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 Palestinian soldiers took refuge in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and were under siege, I marveled that I had stood where they were, and could imagine the place as the news came in. Even when I was there, Israel and Palestine were fighting, as they have been since Israel was formed.
When we landed 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 drive back from the Dead Sea, we arrive at the ancient walls of the Old City of Jerusalem and pass 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 buildings with signs in Hebrew on the Palestinian side and Arabic letters on the Israeli side can be seen on both sides, indicating that the land has changed. 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 in a spy movie as we walk between the crude guard shacks on the Israeli side, which are manned by guards holding automatic rifles, we walk through the no man’s land in between, and then between the equally crude guard posts. and the equally well-armed Palestinian guards, and no one seems to pay any attention to us, they stare at us. Our friendly Palestinian driver, in his distinctive Arab taxi, greets us on the other side. We breathe again.
Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity are only three miles away, so we’re there in minutes. As the driver speaks to us in useful English, we begin to relax. The kindness of the two drivers, citizens of nations at war, points out that even when political situations are uncomfortable, people can find ways to work together. These drivers are not hostile to each other, they are helping each other (and us). Later, we discovered that many taxi drivers would not take their passengers to Belén; 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 walked through each one to get to the next one! The oldest church is the Palestinian Church of the Nativity, originally built in AD 400. We enter through a door deliberately built low, so one has to bow to enter. The ground we stand on now was built in the year 600 AD. C., after the first church was destroyed, but it has a hatch, through which we can look down and see the original mosaic floor, about 3 feet below. The priests have a silent pride and an evident awareness of the sacred ground 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 cute lamps, all lit and each one different. Designs cut into the metal allow light to reflect 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 staircase that leads to a room covered with silks. To the left as you enter is a niche that appears to be a fireplace, but 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 points 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 crack, 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.
As we left the Nativity scene, we walked through the Greek Catholic and Orthodox churches, both beautiful, and back into the courtyard.
After taking a taxi back to the border, we changed back to our Israeli taxi. We sped off 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 Western Wall), the only remnant of an ancient temple, which the 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 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. Again the continuity of the centuries caught our attention.
The history of these places, the millennia of human existence, the prayers, the pain, the fears, the hopes and the dreams of the people who are simply 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, as puzzled about why they are at war as we in America are about why the world cannot live in peace. They have no 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 their countries are doing to each other, despite soldiers, political parties, suicide bombers, guns and borders, they 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 religious and/or political fanatics want to own it. These men, like you and me, just 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 that the warrior must do: find a way to relate to the person on the other side of the closed valve, so that together we can twist that valve from both sides 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 require that we have the courage to look at it. “. So using the word “warrior” really has some meaning, because warriors have to have the courage to put up with some pretty strong criticism from their own people. We are asking our own people to grow and not to 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.”
