The Promised Land - 2005

The following reflection was written upon returning from Israel in 2005. It is my hope that I will be able to reconnect with Khalil, my friend, on this current Pilgrimage in 2009.

I have been to the promised land and I am forever changed. In the summer of 2005 I traveled to St. George’s College in Jerusalem to study Abraham, the father of three faiths. Me, Tara Livingston from a working class town traveled across the ocean and stood at the footsteps of history.

On my first day I entered the walled city of Old Jerusalem, three blocks from the college. I stood for a moment caught by the sight of the first great sign that I saw – “money changer”. I was not yet near the temple but the irony was not lost. I walked over the cobbled streets with its wet stones caught in a forever dampness that I’m sure never leaves – the sun does not penetrate through the crowded buildings. The smell of spices mixed with sweat as the people jostled and called out to one another to lure each passerby into checking out their wares. I imagine that this Jerusalem was not so different than the Jerusalem that Jesus entered in his youth.

All these many years later I can still recall the sights and sounds of the most foreign land that I have ever entered. I can still recall the people; oh the people. The Christian and Muslim Palestinians who worked at the college, kept on even during the intifada of years before. The Jews gathered at the Wailing Wall dressed in their Sunday best on Friday Sabbath. The Rabbi’s who were so gracious and kind in their words and their hospitality. The Palestinian Muslim named Abu Hani who gave us a tour of Hebron and invited us into his 700 year old home for coffee. Here too, you could feel the dampness permeate from the one metre square stones that framed his house even as the plaster fell silently into my coffee from the carefully painted ceiling.

I have been to the Promised Land and I have been forever changed. I, Tara Livingston, wife of Chris, mother of Wesley and Tyler followed the call to cross the ocean and touch the story of Christ in a way that is not possible anywhere else. I, Tara Livingston, walked in the footsteps of our Lord, waded into the water of the Sea of Galilee and floated on the Dead Sea where the minerals do not let you swim. I, daughter of Jim and Shirley, working class parents, travelled to follow God’s call.

Years after my first acknowledgement of my call to ministry I found myself travelling in the desert, sleeping under a goat hair canopy in the middle of a Bedouin camp looking up at the darkest sky I have ever seen – one filled with more stars than I ever imagined existed. I lay there in the desert smelling the cold snap of the air and listening to the snorting and braying of the camels chained near my tent and realized that it was in fact I, Tara Livingston, that was following the call of God, the voice in the desert calling to me as gently as a lullaby and as persistently as a baby’s cry.

After the course had ended, after my classmates had boarded their planes in Tel Aviv to return to the safety and sanity of the U.S., Britain and Australia, I booked a driver to take me to Bethlehem. I had missed the trip due to an illness during which I was ever so carefully nursed by Khalil, one of the gentlest men I know. Henry, the driver and Jill, the dean’s wife and I boarded the van and left for my one last adventure. By this time I was used the security stops; show your passport and ignore the guns pointed at the vehicle. By this time I was used to passing the wall, the real wall, the wall that towers 30 metres high and steals the sky. The real wall that separates the land that Jesus walked and prohibits free movement of all. I was used to the security and the scrutiny.

We entered a refugee camp called Deisha founded in 1948 after the first intifada by the United Nations. We entered an area filled with two floor apartments with no glass in the windows to fight against the cold night air. We encountered two little girls who, when they saw our camera’s, posed shyly for a picture. We encountered nothing green; nothing of the earth but stone and rubble. We encountered people some of whom were third generation resident’s who had never lived anywhere outside of the camp. Seeing the Muslim mosques and listening to the call to worship I asked, where are the Christians? Surely Christian Palestinians were sent here, too. Yes, I was told, but the churches from around the world raised money to get them out. Why are these people still here, I asked. Because there is no money to be raised because it might be for terrorism. Because these people have been forgotten by the world. Because love only danced around the edges of this place but could not make a home here.

I left this place a different person than who I was when I entered. I was inspired by their spirit, by their art, by their passion. I was saddened by the stories, by their tears, and by their passion. We drove to Bethlehem, to the oldest church in the world that has never been used as a Mosque. I saw the floor that was laid by the mother of Constantine, the great defender of Christianity. Surely I was in a Holy Place but my soul was troubled. Again we met the locals who told stories of being under curfew by the soldiers. They were forced to throw their garbage in the streets because there was nowhere else for it to go only to have it blown up by the soldiers in case there was a bomb hidden inside. And then the rats came. The distrust, the misconceptions, the lack of communication weighed heavily on my heart.

We left the city of Bethlehem having received some of the best of Palestinian hospitality. As we drove toward the next check point, the one that would take us back into the West Bank and Jerusalem, our driver suggested that we stop because of line up at the crossing. While we waited Jill and I took pictures of the graffiti on the wall; the real wall, the one that steals the sky. We noticed that there was another wall only metres away from the one we were next to. We looked for the reason that they would build them so close together and then we saw the well. The well of Rebecca, a Holy site and it was being enclosed by this new wall. We heard from the local street vendor that once the wall went up completely the Olive trees that surrounded it would never be harvested. We live in the desert, he said, whoever rules the water rules the world.

As we stood there talking to this man, as he told us about his life, six soldiers began running towards us with rifles, locked and loaded. The sound of their gear and their footsteps filled my head and I became aware of my heart beating and nothing else. They ran at us without seeing. At the last moment five of them moved to my right and only one continued his charge. For a moment that lasted forever our eyes met and I saw that he was terrified. I saw that he was scared and that what was missing was the anger that I would think it would take to run after people with guns. At the last moment he veered away from me – I was clearly not the target. There was shouting back and forth between the street vendor and a car parked across the street and the soldiers changed their course once again and snaked down beside the wall – the real wall, the one that steals the sky – that lead to another refugee camp just out of our vision. Conversation resumed. The sandwich guy began laughing at a joke from my driver and the vendor was trying to sell us his wares. My life was flashing before my eyes and he was trying to sell me a necklace. I looked at Jill and said that I had to leave. We crossed the checkpoint – the sound of the soldiers still ringing in my head – but this time the soldiers with their guns looked more menacing, more powerful than they had before.

And when we had passed through, I cried. I cried and cried until I could not speak. I cried because I was terrified, I cried because I was confused. I cried because I could not figure out who the bad guy was but I knew this place was bad. I cried because I was in the land of the between. Jerusalem, Israel, lies between Heaven and Earth, between the East and the West, between Jews and Muslims – between God and Peace.

I recovered in the garden at the college, a peaceful place. I read the Psalms and found only ones about petitions for God to spite thine enemy. I couldn’t tell who the enemy was. I then found Psalm 139.
O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.
5 You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.

The next day, the day after I had been profoundly changed by my experience at the Deisha camp and the wall, was to be my last day in the land of the between. Khalil, the chief cook and bottle washer at the college, the man who had nursed me through my illness, was to take me on my final journey through Jerusalem to see all of the things that I had missed – and to ride a camel at the top of the Mount of Olives.

Early that morning the phone rang in my room and I heard Khalil’s voice. I cannot come, he said, they have closed the wall and will not allow me through. I will try later, Tara, I am a man of my word. No, I reply through my tears, please do not put yourself at risk. Stay home and stay safe I tell him and with every breath by heart breaks a little more. Khalil tells me that he has something for me and tells me where to find it. We say our good-byes and I go upstairs to his closet in the laundry. In his trouser pocket there is a lighter. I lighter that I had admired and it is Khalil’s gift to me. They find me on the roof, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes just as Khalil and I had done every morning while we watched the sun rise. I cried and yelled and railed against the wall – the real wall in Israel, the wall that snakes through the desert and steals the sky. I railed against the humiliation that employees – citizens- had to endure every day just to make it to work. I railed against the fact that I, a white woman from the Western World had more rights in this country than people who had called it home for generations.

I did not know who the bad guy was. I could not point to the Jewish people and hold them responsible. Not the Jewish people that I had met that had greeted me with enthusiasm, love and hospitality. Not the people who had welcomed me into their synagogues and their homes. Surely not them. Certainly not the Palestinians, both Muslim and Christians, who sought peace through justice and dismissed violence as a way to freedom. Certainly not the young soldier whose eyes were filled with fear, not hate, as he ran toward me with his rifle ready.

The voices of generations before me rang in my head. “Tear down this wall” President Reagan said about the wall that separated East & West Germany. “Never again” the world cried out.

The wall that snakes through the desert landscape that reaches 30 metres high and steals the sky. The wall that does not allow for justice, the wall that does not allow for peace. The wall that represents the land of the between – Jerusalem, Israel, lies between Heaven and Earth, between the East and the West, between Jews and Muslims and between God and Peace. May be if we help Jerusalem find justice then the world may just find peace.

Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem.