A Year in Review

Almost exactly one year ago I left Israel and Palestine in order to begin my master's degree. When people asked me if I would ever return, I would always reply, "I hope, at least someday." Today, certainly sooner than I expected, I find myself in Israel once again. Returning here once more has brought me to reflect on my where I've come this past year. So much has changed in this short time, and the surprises and twists have not slowed down. The general progress in my life which seems unremarkable as I busy myself in undertaking these various tasks and goals takes on a new light when I remind myself where I was just one year ago today. On the academic side of things, since I last left Israel, I've completed half of a master's degree at Harvard, finished two years worth of biblical Hebrew, published my first scholarly works (along with a volume of papers I never thought feasible to produce in this short time), and earned the award which provided me the funding to come here to Israel once again. I have come a long way it seems. My personal life has been equally eventful, though most of these changes I wish not to recount here. I have coped with the reality of returning to an environment largely numb to the issues of peace in the Middle East and its immediate relevance to our society. Because of my past experiences here I have had to face more challenges reintegrating into American life, the social world, and especially the Academy. I also survived a Boston winter, certainly that’s worth something.

Spiritually I am a work in progress, as always, and I take it as a good sign. The pressing fear of detachment from the things I study and what I practice as my faith has not diminished. I’ve been feeling as though I have less and less in common with the people that fill the pews on Sunday. I know the reason for most of this feeling is because I’ve been so privileged to have the education I have had, but I know that this doesn’t account for everything. During my recent visit with family and friends in California I was able to visit Foothill Community Church, where a great deal of my spiritual formation and ministry training took place. All of my friends there were familiar and I felt at home, but to think that just a few years ago I was the youth ministry intern, and even more recently as one of their missionaries, it feels like a lifetime ago. To put a positive spin on it, my service to the Church has been transforming as quickly as I have, but not diminished. I did come all the way to Israel after all. And I’m here to understand, if only a little better, the relationship between Jews and Christians in Antiquity, something I believe is crucial for interfaith dialogue today.

Sneaking a blog in a snow storm

So much has happened since my last blog, far too much to include in a biographical entry. It's a shame really, I know how important these years are. I have certainly had much to write about in my typical fields of interest, but graduate school at Harvard has a way of keeping one busy. I write now because it is early enough in the semester to not be aware of how swamped I am, classes are canceled tomorrow due to a snow storm, and my mood is just somber enough for me to pen my thoughts with the genuine recklessness of candor I think makes the energy worthwhile and memorably for me.

My spiritual life has largely been disconnected from my coursework. I no longer feel like any kind of aspiring theologian, rather I feel simply like a historian of religion, the kind of scholarliness purged of the motivational bias that generated the love of the field to begin with. It's not bad, but the questions I began with have been long obscured by the esoteric stratigraphy of academia. Spirituality is something I encounter listening to the five minute childrens' sermon on Sunday, or on my staircase. Staircases make good altars. They go someplace familiar; steps too, in good Wesleyan fashion, offer a vehicle to represent struggling for holiness. Crawling up stairs is a symbolic gesture with no parallel in church furnishings that I'm aware of. Even more an intimate gesture than falling to one's knees, if only slightly more embarrassing. I do see an apologetic aspect to my research this semester, hopefully peeling away some of the falsely perceived distinction between modern Jews and Christians through some insights concerning their relation in Antiquity. Apart from this and the physical realm outside my basement lair, my piety remains expressed by and large through the guilt, feelings of desperation and outcastness, and paranoia of starvation and homelessness that I have come to equate in a twisted way as a sign of intimacy with God. I say "twist" not because I believe it any less, I cannot help that, but because of how bad it sounds when I say it. I have changed so so much in these last few years and I wish there was someone that could remind where I've gone. More than this derelict blog anyway.