Way to Go, Minnesota!

In a world where it often feels like there just isn’t enough evidence of love (and as such of God) in this world, I am heartened and strengthened whenever I witness love and equality prevail against fear, bigotry, and injustice.
Today, I witnessed that in this state which I’ve called “home” for the past three years.

Just six months ago, we were voting on a constitutional amendment that would deny the right to marry for same-sex couples. Never before had such an amendment been defeated in a state where this was put on the ballot, and quite frankly, that’s usually what happens when the rights of a minority are left up to the will of the majority.

But not here. People spoke through their votes and struck down the amendment, refusing to enshrine bigotry into our state’s constitution.

I believe that action is what emboldened our elected officials in the House and Senate to finally make a stand for equality and love. Sometimes, when the people speak out for justice, our leaders can set out to do the right thing.

Well done, Minnesota. I have never been more proud to call myself a resident.

 

A Prayer of Thanksgiving, Supplication, & Lament

(Having just returned from Ecumenical Advocacy Days, there are many justice-y things to process & share. But I wrote this prayer on the plane on my way home, so I’ll share this first:)

image by GETTY IMAGES

Dear God,
There are so many moments when I am grateful that I am not pregnant and without children:

• Every time I gorge myself on sushi and beer or enjoy a glass of scotch in the evening, I give you thanks;
• Every time we spontaneously decide to watch a movie in theaters without worrying about getting a last-minute sitter or wondering what movie I must watch since I won’t be back for another 6 months, I give you thanks;
• Every time I look at the mess that is our home with dust bunnies and dog fur covering our floor, knowing that a curious crawling child would be face to face with this mess, but I can put it off for yet another day, I give you thanks;
• Every time I go skiing or do something deemed “too dangerous” for pregnant women, I give you thanks;
• Every time I breeze through airport security and walk to my gate burdened only with my own carry-on luggage and no one’s crying and melt-downs but my own, I give you thanks
• Every time I travel internationally in this same way, I give you thanks- many, many thanks.

But God, despite all these blessings, I still really, really want to be pregnant, have a baby, and raise children.

Sometimes, I feel like those formerly barren matriarchs of the Bible:

• like Hannah who prayed fervently in the temple, asking, as if drunk, for a child, seeking refuge in her faith and bargaining her child’s future profession in exchange for answered prayers – like Hannah, I say, “Me, too, God. I’ll force my child into ministry, too, if that’s what it takes!”
• like Rachael, desperately seeking mandrakes with the hopes that it will increase her fertility and who probably wants to be happy for her sister Leah, but really? She’s pregnant again? Just like that? What miracle drugs might make that possible for me? Those mandrakes didn’t work in the end; we don’t know what did. – like Rachael, I say, “I’ll try mandrakes! I’ll try anything! And I really am happy for all those expecting. It’s just, well, you know. How come it’s so easy for them? And what’s wrong with me?”
• like Sarah, who was promised a child but faced one disappointment after another until she began to doubt that promise and believe it impossible. Through time and pain, she built a wall around hope and expectation, so much so that she laughed in disbelief when she was told it would happen – like Sarah, I laugh because otherwise I’d cry and I say “Send me strangers! I’ll entertain them with food and be hospitable. And I’ll really try not to laugh at them when they talk crazy.”

Because I just want so much to…

• to see two lines on that plastic pregnancy test, and since we’ve already experienced that, to then also hear a heartbeat on the ultrasound and witness a healthy baby being born;
• to hold a newborn baby and to wonder if s/he looks like me or Mike, and (according to my mother) hopefully it’s Mike;
• to kiss that forehead and touch those tiny hands and feet, marveling at the miracle of life. I do this all the time with other people’s children because it’s true of them, too. But I wonder if it’ll feel even more that way if I get to take him/her home with me and look at that face at all hours of the day and night;
• to breastfeed. I know it’s weird, God, but every time I hold a newborn child, I have this absurd urge to feed it. I don’t, of course. That would be inappropriate and very frustrating for that child, but I really, really have to fight the urge.
• to know, either way, if this is even possible, so that we can choose another way if necessary. Because the uncertainty is exhausting. And the Great Disappointment was hard, but the small disappointments that have since followed each month are the ones that wear me down;
• to one way or another raise a child that turns into teenager who is embarrassed of me because I’ll still be saying things like, “LOL” and “OMG” fifteen years later, and I’ll be over-protective and probably a little too loud. I’ll also assume I’m hip and try to make friends with my kids’ friends, and in the process, scar my child. But I promise to save money for therapy and to love him/her even when (s)he’s being a mean brat.

I want all these things, God. But in the mean time, I’ll continue to eat sushi, drink scotch, travel, and be grateful. Because this, too, is a blessing.

Amen.

P.S.
The cutest baby is on the airplane as I pray/write this, and yes, she’s starting to cry as we descend, but I still want that. I still really do. Because, I swear, when I looked over at her, she smiled at me. She really did. She smiled at me. I don’t care that she probably can’t see me. Is it a sign? She is tiny and cute, and I want her. Should I ask her parents?
No? Fine. Then, I’ll just keep waiting.

Meditation for Maundy Thursday

Artwork by Sadao Watanabe

I think about Jesus, sitting at that table, eating his last meal, accompanied by people who had promised to follow him, who were supposed to be his friends.

And he knows, that these very people, these very disciples whom he has chosen, whom he has shared his life with, would soon go on and fail to pray with him, betray him, deny him, forsake him at his hour of greatest need, and then go into hiding.  Every last one of them would leave him in the end.

I think about Jesus, sitting at that table, eating his last meal, sitting with the betrayer, the denier, the sleepers who can’t keep watch and pray, and all those deserters.

And I wonder, what would I want to say to them?  What would be my last words to this sorry band of followers?  Maybe something about loyalty?  Or courage?  Maybe something that would really eat at their conscience as they looked back on these last hours and remembered our time together.

I don’t know what I’d say these supposed friends and disciples, but I do know that the last thing on my mind would be love, and particularly my love for them.  And a love so profound and deep, no less, that it overflows into action, into humility and service, into intimate touch that washes the feet of these great disappointments.

I think about Jesus, sitting at that table, surrounded by those he should’ve been able to trust, should’ve been able to count on and lean on, and I know, if it were me, I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t do what he does.  I couldn’t give of myself that way.  I couldn’t stare into the eyes of the one who will betray me, into the eyes of those who will desert me, and love them any way, and not only love them, but show them that love in complete humility and service.

I’d like to believe that I would, but if I’m honest with myself, I know that I couldn’t do it.

I confess that I have a hard time loving well even those who are good to me, those who have supported me and loved me in return, I have trouble loving even them well.

I’m selfish and calculating, I’m guarded and afraid of getting hurt.
It’s hard for me to love fully and with abandon; I prefer to be careful and cautious.

And maybe some of you can relate to that.
Love, even shared with those whom we know well and trust, can be risky, asking of us too much intimacy, too much honesty and too much vulnerability.

Mother Theresa once said, “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”   The problem is, most of us don’t love until it hurts, in fact the moment we sense anything uncomfortable or frightening, the moment we’re confronted with even the perception of pain, we run the other way; we don’t dig deeper; we don’t love harder; we leave.

And we come from a long line of leavers, a long history of those who’ve walked away and left:
we are all Adam & Eve, walking away from the gates of the garden;
we are all Jonah, running from Ninevah and God’s call,
we are all the prodigal running away with our inheritance,
and we are all Judas running from the Passover meal, feet, recently washed by the one we will betray.

Teresa of Avila has this beautiful poem about us being the body of Christ in this world:
“Christ has no body on earth but yours, no feet but yours, no hands but yours.
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world.
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.”

And, indeed, we, the church, are the body of Christ to this world, and I believe that, yes, we are called to be like Christ.

But this week, as we relive the passion of the one whom we call our Lord and Savior, we are made grossly aware, that no, we are not Jesus.  Because if we were, what we commemorate, what we celebrate, the love we are given, none of it would’ve happened that way.

We are not Jesus.  There are some things that only Christ can do, that only God incarnate can do.  We cannot do them. 

We cannot love unconditionally; we cannot save humanity; we cannot be the life and the resurrection.  It seems impossible because it is impossible for us.  There are some things that only Jesus can do, and thanks be to God, he has already done them.

Now, please hear me, when I say, I believe we are capable of amazing things. And we are called to be Christ to each other, we are called to transform the world, and yes, I even believe we can do it, but only with God’s help.

And this week, this Holy Week, we are given the gift to stop and pause.  We pause to recognize and acknowledge our own frailty, our own failures and our own complicity. We pause to affirm that while we are called to be like Christ, we are not the Christ.

This week, we pause.

And on this Maundy Thursday, we acknowledge that, today, we are not the hands and feet of Christ, we are the hands that receive the bread from the Bread of Life, and we are the feet that are washed by the Son of God.

This week, we are not the hands and feet of Christ.  We are the ones who will drive the nails into those hands and feet.

This week, we watch the story unfold yet again, and we take our place in that story, not as Jesus, but as the ones whom Jesus loved and forgave.

Despite our shortcomings, despite our betrayal, despite our denial, we are the ones whom Jesus loved.

It is to leavers and deserters like us, to betrayers like us, to sinners like us, it is to us that Jesus speaks these words, not of anger; not of reproof; not of blame, but of love.   Of deep, abiding, ceaseless love…

And though we fail again and again.  Though we fall short again and again, God’s mercies never end.  And God’s love never ends.

It is because of that radical love and grace shown first to us, that we can rise again from the ashes of our own failures and shortcomings to choose once again to follow Christ.

Even those fickle and frightened disciples who sat with Jesus around that table, they, too, were transformed by this love, and all but one of them would continue, picking up the broken pieces of their faithless lives to try again.
And it is my belief that even that one disciple, that even Judas who could not, in the end, forgive himself, it is my belief that he, too, was loved and fully forgiven by God.  But our reality is that sometimes, the hardest thing to do is to receive and accept that kind of love and grace.

And so, this week, this day, we are invited to take off our shoes and bare ourselves to Christ.
To allow Jesus to touch us in the places we’d rather keep hidden.
To allow God to shine light into the dark places of our hearts that we pretend don’t exist.  And we are invited into a love so deep and intimate, so consuming and constant, that what matters is not how we’ve failed in the past or how we will fail in the future, but that God loves us so much, right now, that God prostrates before us to wash our feet.

Will we let Jesus wash our feet, or will we, like Peter respond, “You will never wash my feet,” scandalized by such an uprooting of societal norms and breech of polite rules.

Will we allow Jesus into our lives to wash our feet?

Can we lay ourselves bare before him, vulnerable and broken?

And will we let him love us, not with the love that we deserve, but with the love that can only come from the Creator of the universe who has searched us and known us as her own.

Because then, and only then, will we be equipped to do our small part in God’s continued work in this world.

On Maundy Thursday, we remember the Mandatum Novum, the New Commandment, the new commandment to love one another that Jesus laid out and showed for us.  Christ perfected and completed it; we now live it out the best we can in our own broken ways.

But only after we’ve honestly uncovered who we truly are, and recognized whose we truly are, can we go on to be who God calls us to be.

I have a quote hanging in my office that reminds me of this every day. It reads:

Dear Human:
You’ve got it all wrong. You didn’t come here to master unconditional love.
That is where you came from and where you’ll return.
You came here to learn personal love. Universal love. Messy love. Sweaty love. Crazy love. Broken love. Whole love.
Infused with divinity.
Lived through the grace of stumbling.
Demonstrated through the beauty of… messing up. Often.
You didn’t come here to be perfect. You already are.
You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous.
And then to rise again into remembering.
But unconditional love? Stop telling that story.
Love, in truth, doesn’t need any other adjectives.
It doesn’t require modifiers. It doesn’t require the condition of perfection.
It only asks that you show up. And do your best. That you stay present and feel fully. That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as you. It’s enough. It’s Plenty.”

Sisters and brothers, take heart.
We do not have to save the world; God has already done so.
We only need to receive God’s love for us, and in our own small way, share that love with one another. That is the new commandment.

And so, let us prepare our hearts for the feast of love that Christ first shared with his disciples in that Upper Room.
And in the breaking of bread and sharing of cup, let us receive that love, and in so doing, go into the world to share it with others.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Not Just Any Babysitter

I try to make myself out to be the pastor who’s “not so different from you.” I’m honest about my shortcomings, curse (to remind people of my normal-ness), drink and try to be as approachable as possible. To most of my friends, peers and even church members, I really am just another flawed & broken human being that God has somehow called to serve the church as a vocation.

Nonetheless, there are moments in my life when I am reminded that, simply by virtue of my office, I often am and will be viewed differently.
I’m slowly starting to realize that not only might this be okay, it may even be an amazing honor that, like grace, I receive without deserving.
I feel this most profoundly when I am welcomed into a family’s grief as I help prepare for their loved one’s funeral, or when I’m invited into hospital rooms for those who are sick and afraid. There’s great privilege that comes with this office; privilege I don’t deserve.

Often I’m still caught off guard at how some folks respond to me being a pastor, but sometimes these moments just make me laugh.

Tonight, I laughed.

Each year, House of Hope holds an event with a silent & live auction to raise money for mission. And each year, I donate my babysitting services. I thought that would be one good way to get to know some of our church families & their children. And since my favorite job before becoming a pastor was working as a nanny, I’ve got a good amount of experience with kids & babysitting.

Tonight, I made good on my auction item and went to babysit for a family with a 5 year old. I brought Jenga with me, and we spent time playing the actual game, making our own towers with the blocks and lining them up like dominoes to watch them fall. We were getting along famously, like any sitter/child relationship might, when he suddenly stopped and said he’d be right back.

He ran upstairs and brought down his Children’s Story Bible which we passed out to his class this past Sunday in worship. He showed it to me.
“Look,” he prompted me.
“Oh, you got that just last week, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Yup. And I’ve read it all the way to here,” he said as he flipped far into the New Testament portion of the Bible.
“Wow. That’s great. Are you enjoying it?”
“Yup.”
“Do you wanna read it with me now?” I asked, feeling like a dutiful pastor should at least ask.
“No. Not right now. Maybe later. Let me build you a castle now,” he replied as he went back to the Jenga blocks.

And I had to laugh. Because I doubt he’s done that with any other babysitter.

When his parents came home, I shared the story with them, and we laughed together. They told me he had felt a bit shy about me coming over to babysit.

And that’s when  I realized, it could be a little weird to have your pastor be your babysitter, too. I had never thought of it from a 5 year-old’s perspective. 

Despite whatever awkwardness we started with, I think we ended up having a good time any way. And perhaps after seeing me without a big, scary black robe and with the ability to play games on the living room floor, I seem a bit more “normal” to him now. And if not, I suppose that’s okay, too.

Thank you, Jhumpa Lahiri

Meet Jhumpa Lahiri, Indian American author of books like The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies. She is changing my reading and creative life.

Growing up, I loved to read.  I would spend hours with my nose in a book, and the rule at our dinner table was, “no books.”

I also enjoyed writing as a creative outlet.  I didn’t like it as much as reading other people’s written work, but I did like it and even won a national Promising Young Writers’ Award in 8th grade.

But when I pursued my English degree in college, I always said, “it’s not because I want to be a writer; it’s just because I love reading so much.”

In seminary, I read Lahiri’s novel The Namesake. It echoed so much of the first/second generation immigrant experience, it was sometimes painful to read. I was uncomfortable with how much she could see into my soul as she wrote about Gogol, the American-born son of two recent immigrants from Calcutta.

I couldn’t pick up her stuff again for another seven years. That’s how much it affected and terrified me to read something so close to my own experience.

And then I began to wonder… Is this how some of my white classmates  felt as they read The Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace, or even something as simple as Ramona & Beezus.  Did these books resonate with them in ways I couldn’t understand because they came from their world-view as white Americans?

Now, don’t get me wrong- I think, at their best, books help us transcend our own experience and allow us to live vicariously through the lens of another. I think they help us become more empathetic people who can, for a brief moment, be whisked away into another time, culture, or world.
I love reading because I am taken out of my own reality, transcendent through time and space, tasting and living something new and different.

But what does it say that in all my years of reading, I didn’t find something that reflected my own experience until far into my 20′s? And what does it say that reading my 2nd generation, Korean-American self in a book felt wrong, scary and too-close-to-home?

Why shouldn’t more books reflect this marginal perspective, and why don’t they? Why shouldn’t young Asian Americans read their life story echoed in popular fiction and classic literature?

In hindsight, I wonder if I would have felt more inspired to write if I knew I could just write what I knew. If I didn’t have to conform to social norms or pretend to know any other experience than my own. I wonder how much of my unwillingness to write was associated with never having read any stories that sounded like the stories that were in my heart.

In seminary, my preaching professor, Frank Thomas, once said something that liberated me from my fear of preaching: “You can only preach what you know. And if you push that experience deep enough, it will resonate with your people, no matter how different they are from you.”
I guess writing sermons and writing stories aren’t all that different.

Last week, I began reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, and these short stories are inspiring me to reclaim the creative outlet of writing fiction once again.  All the characters in this collection of short stories are immigrants, children of immigrants or are in relationship with immigrants from Calcutta. These are stories of those who are Bengali.  She’s writing what she knows; something she’s intimately familiar with. She’s writing the story on her heart.

And she’s inspiring me to do the same.

It may turn out that 15 years later, I’m actually not as promising of a writer as they’d thought I’d be.
But I’ll get the stories out first, and criticize myself later.

What’s in a name?

House of Hope: Easter 2012

My first session meeting at The House of Hope, I was surprised to find how we ended our meetings:  We all stood up, held hands in a circle, shared our prayer requests & ended with the Lord’s Prayer.

It was beautiful.
Something about this act of intimacy & community, of ritual & faith, brought me to tears, and I knew I was in the right place.

That first meeting, I could only name a few names around that circle.  Many of the faces were new to me, and most of the people were still strangers.

But tonight, as we ended our session meeting to stand and join hands for prayer, I realized, I knew every person in that circle by name.

Now, I know for most pastors this feat seems hardly worth acknowledging.  And I recognize this mostly speaks to my embarrassing inability to remember names.

But, just for some context: For me (and for most members of a mainline denomination), House of Hope is a large church.  We have just under 1600 members, 33 ordained elders serving on session, and 11 of them rotate on and off each year.
I don’t submit this as an excuse; just as a reality of this congregation.

And so I confess, I routinely fail to remember everyone’s name’s on Sunday mornings.   Sometimes, it feels like I’m walking among a sea of people I mostly recognize, but can’t fully place…and whose names, for the life of me, I can’t seem to conjure up.  It’s frustrating, but it’s mostly embarrassing.

But tonight, as we ended our session meeting to stand and join hands for prayer, I knew every person in that circle by name.

To me, that’s something. It’s progress; it’s a milestone; it’s something.
And these people around this circle, they were no longer strangers.  This was my community.  And, today, for that, I am grateful.

Travelogue: Jerusalem and Other Parts of Israel/Palestine

(*note to readers, I began this blog in February after returning from Israel/Palestine, but didn’t finish it until December! Sorry for the long delay, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.)

Mike & I began the new year with a class in Jerusalem.  We took a law school course together entitled “Conflict Resolution from Religious Traditions.”  It was one of the few classes that would appeal to both of us, me as a pastor and Mike as a law student.

One of our readings, “Jerusalem: City of ‘The Between’” by Daniel Rossing beautifully captures the spirit of Jerusalem:
“To truly enter Jerusalem is to leave the alluring arena of either-or dichotomies and      embrace the sometimes frustrating, but always rewarding realm of both-and dilemmas… The city invites all who set foot in her gates to celebrate Creation & seek Redemption, to grasp heaven & earth at once, to elevate reality w/ dreams & ground dreams in reality, to faithfully recall & respect the past & fervently reach out to the future, … to find security in one’s particular theological or ideological home without being afraid to wander in the open spaces of universal humanity, … to be empowered and powerless in the same moment…
We are constantly challenged – now! – to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to respond to the command to ‘go up,’ not as temporary escape from the demands of daily life, but as a timeless journey into the between, into the heart of life and faith… To journey into the between is not simply a matter of transportation, but indeed an occasion and opportunity for transformation.”

Indeed, Jerusalem, and what we saw of Israel/Palestine, was very much an in-between kind of space.  There’s much I continue to process and reflect on from the course and from our experience abroad, but I wanted to start here with this:

We arrived in Israel after over a day of travel and an 11 hour lay over in Brussels.  This was a welcome welcome as we picked up our baggage at 1am Israel time. We took the sherut (like a small airport shuttle) to Maeirsdorf Faculty Club at Hebrew University, Mt Scopus Campus.  I thought this would be more “dorm-like,” but it was a full-on hotel which was a nice perk! We found it very convenient and comfortable.

We pushed the two twin beds together as to feel more like a married couple and less like roommates. the electric kettle & fridge in that nook were money.

Each room had a mezuzah (an encasement with a piece of parchment with the shema on it). They are placed on the door frame as is instructed by the halakha (Jewish law).

This particular campus is on Mt. Scopus and has some amazing views of Jerusalem.

Day 1) After registration, we had our first class. We learned about the many different Christian traditions in Jerusalem and how they not only have conflict with other religious traditions but within the Christian tradition itself.  A trip to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher showed us how different parts of the church belonged to different Christian denominations: the Armenian Church, The Greek Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, etc…  We also met with the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate who is a judge in the Ecclesiastical Courts.

our student ID cards

Our first time viewing the walls of the Old City.

The Greek Orthodox judge telling us about the Ecclesiastical Courts. Did you know there’s no civil marriage in the State of Israel?

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is on the location where people say Jesus died on the cross and then where he would’ve been buried in the tomb.  This would’ve been the tomb the women went to on Easter morning.
Some of the places we visited on this trip were likely the actual places, some were possibly the actual places and others were not likely at all.  Whether these are the actual sites or not, there’s something powerful about joining with millions of people who’ve made pilgrimage to these very places for hundreds of years. What’s heartbreaking is the violence that often erupted in the name of these holy sites.

Walking into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Mike touching the ground where Jesus is said to have died on Golgotha.  There’s a hole in the glass encasement where you can put your hand through and touch the ground.

a mural of Jesus being taken off the cross. anointed and buried. all of which they believed took place where this church now sits

me touching the slab on which they say Jesus was anointed.

entering the garden tomb where jesus was buried and from which he resurrected

inside the tomb

After a very Christian-oriented day, we ended our time in the Old City with a visit to the Western Wall.

the western wall on a drizzly January night

a woman prays on the wall; above & next to her prayers have been inserted into the wall

There was something so sacred about touching this wall which has remained standing for thousands of years. I lifted up prayers for peace.

Day 2) “Only through the encounter with ‘the other’ can we truly and faithfully fathom the infinite depths of our own unique otherness, our own particular memories and visions of the future.”
On this day we visited some places where, either intentionally or unintentionally, you are challenged to encounter “the other.”
ALYN (All the Love You Need) Hospital & Rehab Center is a children’s hospital that serves  all children regardless of nationality, religious belief or ethnic background.  Muslim parents encounter Jewish parents; Arab Palestinian children befriend Israeli Jewish children as they go through treatment together.  Out of necessity and love for their children’s well being, adults learn to trust “the other,” and friendships are born.

a little girls walks with some help

Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam (meaning “Oasis of Peace”) is an intentionally diverse community jointly founded by Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinian Arabs in an attempt to show that the two peoples can live side by side peacefully, as well as to conduct educational work for peace, equality and understanding between the two peoples. It shone as a beacon of hope and light for me.

the sign welcomes us in three languages

a peace pole

tiles made by the children who live, study and grow up in this community

getting a walking tour of the community

Day 2 is also the day we got our RavKav. This turned out to be a good decision as we didn’t have to constantly have exact change to take public transportation.  Actually getting it, however, was such an ordeal! We were sent to several different windows, back and forth and were sent all over that transportation building! It would make a good “Amazing Race” activity, I think.

mike waits in one of many lines to get his rav-kav

at least in the end, we were successful

Day 3) We had a class on Jewish Law which was informative, but reminded me why I quit law school (mostly teaching methodology more than anything else).  Occasionally, though, I was intrigued because it sometimes reminded me of Biblical Interpretation.
After a full day of class, we made our first, but certainly not last, visit to Mahane Yehuda or “The Shuk” as some people call it.  The sights, sounds and smells of the market place were glorious!
Day 3) Qadi Ahmad Natour, President of the High Sharia’a Court of Appeals in Israel, taught us a day-long seminar on Islamic traditions. I was fascinated by his interpretations of The Qu’ran. He also reminded us (a class of mostly American Christians and Australian Jews) that just like in any religious tradition, there are behaviors done by Muslims that have nothing to do with Islam. I’m saddened that he had to say anything to that effect at all, but it was indeed a good reminder and truth reiterated.
This day also happened to be January 5th and my 30th birthday!  I couldn’t think of a better place to celebrate turning 30 than in Jerusalem where Jesus began his ministry around the age of 30.  To celebrate, Mike and I went to dinner at Yudale, a one room tapas bar with the kitchen right in the middle that’s located near the Shuk. The servers and cooks were so much fun and even offered free birthday shots that they took with us!

menu for my birthday: 5/1/2012! the food was great!

they make your food right in front of you!

birthday dinner w/ the hubs

our free drinks: Haraq

Day 4) No class on January 6.  This day was Epiphany for us and Christmas Eve for the Greek Orthodox Church.  We chose quite a day to visit Bethlehem!
First, to the field where shepherds lay keeping their sheep:

the fields where sheep would’ve grazed in Bethlehem

another view of those fields

where shepherds would’ve slept

mike inside the shepherd’s cave where the animals would’ve slept

skylights in the cave

exiting the caves where the shepherds would’ve taken shelter

Then, on to visit The Church of the Nativity located where they say Jesus was born!

Greek Orthodox Processional for Christmas Eve

entering the church through a very small door

inside the church

the processional makes it into the church

they go into the “grotto” where Jesus was born (we follow)

where Jesus was born

this is supposed to be the very spot where the Christ Child entered the world

Mike & I standing where they say Jesus was born. Merry Christmas or Happy Epiphany!

seems appropriate to have a nativity scene here

Driving to & from Bethlehem was quite an experience, too.

murals on the walls dividing Palestinian territory from Israel

check point. i believe those words say: “stop the wall”

We also got a nice view of Jerusalem driving back in with the Dome of the Rock shining brightly

we bought this in Bethlehem

Afterwards, we walked around the Old City before heading back home:

the supposed Room of the Last Supper

Jewish Quarter Gate

the dome of the rock from inside the Old City

near Muslim Quarter

outside Damascus Gate

walls of the Old City

Day 5) No class today either, so we took a visit with some classmates to Masada and The Dead Sea
Masada is the ruins of a fortress built by King Herod. There’s a lot of history here which I won’t go into, but it was the place of a mass suicide of Jewish rebels who chose death over slavery to Rome.

cable cars take us far up

some of the original mosaic can still be seen

walking the ruins

great views!

Afterwards, we took a dip in the Dead Sea which was, yes, very, very salty.  But it was so much fun, and such an amazing experience feeling supported by the water beneath you.

floating in the Dead Sea

carefully walking on the sharp salt

covered in Dead Sea mud

Because it’s been so long, the days now start to blur together.
Classroom Highlights:
 Michael Tsur who is a professional negotiator came to talk to us about conflict resolution.  He was there at the Siege of the Bethlehem and helped negotiate the release of the hostages.  I can’t quite remember what else we did that day.  That night we saw a documentary of the Siege of Bethlehem.
Marc Gopin intersected conflict resolution with the religious traditions, and those were the most seminary-like classes we had. I loved them, the law students, not so much. Some of them kept wondering, “so what’s the law to apply here?” I think it was, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.”
Gopin also talked about the importance of raising compassionate people, not just successful people and how suspending your own reality & entering another world helps with that (another plug for reading fiction!)
The Rev. Canon Hosam Elias Naoum from St George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem shared with us his interfaith work with youth.

Tomb of David Visit: This place showed how all three of the faith traditions can converge on one place and call it a holy site. The Tomb of David for those who are Jewish, the Room of the Last Supper above it, and above that a minaret and place of prayer for those how are Muslim
Mount of Olives Tour & Lecture: from an aerial view of Jerusalem, we reflected on how many different religious traditions exist so close together. We considered how such realities can make for conflict, but how they might also make for peace. And if not peace or conflict resolution, maybe a little conflict management will do.

class photo at the Mount of Olives

Tourist-y Highlights:
Hezekiah’s Tunnel- an aqueduct system built in ancient Israel. It was the darkest, lowest, wettest, most narrow adventure I’ve ever had. Good thing Mike brought a flashlight because it was sheer darkness otherwise!

they weren’t joking that the water would get that high

walking down to the tunnels

see? it’s thigh-high

sometimes, even i would have to duck to make it through

other side leads to the pool of siloam

Afterwards, we ventured back up to the Old City again

gates of the City of David

a view of the city

Tour of the Tunnels under the Western Wall:  We went underneath current homes in Jerusalem to see more of the original Western Wall. not just the portion where people pray. It was awesome to get underneath and see what’s been buried by new developments.

the stones Jesus himself may have seen coming into Jerusalem

as close to the original “Holy of Holies” as you can now get

walking through the walls

Yad Vashem: We also visited the Holocaust Museum which was well done and poignant. May we remember our history, and may we always value all human life.
The Israel Museum holds so many amazing treasures from the ancient land of Israel/Palestine. Here in the U.S., we rope off old things and put them in glass cases, but there were so many things available to touch and walk through at this museum! Other highlights of this place are the Shrine of the Book that houses most of the Dead Sea Scrolls and, one of Mike’s favorite findings, the model of Jerusalem in the Second Temple period.

Shrine of the Book (that holds the Dead Sea Scrolls)

they’re held in an encasement that look like a scroll

2nd Temple Period Jerusalem! It was fun to run around and look at it up close. We felt like giants.

Transportation:
We used a taxi once, private charters twice with the tours, and a sherut twice (to & from the airport). Otherwise, we used public- buses and Jerusalem’s new light rail system.
The light rail, however, was literally brand new and bus lines were changing, and we came in a time of transition when no one was sure which bus would stop where. It was sometimes very frustrating as we walked from stop to stop, ran to catch something when we saw it, and overall just felt lost.
But it’s good for us to get lost in a city we don’t know every once in a while, and I am grateful for even this.

new light rail map, for this line

happy when we found the right light rail line

confused when the bus stops would have NO numbers on it to indicate which lines stopped there

And of coarse, the ever-important, Food: We did go to a few nicer restaurants (like on my birthday), but we mostly ate a lot of street food, looking for the cheapest falafel sandwich we could find! We also frequented two places, one on Jaffa Road and one at Hebrew University.

Helene: Queen of Hummus, a restaurant on Jaffa we went to 3 times

Mike & our new friends (our server and the owner) at the Helene: Queen of Hummus Restaurant

some shwarma place… (the place we went to in Hebrew University) it’s right as you get to the bus stops

corn outside the Old City

falafel sandwich & diet coke

From this experience, both classroom & otherwise, I decided that these are some of the things that may make for a compassionate person:
- the ability to empathize & see and feel from different perspectives (traveling to other places helps with this, I think)
- philosophy: the ability to argue and critically think
- opportunities to live vicariously through other people and through books and movies
- relationships that challenge your beliefs & deeply rooted understandings
- moments of cognitive dissonance: when your “reality” is agitated by another “truth”
- having opportunities to forgive and be forgiven
- allowing transformation and “little c” conversions to take place (not the kind where you switch religions, the kind where your understanding of your own faith expands)
- emotional intelligence: the ability to know what you feel and to understand why you feel that way PLUS the ability to understand what and why others feel a certain way.

So, there you have it- our trip to Israel/Palestine through brief reflections and many pictures. It really was a trip of a lifetime, and it was so wonderful to bring in 2012 in a place that will always remain so close to our hearts.

It was fun to reminisce as the year comes to a close, and let us continue to pray and work for peace here and everywhere.