I returned from my first witness trip to Israel/West Bank a week before the beginning of Advent.
The number of disturbing afterimages poses a formidable challenge for clarity and coherence. The glare endures after closing your eyes. The towering walls and watchtowers. The ubiquitous IDF. The stark contrast between the arid desert terrain [Palestinian] and the lush hilltop settlements [Israeli]. The once productive Palestinian-owned olive grove now rendered stumps --some of the older uprooted and transplanted for Settlement roadway ornamentals. The nets over the Hebron market keeping out the thrown objects by the settlers, but not stopping the urination.
The check points -- it used to take 20 minutes to travel to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem from Ramallah, now, you can no longer take the direct road but must pass thru 3 check points, taking anhour and forty minutes. The roadways and trains prohibited to Palestinians. The red warning signs by entrances to Area A. The graffiti wall art in a refugee camp of a Monarch butterfly with the writing in English “Here, only butterfly and birds are free”.
The fresh tire tracks of the Caterpillar tractors on the site of a recently re-demolished Bedouin village--most of the structures trucked off, leaving remnants of tile, wire, and pipe.
I am still caught short by a side comment by a brave young Israeli American activist, a writer and poet residing in Jerusalem, convening a workshop on the militarization of Israel: that despair is actually selfish, that we are called to serve God’s children. The portals then become open to other images: the Palestinian activist in Hebron, “I hope the hope never goes away. I feel helpless, but not hopeless.” Then there is the Bedouin farmer whose village was just demolished for the 61st time, kneeling over an olive stump, still viable, citing that as a symbol of hope for him.
There are others: the Bedouin high school teacher excited for his students in math and computer science, the cluster of Bedouin school kids excitedly waving to us Americans visiting the US AID sponsored Women’s Center in Anata, many with their fingers in the V formation.
There is that beacon of hope in Nelson Mandela. The Prewar Plan was just cancelled.
Darkness comes before light. Advent. We were reminded that Jesus lived under occupation.
Palestine is strikingly beautiful in its stark and expansive nature. It is the image of wide vistas and stretched valleys that stand out in my mind as I reflect on my time in Palestine. Driving along the ascending road just north of Jerusalem, we stopped to pray on a peak that overlooked an ancient monastery. It had been built into the sharp drops of a river gorge by ancestors in the faith, a place that has been prayed in for centuries, a place one can still only approach on foot. Standing on this holy ground has forever altered my relationship with scripture—these beautiful images now dance through my head as I turn the pages of the sacred Word.
The festival itself was a great blessing for me. It was very powerful to be in fellowship with other young Christians from all over the world; in church life in the US, I am generally with older parishioners; here I was with an international group of believers my age. Our normal lives lay worlds apart which made our time together strikingly beautiful. We were able to come together to acknowledge and delight in our shared humanity. We were able to bear witness to the daily lives of the Palestinian people, and name the injustices they suffer. Both participants and Palestinian nationals bonded quickly as we were led through this blessed experience and we continue to pray for each other today.
One particularly extraordinary day for me occurred towards the end of the Festival when all 150 participants, donning T-shirts the colors of the Palestinian flag, performed a flash mob by Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. A local group of professional dancers taught us a traditional Palestinian dance. As the market was beginning to clear for prayer and the midday meal, we flooded the terraced steps leading into the Old City and danced to the music of drums and bells and the cheers of the Palestinian locals. Many of those watching us pulled out their iphones and videotaped our performance; these videos were quickly uploaded to Facebook and other social media sites and within the course of an hour had become viral. Despite our attempt at a speedy departure, the social media roar caused us to be recognized wherever we went. For a people who have suffered so much and for so long, this simple act of singing and dancing brought hope and joy. The injustices in Palestine can seem daunting; however, it is the simple acts of embodied hope that God is calling us to create. This was the true beauty of Sabeel’s Young Adult Festival. We danced hope across Palestine’s social media networks and embodied the truth that God has been inviting us into since the original Creation.
