How Then Shall We Lead?

So I am leaving soon, in fact in less than a week. By the time you read this, I will hopefully be a member of a Witnessing Delegation in Israel-Palestine with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT). I have requested, at the suggestion of CPT, that this Blog and my correspondence with Winnipeg and Tamarack Presbyteries of the United Church of Canada not be released until after the 18th of November. The reason for this request is that while entering through customs, in particular in Israel, I could be denied entrance should my affiliation as part of a Delegation become known. I could be detained and denied entry. Of course, in my discussion with CPT and in their literature, this is not so much to discourage, as it is named as a reality. Civil Disobedience can be lived out, in this situation, in more than one way: whether that is to declare specifically why I am entering the country or whether I choose to be honest, but not fully disclose, by saying only that I am seeking to experience Advent in the Holy Land.

In the West Bank

During my Remembrance Day Reflection on Nov 9/08, I was struck by how many questions I have received as to WHY I am doing this. And, in turn, I have had to seriously consider WHY. It would be dishonest to say that part of it is not connected with a sense of pilgrimage. The Holy Land obviously possesses great import for Christians, regardless of theology. There is also the personal reality: my family left the Middle East during Christian persecution in the latter half of the 19th Century during Ottoman Rule. And, if these two reasons were the only ones, I would likely be wrestling with questions of conscience and guilt – not to imply these are not present at times, but they are owing more to my culpability in the suffering and oppression of men and women throughout God’s Creation who have little, in order that I have much …

In respect to pilgrimage and personal history, however, if these were my only motivating reasons, I would have to confront my carbon footprint and the voyeuristic tendency to go into a place in which affluence easily blinds one to the reality of poverty and political systems that alienate as opposed to liberate. I think the primary reason, other than that I can, is that I have to. Not to satisfy a check-list of ‘been there, done that,’ but to simply be in the presence of stories that are born from the soil in which we are called to walk as Christians. Not on account of spreading the Good News to convert, cajole, or convince people that I have the answers, but to witness that my context – Western post-Christendom – is not only not the norm, it is culpable in its ability to benefit from the suffering of Creation.

I do not know what to expect, I do not have expectations of revelation or epiphany. I simply have to get off the idolatry of the North American ark to be in the places where Hope must meet Human Reality. A Reality that cries to be heard and, perhaps, in that place something might happen …

I am also well aware that whether it is in the streets of Israel-Palestine or the avenues and back-lanes of Winnipeg, people are hurting, they are praying for someone to hear them. And it is in the potential when we listen to the Other that anything becomes possible, when the words of Isaiah ring with probability. It will take patience and it will require humility. Whether we operate from a sense of guilt or shame, the intent is not to become paralysed in our gifts: rather, I believe, it is to be motivated to claim the responsibility that comes with the privilege in which I find myself and others do not. Otherwise, ploughshares and swords simply become slogans that can you sell you a product, but not inspire you to walk into places that are dark – places in which we may encounter the Holy and realise that we are the Light that yearns to shine.