My Return to Bethlehem

I should have been better prepared. I chose not to walk to the Church in En Harim – I was already tired. I dozed on the bus and didn’t disembark to look at Bethlehem from the other side. But nothing could prepare me for seeing the wall.

The real wall in Israel – the one that snakes through the land, reaches up 8 metres and steals the sky. The faces of the people in Diesha, the memory of not seeing Khalil on that last day, they overwhelm me and there are tears – flowing freely and quickly. As we see the graffiti and Nadal our guide talks about the wall, as we snake through the crowded streets they flow and my face is wet.

Twice I think I see the place where we stopped so many years ago – the place where they gave us wine and bread, where they shared their stories of living under curfew, Palestinian Christians & Muslims with the same experience – but I am wrong. We stop for lunch and I try to pull myself together and engage in conversation but on the way out one too many people ask me if I’m OK. The story comes out quickly and breathlessly – Diesha, Rebecca’s well, the soldiers, Khalil. For me they are so tightly woven together I cannot separate them. I stand there with Nadal, his arm around me, and Rhonde and the owner of the restaurant (Abu ______ = Father Mustache) sees my tears and says I don’t have to pay for my wine. I have paid with my painful but beautiful tears, he says. In my wake I leave people confused and compassionate but I cannot stop.

Again we board the bus and go up even more wills to the Church of the Nativity. Just as we turn the corner I see it...the place where I received the best of Palestinian hospitality. But we move quickly past it, up the hill past the store to the oldest Church in the world. The original floor was laid by Helena, mother of Constantine.

I am overwhelmed by the incense as we walk through an orthodox service. I cover my mouth with my shawl and rush through and then we are there – in the courtyard. The group moves quickly through – for them it is just another courtyard, but for me all I can see are the bullet holes. The holes left from the bullets of snipers who fired into this sacred place to kill Palestinian freedom fighters who had taken refuge within the walls of the Church. Let me be clear – I do not agree or condone the violence that the “freedom fighters” may have engaged in but to have soldiers’ fire bullets into a Holy place is beyond my comprehension.

We go to Jerome’s study where he translated the scriptures into latin but my heart is not there. The group sings a hymn – in this cave where Jerome sat for over 30 years – and I allow myself to be transported to another place, a peaceful place.. The group hast to wait in line to go down to the site of Christ’s birth but the incense overwhelms me and I burst out into the open air to breathe,,,to breathe,,,to breathe...

We get back ont he bus and drive through the small hilly streets – no easy feat for a full size tour bus. San Francisco’s got nothing on this place. We shop and I buy a cup and a plate to use as a chalice and paten. I am breathing now, in and out, and the memories take their proper place.

It has been a long day; on the bus at 8:00 AM, and we don’t leave Bethlehem until 5:00. We drive to the wall – the real wall in Israel that snakes through the desert and steals the sky. I take pictures of the graffiti and hope that they turn out through the window. Nadal shares with the group his experience of lining up before dawn every morning for two hours just to get through security. The group is horrified – this is their first glimpse into the reality of this place – one country, two nations and three religions. May be now some of the comments from people saying they didn’t want to hear about politics will be put in their place. You cannot separate this land from the politics because it’s all tied together. At the check point a soldier with a rifle, talking on his cell phone, walks casually through our bus glancing at our passports as we hold them above our heads. One country in theory but the message is clear – we are now re-entering the “real” Israel and have passed from one to the other.

President Reagan stood in Germany so many years ago and said tear down this wall and the world said never again. Yet the wall, the real wall in Israel that snakes through the desert and steals the sky, still stands.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.