unendurable. And then it concludes I will trust in you.

My prayer as I leave Palestine is for faith to trust in the face of all these things.
Amen.

palestine

there is way too much to say about this place for one simple blog post; again i refer to linford's quote about the longer you stay in the middle east, the less you say.

it is that there are so many sides; that so many people make sense; that all these sensible things contradict each other; that there is pain; that the pain is caused by many people; that the US is so complicit in conflict here; that i love arabs, palestinians - and that this love is suspicious to a lot of people.

i wish that you could see what i've seen:

illegal israeli settlements
trash thrown at palestinians in hebron
a jewish settler saying he's been called a nazi
a video of a jewish settler calling a palestinian a nazi
lack of water
swimming pools in the settlements
piles of food in my host family's home
a refugee camp
a documentary about occupation
pictures of gaza
stories of civilians blown up by suicide bombers
a powerpoint ripping apart christian zionism theology
keffiyahs
synagogues with machine guns outside
mosques with machine guns outside
hasidic jews with ear curls
the palestinian flag
a map of the illegal settlements superimposed over the west bank
a video of rachel corrie when she was in 5th grade, giving a speech on ending poverty
a video of rachel corrie's parents after her death doing humanitarian work in gaza
a woman who has lost two pregnancies because she was beaten by extremist jewish settlers
a mosque and a church side by side in beit sahour
the shepherd's field in bethlehem
the lemon tree behind my family's house
broken hearts
traditional dances by my brother cezar
people waiting to reclaim their land
people waiting to claim land
the present power of love

beduins and a camel ride

i have crossed another item off my bucket list: riding a camel! riding a camel through the desert, no less!

on friday we arrived in wadi rum, a (admittedly touristy) beduin camp, where we proceeded to sit in the back of pickup trucks and wander through the desert. We were out for over two hours, watching the sun set and at times jumping out and running down dunes. it was beautiful.

so then we slept in the beduin camp and this morning i rode a camel! it was awesome.

other things that i've done since i've updated last: visited Petra, the Nabatean capital that is literally built in a canyon; eaten SO much food; accidentally lost an orange over a cliff; written in my journal by the light of the full moon; visited Jerash, the ruins of an ancient Roman city...

as you can maybe guess, i am starting to get very tired from all the events happening. and it is about to get even more intense - tomorrow morning we are leaving jordan and crossing into Israel, and immediately entering the West Bank. !!!!!!! which is (of course) Super Exciting And Maybe Slightly Terrifying [In A Good Way], but is also exhausting to think of, because i will be living with a family, trying to figure out their culture, trying to understand the ramifications of the occupation of Palestine; waking up early each morning for a day packed with political and religious lessons -

AND this sunday is my birthday! what?! i am about to leave my teenage years behind!!! haha.

well i guess that's all for now. you all can send me happy birthday thoughts on the 27th. :)

bible thoughts

tonight i lead devotions for our group - it was a short affair, involving me and my friend jamila alternating reading 8 short scripture passages i chose earlier in the day. i have been thinking a lot about the idea of new life because we have visited so many ruins that are 1. beautiful, 2. ancient, and 3. dead. so today (on my last day in damascus - sad, sad thing) i sat on a bench in the area that I've termed in my head "flatbread square" due to the flatbread store on the corner. i sat there and slowly meandered through my bible, picking out verses that fit with that theme.

one that i really like is isaiah 43:18-19.

“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland."

i like this verse for a second reason: it reminds me to look ahead to what is coming rather than mourn what is over. there is a good chance that i will never return to damascus (although if i ever have the opportunity, believe me that i will definitely jump at it). it is really sad to think that i might never buy pomegranate juice outside the hamiddiyah souk again; that i've walked down straight street for the last time; that i will never have to sneakily avoid the scheming almond sellers or dodge a taxi in a narrow walled alley ever again. but: there are new things coming - nights spent in a beduin tent, a camel ride, walking the streets of Jerusalem, meeting a Christian family in the west bank (who i will celebrate my birthday with!).

there is a new thing coming, and it will be good - i believe that. i am on the way to perceiving it. :)

palmyra and aleppo

this weekend we traveled to aleppo and palmyra - saw a bunch of ruins, visited a few citadels, a castle, the souk in aleppo, the burial valley with tomb towers and underground tombs in palmyra... some pretty cool stuff. lots of pictures (how am i ever going to organize them?).

tomorrow is my last day in damascus. my goals are to get a falafel and a chocolate covered chocolate waffle. :)

right now i am in my friend joel's hotel room watching al-jazeera's coverage of egypt, tunisia, and yemen. it is so crazy to be in this part of the world right now! being here as unprecedented history is occuring. so cool. and i can envision it now - what the streets look like, how the people act when they are in their home, their mosque or their church. ooh, other interesting thing. al-jazeera's other breaking news was that the ex-president of pakistan (musharraf) has an arrest warrent out for him - apparently he requested the assassination of benazir bhutto (the former prime minister who was running for president). and guess what? there was significant US support for him too... i am starting to understand what linford said at the beginning of this trip:

'people who travel to the middle east for a week write a book. people who travel to the middle east for a month write some journal articles. people who live here have nothing to say.'

and he also said 'it is like a puzzle (fitting all the pieces of what people say and believe together). everyone has a point and a lot of them make sense - but they don't fit together! and what do you do with that? everyone has a point...'


i am feeling like i have no more words left in me to type; i think it is time for me to sleep.

leaving

marhaba! (hello!)

this seems completely unbelievable to me: tomorrow I am leaving st. elias for the last time. we head out from the monastery at 7:15 tomorrow morning for a weekend trip to Aleppo and Palmyra - we will return to Damascus on Saturday night and leave for Jordan monday morning. In between we are staying in a hotel.

i feel like i just arrived here. has it really been almost a month? a month of riding the bus to Arabic class, trips to Lebanon, Bosra, Mar Musa, amazing food (shwarma! falafel! pomegranate juice!), friendly faces, exploring, visiting churches, visiting mosques...

i guess i should do a somewhat more thorough update ~ i have no idea what my access to internet will be like after i leave this place. so. where to start.

on monday we went on a field trip with our Arabic teachers from Berlitz. first we went to a monastery called Mar Musa. it is hidden up on a mountain: 350 steps to reach the old monastery (the new, actually inhabited one is further up). we were priveleged to meet with several interesting people while we were there. first we spoke with a spaniard named Luis who is in the beginning process of becoming a monk. he spoke of his vocation as a call to overcome hatred with love; his deep desire is to bring Christians and Muslims into real dialogue, to help create safe space to do that. After Luis told us about some of the history of the monastery (which was so, so cool - there were murals on the walls dating back to the 1100s) he said he would go see if Father Pauli would be able to come speak with us. Luckily he wasn't too busy to meet with us, and we got to spend probably an hour listening to him talk about theology, what it means to be a Christian in the Middle East, mysticism, peace-building...lots of stuff about Jesus. Linford said it was like a seminary class. :) I've decided after some books I've read recently and after meeting with this priest that I would really like to learn more about the Jesuit tradition. One thing that Father Pauli said at the very beginning of his 'lecture' that I found interesting was something about how he bears on his shoulders the weight of his church's long centuries... he said "i can see in your faces you feel more free." We were also treated to Syrian hospitality - they gave us pita and the most delicious goat cheese I have ever eaten, as well as apricot jam, olives, and hot tea. mmm.

anyway, i took copious notes as he was talking and have lots of thinky-thoughts rattling around in my head, so anyone who wants to know more can talk to me when i get home.

after leaving mar musa we headed to a village that is almost entirely Christian - it's claim to fame is that the people there speak Aramaic. The village was called Maalula and it is one of the very few places in Syria that Aramaic is spoken fluently, as the people's mother tongue. 

---
what else? i'm done with arabic studies and passed the class, hamdullah (praise God). yesterday i started to pack up all my stuff that somehow got spread all around my room ... I still have space in my backpack, so I guess I haven't bought too much stuff - but I have so many things! it is so hard to keep track of. oh wait! my shampoo! and the keychain I bought in Lebanon! and the notebook under my bed! and my earrings on the bathroom counter! argh.

on sunday i went to the Armenian orthodox church. the service was beautiful but confusing (also there was way, way too much incense. that stuff gives me a headache). I went with Joel and we arrived at 10:00. One interesting thing I noticed about the syrian orthodox church two weeks ago that held true today is that people keep coming in until about 11:00. And apparently it isn't rude or considered disruptive... When we arrived there were only a handfull of people in the church, mostly a few old men in suits and a woman and her daughter. By 11:30 the church was packed and there were people standing in the back. What made me think of that is this: about 10:15 when there were still only a few people in the church, the boys shaking incense and two priests (I guess) started walking around the edge of the church. one held a small metal cross and when they passed people in the church, the people in the pews would kiss the cross - and then cross themselves. When it got to us we kissed it and forgot to cross ourselves after; I was so embarrassed and was starkly reminded how difficult it is to really understand and infiltrate other people's culture. other interesting thing: at the beginning of the church service there was a man wearing army fatigues and combat boots standing in the back. I was actually wondering if he was there as a church member or as a sort of threatening 'peace-keeper' at first; he sort of just stood there even though there were lots of empty pews. Then I saw him cross himself and before long he slipped out the back door.

today we took a brief tour through two mosques. the tour was given by the same guide who showed us the different churches last week. one of the most interesting things was seeing the pilgrims from Iran and Iraq. One of the mosques in Damascus (the Umayyad mosque) is one of the four most important mosques in the world. I believe the order is Mecca, Medina, Dome of the Rock, and then the Umayyad. This mosque here is important to Shia muslims because one of the men important to the founding of the Shia sect of Islam was beheaded and his head displayed at this mosque. So, a lot of pilgrims from (predominately Shia) Iran and Iraq come to the Umayyad. They travel in large groups and the women are usually either wearing all black with only their eyes exposed, or in the complete veil - no skin shown at all, with a thin black silk piece thown over the eyes.


I can't really think of anything else worth writing right now...whenever I am able, I will contine to post blog updates, but remember that they will probably be less frequent from here through the end of the trip.

churches

today our cross-cultural group visited three churches off of Straight Street in the Old City of Damascus. One was Greek Orthodox, one was Armenian Orthodox, and one was Greek Catholic. In the Greek Orthodox church we were able to speak with a priest and in the Armenian Orthodox we heard from the Bishop of the Damascus diocese.

it is so interesting to begin to realize the ways of knowing God that I haven't learned about and don't understand. my Mennonite background has done little to help me understand God through mediums such as icons and grand architecture. and yet as the priest and bishop spoke it was clear that for many people these symbols hold deep significance...

i am learning a lot about Christianity from being here; realizing the role Syria played in the Christian story - even from before Jesus' birth. One of the oddest and most complicated thing about being here is that I am an American Christian. By this I mean: as an American I am, in the eyes of many people in the Middle East, at best meddling in things I have no right to, and at worst directly opposed to the interests of people living here. While I have been told and have witnessed that Syrian people are very good at separating people from their government, I still feel like I am lumped into a category of people that I don't necessarily want to be a part of. [Side note: see below] At the same time, I am a Christian who is part of an international family - one with no borders, no boundaries. I belong in the Syrian Orthodox church, I can pray with the Armenians...

[side note] to quote my Arabic teacher, the support the US government has given to Egypt's Hosni Mubarak is the type of thing that "makes the Arab world fume." many of the democracy minded people living in the Middle East hear western countries (namely the US with our 'war on terror') promoting democracy and seeking to develop democracy in the Middle Eastern countries, while simultaneously supporting rulers like Mubarak with billions of dollars. soooo maybe that makes it clear why I am reluctant to be identified as American here.

interesting factoid of the day: the armenian orthodox church does not have crucifixes, because they say that Jesus on the cross is only the beginning. All of their crosses are empty. In the words of the Armenian bishop, their focus on the resurrection is "perhaps the reason [we] survived the genocide."
^for those of you that don't know, Armenians were heavily persecuted (under the ottoman empire? i'm not sure) and, while the numbers are disputed, up to a million or more may have died around 1915.

wahid, tnein, tlati...yalla!

or 1, 2, 3...let's go!

that's how i feel right now...we are always running off to the next thing. and really, this part of the trip is going to be the most restful out of all of them. it is tiring just thinking about it.

today I visited the modern downtown shopping mall. we had an assignment to explore the mall and compare it to the Old City souk. I got subway and a donut for lunch. :) crazy, right? I bought my brother a cool gift - I can't wait to give it to him!!!! haha.

yesterday our group was privileged to meet a Bishop in the Syrian Orthodox church. Amazingly enough, he has been to EMU before! In 2002 he attended EMU's summer peacebuilding institute. We enjoyed hearing his perspective on what it means to be a Christian in the middle east, what peace means, and how all Christians share the same faith. The Syrian Orthodox church is active in the world ecumenical movement, which I think is pretty cool.
and guess what? we might get to meet the Patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox! he is sort of like how the pope is to the Catholic church. so that's pretty exciting. There is a couple here who work for MCC and they do most of their work alongside the Syrian Orthodox; apparently a good working relationship between the two groups has developed here.
I've been reading a lot of interesting books. For those of you interested in what I'm reading, so far I have almost finished The Brothers K, am halfway through Everything is Illuminated, have just started The Time Traveler's Wife, and am contemplating beginning Jesus among other Gods.

I think I will finish this post by remarking on some small parts of Syrian life that don't really deserve their own post:
-there are cats everywhere
-only men ride bikes
-taxis honk when they are empty at pedestrians to see if you want a ride
-baklava is SOOOOOO good
-there are bakeries that sell these awesome chocolate ball things (about the size of a clenched fist) for between 5 and 35L (between around 5-50 cents)
-there are juice stands throughout the old city and on the walk from the monastery to the old city that have bags of oranges hanging from the ceiling. if you want juice, you go ask them and they grab an orange or two from the bag, peel them, and juice them in front of you.
-used toilet paper is thrown in trashcans, not flushed...the plumbing here is quite delicate ;)
-the best conversations always happen over food

and i think that's all for now. Salaam!

chocolate waffles

so my lunch today was a falafel sandwich that cost 25L and a chocolate covered chocolate waffle for 30L. Which, all told, is ... a few cents over $1. I feel sort of like I'm robbing the shop owners; of course then I go to buy stamps for some postcards and am overcharged by 70L, so I guess it all evens out in the end.


spoiler for Jess Sarriot's postcard... ;)

a bit of poetry that has been going through my head while I've been here is

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

-TS Eliot, 4 Quartets

I'm so excited by the idea of returning. Even after just 4 days gone it felt so nice to return to Damascus where things felt somewhat familiar. I think one of the most intense things about this whole trip will be returning to the US and knowing the place in a new way. Mmm.


Final message - send me emails! comment on my blog! i only have regular computer access for sure for the next two weeks, so. write to me!

lebanon

this past weekend my cross-cultural group traveled to Lebanon. we left Damascus early Thursday morning for Beirut. during our stay there we: wandered through downtown Beirut, walked along the Mediterranean Sea, visited Biblos, Baalbek, the northern Cedar grove, and saw a whole bunch of churches (Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Latin Catholic, Meronite, and Protestant).

my experience of Lebanon was overwhelming. Beirut is completely different from anything we have seen so far in the Middle East. it feels European; there is extreme wealth in the country that overshadows the poverty lurking in the margins. walking just a few minutes from our hotel, we passed a Caribou Coffee, a Starbucks, a Hermes shop, several clothing stores that looked super upscale (although I didn't recognize the names)... and while there were mosques throughout the city, you were as likely to hear a thumping bass line in a passing car at sundown as the call to prayer. Actually, at least once I heard both at the same time.

the most interesting thing about being in Lebanon this past weekend was the fact that we were in Beirut just days after their government collapsed, and at the same time that Egypt was beginning to descend into chaos. it is so odd. i can't quite find the words...I really wish I knew what the newspapers at home are saying about this area of the world right now. From where we saw things, life just seemed to keep on moving. People still sat with their newspapers at starbucks, still prayed at their mosque or cathedral, taxis still honked at pedestrians in the streets. Even the military presence on the street didn't seem much out of the ordinary. Only a few roads in Beirut were blocked off, and the protests happening in the country were entirely out of our sight.

and yet it was clear that there was tension. our tour guide, a Meronite Christian, said that because of the Lebanese civil war, many Muslims and Christians have grown up without knowing each other at all. In the center of the downtown, there is a church built within spitting distance of a mosque. Right now the church is undergoing renovation from the most recent war, and they are in the process of constructing the bell tower. She said, "I think it is going to be very tall...they want it to be higher than the minaret." So that is the attitude...

Today as we left the country we drove north to visit Baalbek, the site of one of the best preserved Roman temples in the world. Just outside the town, which is almost entirely Shia, we saw pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plastered to walls and telephone poles. As we exited our tour bus and headed to the ruins, some men started following our group hawking Hezbollah t-shirts. It was crazy. Some of us contemplated buying a shirt, but realized we would have some trouble getting them through certain border crossings...

another interesting moment from the weekend was when we visited the oldest protestant church in the Middle East. The pastor of the church has a son who spent a year at EMU (I actually had a class with him - small world). It was so American - but for about two things; 1.) how mennonite it seemed, with the pastor talking about critiquing power and Christianity outside the Christendom context and 2.) the fact that he called Christian Zionism a heresy. And wasn't that interesting! I could probably write a whole post on that...it might have to wait until another time.

....

Over the weekend between our tour finishing around 4:00 and supper at 7:30 we had free time. A lot of my free time all weekend was spent seated in front of the hotel's television watching BBC or Al-Jezeera (English, of course) for news of Egypt. It was unreal to be watching the riots knowing that last year on this date the EMU cross-cultural was in Egypt, maybe visiting the (now looted) National Museum, maybe touring the pyramids, maybe wandering through Cairo. I was able to be part of or overhear several interesting discussions over the weekend about democracy, freedom, and the surprising benefits of oppression (namely: stability). On one hand, it was thrilling for our democracy loving hearts to see poor and ill-treated people realize that they have the power to throw a corrupt politician out of his lofty seat. On the other hand, it was, and continues to be sobering to realize that there will be a severe vacuum of power and knowledge in a post-Mubarak Egypt. The people there are mostly poor, mostly uneducated... it is sort of likely that the country will end up in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, and who knows what will happen then?

....

To close my post, I guess I'll say that I'm still loving it here - although to be honest I am missing some small comforts like the freedom to sit on the floor or cross my legs in public. ;)

Reading the Old Testament in Syria

yeah, it gets interesting real fast. we read from 1 and 2 Kings today - and it is interesting to see how some of the same conflicts that occurred in 1000+ BC are still going on now. (see 1 Kings 11:24-25)

one of the things that is important on this trip is the understanding that geography, that place, is important to a clear understanding of the Biblical story. today during our daily 6:00 pm debriefing session, Linford said, "Reading the Bible is just like stepping into another culture. You should ask questions...It tells the story without explaining why the story is there. You don't have to judge it. You can just compare your own experience of God with it."

I found that quite comforting, as we were reading verses such as "The Israelites inflicted a hundred thousand casualties on the Aramean foot soldiers in one day. " (1 Kings 20:29) and "Joab and all the Israelites stayed there for six months, until they had destroyed all the men in Edom." (1 Kings 11:16) and "David also defeated the Moabites. He made them lie down on the ground and measured them off with a length of cord. Every two lengths of them were put to death, and the third length was allowed to live." (2 Samuel 8:2)

Reading those verses does feel like I'm stepping into a foreign country; and maybe even more scary than traveling across the ocean to an Arabic speaking nation with few Americans in sight or reach. I remember one of the first nights we were here, Linford said "There are lots of crazy things going on in the Old Testament, and people ignore it because they don't understand it, or it is hard, or it conflicts with pacifism..." and it was funny and we laughed, but it is true. Reading verses like 1 Kings 11:16 and 2 Samuel 8:2 is terrifying to me, because the words seem to directly contradict the character of what or who or why I believe God to be.

Reading those verses here is even harder - because it all feels very real. I am living in Damascus, which is mentioned in all of the stories we read today. And (WHAT?) I saw and touched the wall Paul escaped over. It isn't like I can just ignore the history; I am literally walking on and in and through it every day. The culture here is also very militaristic, which only drives home the sense that I am a player in this drama that keeps repeating over and over and over and over and over again...

All that to say, I am excited to read the Old Testament here. (Which, if you know me well, is somewhat surprising. Let's just say that I am much more a fan of the New Testament - and the Psalms, I suppose - than I am of what seems to me to be a violent and angry Old Testament).
Third Linford quote of this post: "Christianity is just as exotic as any other religion. We're just used to it." One of the things I am most excited about right now is that this city takes what I'm used to, my sense of being established as a Mennonite, as a Christian - and shakes it all up, turns things around, upside down, inside out. I think I will emerge still a pacifist. I'm fairly certain I will still be a follower of the Way. But my understanding will be different, and that is good, I think. It will be good.


so going back to how I opened this post -

Reading the Bible is just like stepping into another culture. You should ask questions...It tells the story without explaining why the story is there. You don't have to judge it. You can just compare your own experience of God with it.

I think I am getting through the culture shock of the Old Testament right now and hopefully sometime soon on this trip I will be able to "observe" my Bible in ways that will help me grow and understand the world better. And that, for sure, is pretty sweet.

a new way to post

because the US has sanctions on syria, the syrian government actually blocks sites like facebook, blogspot, etc. the only reason i was able to get onto blogger earlier was because the monastery had a proxy server running those sites. unfortunately, in the time since we've been here, they've found that proxy server and shut it down...meaning i can't update my blog -

***So she is sending her blogs to me to post***(mom)

its sort of funny - a lot of people here use facebook even though it is technically outlawed... facebook (pronounced sort of like facebuk, long U) is a word i've heard on the streets. i guess people find ways around the firewalls. darian actually figured out a way to do it but i don't know how...

today i went to a syrian orthodox church. it was really odd...although after our group discussed it later in the day i felt like i understood it better. we decided that a lot of the things during the service came out of the old testament. there was a priest and he served as the mediator between God and people. most of the time he stood with his back to the congregants, facing the alter; Linford said he was the people's representative before God. Then during the service he turned to the congregation and was like God to the people.

They had a huge velvet curtain that they opened and closed at various points during the service and i think it was to symbolize the veil between God and men. There was a man wafting incense all around (it was also very warm in the church - there was a hot air vent blowing right on my head. I though i was going to pass out. We had to stand almost an hour and a half and it was just...sickening. blech.) and a young boy with a tambourine type thingy that was fastened to a long stick. he shook it above the priest's head. there were icons all around the church and the priest was holding a little ornate golden cross. for probably at least 45 minutes there was a whole bunch of chanting going on - from the priest, the deacons, and the church members. it was in syriac, which is the mother tongue of aramaic (so it is SUPER ancient). when he would gesture to the congregation with his little gold cross, they would all cross themselves and bow (shallowly, luckily. i heard that in the russian orthodox church they bow very deeply and visitors that aren't expecting it look really dumb). the women sat on one side and the men sat on the other. A lot of the women covered their hair, but it was with a different type (color and size) scarf than the Muslim women wear to enter the mosques, so none of us had the right scarves. (We had an assignment to visit the Ummayyad Mosque last Friday and so we at least had those

scarves...) We sat in the back and tried to look inconspicuous. At the end of the service most people in the church headed to the front of the building and got in a long line to kiss the Bible.

umm...other things i've done this past week are

-long, epic hike up mt. cassion (i might not be spelling that right).

at the top i got a good sense of how HUGE damascus is. wow. it disappeared into the smog - we literally couldn't see the edges of the city -arabic class (ahhh so hard) -movie night at the monastery - watched Gladiator on Linford's projection system -escaped like Paul over the damascus wall. we visited a house that supposedly is right by where Paul escaped. The man who owns the house has a fire pole built off his back balcony and you can pay to walk through his house and escape over the wall.

-visited the syrian national museam

-bought a pair of turquoise and lapis lazuli earrings for 350 syrian pounds each (about $7 each). the lapis lazuli stone is from Afghanistan. i also learned that turquoise is the color of damascus.

the shopkeeper who sold them to me told me that his store has been in his family for at minimum 300 years. that is as far back as the paper trail goes... which is, of course, older than America. mmhmm. he also gave me tea; i sat in this little dim shop next to the Ummayyad mosque surrounded by old swords and silver earrings and prayer beads...

I guess that's probably pretty much all for now...I hope things are well at home. Give me some news! :)

also you'll notice if you look at the people i'm following on my blog that i joined a site called "james and the giant lemon" http://jdsouder.blogspot.com/ ...that is the blog of the photography guy on our trip. he has good pictures and interesting things to say so you all should check it out :) oh, and hopefully EMU's website will have pictures up soon. we sent some in.

Salaam Alaykum!

here is a snippet from yesterday.

four of us walked down the street from the monastery and found a little pastry shop - we had been given a tip from some of the other students of a shop owned by two Syrian men who were very nice and tried to speak English. They had these chocolate desserts for 5 Syrian pounds (which is literally like - a penny. or less.) And so the four of us found this little shop and went in. The two men (George and ... Faisal? We can't remember the second man's name) gave us the pastries for free. We tried to pay three times and they refused our money. They kept saying "Welcome to Damascus!" We tried to talk (using our 50 or so Arabic words) and they talked back in broken English. It was wonderful. Partway through the exchange, one of the girls with me noticed a picture of Mary on the wall and pointed to it. She asked, "Mary?" and they said, "Ah, Margaret!" and after a brief pause, pointed at themselves and said "Christian." We smiled and pointed at ourselves and said "Christian."

They called their niece up on the phone and had her come over to help translate. She invited us to come to her house at some point; we weren't sure if we would be able to and responded with "Inshallah." (if God wills).

I've decided that I have two wishes that are equal and opposing - I wish that everyone could visit Damashque. I wish they could see the friendliness of this city; the marriage of ancient and modern; the way East and West coexist; the way Christians and Muslims live in peace and respect. I also wish that foreigners wouldn't come here. I wish that tourism would never ruin this place; that people would not be jaded out of their worldview; that money and its host of ills would not corrupt the crooked streets of this city.

But how does that saying go? If wishes were horses...
I suppose rather than wasting time on wishes I will just go walk through the Old City or play a game of Hearts or read a book. :)