In preparation for my sabbatical, several people have asked me where I will be living. It's a reasonable question and so I wrote my friend Iyad in Bethlehem who made the arrangements asking him about the specifics. I was eager to google the address so I could figure out how to find my apartment, plot out my first trip to the open air market, and find my way to church.
Iyad wrote me back and told me that only the major streets have names and since everyone knows one another in Bethlehem, all you have to do is tell someone who you want to see and they will direct you to their home or place of business. I'm thinking, but how will anyone find me when no one knows me? Then, sensing my anxiety, he wrote: "Don't feel bad. I'll create an address just for you. Here it is:
Karkafeh Street (no number)
Armenian Housing Project (no zip code)
Neighbor of Iyad Shreydeh
After I stopped laughing, it dawned on me that I am really walking into a very different culture. Home will no longer be identified by technology (a street, city, state zip, address) but by my relationship with others. How Un-American! Yes, I'm stating the obvious but I'm beginning to realize more deeply that I'm going to be living in a completely unfamiliar reality. No Peets, no IPhone, no google maps, no anonymity. That last one is very intriguing to me. While so much is familiar here in the Bay Area and I have gobs of friends, I can move rather anonymously through my neighborhood. Other than my public license plate (rev deb), no one knows what I do or has any inkling of who I am unless I tell them. I live in a world where I control what is known about me and who knows it. Of course, my vocation as a pastor has a very public dimension but being known in that way involved my choice. In Bethlehem, where I know only one person and nothing is familiar in this Palestinian town of 30,000+, I will not be able to navigate life apart from being connected to others. By choosing to live there, I am giving up part of my autonomy as an individual and will not and cannot be perceived, understood, or known apart from family and community.
And what will I learn about being interconnected in this kind of community where Christians are a small minority in this Muslim region? What will it be like experiencing this kind of interdependence with people who love and work under oppressive conditions, where freedoms are limited and my unconscious American privilege will undoubtably be challenged? How will faith be deepened and revealed in a "body-of'Christ" reality where the individual cannot be understood or experienced apart from another?
I find myself wondering if I can I prepare for what's ahead? On one level, yes. I can be intentionally attentive to the disconnects as well as the places of deep resonance. I can be open-hearted to what is being challenged and revealed. I can willing to learn and trust that God is with me, in this place, and on the road with me. But can I prepare for (think manage) the experience itself? No, I think not. I need to start the journey and see what unfolds. I may not be fully prepared but I'm ready. I wonder where this will take me.
In just over 2 weeks, I begin my trek to the West Bank where I will be living in Bethlehem for the 3+months of my sabbatical. Some people have suggested that I'm being a bit reckless. After all, the tensions between the Palestinians, Israel and the other hot spots in the Middle East are often in the press and it is not an understatement to say the news is rarely pleasant! My human-rights oriented daughters have expressed concern about my safety should Israel's conflict with Iran escalate. More than one of my friends have wondered how I will navigate as a single, American Christian woman who doesn't know a lick of Arabic in a predominately Muslim environment. What will you do? Who do you know? Aren't you afraid? More often than I care to admit, their concerns fuel my pre-dawn anxieties. I wonder if I'm not only reckless but a bit crazy too.
But when my thoughts race wildly like a dog chasing its tail, one face comes to mind that helps me stop and trust that all will be well. On the last Holy Land pilgrimage I led 18 months ago, our group spent one week of the Jerusalem portion under the care of Iyad Shreydeh, our Arab Catholic Christian guide. Iyad parented us through military checkpoints and stations of the cross. He laughed at our jokes, answered innumerable questions, and communed with us at the empty tomb. He unexpectedly and graciously invited us into his Bethlehem apartment where his wife and three children gave us a glimpse of Palestinian hospitality and family life. It may have been because I was the pastor-leader of the group or simply because I'm nosy and ask too many questions, but Iyad became more than a guide. He became a treasured friend. I was grateful for this deep but temporary friendship born out of a shared experience that can never be replicated. It was no surprise that I would feel affection for him. He assisted in the spiritual re-birth that all of us experienced on the trip. What astonished me was that he seemed for feel the same affection for us, for me.
When I wrote Iyad six months post-pilgrimage, I wasn't even sure he would remember me. He leads 45+groups like ours a year. Nonetheless, I boldly asked him if he could help me figure out the practical challenges of moving to Bethlehem for my sabbatical. Not only did he help me find a place to live (in the same apartment building no less) but he and his wife, Cloudette, have already welcomed me into their community. In an email several months ago when I was still wondering about the merit of this idea, I asked Iyad about safety issues and how I might be perceived as an American woman on my own. He immediately wrote back and told me that I wouldn't be alone, that he was a brother to me and that we were family.
And that is what this Palestinian sabbatical seems to be about. The invitation is not to focus on the challenges but to attend to the God-given deep roots of land, people and history. To live into what it means to be a sojourner in a strange land. To trust that God's people are family. To know that I belong to them and they to me because we all belong to Christ.
It may be reckless and it may be crazy but it is where I'm supposed to be.
