Saturday Night / June 14
In our six weeks together, you have touched me deeply, with your kindness and courage, with your laughter and faith, and with sumud. While Bethlehem is rich in Christian history and iconography, it is you, my friends, who shine with Christ's light. Though our days together have been shadowed by suffering, I have enjoyed each and every one of them, and learned so much from your example and spirit. The tattoo on my forearm may say "Al Masih Qam," but the proof of his resurrection is in you! I mean this with every fiber of my being. Christ rises again, day by day, in you!
As I think about returning to the US, I imagine my heart full of your stories and warmth and concern. I will bear in my own spirit your joy in working together, your hunger for justice and liberation, and most of all your decency. I will not forget this decency and kindness, and what it has felt like to be in your company. I will hold it close: so that it unsettles my settled spirit and stirs in me a hunger that is something like your own. And I promise you that your passion--for your people, for your people's future--will inspire my ministry, my activism and my life moving forward. You can be sure of that. I'm quite sure that's how God works!
Because of the attacks on Iran this week, and retaliatory attacks these past couple days, I'm hoping to catch a ride to the border tomorrow morning, and a flight from Amman to the States thereafter. Whenever it's possible. I feel a sense of responsibility to my wife, my three daughters, my brothers and my church as well. The past two days have been hard for them; and they need me close now.
But my work with you, for you, for the gospel we love...this will go on. And someday soon, I know I will return again to pick mish mish, and play bingo, and read the bible together, and watch you all laugh and enjoy one another. I'll pray for that day.
It has been my deepest intention to practice a kind of Christ-like solidarity with all of you; and this will not change as I board a plane and return home, to a very different setting. I believe that, in faith, we are joined to one another as sisters, brothers and friends in the Body of Christ: a body of great diversity, many experiences and dreams, but united in prayer and love and our commitment to human liberation and justice. I will continue to organize among American church folk, and in American political settings, for repentance, for peace and for the values of nonviolence and justice that shine so brightly among you, at Wi'am. I will protest the American weapons that are sent to torment Gaza and so many other beautiful and vulnerable peoples. I will organize nonviolent actions to demand the US and Israel are at last held accountable to international law, conventions and human rights agreements. Gandhi said, in 1926, “The cry for peace will be a cry in the wilderness, so long as the spirit of nonviolence does not dominate millions of men and women.” We have a lot of work to do. And I'm committed. Because you are.
For Christ has risen.
Your brother always, in Christ,
David GJ
* Keep in touch: david.grishaw.jones@gmail.com.
