Coming Home

Thankfully the day begins a little later. I am refreshed and well rested after having finally slept through the night until 6:30 – a record for me to be sure. I am once again in the garden – with a coffee and a cigarette – when a man comes up to me and gives me three freshly picked roses. All he says is welcome to Jerusalem. For some reason on this trip men want to give me flowers – between this guy and the steward on Lufthansa there seems to be a trend starting. We’ll see if I can keep it up!

We have our group picture taken and then board the bus to go to St. George’s Cathedral for worship at 9:30. As we fight through the traffic I catch a glimpse of the streets that I walked when I was here and then see the College – the entrance with the big metal gates and the garden that lies behind. We enter through the other side where the Church entrance is and again I am overwhelmed. We have some extra time so Richard takes us through to the garden of the College and I cry. This is where I came to heal. This is where I restored my soul with Psalm 139. O Lord you have searched me out and known me. I am home. This feels like home.

I see Tamir – the gatekeeper. He remembers me after a time. I am so delighted to see him again. Quickly we go into the College to have a quick look around and then after a few minutes in the garden we go to the service. It is an Arabic service – we are definitely the guests here. Richard tells us that in the 90’s when he was here there were maybe 100 people in the Arabic service but because of how difficult it is to travel into Jerusalem for so many Palestinian Christians the numbers have declined significantly. The service begins – our group responding in English, the rest of the congregation in Arabic. They read the Gospel in both languages and the presiding Bishop offers his sermon twice to include us all. The lovely cacophony of sound – the hymns sung in two languages, the creed in two languages – all at the same time. We are truly the one in the body of Christ. We sing – in two languages – the Church has made a true foundation – and that has never been truer than in this place. It is overwhelmingly beautiful and moving and I am grateful to Richard for not having us attend the later 11:00 service where only English is spoken.

At the end of the service I turn to see Jill, the wife of the Dean, the one who travelled with me on my last journey. I throw my arms around her and cry. I step back, look at her face and embrace her again. I am so delighted with this unexpected surprise – I didn’t think that she and Steven would be here in May – that again the memories come back but now they are the good memories; the memories of learning, of praying, of fellowship and of healing. We make plans to meet on Monday morning to catch up and she is gone.

I had decided not to participate in the afternoon program. I just needed some time away from the group and hustle and bustle and decided I’d rather spend it in the hustle and bustle of the market. Ronda (friend for years, Trinity grad and Priest in Medicine Hat) and I walk the familiar streets. For me it is memory lane and for her it is all new. It is great to see it through her eyes. We enter the Damascus gate where the first sign you see is still “money changer”. I love that irony.

The smells of the spices the sight of the crowded streets and the sounds of the people overwhelm our senses as we enter. I barter for a gift for a friend back home (but she’s not a forty sheckle friend, only a 30 sheckle friend....) and get into the rhythm of the game. We stop to have lunch at a cafe – wonderful food and good prices, although he assured me that it was the same price for tourists and locals which made me suspicious that that wasn’t true... – and watch the people. A woman comes with a massive package balanced carefully on her head. She calls out in Aramaic for help but before I figure out what she is asking someone else stops to help her take it down. She sets up on the ground with her freshly cut herbs to sell. Life must be unbearably hard for this woman – a woman forced to sell on the ground of the streets – and I realize that she must be a widow just trying to get by. I am struck by how little has changed since the time of Jesus. He asked us to look after the widows and orphans and here we are watching this old woman with an enormous weighted pack on her head – only the full strength of one’s body could bear it.

We continue down the street and Ronda enters into the game of bartering (but my daughter is in hospital and I must pay.... you would cheat an old man cough, cough). And I am home.

We go back to the hotel for some rest (I just ended up sewing for the afternoon – and I don’t sew!) and then back down to St. George’s College to hear our guest speaker. His name is Yakir Englander and he is with the Kids for Peace organization. Their mandate is to bring 10 Orthodox Jews, 10 Palestinian Christians and 10 Palestinian Muslims together. They meet together – for the first time. Those kinds of boundaries are not crossed here in Jerusalem. If not for this program they could go their whole lives and never have a conversation with the “other”.

“Others” loom large here. There is so little communication and so much misunderstanding. Everyone points their fingers and blames the “other” without knowing who that is. Yakir tells us of his escape from a Hasidic Jewish community where they only studied Torah – no math, no languages and certainly no world events. Because they studied all of the time they could not work so the state supported them. These are the orthodox of the orthodox. When he left he had to fulfil his commitment to join the Israeli army and was eventually asked to be in a special unit that dealt with dead bodies. Dead Jews, he said, look and smell exactly the same as dead Palestinians. Palestinian mothers, he said, cry and mourn in the same way as the Israeli mothers. Hmmm. May be “they” are not so different after all.

Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem!