Worlds of Wanwood

Many years ago I started a column (The Asylum) in the Christian Educators Journal.  It featured a high school faculty lounge with a continuing set of characters.  I was teaching in the English department of Calvin College, and after a few columns I asked a colleague to join me as co-columnist.  Often we would co-write a column, but sometimes we took turns.
The piece that follows is an excerpt of a column I wrote during the fall season back some thirty years ago.  The falling leaves during the last week reminded me of it.
It focuses on the Bible teacher, John Vroom, whose teaching at Omni Christian High has not gone well, especially on this particular morning. Tom Graham, a brilliant student, again made him feel uncomfortably inadequate and even defeated. He found himself empty of authority. 

On this blue Monday morning, John Vroom entered the Asylum like a phantom lost in space.  He dropped into his chair and sagged there, staring into nothing.
Outside, the early winter sun reflected brightly off nature’s overnight dusting of snow. 
Inside, Vroom remained oblivious to the scene and the sounds just outside the room window. 
But there, under the large oak tree that in summer shaded Omni’s faculty room, Lucy DenDenker and her English class had gathered. 
The students crowded around Lucy, some holding up a wet handful of fallen leaves whose flaming orange and bright yellows had long ago turned into muted browns and blacks. 
A few students pulled themselves up onto the lower branches, a thin layer of snow cascading down as they climbed higher. 
The class grew quiet as Lucy’s clear voice began to recite:

            That time of year thou may’st in me behold
               When yellow leaves. or none, or few, do hang
               Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
               Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

On the inside of the slightly opened window, John Vroom floated within a dark bubble, where he heard and saw nothing.

            In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
               That on the ashes of his youth doth lie…

Lucy’s voice, husky with emotion now, reached the rhyming couplet:

            This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
               To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

It was the next voice that penetrated John’s stupor and activated his senses:

            Margaret, Rachel, Susan, Stanley—are you grieving
               Over Omni’s oak unleaving?

Vroom stirred, his eyes focusing now on the mahogany table he’d been staring at.

            Ah, as the heart grows older
               It will come to such sights colder
               By and by, not spare a sigh
               Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
               And yet you will weep and know why.

John Vroom knew that voice.  As if released by a coiled spring, he leaped up and sprang toward the window. 
Lucy DenDenker, surrounded by her students, stopped him. 
The students’ faces, solemn and attentive, stopped him.  He followed the upward gaze of some, and then he too saw where the voice was coming from. 
Tom Graham, perched halfway up the oak, face serious and intent, delivered the next lines of his version of Hopkins’ “Spring and Fall”:

Now no matter, class, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.

Now not only his senses but John’s mind began to refocus as the last lines floated down:

            It is the blight we were born for,
               It is Margaret, Kenneth, Janet, Robert that you mourn for.

A breeze stirred through the oak’s bare branches, scattering more feathery flakes across the schoolyard, some briefly flashing their bright crystals in the November sun. 
Quietly, Lucy’s class gathered and began to move back toward their classroom. 
Quietly, John Vroom stood by the window and waited for the light to reach his darkened soul.

  

           

THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN: a literary exploration

Literature asks us to imagine; it works its magic (and its misery) through imagination.

So let’s imagine that you wake up one morning and find yourself in a large, rambling house.  You don’t know how big it is at once, but in time, as you begin to explore it, you realize that it’s so enormous, you will never know it all.  In the house are people, some of whom you know: family members, friends, neighbors, colleagues; but most of them are strangers.  They tantalize and terrify you both at once.

At some point the truth dawns on you that there is no way out; it is in this house that you will have to live your life.  The house is not what you’d have chosen exactly. It’s in fairly bad condition: the ceilings are cracking, the paint is chipping, the smell is musty; many corridors are crowded with bullies.  Some parts are haunted where in the night blood-curdling screams are heard, places where others and common sense tell you not to go.  But the house will have to do—it’s all you’ve got.

One day your exploring nature takes you inside an unimportant-looking little room.  The room is empty, but there is a voice in it, a voice that seems to be whispering just to you.  It makes you want to stay and listen.  But you want to know if there are other rooms like this one. 
And there are.  Each one with a different voice.  The voices are talking about the house, about everyone in it, about everything that has happened, that is happening, that might happen, that should happen.  Some voices are vulgar and profane; some whine; some are angry and hateful; some are shocking.  And some voices are many of these things at once.  |
You’re spell-bound.  You begin to visit these rooms often now.  Gradually you realize that many people in the house do the same.  You talk together about your visits to these rooms.  You discover that some go there to escape the confines of their life in the house; some to be informed; some to be inspired; some to be provoked to critical thought and gain understanding; some to be delighted and to enjoy; some to glory in the sordid and sensational; some to glory in the right, the true, the just. 

And you—you listen to the voices that compel you to experience other lives and thereby exercise your humanity.
Like the voice of an old woman, 90, suffering from inoperable cancer, facing the end of her life.  But she’s terrified of death.  Nothing in her life has made her ready to accept its end.  She thinks back on the story of that long life: the story of a young girl who had to grow up without a mother; whose father was cold and dictatorial and proud; her defiance of this father by marrying the town’s reject; the unhappy years with a man whose body she desired but whose mind and manners she despised; the decision to leave her husband with her youngest son, whom she loved deeply in her heart but never expressed with her mouth; later, the son’s return to his father, to tend him as he lay dying; then the accidental death of that son for which she felt personal guilt, but for which she was unable to shed tears and which she was unable to accept. 
A sad story of broken relationships, of alienation, of unrepentant pride.  A story without warmth or tenderness for there had always been that overpowering fear of weakness.  Now darkness is closing in, and with it the terror from never having lived in the light.
She tries to run away from it all and finds shelter in an abandoned house.  There, exhausted in body and spirit, she faces her self-inflicted blindness and makes her confession to another wandering soul: “I had a son, and he died.  The night he died, I was transformed to stone and never wept at all.  I’d had so many things to say to him, so many things to put to rights.”  She begins to cry, her first tears.  Still she insists: “I don’t accept it.  It angers me, and will until I die.” 
But then her prideful spirit breaks down completely, and she is able to admit that she treated her son wrongly.  Suddenly the sense of his forgiveness floods her soul with peace.  She’s changed when she’s found and hospitalized.  When the minister stops for a visit, she asks him to sing, “All people that on earth do dwell, Sing to the Lord with joyful voice.  Him serve with mirth, His praise forth tell; Come ye before him and rejoice.”  When he finishes, a veil lifts from her eyes, blinded too long.  She’s choked with the incommunicable years, everything that happened and was spoken or not spoken.  The knowledge comes upon her so forcefully, so shatteringly—the knowledge that she must always, always have wanted simply to rejoice. 
Her voice, profoundly penitent, speaks to you:  “How is it I never could?  Every good joy I might have held, in my man or any child of mine of even the plain light of morning, of walking the earth, all were forced to a standstill by some brake of proper appearance—oh, proper to whom?  When did I ever speak the heart’s truth?  Pride was my wilderness, and the demon that led me there was fear.”
At the end of her wilderness now, the old woman is thirsty.  She takes the glass offered her, and drinks the water, and dies. *
And you—you return to your own life, sobered, and you pray God to save you from walking in darkness, eyes blinded to the truths within you and around you.

When you go again, you hear the voice of a man who learned long ago that life for many is a battle for survival.  As a youth he has to steal for food on the table at night.  Often he gets caught and jailed.  He watches his mother fall ill, grow weak, and fade away, for there is no money for medicine.  When he marries, it is to a woman who has no capacity for affection.  They manage to raise a sickly son on proper nutrition, which they are able to provide with money from stolen goods.  Work Is scarce and pays but little.  Often there is no work at all.  Eventually the little family of three lands in a cabin by a lake, and the man learns how to catch fish for a living.  It takes years before he is able to make it into a livelihood.  But his hopes for his son keep him going.  He wants his son to have a better life than he has had.  His son grows up into a sturdy, independent young man.  Then war breaks out.  The fisherman tries to ignore it as much as he can.  He wants nothing to do with any man or people or ideology that would curtail the freedom of others.  And he gives shelter to anyone whose life and freedom is endangered by another.  Thus his cabin on the lake becomes a hiding place. 
One night the Germans raid his place.  They find no one, but they take the fisherman in for interrogation.  They tell him they have his son too, and that his son will die unless the Germans get the names of those who are involved in the underground.  Nothing is more important to the fisherman than the life of his son.  Yet he refuses to tell what he knows.  When he discovers that his son is already dead, the will within him to live dies too.  They try to beat the wanted information out of him, but he is silent.  They torture him repeatedly to break this man who had not been broken by an absent mother and a cruel father, by poverty, exploitation, discrimination, humiliation, and a loveless marriage.  But they cannot break him.  Though life has trapped him again and again, his dignity and pride and self-respect as a human being have survived. 
He gives the Nazis nothing.  So they take his life.  The voice of the fisherman is stilled. **

You leave the listening room, and you walk the corridors of your dwelling place, and you think of blighted lives around you, made in the image of God, diminished by the inhumanity of others.  And you weep. You weep for all the Humpty Dumpty’s in the world who were created to sit on a wall, but who had a great and terrible fall.  Whose beautiful but delicate shell was cracked beyond repair; whose brokenness arouses compassion in some, and glee in others as they stomp on the pieces, crushing them to powder.

The voice you listen to on another day is not the voice of a child but of a grown man who, like yourself, has discovered that this sprawling house of yours has parts that are overcrowded with lust and crime and unhappy love; an impoverished place, darkened by the absence of God.  It’s the voice of a priest, pursued by the hounds of repression, a fallen priest, a corrupted priest but clinging fast to his vocation, administering the sacraments, giving sermons in jungle clearings, looking for wine that he may say Mass.  At the end he faces execution, the last surviving priest in the land; he’s ashamed that he has squandered his gifts and betrayed his calling, that he must come to his God with nothing in his hands to bring.  He dies, but another priest appears out of nowhere, and the ministry will go on—the power and the glory will not be denied. ***

The next voice you hear is that of a teenage boy.  It’s not a pleasant voice to listen to.  It whines, it curses, it’s full of teenage slang.  You want to leave, to shut it out, but you don’t.  For behind the profanity and the irritating repetition and the incoherency, there’s something you can’t quite dismiss.  You think you begin to hear another voice—the voice of a bewildered adolescent searching for the true in a world choking on false values and hypocrisy.  So you stay and you listen, because it’s your world in which the boy tries to find his way.  Tries, but fails again and again.  For his older brother, who was his hero, is dead.  His parents play only a passive part on the periphery of his life.  His friends think only of the pleasures of self-indulgence, and the adults whom he needs for help talk at him but not to him. 
You stay and you listen because you hear more now than the offense of his language.  You hear him being friendly to the friendless; being critical of messy people who have bad manners, who profane love by reducing it to sex, who humiliate the underdog, who slobber over sentimental movies while neglecting their kids right beside them, who are devoid of conscience or human decency.  In this creature who is no longer a child and not yet an adult, you hear the voice of a moral critic.  And you begin to look beyond his posturing and see his kindness and generosity in action, his respect for the humble, his love of good books, his need for clean, white things, his pursuit of purity. 
You’re shamed by his capacity to care about others; here’s an adolescent who is supposed to be self-centered and egotistic, and what does he think of? About what will happen to the lowly ducks in Central Park when winter comes; about what will happen to the innocent girls when not-so innocent boys take them out; about what will happen to young children when they see the f-word scrawled on school walls.  You hear an anxious frustration in the voice: “I thought how the little kids would see it….”
He rubs it out; then finds another.  “I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on.  It wouldn’t come off.  It’s hopeless anyway.  If you had a million years to do it, you couldn’t rub out even half of them.” 
You’re shamed again.  You’d been ready to write this kid off as a foul-mouthed jerk, emerging now as a would-be saint.  You listen to his voice again, wistful and urgent at the same time: “I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. … And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff. … That’s all I’d do all day.  I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.  … that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.  I know it’s crazy.” ****

Yes, it’s crazy—a 16-year old who would save the children from falling over the edge of innocence into the corruption of the adult world, while he himself is falling into the pit of despair because there’s no one to catch him. 
When you return to your part of the house, you realize that this lonely, lost voice has given you more to be Christian with than you had before.  Again, you remember the story of Humpty Dumpty, and the words of another voice you’ve listened to: “When God had made the Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over.  Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him down to nothing but sparks, but each little spark had a shine and a song.  So they covered each one over with mud.  And the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb.” *****

The voices you listen to next are children’s voices, two children who are left without a mother.  They’re brought up by their father, and he is a good man.  And by a black housekeeper, and she is wonderful.    The children wonder about many things.  Their father listens and always tries hard to explain what they don’t understand.  But then something happens in the town where they live that is even beyond the father’s ability to explain.  A white man accuses a black man of something he hasn’t done.  The jury believes the white man’s word and not the black’s, though there is no evidence against him.  You hear the father’s voice: “… there’s something in our world that makes men lose their head—they couldn’t be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins.  They’re ugly but those are the facts of life.  The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentment right into a jury box.  As you grow older you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.”  The father wants his children to recognize that there is evil in a world where often the innocent are hanged and the guilt go free because of the color of their skin.  He wants his children to recognize evil for what it is.  “We must choose what kind of people we are going to be,” he says, “those who are overcome with evil or those who overcome evil with good.” ******

The voice goes in your ears and in your heart, the voice of a father who inspires the will to follow his example—to meet ignorance and hatred and prejudice with understanding, courage, goodness, and love.  It’s a voice that lingers inside you when you leave that room and makes you want to be a father like that to your children. 

The story you listen to another day is told by a young girl, Lena, and it fills your heart with tears.  Lena too is blessed by having a good father.  He has led his family out of the deep South and segregation and a history of “men hanging from trees and children being taught every day that God meant them to be inferior.”  “We gathered up our courage,” he tells Lena, “and moved on, out West here…the promised land, where people would look at us and see us, not our color.”  But there are poisonous snakes in the promised land, like the town’s white-trash Haney family: the Haneys are shiftless and poor and mean.  And when Lena’s dad replaces Haney as hired man, Haney’s hate-filled son Tater strikes back.  Lena finds both of them, in a far-off field: her father dying from Tater’s bullet; Tater badly mashed from being dragged by the spooked horse he was riding.
You know that the bond between daughter and daddy has always been close and strong and special.  You hear their voices now, and the listening room in this ramshackle house of yours is hallowed by them. Listen:
 “ 'Lena, I had so much I wanted to tell you.  All the things I thought we’d have time for later.’  He bit down on the pain with animal teeth, then his face drained back to calmness.  ‘Couldn’t remember to live every day like it was the last one…. I want you to get Tater back to his folks.’  He held her as her body stiffened and broke into helpless tremors.  No. Impossible.  Her head slashed back and forth against him.  ‘I won’t do it.’  ‘For my sake,’ he said patiently.  ‘Don’t grieve now, Lena.  This is wonderful, that we’re getting to say last things to each other.  Most people don’t get to, or can’t.  It’s what I held out for.  So I could tell you how much I love you.  And Claudie.  And the babies.  And thank you.  For all you’ve given me.’ ” 

The power of Godly grace through her dying daddy enables Lena to do the impossible: to load her enemy, Tater Haney, who killed the most precious person on earth, and whom she hates with all her heart, to load him onto the wagon and ride him back to town and help; to stop the wagon when Tater thrashes and screams in his pain, and to hold his thin hand until he calms.  She does what her father taught her: to overcome evil with good. *******

When the story is finished, it is not finished; for good stories never are.  You take them with you, inside of you where good stories multiply their blessings and change your life.
For what are stories for if it is isn’t also to make you try to catch the Humpty Dumpty’s falling from the wall, if it isn’t also to touch the tumbling mud-balls and help them to show their shine a little and make them sing again?

·        *             Margaret Laurence The Stone Angel

·        **           Rink van der Velde  The Trap

·        ***        Graham Greene       The Power and the Glory

·        ****      J.D. Salinger               The Catcher in the Rye

·        *****    Zora Neal Hurston   Their Eyes Were Watching God

·        ******  Harper Lee                 To Kill a Mockingbird

·        *******Ouida Sebestyen     Words by Heart          

A PILGRIM IN ISRAEL

I wrote of this pilgrimage before (see March 2013), a kind of synopsis of the “Holy Land” experience.
This account is an elaboration; the subject is worthy of a revisit to me.

It took me a time to warm up to an Israel journey.

My wife had been ready for a long time, but for some reason I dragged my heels.

What eventually gave me the needed motivation was the reading of a book, Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour.

For that to make sense I need to tell you a little about that book.

           

It’s the story of a young Palestinian boy growing up in a small village in Galilee, not far from Nazareth.  It was a happy childhood.  For generations, his family had owned fig and grape orchards and enjoyed a simple life, with the Melkite Christian church at the center of their existence.  Home, church, and school nurtured his soul.  He came to love Jesus.

But one day, in 1947, his idyllic life and innocence were swept away when Jewish militias came to take their home, their orchards, their village, everything.  Tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed and nearly one million forced into refugee camps.

Somehow Elias, blessed by a brilliant mind and sterling character, gained an education, first in Israel, then in Europe where he graduated from seminary, after which he became the first Palestinian to receive a degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

But what had happened to him and his family and thousands of other families left a permanent mark on his soul, and a struggle to reconcile the wounds that had been inflicted with the promises of God.

The story stirred me with the injustice of it all.

But what really moved me was what happened next.

For his first assignment as an ordained priest Elias Chacour was sent in 1965 to a dying church in the remote and contentious Arab village of Ibillin where no pastor lasted longer than a few months.

The church, St. George Melkite Catholic Church, close to falling apart, had few attending members, and even those were often at odds with each other.

At times, Chacour was close to despair and giving up.

But he did not leave after a few months, as he had planned.

He stayed for 41 years.  And in that time Chacour became God’s agent of reconciliation among his church members, among the Jews and Palestinians of the town, among the Christians and the Muslems.

And he built a school on an empty hillside now known as the Mount of Light.  It started small, at first a kindergarten in 1968, housed in his humble office and bedroom while he slept in his Volkswagen Beetle.

But Chacour didn’t stop there. 

Today the co-educational Mar Elias Educational Institutions enroll nearly 4000 students from age three through university, including Muslims, Christians, and Druze; even some Jewish. 

When I discovered this story of Father Chacour, there was no hesitation left about going to Israel. I wanted to see what this man had wrought.

This would be a pilgrimage to a land where Jesus walked and taught and modeled what this extraordinary priest was trying to practice.

A pilgrimage to a land where the children of Abraham had lived for centuries and where Arabs and Jews, though blood brothers, were at war with each other.

I became eager to go and learn and grow in understanding and faith.

So off we went, some 35 pilgrims from all over the country with Bill and Lyn Vanden Bosch as our expert leaders.

Our tour of Israel was packed full from 7 o’clock in the morning (or earlier) till 9 o’clock at night (or later) with bus rides, hikes and climbs (we walked about 5 miles a day), lectures and descriptions, devotions and testimonies.

I want to highlight those experiences that continue strong in my memory, and that continue to bless and agitate me.  

Our first two nights we stayed near Haifa in a Carmelite Monastery, built over the cave of Elijah on Mt. Carmel on the Mediterranean – a beautiful and peaceful spot.

Our first full day in Israel included the visit I had eagerly anticipated.  The bus wound its way through untraveled country roads to the city of Ibillin, not shown on most maps because, I’m told, it’s an Arab city.

Ibillin is in the Galilee region, near Nazareth, where Christians and Muslims have lived together peacefully for hundreds of years.

The residents are an agglomeration of what remained from four different villages which were among the 460 towns that were completely destroyed or deleted or emptied for the arrival of the Jews, the same as what happened to Chacour’s family.

Those who fled the deportation and hid later agglomerated themselves in this village which then grew to 8500 inhabitants.

The Palestinians who lost everything – have no right of return or compensation, or even recognition.

All the Arab villages in the Galilee are surrounded by Jewish posts of observation, from which they are closely monitored.

Learning about such injustice began to weigh on us as our pilgrimage crisscrossed through the Promised Land.

But now, the bus chugged its way up a steep hill, and then we suddenly had our first glimpse of Chacour’s realized dream, the Mar Elias Educational Institutions.

We were welcomed by a throng of smiling school children. 

To me it was inspiring to wander through the hallways of this beautiful educational institution to which students come from all over the Galilee because of its high quality reputation. 

The principal of the school treated us to an impassioned talk about the mission of this place.

It includes Mar Elias College, the largest college in the Arab community in Israel with 384 students and 59 faculty members and which has earned a reputation for excellence.

Then there is the recently founded Mar Elias University, the first Arab university in Israel, operating as a branch of the University of Indianapolis. Mar Elias University at the time had some 200 undergraduate students and 60 faculty members.

Students learn in Arabic, English and Hebrew.

And what became of that ramshackle, forsaken little church that Chacour came to in 1965?

It’s become a place of beauty for worship and faithfulness in outreach.

Not far from the school campus is the Mar Elias Church constructed somewhat in the shape of a boat, according to Charcour’s intent to have it symbolize the Palestinian population’s need to move forward.

The steps to the entrance emphasize the profound impact the Sermon on the Mount had on Chacour and on the mission he embraced.

And inside there are many reminders of the biblical events that continue to inform Chacour’s mission.

What excited me about this pilgrimage after reading Blood Brothers and online information about Ibillin was not only the inclusion of this place in our itinerary but also  and especially the opportunity to spend an hour with Archbishop Elias Chacour in person.

Chacour was the first Israeli citizen to be appointed a Catholic bishop.

And this three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, in 2006 was elevated to the office of 

Archbishop of the Melkite Catholic Church for Haifa, Nazareth, and all Galilee.

We would have the honor of a private audience with the Archbishop in his quarters in Haifa.

Abuna (as he’s affectionately called by his parishioners, students, and friends) sat with us for at least an hour. Let me mention some bits and pieces of what he said.

He said he’s “a walking contradiction” – a Palestinian-Arab-Christian-Israeli, and told us about the challenges that causes in his mission to break down stereotypes.

He said: “Tell your friends that I was born in a village, a very beautiful village. When we heard the Jews were coming, we prepared a banquet for them. We gave them our beds to use, and only ten days later they deported us, and we are still deportees, while our homes and land were turned into wasteland.

“This is a people here who have a history of over 3000 years. And now it is no longer a fight of one nation against another nation because of their convictions, but because both claim the land to be theirs, and none is willing to share it with the others.

“The majority of Jews understand that the big land of Israel can no more belong to the Jews alone. But their heart is in love with all the land, and they don't know how to make the separation.

“Palestinians as well, especially Palestinian Muslims, say this is our ancestral land. And they know, with their intellect, that it is no more their land alone. But from their emotion, they cannot agree with the reality.

“What we have here is a majority of Jewish people, a minority of Palestinians living in Israel, and three or four million living in the West Bank. What can we do to improve the situation so we can live together.

“Palestinians do not ask for compensation. They ask just for the return of the occupied territories to have a viable independent state, side by side with Israel. Without that, there will never be peace or security. Unless the Palestinians, by divine power, decide: ‘We accept to be the slaves. We accept to be the Jews of the Jews. We accept to be the eternal deportees/refugees, no human rights observers.’ If that would happen, that would be a solution.

“There are 3000 Israeli settlers around the city of Gaza, surrounding 1,200,000 Arabs. And the 3000 settlers, to my knowledge, have the right to 85% of the water of Gaza, while the 1.2 million have only 15% of the water, which is hardly enough. They have water once or twice a week. These things are not right.”

Chacour,  who “has devoted his life to advocating non-violence and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians”  challenged us to be peacemakers, and that sometimes means raising issues on injustice loud and persistently.

For me, and I think for all of us, it was not only informative but transformative: we brought much more thought and understanding and a prayerful spirit to the rest of our pilgrimage.  Our eyes, our minds, and our hearts were opened to the complexity and agony of the ongoing conflict in the land where Jesus as the Prince of Peace, teaching the Sermon on the Mount, lived the life of a servant, and sacrificed himself for others.

Elias Chacour is retired now. He is living again in Ibillin, having time to read, write, pray, and continue meeting pilgrim groups to share his story of “Building Peace on Desktops.”

 Sometime later that day we stood on Mt Precipice, overlooking the city of Nazareth, where Jesus spent most of his short life.

Next we had a good look from Mt. Arbel at the Sea of Galilee, including a distant view of Capernaum, Korazin, and Bethsaida where Jesus did much of his ministry.

The last stop of the day was at a very recent archeological site in Magdala, the home of Mary Magdalene, a spot where almost certainly Jesus walked.

Our pilgrimage included a long hike to the ruins of Gamla, a place where Jesus almost surely preached in the synagogue; it’s in the Golan Heights near the border of Syria.

And we reflected in the nearby pastoral site of Kursi where Jesus healed the demoniac. 

That healing started a Christian movement in the area which many years later provided a delegate to the Council of Nicea.  Now when we recite the creed in our Sunday morning worship we remember doing that together as pilgrims in that historic location. 

Then we returned to the Sea of Galilee.  We remembered the words of Jesus: “Come follow me.”

Of course we had to take a boat ride.

And we heard how on that lake, surrounded by low mountains, sudden storms can sweep down and endanger the lives of fishermen.

No such storm arose during our sail.

Nearby is Capernaum and the ruins of the synagogue where Jesus taught.

We ended that day on the slope of a promontory above the Sea of Galilee where some say Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount.  It was one of the most moving experiences of the trip when Pastor Bill recited the sermon from memory.  The words touched our lives as perhaps they never had before.

Close to where we gathered, there was a sculpture of the face of Jesus, hidden inside the bush. 

To me that hidden presence gave the words of the Sermon on the Mount even more import.

   

Next we stopped at Beth-Shan, where the bodies of King Saul and his sons were brought after their deaths.  

The Assyrians destroyed the city in 730 BC, and it was left in ruins for centuries.

It was rebuilt a number of times and was a major city in Roman times, considered a Gateway to Paradise.  It was destroyed by a major earthquake in 749.

We viewed the ruins of that meticulously designed and built city from high above, and then walked down the marble and stone thoroughfares to take a closer look.

They even thought of latrines.

These weary pilgrims are making grateful use of this public restroom!

Jericho was our next destination. 

Jesus walked the Jericho Road on the way to Jerusalem and the cross.
 

The road leads through a forsaken wilderness, emblematic of the spiritual wilderness Jesus came to redeem.

No one goes on a Holy Land pilgrimage without visiting Masada where Herod built a summer palace and fortress, and where, more famously, over 900 Jewish zealots made a heroic stand against a powerful Roman army.

It has become Israel’s most visited national park.

The replica gives an idea of the engineering challenge and accomplishment.

A full-fledged city operated on top of the huge rock, 1500 ft above the level of the Dead Sea, with sophisticated water systems and baths. 

It was a long and strenuous climb to reach the oasis of En-Gedi; this is where David found refuge from king Saul.

The place became more memorable for us when we sang David’s words “As the deer panteth for the waters, so my soul longeth after you.”

We went on to Qumran, the legendary home of the Essenes and the location where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

And not to be missed, of course, was the chance to float in the Dead Sea.

As we continued to drive through the West Bank area, we became more aware of the inequality of the land use for Israelis and Palestinians, which is of course the case throughout the country.

And we’d see signs like this:

Just outside of Bethlehem is the site of the Herodium Palace and fortress complex where he won a victory over the Jews and Parthians in 40 BC.  It is highlighted by a hill that he made into a mountain fortress. 

Herod’s complex included a large swimming pool and parade ground, a theater, and the recently discovered Herod’s tomb.  In the theater is the just uncovered royal box where Josephus tells us Herod entertained Agrippa, son-in-law of the Emperor Augustus.

Not far from this site one enters Bethlehem.  It was painful to see the dividing wall built by the Israeli; in many places it’s marked by angry graffiti but sometimes also by expressions of hope and reconciliation, like this:

Bethlehem District is home to more than 170,000 Palestinians, concentrated mostly in the  town of Bethlehem and two nearby towns. The wall surrounding the Bethlehem district is a 15-kilometer shackle that segregates a huge area of agricultural land, mainly olive trees.

The wall around Bethlehem serves to isolate and annex the religious areas.

 Hundreds of people are isolated between two walls, further strengthening Israeli control of historic, religious, and deeply significant places and strangling the city economically.

Close to 90% of the route of the fence/wall is on Palestinian land inside the West Bank, encircling Palestinian towns and villages and cutting off communities and families from each other, separating farmers from their land and Palestinians from their places of work and education and health care facilities and other essential services.

No gate in the wall allows residents access to their lands. As a result they must travel long distances to get to their land. The main roads are often reserved for soldiers and settlers, and so Palestinians are forced to take even longer routes, often on foot, and cannot bring equipment to harvest their crops. The walls in effect deny them the ability to earn a living from their land.

The fence/wall encompasses more than 50 Israeli civilian settlements in the Occupied Territories, in which the majority of Israeli settlers live and which are illegal under international law.

The construction of the fence/wall inside the Occupied Territories, projected to be about 450 miles in length, in its present configuration violates Israel's obligations under international humanitarian law.

But within the grimness of that divided Bethlehem, we found a place of compassion and  love: the Al-Basma Center for young Palestinians with disabilities, where smiles and hope abound.

Its founder, Abdullah Awwad, fled Libya to come home to Bethlehem where he felt called to lead Al-Basma.

The young people trained and cared for here were the outcasts of society.  Here they learn love and respect, joy and purpose and our hearts were filled just being part of their lives nd this place for an hour.

But Bethlehem is the birthplace of Jesus.  Instead of visiting the Church of the Nativity, which is built over a particular cave believed to be the Birthplace itself, we went to a much more peaceful place, a shepherd’s cave in a corner of the city, the kind of cave and manger (not a wooden box) in which Mary and Joseph welcomed the Son of God.

And that leaves Jerusalem. 

Bethlehem is what we remember especially during Advent and Christmas.

Jerusalem, a short distance from Bethlehem, is our focus in Lent, and the difference between Advent and Lent is the difference between life and death, joy and sorrow.

Except to this pilgrim there is more sorrow than joy in the land today, and that is true of Bethlehem as well as Jerusalem.

When we looked down on the city from the 2500 feet height of the Mt of Olives area, I couldn’t help but think of Christ grieving over Jerusalem, when he said: “…how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”

There was much to pray for at the Western Wall.

The Western Wall is the holiest site in Judaism.

I stood at that wall, joining others from many places, praying with one voice, I hoped, for peace and justice.

We spent time at Yad Vashem, the official Holocaust Museum of Israel, an experience that penetrated our emotions to the core.

Such unspeakable suffering in the history of the Jews! 

We spent a time of reflection afterward in the Grove of the “Trees of Righteousness.”  Nearby a tree had been planted to honor Cornelia Blaauw of the Netherlands for her wartime courage on behalf of the Jews.

And then there’s the Temple Mount, and the majestic Dome of the Rock visible from all over, the Islamic holy place built on the site of the old Jewish temple.

This is a hot religious collision spot for Arab and Jew.

In the Old City part of Jerusalem are four holy sites of the three major monotheistic religions: the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Via Dolorosa, the Western Wall, and the Temple Mount with the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine.

Only Muslims are allowed to pray there. Jews and Christians can visit, but they may not enter the Mosque.

For Jews the Temple Mount "is where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac, and where God gathered the dust that created Adam. It’s there, the Bible says, that King Solomon built the First Temple, circa 1000 B.C., where Herod refurbished the Second Temple, and where Titus tore it down in 70 A.D. Its inner sanctuary is known as the Holy of Holies—a place where no one but the High Priest was allowed to tread.

The Temple Mount and Jerusalem have often been rocked by violent riots, terror attacks that claim lives, and attempted assassination.

On our last day of the pilgrimage, we went early to the Mt of Olives.

From the Mount you look down on the Jewish cemetery, where one can buy a grave site for around $25,000.  It’s been a burial site for about 3000 years and is still in demand.

Many Jews believe that when the Messiah comes to Earth riding on a white donkey, the dead will rise from their graves and walk to the holy Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City.

From the Mount you also look down on nearby Bethany, the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus…dear friends of Jesus.

The Mt of Olives and Gethsemane had only lived in my imagination, as had many other Biblical sites.  But not many places in Palestine are the way they were in Biblical times.  No compelling pilgrimage destination stays the same.

Here we also saw the Dome of the Ascension: A small shrine, now a mosque marking the place where Jesus is believed to have ascended to heaven.

And there’s a depiction of Jesus leading his disciples after the Last Supper to the Kidron Valley, or the Garden of Gethsemane.

An ancient staircase leads down towards the Kidron Valley and the Garden of Gethsemane.

This is where Jesus wrestled with his Father in dread of the days that lay ahead.

There are many memorials, one of which is the Church of All Nations.  A somber church at Gethsemane, built over the rock on which Jesus is believed to have prayed in agony the night before he was crucified.

On the façade of this Church, the triangular area over the great portal displays a much-photographed mosaic.

Christ is depicted as the mediator between God and mankind, on whose behalf he gives his very heart which an angel is shown receiving into his hands.

On Christ’s left, a throng of lowly people, in tears, look to him with confidence. On his right, a group of the powerful and wise acknowledge the shortcomings of their might and learning.

An atmosphere of sorrowful reverence pervades the Church of All Nations. The architect wanted to leave the interior in semi-darkness to evoke the night-time of the Agony.

We spent some time in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Time for silently meditating, praying, reflecting.

More signs reminded us of what followed after the arrest in the Garden.

Then we made our way uphill, through the Lion’s gate, into the Old City and along the Via Dolorosa all the way to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
And as you see in the background here, you’re never far away from the walls that encircle Jerusalem.

 

Defensive walls go back to ancient times, of course. Remains of one ancient wall that goes back to the Bronze Age are located above Hezekiah’s Tunnel that is still there the same way it was in Hezekiah’s day.

Most of the walls you see today were built between 1535 and 1538, when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire. They contain 34 watchtowers and 8 gates.

Today they mainly serve as an attraction for tourists since they ceased to serve as a means of protection for the city.

And what’s the experience today of walking the Via Dolorosa?

The stations and sites along the way reminded us of where we were.

And though the way of Christ as he stumbled to the final destination was undoubtedly not exactly the route we followed on that Friday, we felt more keenly than we ever had before the cosmic irony of our faith: the Son of God, his flagellated body sagging under a cross to which he would soon be nailed, staggering through the narrow streets crowded with indifferent merchants and hawkers and Passover observers from far and near – all this unspeakable humiliation and agony – to give his life for us, out of love for us.

We stop at the Church of the Flagellation, and we remember that with his stripes, we are healed.

In the Chapel of Condemnation, we contemplate the statue of Christ, taking up his cross.

The crowds move steadily toward The Church of the Holy Sepulcher where the walls tell the story.

We took turns going down into a burial vault nearby.

There we felt close to the Passion of the Christ.

Afterward we stood together as a group and professed the Apostle’s Creed together.  Here, on this sacred site in Old Jerusalem, we thought deeply about what we were professing.

We ended our pilgrimage in the Garden Tomb.

Some claim this to be the actual site of Calvary and Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb.

The Garden Tomb is a quiet place intended for worship and reflection.

There was beauty and peace here.

Our time in the Garden and our pilgrimage ended with a moving Communion Service.

We were reminded of the places we had walked together as pilgrims and the significance of each.

Then we sang “He Lives,” “In Christ Alone,” and our daily pilgrim song, “In the Light of Jesus.”

We had walked where Jesus walked.

We had walked “on ancient stones smoothed by the feet of millions of pilgrims gone    before.”

We had sailed the Sea of Galilee where Jesus walked on water and Peter sank.

We had been in Bethlehem where God came to dwell among us.

We had stood in the Garden where sweat turned into blood.

We had walked the Via Dolorosa.

We had stood near the place where our Savior was crucified.

And near the place where he emerged from the grave, so that even Thomas the doubter could say: my Lord, and my God.

Through this pilgrimage, we re-committed ourselves to keep walking the path of faith, hope, and love—in the steps of Jesus.

And yes, to keep on praying for the peace of Jerusalem.