In 1998 Richard and I had the wonderful opportunity to sail around the world as ballroom dance teachers on a cruise ship. Many of the places we saw then, like Oman, Jordan, Turkey, Morocco, Indonesia, and Israel, are now in crisis and not so safe for tourists. Last year, when the Palestinian soldiers took refuge in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and were under siege, I marveled that I stood where they were, and I could imagine the place as the news came. Even when I was there, Israel and Palestine were fighting, as they have been since Israel was formed.
When we docked in Haifa, Israel, we only had one day, so my Jewish friends Murray and Sylvia (who had been there before) and I hired a taxi driver who drove us all over Israel, to see as much as we could in twelve hours. Arriving in Bethlehem was a lesson in world peace, and I want to share it with you, from my travel notes:
After a long journey back from the Dead Sea, we reached the ancient walls of the Old City of Jerusalem and passed through the old city to go to Bethlehem, just to the south. Along the way, there is evidence of ever-changing borders. A fence of barbed wire and chains marks the border for many kilometers, and on either side you can see buildings with signs in Hebrew on the Palestinian side and Arabic letters on the Israeli side, indicating that the land has changed. of owner many times. . Back and forth, back and forth, the fence moves, as various skirmishes change the borders. Bethlehem is now under Palestinian rule since the peace agreement four years ago, so our driver feels it is not safe for us to get into an Israeli taxi; he phoned across the border and arranged with friends for a Palestinian car and driver to take us. in.
Changing taxis makes the tension of these places palpable. Our driver stops at the Palestinian border and tells us to walk across. We feel like characters from a spy movie as we walk between the crude guard huts on the Israeli side, which are staffed by guards holding automatic rifles, we walk through the no-man’s-land in between and then between the equally crude guard posts. guard. and the equally well-armed Palestinian guards, and no one seems to pay attention to us, they stare at us. Our friendly Palestinian driver, in his Arabic-badged taxi, greets us on the other side. We breathe again.
Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity are only three miles away, so we are there in a few minutes. As the driver speaks to us in quite serviceable English, we begin to relax. The friendliness of the two drivers, citizens of nations at war, points out that even when political situations are awkward, people can find ways to work together. These drivers are not hostile to each other, they are helping each other (and us). Later, we found out that many taxi drivers would not take their passengers to Bethlehem; only ours fixed the change.
The Church of the Nativity turns out to be three churches in one: a Palestinian Christian church, a Greek Orthodox and a Catholic church; the 3 buildings are next to each other, they share a courtyard and some walls, and we walk through each one to get to the next one! The oldest church is the Palestinian Church of the Nativity, originally built in 400 AD We entered through a door deliberately built low, so one has to bow to enter. The ground on which we now stand was built in AD 600. C., after the first church was destroyed, but it has a trapdoor, through which we can look down and see the original mosaic floor, about 3 feet below. The priests have a quiet pride and an evident awareness of the sacred ground that they tread and care for.
The church is built in the traditional cross shape, with a high ceiling from which hang long chains with carved brass oil lamps on each. There are maybe 50 of these pretty lamps, all lit and each one different. Designs cut into the metal allow light to reflect the shapes cut into the walls: diamonds, moons, stars. What a glorious sight people have reverently experienced for 2,500 years! To one side is a door to a stairway leading to a silk-draped room. To the left, as you enter, there is a niche that appears to be a fireplace, but it turns out to be the place where Jesus was born. An ornate 13-pointed star is placed on the floor in the same spot, surrounded by oil lamps. The 13 dots represent the generations between David and Jesus, the number of disciples at the last supper, and the stations of the cross.
On the opposite side of the room is the stone manger where the baby was placed after birth. At one end are candles. It is a powerful sight: all the centuries of veneration have left their energy in this room. My father was Catholic and I have lit candles in his memory in churches around the world, but lighting the manger candle was a special moment for me. When I saw the votive candles in the room I asked where I could buy one and our guide said the priest would get it for me. The priest was almost as old as the room, and with an almost audible creak, he slowly brought me a candle, which I then lit and placed with the other candles at the end of the manger. This simple ritual, followed for centuries, moved me to tears.
Leaving the Nativity scene, we walked through the Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches, both beautiful, and back to the courtyard.
After taking a taxi back to the border, we changed back to our Israeli taxi. We sped back to Jerusalem. The afternoon was fading fast. We rushed to Old Jerusalem and visited the Cardo, an ancient Roman market surrounded by a more modern shopping area.
Then we are at the Wailing Wall (known as the Wailing Wall), the only remnant of an ancient temple, which Jews revere and where they come to pray. The wall is divided into two sides, one for men and one for women, so Sylvia and I went to the right and Murray to the left. It was Murray’s birthday and the anniversary of his mother’s death, and this was the main reason he returned to Israel. To pray on the wall. Everywhere along the wall were men and women. praying, or rocking back and forth while praying. Most of the men wore the long black coats and black hats of the Orthodox Jews, and many women also wore long black suits. It is said that if you write a request on a piece of paper and stick it in a crack in the wall, it will be granted. As we got closer, we could hear the women murmuring, and one was crying. Once again, the continuity of the centuries caught our attention.
The history of these places, the millennia of human existence, the prayers, pain, fears, hopes and dreams of people just trying to feed their families and live a peaceful life, rises around us like a mist of human strength and survival. Our taxi drivers, both Palestinian and Israeli, are family men, just as puzzled about why they are at war as we are in America about why the world cannot live in peace. They don’t need to fight each other over land or oil rights, or religious supremacy. They need to feed their families, take care of their wives and children, and try to leave a legacy for their descendants. So despite what your countries are doing to each other, despite soldiers, political parties, suicide bombers, guns and borders, you work together to earn a day’s wages. They are proud of their part of the world, the Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy places, and see it as belonging to everyone, only the fanatics, religious and/or political, want to own it. These men, like you and me, only want their small share, enough to keep them comfortable and keep their families healthy. There is enough to feed and clothe everyone in this world.
The late peace warrior Danaan Parry wrote: “The energy we use to create war is the energy we need to make real peace.
“That is the brave act for the warrior to do: find a way to engage with the person on the other side of the closed valve, so that together we can twist that valve both ways and open it again.
“The new warrior is in a precarious position, because he or she says, ‘I am going to prove to myself and the rest of my tribe that… darkness exists within each of us, and I will demand that we have the courage to look at it. “. So using the word “warrior” actually has some meaning, because warriors have to have the courage to take some pretty strong criticism from their own people. We are asking our own people to grow and not project.”
On this Memorial Day, I pray that we all learn to live in peace, even in the midst of wars we don’t understand. I pray that we do not accept the idea that other humans are our enemies by virtue of their race, nation, or creed. I pray that we learn to work together, no matter what our governments insist on telling us. I pray for peace, within ourselves, within our families, within the world. And like Tiny Tim, I pray, “God bless us all.”