wfn.org | Presbyterian mission volunteer in Jerusalem pleads for peace

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Note #6241 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

31-October-2000
00381

Presbyterian mission volunteer in Jerusalem pleads for peace

‘Oh that the road between us was easy and smooth'

by Wendy Mathewson

Editor's note: The following account was written by Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.) young adult volunteer Wendy Mathewson, a student at McCormick
Theological Seminary.  She wrote Oct. 21 from the Ayia Napa Conference
Center on Cyprus after being evacuated from Ramallah in the occupied West
Bank. -- Jerry L. Van Marter

CYPRUS -- My friend Hilary's family have been Christians since the 4th
century. Her father is an ordained Palestinian minister who (very small
world!) got his B.A. at Aurora University, a small college five miles from
my hometown.

	The first time I visited Hilary in Ramallah, her father welcomed me in
Arabic. "Ahlan
wa Sahlan," he said. "You know what that means?" 

	"Yes. It means ‘Welcome,'" I replied, confident it was the right answer. 

	"Ohhhh," he said, "but it means more than that. Literally it means that now
we are family, and the road will be easy and smooth between us."

	This is what it means to be welcomed in Palestine.

	A couple weeks ago, I was walking past the police station on our corner in
Ramallah (the one destroyed by Israeli gunships a few days later) on my way
to buy some groceries. As I passed the Palestinian policeman on patrol, half
expecting him to say something which indicated that he believed all western
women are loose, he instead said very cordially, "Ahlan wa Sahlan."

	We are family now, and the road will be easy and smooth between us.

	Now I am in Cyprus indefinitely -- having fled the violence that left that
police station on our corner a pile of rubble. The road is neither easy nor
smooth between us. I sit gazing at the turquoise Mediterranean Sea which
separates me from Palestine and wonder: what does it mean to be family when
I can get out and you have to stay? When my country helps to provide the
weapons that destroy your people and your infrastructure?

	Your heart can become so heavy and your mind so overwhelmed that it is too
difficult to pray. Especially when you know that if you allow yourself to
truly enter a state of prayer, of conscious openness to the presence of God,
it will elicit such strong emotions you will not be able to keep it
together.

	On Oct.12 at Sabeel, the Palestinian theology center where I work in
Jerusalem, we started to get trickles -- grapevine news -- of a horrible
scenario taking shape in Ramallah. A mob of desperate people had found two
Israeli soldiers in the center of town, where soldiers are not allowed to
go.

	We always have holy communion together at Sabeel on Thursdays. As dread of
what was going to happen in Ramallah gripped us, we went into the prayer
room and waited for the service to begin.

	When it was time for spontaneous Prayers of the People, we could not find
the words -- and sat together, in the presence of God, in silence. I was
just trying to keep it together. "Behold, the lamb of God, who takes away
the sins of the world...." we said together, in English and in Arabic, as
the eucharistic liturgy continued. My heart lurched inside of me. What can
that possibly mean?

	If that's true, then what is going on here? This world -- where the strong
can kill the weak and might makes right and children are too terrified to
sleep and mobs are so afraid that they have become fearless -- this world is
still stinking of sins.

	They are piling up around us and I can't see over them. Your heart can
become so heavy and your mind so overwhelmed that it is too difficult to
pray.

	But then, by the grace of God, others are moved to pray for you. My sister,
Abby, organized a prayer vigil in our hometown this past Sunday. They used
the prayers and readings from the ecumenical prayer service last week in
Jerusalem -- to pray for me, and for the summit, and for justice for the
Palestinians.

	Today I phoned my friend Hilary to see how they are doing in Ramallah. I
asked her whether I would be a liability to her and her family if I did get
to go back to Ramallah to finish my year -- an American in the middle of
Palestine. "Oh, no." She said. "No one here feels like that. Palestinians
differentiate between American people and their government's policies." I
heard her father shouting in the background, "You are family!" 

	Oh, that the road between us was easy and smooth.

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