MUTUAL AID: "Strength We Share, Hope We Make"

REMEMBER: "Shireen Abu Akleh"

SABBATICAL 6: "When There is No Peace"

They have healed the brokenness of my people superficially,

Saying, "Peace, peace," but there is no peace.

Jeremiah 6:14

Wi'am / Palestinian Conflict Transformation Centre

My dear hosts, Tarek Zoughbi and his fatther Zoughbi have in common this gift: the ability to break my heart and encourage it at the same time; the wisdom necessary for deconstructing outdated assumptions and suggesting powerful and prophetic alternatives.  I'm in awe of them both, each as brave and brilliant as any Christians I've ever known.  My heart bursts each evening with all I learn in their presence.

In a podcast recorded yesterday with a French journalist in Paris, Zoughbi first offered a lament of sorts for the silence (or inaction) of the global community in the face of genocide and apartheid.  Only the global community has true power now, he said.  Where is American leadership?  Canada?  The EU?  

Then, he turned his attention to notions of peace, and peacemaking, and how often we in the West get these crucial things wrong.

In the Zoughbis' Home

"In the world of colonial powers," he said, "peace most often means the absence of resistance.  A conflict is mediated, 'resolved'--but the oppressor continues to dominate the oppressed with little systemic change around deeper issues."  And this, of course, is no peace at all.  Rather than this cheap peace--which is something like a "negative peace"--Zoughbi offers a more urgent and even biblical idea: that we organize, agitate and live into "positive peace", a dynamic mode of community based in justice, equity and equality.  

We don't finally "achieve" peace, then, but practice it (together)--as a foundational spiritual practice, collaborating with peoples of all kinds, developing energy and perseverance within the church (and society), leaning into Kingian and Gandhian nonviolence together.  "Salaam" in the Palestinian context means well-being, both personal and (especially) communal.  Again it's dynamic.  It's a positive orientation of the heart, and a positive set of shared commitments--around Jesus' notion of agape ("Wi'am") and Gandhi's notion of satyagraha.  There are inevitable failures (the gospel story), occasional victories, and always, always, always a spirit of sumud: binding brother to brother, sister to sister; finding comfort in suffering together; belonging to one another "in the image of God."

There is no peace, then, without justice.  "Salaam" does not, cannot accommodate violence and injustice; and, thanks to Jeremiah, we remember that "shalom" is exactly the same.  Not the absence of conflict or tension; but the creative, empowering project of a "just peace."  And this is what we seek in Christian community, then: a dynamic and always evolving "just peace."  (And that's no Trumpian "deal," by the way, made over drinks in a penthouse or castle late at night.)

They have healed the brokenness of my people superficially,

Saying, "Peace, peace," but there is no peace.

Jeremiah 6:14

The Arrest of Mothers' Day 5: 2024

And this brings to mind my dear colleagues in the New Hampshire Coalition for a Just Peace in the Middle East--whose disciplined, collaborative, multi-dimensional witness has so inspired me over the past two heartbreaking years.  That coalition coalesces around this very value, a vision of a "just peace" in Palestine and Israel, and beyond.  Gathered from religious and secular circles, our shared commitment to dynamic peace-making, to persevering nonviolence moves me deeply.  I know--within that Coalition--that noone believes that task will be "accomplished"; but I also know there is a strength among us that insists peace-making is possible, is our human calling.  Not to achieve it, once and for all, but to live it, to embody it, to offer our lives and energies for it.

"Blessed are the Peacemakers"

Tarek tells this story: 

Not long ago, a Palestinian teen arrived for a program at Wi'am, having been detained for several months by Israeli interrogators, abused by his captors physically and psychologically.  Wi’am’s staff worked carefully with the boy, guided by skilled therapists and social workers, encouraging a long (and even unending) process of healing from unimaginable trauma.  

One day, weeks later, an international delegation come to visit; and a well-meaning visitor asked a potent, but invasive question.  “What would you do now to the soldiers who abused you so badly?”  When Wi’am’s staff intervened and suggested the teen simply ignore the question, the boy insisted instead on answering.

“You have asked me the wrong question,” he said.  “Instead you might ask me what I most want to be?”  And after a pause, he continued: “I want to be an Arabic teacher—so that I might teach children among us to take pride in who they are and resist all efforts to demoralize us.”  The visitor had been probing for something visceral, something inappropriately intimate.  The teen, on the other hand, had learned to claim agency in his life, to see himself as a creative contributor to his people’s liberation.  “I want to be a teacher.”

Wi'am: A circle of empowerment

And this is the kind of transformation that seemingly happens at Wi’am every day, and the kind of programming and empowerment centered here.  If there is a spirit of peace here, and there is, it's not static, calcified and proud.  It's Christ-like, humble and ongoing.  In this sacred space, hope is embodied in relationships, celebrations, classes and support groups.  In this sacred space, a whole city sees beyond occupation and apartheid the possibility of a just peace.  Through the eyes of a young man who has experienced the worst of the world, and now offers back his very best.

There's no doubt, really, that Jesus knew Jeremiah's poetry, and his life, inside and out.  Ched Myers and Walter Brueggemann remind us of that, without hesitation and beyond urgently.  To follow Jesus as disciples is not to "save" the world from conflict, and it's not to "fix" folks or nations either.  That's just another cover for "colonial" thinking and religion.  

To follow Jesus as disciples is to "empty" ourselves (and communities) of such pride and simple-mindedness and take up instead the cross of Jesus--who grieves for our suffering and violence, laments divisions among us, and reimagines a beloved community organized around equity and celebration, working across communities for a just peace.  It's a costly kind of discipleship, to be sure, and invites in us all "costly solidarity" (per the Rev. Munther Isaac in Ramallah).  But it is the way of resurrection.  It is the Love that makes the sun to rise every morning, over every hillside and every prayer.

Amen and Ashe.

Bethlehem

13 May 2025

SABBATICAL 5: "Waiting as One, as One, as One"

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Every spring, my friend Loren McGrail reminds us that Holy Fire Saturday is something like a liturgical key.  In that tradition, she says, the world discovers something like the soul, the determination of Jerusalem's Christian community.  As that community leans into hope, as many press together as one body (waiting as one, as one, as one), a single torch of fire emerges from a darkened tomb.  And the crowd erupts in joyous cries--"Christ is risen!  Is risen indeed!  Christ is risen!  Is risen indeed!"  And as they do, the single flame becomes many, passed from hand to hand, from neighbor to neighbor; all over the now bejeweled church believers cup their hands and pull the holy smoke toward cheeks, lips, bruises and hearts.  "Christ is risen!  Is risen indeed!"

At lunch last week, Lareen Abu Akleh shared her experience of Holy Fire Saturday just weeks ago.  And this year it had been different, sad even, interupted by occupation muscle and provocation.  With friends, Lareen had set out early for the heart of the Old City and the tomb within the ancient church.  This year, though, Israeli police had set up ten, twelve checkpoints, blocking the progress of pilgrims, and creating bottlenecks where police angrily confronted pilgrims.  There were scuffles in the old streets, even priests and nuns were pushed around roughly.

For Lareen--the niece of martyred Palestinian--American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh--this was especially cruel.  As she'd done since her aunt's assasination in 2022, she'd planned to take the holy fire from the great gathering in the Old City and out to Shireen's tomb in an East Jerusalem cemetery.  Her family was waiting there--for a reunion of sorts, and a circle of remembrance around a spirit that still burns bright in both family and community.  But she never got into the church.  Stymied by occupation.

As she told us this story, Lareen's eyes brightened (by turns, angry and proud, bewildered and determined); and she noted again how much power and purpose she finds in bearing witness to the holy fire, and its miraculous appearance in that tomb every year, and how it brings a whole people together.  Resilience.  Grace.  Solidarity.

It was clear that, reunion or no, Shireen's spirit lives on, boldly, gathered up by God's own passion for justice, and stirring in the hearts of her family, her community, and this land of many peoples.  Listening that day, I felt as close to the gospel as I've felt in a good, long while.

Razzouk Tattoo--Since 1300 (Old City)

Sitting there Friday afternoon, as Nazir worked his magic into my right forearm, I remembered Lareen's story, and the longing, the determination, the urgency in her voice.  That "Christ is risen" is an embodied experience, a community heartbroken but open to grace, bodies pressed together, waiting in communion, waiting as communion.  The radical truth of the resurrection is not that "I" am risen, that "Dave GJ" is risen, or that any one of us is.  It just can't be reduced to personal piety or individual achievement.  The radical truth of the resurrection is that "Christ is risen," and that in Christ and through Christ so too are all the dear ones God loves, all the souls, all the communities, all the children, all the martyrs: and the grieving mothers of Gaza (all of them), and the dispirited survivors of Shoah (all of them), and the hungry whose plates are empty, and the wandering poor who have no place to lay their heads, and all and all and all.  It's really not about religion at all.  It's about holy fire, it's about love liberated, it's about what is.

So I did this thing.

After 63 years spinning around the sun.

Encouraged by my much more daring daughters and egged on by UCC friends traveling together, I found my way back to Razzouk Tattoo and asked for a tattoo (calligraphy) that reads (right to left, of course) "Christ is risen!" in Arabic.  The folks at Razzouk were enthusiatic, wonderfully professional, and appreciative of the old man's spiirt in me.  

I look at it now, my first tattoo, and it connects me to every soul, every single soul I meet now: the Muslim woman pushing her child up the steep hill on her way to pray; the dear Jewish friend with whom I reconnected (here!) after nine long years; the two-year-old in church this morning, wailing like the sky was falling during communion itself; Zoughbi and Tarek here in Bethlehem, so exhausted by all this violence and apartheid's (seemimgly lethal) grip; Lareen and Omar and Issa and the determination embodied in them all.  "Christ is risen" has nothing to do with human triumph, and nothing to do with supercessionism or religious one-ups-man-ship.  It has everything to do with us, with all of us, with this strange and strangely transfigured human family.  All of us.  Rising.

The Arabic word “Intifada” means “uprising” or maybe even “shaking off.”  It strikes me now that that's what Holy Fire Saturday is really offering, that's what Easter is really all about: that we are not alone as we rise to the struggle for freedom, for justice, for peace; that we are wholly blessed as we lean into community and solidarity, press together to watch for...

Come, then, Holy Fire!  Come, Shekinah, Sophia!  Come, Sister Christ!

VIDEO: "All Are Responsible"

POEM: "Fire Flees Every Tomb"

For Omar Haramy and Lareen Abu Akleh

Demolished, Silwan

What no army, no bulldozing general,
No scheming settler can demolish:
A father's madness, sadness in Silwan,
As his children climb with their backpacks
Through apartheid's wreckage
On their way to school.

What no army, no blasphemous drone,

No empire can erase:

A rabbi's tears, a cantor's prayer

And every advocate for the dead

Searching the rubble for mothers, for lovers,

Their vigil at today's cross which is Gaza.

What no army, no machine/grim gun,

Sage in the West Bank

No genocide can kill:

How their coffee tastes on the tongue

As God's only sun rises in the hills;

How sage plucked from stems

Reminds them all of family, of grace;

How sumud is shared in a glance.

What no army, no checkpoint,

No AI program can keep from them:

Fire that flees every tomb,

Spirit that cries out, "Liberation Now!"--

And friendship which is solidarity

Which is human which is love.

I Witness Silwan

I too would surrender now--

Like Miriam and Moses,

Like Jesus and Francis,

Like Mohammed, 

Peace be upon them, all.

I too would surrender to the power,

To the peace, to the One who is greater

Than all our fears, and even our faiths.

I too would surrender to the 

Nameless whose name is Love.

Come, Holy Fire!

East Jerusalem, 

10 May 2025

Dave Grishaw-Jones

SABBATICAL 4: "Nonviolence is Anti-Occupation"

Tuesday Afternoon, Hebron

Issa Amro (founder, Youth Against Settlements) and Jeff Halper (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) have been nominated by Norwegian MP Ingrid Fiskaa, for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.  In acknowledging this recognition together, they've written: 

The nomination represents not only recognition of our joint efforts to confront Israeli repression, violence, displacement and denial of Palestinian national rights, but of the collective resistance the entire Palestinian people have sustained over the past century and more – supported, as our nomination signifies, by Israeli Jews of conscience willing to stand up for Palestinian rights in opposition to their own government and society.

We met Issa this morning just outside his home, high above the Old City of Hebron--where he lives, and where he continues to build a nonviolent grassroots Palestinian movement in solidarity with Israel Jews and allies around the world.  Along the steep path up, we passed an ancient olive tree (maybe 2000 years old) torched by Hebron's settlers.  Miraculously, the tree survived, and branches were already sprouting green shoots.  Hope.  In an olive tree.  Nature's resistance to apartheid and cruelty.

The H2 area in Hebron is inhabited by approximately 35,000 Palestinians and 400 radical settlers now living in four downtown settlements. These same 400 settlers are "protected" by as many as 4000 Israeli soldiers at outposts and checkpoints in the Old City.  While Palestinians in H2 live under military law, Israeli settlers move freely under Israel’s civil law.  Due to this kind of  militarization (wholescale closure of shops and commercial buildings; extended curfews, restrictions on pedestrian movement, prohibitions on vehicle movement), the Palestinian population in H2 is declining.  Which seems to be the purpose of it all.  

Issa preached in my California church nine years ago, championing nonviolence as a Palestinian commitment and connecting that commitment to deeply respected American traditions (Rosa Parks and MLK, Delores Huerta and Cesar Chavez, and others).  A year later, in 2017, my daughter and I traveled to Hebron and climbed the steep hill to his home.  It was good, these eight years later, to see him again.  He embodies sumud.

Several things popped out today:

1.  The "Hebron-ization" of the West Bank:  Issa talked about the way in which the drastic tactics used in Hebron for many years are now deployed across the West Bank--and increasingly so since October 7, 2023.  Military aggression without accountability.  Settler violence unfettered.  He noted that he suspects the dividing up of the Ibrahimi Mosque--which followed the massacre of 29 Palestinians praying during Ramadan in 1994--might be repeated in Jerusalem (at the Al Aqsa Mosque) and Bethlehem (at the Church of the Nativity) soon.  He called the situation at present the "Hebron-ization" of the West Bank.

2.  What can be done?  Issa noted that an expanding international coalition must "make this occuaption costly" to the occupiers.  He insisted on boycotts, divestment and sanctions.  He encouraged a wide range of nonviolent organizing and action.  And he urged us to address the extreme imbalance here--between Israeli power and Palestinian powerlessness: lifting up Palestinian voices wherever and whenever possible, supporting Palestinian educational institutions and opportunities, and bolstering the Palestinian economy.

3.  The nature of this struggle.  Issa reminded us, eloquently, that this is not a religious struggle, nor even that of one nation against another.  This is only about one thing, he said.  A system of oppression, dehumanization and control.  At issue: Will you be anti-occupation or will you be pro-occupation?  Will you join the struggle for human rights, and a land in which those rights are equally shared and collaboratively celebrated?  Or will you try to justify a divided land--in which the human rights of many are systematically denied in the name of "security"?  

Issa Amro, Omar Haramy (Sabeel)

If the struggle here is all about and only about human rights, and if that struggle is shared by Palestinians and wise, courageous Israeli allies, it is NOT about Judaism.  And it is NOT about Islam or Christianity.  It's about any and all within these communities coming together around shared values and deeply felt commitments to human rights (voting rights, self-determination, the right to clean water and affordable housing and health care and equal opportunities in school and at work).  So, again, the question we ask is not: "Are you pro-Israel or pro-Palestine?"  And it's not even: "Are you sympathetic to Jews or sympathetic to Palestinians or both?"  The question around which this movement is built--and must to moblized NOW--is only: "Are you anti-occupation or are you pro-occupation?"  And you can't be both.

4.  The Urgency of Nonviolence.  Issa insisted that nonviolence in the West Bank rises faithfully from the culture, from the people, even the land beneath us.  He noted that there are "many Gandhis" right here in Palestine: the farmer working the land against the backdrop of settler intimidation; the woman resolutely remaining in her family's home in H2; the many students continuing in their studies; engineers; and journalists, too.  He said that nonviolence is their best and only tool in "neutralizing" the aggression of Israeli forces in Hebron, and equips them with the courage to stand steadfastly in the midst of it all, without giving in.  And he said that this particularly Palestinian expression of nonviolence is especially devoted to "community resistance"--the promise of vibrant communal life and creative communal cooperation in the here and now.  "Existence is our resistance."

Issa, Recovering, July 2024

Lastly, Issa was asked whether he's ever afraid.  Settlers attack regularly; and did just days ago.  He's been beaten badly many times (picture, right).  His home is a regular target of settler ire and intimidation.  He was quick this time and said: "How am I afraid of them?  I believe in God."

And it is this faith that compels him--to seek friends in each and every faith community; to build alliances for the long haul; to remain in a place where his own life is threatened daily; and to imagine a land where occupation is no more, where war is no more, where peoples of all faiths, of all backgrounds and nationalities, live in peace and kindness and justice.  As one.

It's a vision that comes just soon enough...so that I can too can see it.

Let it be so.

SABBATICAL 3: "I Witness Silwan"

The staring eyes say to people that we see them and they should see us too...we want to say that we are here — we love our land and our home.

- Jawad Siyam, Director of Madaa-Silwan Creative Center

"I Witness Silwan" is a community-based, internationally-supported project of nonviolent resistance, based in Silwan, East Jerusalem.  It's all about murals--"the staring eyes" of artists, philosphers, agents of change and martyrs for justice.  In a neighborhood ravaged by occupation, demolition orders, homes seized by aggressive intruders, each mural insists on the right of Palestinians to lands and homes long loved; and each urges the world beyond these streets to take notice, step up, offer support.

What kind of art are we moved to make now...to bring light to the hidden places and resolve to those plead for solidarity and strength?

This morning's tour introduction to this project, and tour of some of the vantage points, is a reminder of the power of resistance, the gift of nonviolence, and the urgency of community practice.  See this link to learn more: I WITNESS SILWAN.

Lower/Center: Eye of the Man Healed at Siloam

By noted Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour, capturing the moment the man is healed and able to see in John 9.  A joint project of Sabeel and I Witness Silwan.  Connecting the Gospel story with the gift and responsibility of sight in a time of urgency, brokenness and transformation.

Eyes of Shireen Abu Akleh

Bottom/Center: Eyes of Malcolm X

Center/Right: Eyes of George Floyd

SABBATICAL 2: "Take, Eat"

The day begins with news of a missle launched by Houtis in Yemen and landing (without casualties) near the Tel Aviv airport.  In a post to X, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised a response to Iran: “Israel will respond to the Houthi attack against our main airport AND, at a time and place of our choosing, to their Iranian terror masters.”  Later, among Armenian Orthodox friends at the Cathedral of Saint Jacob, we're welcomed by the Patriarch who reminds us that American solidarity is critical to the cessation of genocide and beginning of repair. 

Sunday Afternoon

On that last day, Roman violence haunting his beloved community, Jesus sends Peter and John (Luke 22) to the market to prepare the Passover meal.  And later, at the appointed hour, they all gather, thirteen friends (who've committed their lives to his path of nonviolence, mercy and abundance), in a room upstairs, identified strangely by a woman bearing a jar of water home for others.  The room is already furnished, the food is prepared, and they all settle into an open circle, celebrating God's passion for liberation and their partnership, friendship and discipleship.

According to the customs of the day, they recline around this open space, where the feast is spread and candles set.  John sits to Jesus' right, as his dear confidant; Judas sits to Jesus' left, as the meal's provider.  Peter, the poorest of them all, sits at the far end opposite, again, according to custom.

Figure 1

Habit and decency require the washing of feet, before such a significant meal, and ordinarily it would be the poorest and last called upon to perform this duty (Figure 1).  But Jesus, always conscious of flipping customs upside down and revealing divine intention, takes off his outer robe, ties the servant's towel around his waist, pours water into a broad bowl and begins to wash their feet (John 13).  All of them.  Starting with John and Judas on his right and his left (Figure 2). 

Figure 1

Jesus knows what Judas is up to.  He knows that one of his own has tired of the routine, soured on the discipline of loving enemies, and redistributing meager resources again and again, and praying for the Kingdom on earth as in heaven.  He may even be tempted to pull Judas out of the circle; beg him to reconsider, repent; maybe even shame him for his cowardice.  In the fourth gospel, this moment is hidden, between the lines.  We're left to imagine, to wonder, to encounter the radical practice of Jesus on an evening of intense hope, and even deeper angst.  And in this wondering, often, lies the power of the sacred word.

What surely happens is this: Jesus kneels at Judas' side and with his own tired hands--the same hands that'll be nailed to a Roman cross within hours--his works the water into Judas' feet.  I imagine that this is not a routine splashing, a nervous and brief brushing of flesh on flesh.  I imagine Jesus lingers there, washing Judas' dusty feet, rubbing life into them, loving them--with his hands, with his heart, with his flesh.  Made in the image of God.  Both of them.

When at last he gets all the way around to Peter, Peter is equal parts humbled, embarrassed and verklempt.  "You will never wash my feet," he says.  And of course Jesus does--in the same steady, loving, gentle way he's done for all the others.  "You call me Teacher and Lord," he says to the whole group, "and you are right...So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's."

+

We're standing in a quiet room just outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City.  Our guide Rafi Ghattas is mapping this "last" supper--which may have been here, or a room like it, or just nearby.

Rafi notes that the thirteen of them were undoubtedly "reclining" in a way commonplace in that time and place: leaning on the left elbow, left hip on the floor, reaching with the right hand for food spread before them in the center of an open circle.  He notes, then, that their feet were extended behind them, toes like hands of a compass pointing to the many corners of the world.

And what he suggests--about Jesus and Judas, and Jesus' merciful care for Judas in a moment of disturbing betrayal--strikes me hard and tears something open within me.

The Bread: Cathedral of St. Jacob

Could it be that the sharing of the bread/body, the pouring out of wine, the remembering itself, is communion that evening (and since), and as much about the washing of their feet as anything else?  Could it be that it's not possible to grasp the eucharist, or its power and promise, apart from how it is that Jesus reaches--with his hands--into the bowl of water to wash and caress their feet?  Even Judas'.  Especially Judas'!

The body that is "broken" is first bravely offered--lovinging shared, even sacrificially shared, with friend and foe.  And with the foe is also a friend.  And communion then is no simple transaction--as if faith can be that simple, or God that calculating.  Instead it's the radical blessing of God's presence in our communities, in our lives--and Jesus' grace in inviting in us the kind of human, enfleshed transformation that moves to care (intimately, generously, justly) for one another.  And this includes the feared, the weaponized, the despised and the resented.  Especially them.

And receiving this bread, and offering it to another, is a way of consenting to the transforming intentions of Jesus, the transforming gifts of his gospel, even the transforming spirit of his sacrifice: that I might go from that sacramental moment to a sacrificial life--reconciling with my neighbor with hands of love, pursuing justice in coalitions with all kinds of friends and allies, and building beloved community where tenderness and mercy (not grievance and cruelty) are both sustenance and purpose.

Sunday Evening

Dalia Qumsieh, LLM

Yesterday, outside of Bethlehem, we met Dalia Qumsieh, LL M, Founder and Director of the Balasan Initative for Human Rights - Palestine.  She shared Balasan's work to protect Bethlehem and surrounding Palestinian land from annexation and the "annexation wall"--all of whiich carves apart that land and attaches more and more of it to Israel itself.   Interestingly, "Balasan" is the Arabic name for a native tree that has existed in Palestine for thousands of years, which leaves were used to extract a healing balm to cure wounds and illnesses. The name is inspired by the vision that respect for human rights and justice is the cure needed to end violence and suffering, and restore the humanity and dignity of all people in the region.

Dalia told us how quickly things are changing, how drastically they've changed, and how urgently we must all work together to protect Palestinian culture and community (and lives).  She noted that her Christian grandmother can remember a stunning kind of trust, a dense and generous kind of community with Jewish and Muslim friends: that included (maybe sixty years ago) breastfeeding one another's children!  Jews and Palestinians together!

There's no hint of that any longer, not in the West Bank, of course; and not really anywhere to be honest.  But isn't this the kind of community Jesus imagines at supper that "last" night?  Isn't it the kind of community transfigured by love and mercy--so transfigured that justice is not only their desire, not only their intention, but their joy?  Mothers gratefully nursing one another's children, Jewish friends and Palestinian friends building businesses and civic institutions and imagining shared schools and governments?  Muslims and Jews and Christians singing one another's songs and praying one another's prayers--and celebrating even the strange and puzzling differences between them?

As for us, as for those of us still moved to follow the Peacemaker from Nazareth--I think he lays down his life right there in the upper room.  In a way that's clearly and compellingly available to us--to every little congregation in every hamlet, to all the larger congregattions in all the cities--he says: "Take a deep breath, work up the nerve, and wash one another's feet."  And then he says: "Be sincere about it; be bold and boldly patient; and dare to imagine a world healed and redeemed by justice and love."  And then he says: "Put away your weapons and rage.  Tear down the walls that separate flesh from flesh.  Rewrite the apartheid laws that divide brother from brother and sister from sister."  And then he says: "Be reconciled to one another in peace."

This is my body.  Take, eat.

SABBATICAL 1: "Desperate Exasperation"

There exists a solidarity among men as human beings that makes each co-responsible for every wrong and injustice in the world, especially for crimes committed in his presence or with his knowledge.  If I fail to do whatever I can to prevent them, I too am guilty.

Karl Jaspers, 1945

Thursday Morning / East Jerusalem

Budour Hassan

When Budour Hassan is asked to describe what she hears from Gazans in the weeks since the collapse of the recent ceasefire, she leans forward and breathes deeply.  She does her work from home, by phone, making calls into the catastrophe that is the Gazan genocide.  "I talk to parents who are standing over the rubble, and sifting through to find the remains of their loved ones."  She takes another breath.  "I talk to young mothers, who should be breastfeeding but can't; because starvation denies their bodies the ability to produce milk."  And these are the survivors.  So far.

Though that ceasefire was tenuous and brief, it allowed the women and men she interviewed to "plan for something other than their own deaths."  Just a little.  Some version of a future.  "Something other than their own deaths."  And that phrase hits me hard.  I see those around me wince too.  That planning for their own destruction has been, and is again, a way of life for Gaza's people.  Made in the image of God--but reduced to roaming bombed out streets anticipating their own demise.  And of course, in the violent weeks since the collapse of that ceasefire, this is the daily round for so many, the strange way forward that is no way at all.

Budour joins us this morning in East Jerusalem, reflecting on this terrible moment and her work with Amnesty International, documenting that genocide, listening carefully to its victims and survivors, marking (in real time) the collapse of systems and institutions once trusted: international law, organized religion, even nonviolence to some degree.  "My people are steadfast in our commitment to nonviolence," she says, "but we are justified in asking, 'Has it worked?'"  Trained in international law herself, she lives and works out of Ramallah for Amnesty, rising every day to listen to the unimaginable, to chronicle the obscene.  Though she is blind herself, it's clear to us all that she has seen more than we ever will, and understands realities most of us would rather not.  When asked, late in the hour, what she does with the pain she is witnessing day after day, she replies simply, but sadly: "I will never recover from this."

Thursday Afternoon 

If we are capable of compassion and at the same time are powerless, then we live in a state of desperate exasperation.

Czeslaw Miloscz, 1960s

Bishop Younan

Today's itinerary included that visit with Budour and others with Father David Neuheus, SJ; and Munib Younan, a Palestinian and Bishop Emeritus of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL).  Each was sober, generous beyond reason and clearly enraged: by all that's happening in Gaza and West Bank, by the global community's inaction, and by the church's skittishness.  "We Palestinians," said Bishop Younan (while still settling into his seat), "feel that we are alone."  He lamented Israel's deliberate bombing, raiding and depopulating of Palestinian refugee camps--in Gaza and the West Bank.  Refugees, he insisted, remind Israel and the world of 1948, forced displacement, the nakba then, apartheid since.  It's Israel's intention to rid these lands of refugees permanently--so as to erase that narrative from global consciousness and moral urgency once and for all.  His pace picked up, and there was a touch of fire in his eye as he said: "Don't just come and visit.  Go and act!  The time for action is not tomorrow; it's today!"

I'd heard words very much like these on previous trips, with other delegations.  "We cherish your visits; but go back and do something about the politics at home.  See our suffering.  Beat your own damn swords into plowshares.  We're counting on American leadership."  I'm humbled to realize it's been, maybe, 15 years since I heard them first.  

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On my long sabbatical flight from New York to Amman, Jordan, I picked up Pankaj Mishra's The World After Gaza, a thoughtful and even piercing reflection on the events of October 7, 2023 and the genocidal war following.  An Indian writing from his own context of rising Hindu nationalism, dangerous and near, Mishra begins with his own concern for nationalist rhetoric, racial hierarchies and the "moral perversion" that follows.  Germany, our United States, this Israel.

As Indian voters succumbed to Hindu supremacists, I found myself turning to Indian critics of the nation state, such as Rabindranath Tagore, who denounced nationalist Asians as 'callow schoolboys of the East': they, he argued, had fallen for a Western idea with 'high-sounding distinction' but which was actually 'one of the most powerful anaesthetics that man has invented', under whose influence people can carry out a 'systematic porgramme of the most virulent self-seeking without being in the least aware of its moral perversion -- in fact feeling dangerously resentful if it is pointed out'.

I found Tagore's critique--that 'the people accept this all-pervading mental slavery with cheerfulness and pride because of their nervous desire to turn themselves into a machine of power, called the Nation, and emulate other machines in their collective worldliness'--echoed in the writings of Ahad Ha'am, the pioneering Hebrew writer and opponent of Herzl who likewise deplored the nationalist 'tendency to find the path of glory in the attainment of material power and political dominion.'

Mishra, The World After Gaza

Much like Mishra, each of today's speakers insisted that what is happening here is similar to what's happened in these other places: the dream of a impenetrable nation state ("a machine of power"), willing and able to brutalize another people for security's sake, thereby justifying its own excesses and cruelty.  And everytime...racial hatred stirs and rages at the heart of the project.  What's especially clear here--but should be in other settings--is that the "machine" is destroying lives, families and whole communities.  And faith requires our response: our love, yes; but our loving, active, resisting response.   "If I fail to do whatever I can to prevent [these crimes]," said Jaspers in 1945, "I too am guilty."

I'll need more time to reflect on these last two paragraphs (Mishra's and my own)--so stunningly do they implicate my own country's "nervous desire to turn [itself] into a machine of power" (MAGA again) in 2025. 

Thursday Evening 

In our conversation this morning, Budour Hassan noted that her own academic background includes studies in the history of the Shoah, the 20th century genocide in Europe.  And she said that it is particularly painful, especially difficult to see that genocide "weaponized" (her word) to justify and perpetuate this one in Gaza.  How is it, she asks, that the oppressed become oppressors, again and again through human history?  And yet, to suggest that this too--all that's happening in Gaza now--is genocidal is to face a vicious backlash and accusations of antisemitism.  It strikes her as cruel and inhumane.  There's no doubt, she added this morning, that Israel is imposing conditions on Gaza that are "calculated" (her word) to bring about a whole people's destruction and erasure.  

Fr. David Neuhaus

All three of today's speakers have spoken powerfully to the Palestinian yearning for justice, peace and equality.  Father David (a Jewish Israeli citizen, and a Jesuit priest!) urged us to insist on equality as a key piece: that all the peoples of these lands, whatever the political arrangement of states, must experience fullness of life and the protection afforded by basic human rights.  The same human rights for all.  Peace comes only when we can agree on this, he insisted.  Then he noted the "venomous binding of Shoah and the nation state"--and how that coupling is destroying not only Palestinian life and culture, but Jewish practice and culture too.  He quickly added that many in his own family had been slaughtered by Nazis in Europe.  But radical nationalism in Europe and radical nationalism in Israel are equally pernicious, and deadly. 

Like Father David, Pankaj Mishra worries that the violence of the past hundred years is not only catching up with us, but compromising our capacity for human "being" and human collaboration in a world frought with animosity and distrust.

These events (the Shoah, Vietnam, Iraq) which took place in living memory undermined the basic assumption of both religious traditions and the secular enlightenment: that human beings have a fundamentally 'moral' nature.

The corrosive suspicion that they don't is now widespread.  Many more poeple have closely witnessed death and mutilation, under regimes of callousness, timidity and censorship; they recognize with a shock that everything is possible, remembering past atrocities is no guarantee against repeating them in the present, and the foundations of international law and morality are not secure at all.

          Mishra, The World After Gaza 

"Remembering past atrocities is no guarantee against repeating them in the present."  In fact--reducing one people's wellness to a pattern of victimhood rehearsed and vulnerability defended only betrays democratic possibilities.  Institutions for mutual support and community life cannot withstand the fear, the scapegoating, the rage passed on from generation to generation.

St. George's in East Jerusalem

There was something urgent but almost subtle in the way Budour Hassan revealed her pain to us this morning.  This afternoon, Munib Younan was more explicit.  For the sake of the world--for the sake of those who've died in genocides past--the church cannot be silent and cannot risk inaction.  He described with gratitude our United Church of Christ's willingness to risk truthful witness to apartheid, genocide and (beyond these terrors) a world of reconciliation and restorative justice for all peoples of this land.  But he noted that other denominational leaders have been here, left here and done nothing at all.  Said nothing at all.  

Lives are at stake now, he said: Jewish lives and Palestinian lives, Israeli lives and American lives, and our moral capacity to do good by one another.  And the church that follows the Lord of Love can only respond.  In love.  In courage.  In respect for the sanctity of all life.  All lives.  "Go and act."