Sunday 28 February 2010

Pray for Peace in Jerusalem, All You Who Love Her...

This morning began with an unusual prayer call from the minaret next door. The Allah Akbar did not sound as prayerful as usual, and it broke off midway to give room to what sounded like a long angry call for war, jihad, with some hints of the Wailing Wall intonation every once in a while. Even when you don't know the words, the meaning was unmistacable - the call was for everyone to gather and help out.

Doors locked, windows shut, guests went out on the terrace and got back just as swiftly, somewhat unsure if the best thing might have been to get to some room with no windows and just stay there for the rest of the day.

Apparently, some Jewish people wanted to get to the Temple Mount to celebrate the Purim - they did not get inside, but at other times even less was needed to start a war. So the city braced itself. And I went to Mass, outside the Old City, just as planned.

Shops closed, the lively Damascus Gate died out, shopkeepers outside on the street, socilalizing and waiting whether to open again or to leave altogether, Old City gates closed by the police and soldiers checking IDs. In what looked like an anonymous white grocery truck, soldiers were putting on full body armour, literally from head to toe, covering knees and legs and checking the ammunition...

I went to Notre Dame to pray for the light of Chirst to light up our darkness. It's not that I was surprised - much less afraid - but it was just so incredibly sad to see the place you love so torn by hate...

Friday night, I was at the Sabbath meal where the rabbi - a man who preaches not just by what he says, but by how he lives - said that Purim was a celebration of the event when God reminded His people of His love for them. God is in everything, and if we forget Him in the good He does for us, He will be there in the bad things that happen, reminding that He is there, that He is always present. The priest said in his homily, echoing the rabbi's words, and sometimes repeating them in their entirety, that we can see God in everything that happens around us. The horror of the earthquake in Chile, or Haiti, can move us to pray, or to do good deeds - and in that we see God. Such an uncanny echo. And I, too, was moved to seek God despite the sad things happening in His city...

It's not that I take sides - I have never been the right person to take sides, the picture is always too complex for me to make a judgement - but it's true that somehow I have never felt God more closely then at dark times, whatever they might be. And this is the same thing that both the rabbi and the priest spoke about. The context was different - a crazy Sabbath dinner that left us with a feeling of such profound joy we felt like dancing in the rain and a conservative Mass in Latin - but the message entirely the same.

Jerusalem never ceases to surprise me. Pray for peace in Jerusalem

Tuesday 23 February 2010

Lent Has Begun in Jerusalem...

... and what an extraordinary Lent it is!

Somewhat, for me, it is presently a season of joy, a joy that is difficult to channel at times, but when I am alert to it, it feels almost too much to bear. In this city of His, Our Lord is killing me with His love.

Right now everyone is singing Alleluja in our coffee room. What is more, on the first Sunday of Lent I went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, or Church of the Resurrection as it would perhaps be more correct to call it, and not only were they singing Alleluja, but also Regina Caeli in the end of the Mass! I assumed it was some special sort of dispensation for the church where our Lord has been risen from the dead - it is always Alleluja in the Holy Sepulchre. But someone else went to another Franciscan church, and they were also singing Alleluja at Mass. Apparently, joy seems to overflow in every direction, seasons nonwithstanding...

I dont even know how to summarize what I have been experiencing here. Being touched by the Lord at prayer, experiencing His love, His desire for me. Or meeting people, complete strangers who would give their food, time and posessions to a foreigner?

Seeing God in the love I have been shown by people of all religions and nationalities? Shall I tell the story of how I walked past the Western Wall towards the end of the Sabbath, and an Orthodox Jew jumped up to greet three Africans behind me with the words: "Come, will you sing a song with me?" Or of a Sabbath dinner where beggars from the streets danced with a rabbi from the US? An Arab barbeque on a dead-end street of the Old City? Half of the Jewish Quarter helping us fix the electricity in an apartment we were given by someone who knew me only from 3 previous - and very short - meetings? A Muslim woman reading the book Jabez Prayer, and spending her precious day off buying me dinner and showing me around? Where do I begin, how do I show? If everything could be written, it would have been such a huge book, or perhaps no book could ever contain everything I have to say. Why am I immediately reminded of the words of John, the Beloved Disciple, the man who truly knew that the Lord loved him. Is there a connection? Because the Lord is endless, immeasurable, unexplainable, and no books could ever contain anything that can be said of Him?

Of course, there are sad things. For someone who has spent some time researching the history of the Troubles in Ireland, and who has been indirectly affected by some of the wars on the territory of the former Soviet Union, the story is all too familiar. More painful, perhaps, because it goes side by side with a profound sense of the Lord's presence. But apparently, people are the same everywhere. And in places like this it is impossible to judge. The Christian responsibility for what we did throughout the history to breed hate by our hate of the Jewish people cannot be overlooked. Anything else and more specific I will only be at liberty to write when I get back.

Getting back scares me. I suppose, this is the feeling I share with most people who have spent more than a couple of weeks here. The intensity of emotions, the supernatural energy of the place, the profound sense of living every day as if it were your last, breathing fully, living intensly, with no reservations, no unnesessary provisions for the future - it cannot be repeated elsewhere. I live just a few metres from what was believed to be the foundation stone of the world, the place where Cain killed Abel, where Abraham wanted to sacrifice Isaak, where medieval maps had the centre of the world, where New Age cults mark the energy pole of the Earth, where the Holy of Holies once was. Sometimes I don't feel it, sometimes its ovewhelming. That same place - the Temple Mount - was also made into a city dump by the Church in Jerusalem (hence the name Dung Gate, the gate that now leads to the Western Wall) prior to the Muslim conquest, in an obvious move to underline the way how the Jewish Temple was made obsolete. That's Jerusalem...

Someone who lived in Jerusalem for 5 years and now lives in Eilat said she often was moved to tears just walking the streets, for no reason at all. That's Jerusalem. That's how I feel at times, too. Knowing this is not going to last is devastating. That is why, perhaps, the Bible ends with references to the heavenly Jerusalem - where we will be experiencing God forever. Now I know a little better what it will be like.