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.

Have a Seat and Stay a While

I’m having to make a lot of adjustments to the way I do things. I did the math the other day, and realized that I have picked up and moved thirteen times in less than six years (or fourteen or fifteen times depending on how you count). Save some mementos and books, there is very little I own today that is more than a couple years old, that I didn’t sell or give away. Not that I had so much to sell or give to begin with. I feel like it puts me in a different world, lacking basic needs and confidence in my own security. Even food and sleep are things I have good precedent not to count on. I’ve lived in four completely different cultures in as many years. Even my name itself has changed some three times since it was given to me. I am loath to ask for pity, but I know these facts must strongly impact how I engage with others and my surroundings, how I perceive myself and others, and a host of other facets that make up “who I am.”

It has been brought up a couple times since I’ve been here in Boston that it is odd I don’t have a phone. As big of a tech junkie as I am, I know it isn’t because of some Luddite elitism. Money is always a factor, but thinking about it now, could it be that I have simply just presumed subconsciously that I would never stay somewhere long enough to put down roots to need one? Now that I’m supposed to stay here for a few years, I’ve recognized I’m due for some introspection and reassessment.

The notion that I will live in this same house for the next few years makes me very anxious, like a claustrophobic. I already want to plan my next escape, to be able to run away at the drop of a hat. I have certainly done my share of running away in the past, and have a seemingly unquenchable thirst for independence. Maybe these things are hereditary. Maybe this is why I love the Church so much. While I feel like a stranger wherever I go, like I’m in it alone most of the time, wherever I go and find a good piece of Church, I know I can find a feeling of home there, that I’m a part of something, and that isn’t conditional.

Is it good to be able to just pick up and leave everything behind—family, friends, lovers, possessions, my very name? What does it mean to want to, and feel anxious if I don’t? Is this from fear, an escapist mentality, some extreme method of coping with deep psychological distress? Or could it be quite the opposite, the command of the Lord to give up everything down to my name, becoming my second nature. It is clear to me that this disconnect I sense hasn’t affected my emotional distance from strangers. Maybe this distance, counter intuitively, is what makes it so easy for me to love strangers and want to help them, or at least better identify with them in want. Maybe these alternatives need not be so dichotomized and perhaps one really leads to the other. Maybe I’m rationalizing.

At any rate, even Jesus had a strong group of friends. The notion that Jesus’ ministry with his disciples fit into a niche of contemporary itinerate outcast healers and sophists has been, to my relief, effectively challenged on the grounds of the socioeconomic demography of Galilee in first century CE. To my credit, I certainly have no shortage of outgoingness in certain contexts, and I suppose now would be the time to capitalize on that. I don’t expect these feelings of distance and separation to change quickly, especially having taken place during these most formative years of my life, but I hope that eventually healthy adjustments will be possible. Like I’ve often felt when I pick up to go, the task now becomes discerning what needs forgetting, and what has become too much a part of me to leave behind.

New Directions

The precursor to this blog began about two years ago now in the form of a support letter for funds, prayers and other help to get me to Israel in order to, in my own small way, reflect to others God’s love for me in the form of a sincere love to those who would otherwise be called my enemies, and in so doing, show that such a radical notion of reconciliation and love is, indeed, “Just Crazy Enough to Work.” I continued to produce updates on my progress toward this end in the form of monthly newsletters, and a gradual transition to sending news, reflections, and needs solely through the medium of this blog. Well, as you hopefully know by this time, I have returned to America and plan to remain here, at the very least, for one school year. So, a few adjustments are in order.

I have given a great deal of thought as to how best continue this blog. Should I begin to attempt attracting a larger audience, or simply write as I feel compelled to? How intimate and personal shall I allow these blogs to become? I have resisted publishing a number of blogs because of how intimate they are in relation to their relevance to what has been, until now, the focus and purpose of this blog. I would not compare myself to Mother Theresa beyond this analogy, but I feel like people can be surprised at the humanity of spiritual figures, including ministers, among whom I humbly tuck myself. The reactions to the diaries of Mother Theresa, released posthumously, and against her wishes, seemed to indicate that people expect such figures to lack vices, rise above a quotidian humanity, eradicate doubt, and purge themselves of despair. As revealed by her diaries, this was not the case for her, and certainly is not for me. Will this blog become a place for that? Should I begin developing and expressing my opinion more? I have only tested these waters in a few recent posts. On the one hand, I fear alienating my few loyal readers or even disappointing people if they find out what I truly believe. While on the other hand I feel there are a number of people expecting me to offer something of an “expert” opinion on certain matters from which I have perhaps withheld voicing an opinion. I know that I certainly wish to convey no opinion in such a way that love is not my primary message, and that as a Christian I hope to demonstrate sincere love to every party across the array of opinions; this could be especially difficult, and all the more if people do not read knowing this is a goal of mine.

Change is in order, what form it takes I hope we can explore together. I certainly have a few more blogs to write about my time in the Middle East and I do expect to return to consistently updating this blog. I hope you will enjoy it and will feel free to engage with me as well.

A Confession, a Dream, and a Church

A couple blogs ago I mentioned that I didn’t receive any dreams during the time I was asking God for discernment in deciding what to do about grad school. That wasn’t entirely true. It slipped my mind at the time of writing that blog, and it wasn’t necessarily relevant, but I thought I should confess, especially now because it’s convenient for a blog as I wrap up my time here shortly.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the oldest standing and largest structures in Jerusalem’s Old City, is the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial. There is a lot to see there, the last 4 stations of the Via Dolorosa, or ‘Way of the Cross’, several chapels from the various Orthodox and Catholic traditions, beautiful mosaics, paintings, and tremendous columns and ceilings. Perhaps the most important and most highly revered of all the locations in the church is the tomb of Jesus. I have been to the Holy Sepulchre perhaps five or six times now, but despite this, and after living in Jerusalem for a year, I never entered this holiest of holy places until yesterday. There have been various reasons for why this has been the case, most often because there is a mob of tourists standing in line to see it and when there are one, two, three tourist groups of fifty to a hundred tourists each waiting, the line forms a thick coil around the church that seems endless, while on other occasions it has been that one priesthood or another would require the tomb to do a ritual and allow no one else to go in. These are certainly earthly reasons, unsurprising to anyone who is familiar with the milieu of Jerusalem, especially the constant tension between pious reverence and accommodating tourism at holy sites, but I am still inclined to assign some spiritual importance to this as well, which came in a dream.

Sometime during the 1970s an archeological excavation was done in the Holy Sepulchre which revealed an even older sanctuary buried beneath an existing one (which is saying something considering the present one largely survives from the early 300’s AD). On one of the walls the archeologists found some ancient graffiti depicting a merchant ship and “DOMINE IVIMVS” written beneath it, which reads “Lord we shall go,” or less accurately, but what I think the contemporary vernacular would be, “Lord we came.” This graffiti attest to the site's importance for pilgrimage from an extremely early date in the Christian faith.

In my dream, I finally was able to experience the peace and awe of being a pilgrim. I finally entered Jesus’ tomb and sat down inside the small room. Rather than being rushed in an out by a priest, as is normally the case in real life, I was able to sit, relax, and experience the comfort of the Lord’s presence. In my dream there were books for people to draw or write a message celebrating their arrival to the tomb. The recently filled ones remained in the room and fresh empty books were plentiful. I imagined the filled books were occasionally removed and kept somewhere important to represent the collective experience of each Christian soul making this pilgrimage through the ages. I flipped through a few pages of a book, admiring the different colors people used to write, their unique handwriting, their imperfect spacing on the blank pages, and their drawings and adornments. I felt like a part of something greater, part of a beautifully imperfect human dimension, a throng of humanity not writing as people reaching out to God but as people who were sitting in God’s very presence, the writings of people that have reached their destination. And so I felt; ecstatic in the presence of the God with us. I wrote as one that has finally arrived, “Lord I came.” These laconic words encompassed everything I wanted to express to God as though he were before me, both the reason I direly hoped would leverage grace, and my thanks for the journey.

I went to the Holy Sepulchre one last time the other day and discovered the line for the tomb only a few dozen people long. I finally waited my turn, was crowded and hurried in and out. I had enough time to kneel and say a short prayer. But this was only the physical component of the spiritual experience I had weeks earlier. This was the frame not its contents, and I felt at peace. I know I have completed the journey.

A Few Words About My Grandfather's Passing

It’s hard to believe it’s been more than a month now since my grandfather passed away. The entire process of his dying is still something I feel I don’t have adequate words for, but still I’ve also felt it long overdue that I write something about it. I am so grateful that I was able to come home when I did and stayed long enough to see things through to the end. I think everyone in my family can see that God played a hand in the timing of it all. I spent a great while unsure about whether to stay or go when I originally planned, and more unsure still of how I should greave afterward. Even seeing children die over here, I have not experienced death so closely and at such a personal level; I didn’t know if I should be angry or happy, if I should mope around or continue life as usual, if I should go back to Palestine or stay. In the end I thought the best way to honor my grandfather would be to handle his death as he would want. To me this meant celebrating his passing as far as I was able, because though he is gone from sight, there is nothing sad in the thought of him at his well earned place among the saints at the heavenly banquet with our Lord. It also meant that I should stay and help my grandmother in all the ways my grandfather expected to himself by having his surgery, until at least I knew at she had the support she needed without me. Finally, it meant most of all that I should not remain idly in America where indeed I was moping around, but continue the work that made him so proud and represented a continuation of our family legacy, and his life in so many ways. Each of these events has come to fruition in a seamless way and having been here in Palestine this long now, I know I’ve made the right decision. Below I have included the slideshow of his life I made for his memorial service and a few words I spoke at his service.



I am so thankful for the example he has been to me. My family has a tremendous history of service to the church, and from his example I am proud to continue that legacy. He has shown me just how much of a servant it is possible to be, and has set a standard that I wouldn’t think was really possible had I not been watching him my whole life. What he accomplished in his lifetime is everything I aspire to. He always tried to do the right thing, the honest thing, no matter the inconvenience or personal cost to him; and he truly lived for others, even unto his death. I hope I can continue living in a way that makes him proud, and that for my sake, from time to time, you might remind me how Grandpa would have done it.

O God

“Deconstructing” is a term I’ve grown accustomed to. To me it means that deeply held assumptions and beliefs, when faced with sufficient contradicting experience, have a habit of producing cognitive dissonance, which compels a reassessment. Just like Jenga, it’s only a matter of time before chipping away at the tower leads to its collapse. It’s become such a frequent occurrence for me that I seem to have developed a bit of acrophobia since the last time I was brave enough to be introspective.

The process was introduced to me in formal academic study of the Bible, and that’s certainly where it’s been most industrious. What other field can offer such an enticement as truth of an eternal consequence…if only you study a bit more. Though the consequences seem to involve deconstructing more than constructing, I accepted long ago that it would be better to live behind a humble perimeter of reliable and genuine faith than to hide behind a bulwark of “truth” based on lesser standards.

Memory, it seems, has been among the casualties I’ve attributed to the general toll the year in the Middle East took on me, but the atrophy of my prayers remains vivid. Verbosity in prayer has never been my talent, but especially in this last year, to experience the deconstruction of prayer itself has been matched in brutally only by its intimacy. Prayer is the most authentic locus I have right now for understanding my feelings about the spiritual arena. The inability to reconcile the prayers I speak with my experiences and what I disbelieve has left me mute. The gravity of the issues before me in prayer multiplied by the deluge of internal conflict has reduced my prayers to “O God.” It’s all I can muster, and certainly these 4 characters do not supply the weight accompanying them when they escape my lips. Maybe this is truly all that’s left when the dross is finally stripped away and words cease to offer meaning for what I have to hold up to heaven. Or maybe these 4 characters are all that’s left after an overzealous deconstructive approach to Biblical Studies has taken its toll, having finally received the coup de grâce from the extreme nature of the work in the Middle East. Time shall tell.

"How was it?"

I should probably say first thing that I'm very happy to be received back by everyone and I hope I don't cause any kind of embarrassment to anyone by writing this out. It’s the question everybody asks, and I'm mostly reflecting on why it's so hard to answer.

The surreal feeling that I have experienced since landing in America is fading somewhat now, but in some ways I don’t think it will ever disappear. I have been using jet lag as my excuse for why I often feel disoriented or seem to zone out into space, but like I observed after moving to Bethlehem, it will probably require more than sleep adjustment to be fully resolved. I am also attempting to discern how much of this is strange but expected and normal granting reverse culture shock and how I am received at home, and how much is strange but not quite as normal being the product of certain experiences in the Middle East and the enduring life issues I have been addressing (many of which were waiting for me here). Whether this mental fog ever lifts, turns me into some mystic, or disappears and becomes a part of me that flavors my life as I’m praying it will, is too early to tell. It is very scary though.

It feels as though the day I left, one year ago now, I stepped into a time machine freeing me from the time and space of things here in California. I then spent one year accomplishing all the work I have undertaken, and then, as if not a day had passed here in California, I jumped back into this world. My reception so far upon returning, though I had very few expectations, has offered competing evidence for both my time machine theory, among more traditional ones. The most common question, which seems obvious, has been, “how was it?” But it’s a terribly confining one, because it doesn’t illicit a more detailed response than “it was ____.” It was good, it was terrible, it was beautiful, it was repugnant, it was faith destroying, it was seeing the face of God, it was life changing, it was normal; I could probably speak for hours about how it was any of these without contradicting another. “How was it?” is the same question people ask about a dentist’s appointment, a weekend vacation, or a week long missions trip, and probably the question someone might ask if I had stepped in a time machine and, in their time, appeared the next day. Part of the difficulty I’m sure is there is really no normal question to ask, it’s probably a task no easier than it is for me to answer “how was it?” in a word. After the initial fumbling over the question it seems that within a few minutes things return to how they were before I left; but even if there was no time machine, how else would people act but normally?

Perhaps in some way, “how was it?” is the question people would put to the Justin they knew before I left, and the hesitation is around discerning if I’m the same person. When I respond as a normal person, without some saintly missionary reply, the social dynamic returns to me being the same down to earth Justin as before I left, almost as if I hadn’t. I guess what I mean by a lot of this is that I am very much the same in most places that people might look for change or be concerned about, but there are many changes and fresh avenues for engagement, conversation, etc. “So tell me what it’s like to watch a child die?” is certainly a question I couldn’t meaningfully respond to before I left, and asked in the right way, is probably one I could answer more clearly than “how was it?”

The other implication is asking in past tense, which while again seeming like common sense, isn’t the way it feels to me. Geographically I suppose I am distant from where the aspects of my work that garners the greatest attention are accomplished, but I am still living it now. I feel no more separated from the experience here, and I am certainly still processing many things. You mean, “how is it?” Uncertainty about whether I will go back is probably due to my vagueness on the subject, but it’s something you get used to working in the Middle East that I realize doesn’t translate well back here. I am trying to go back, probably in early February. Whether or not I will be allowed into the country, how long I’ll be allowed in for, and detailed specifics about the work I will do there in the future is largely out of my control. Enshallah (God willing, or as God wills), is the best I can offer right now.

Departure

She left a few nights ago. The past six weeks with Maddison have been wonderful.

The goodbye at the airport was terrible, though nothing like when I left her so many months ago. I convinced her that it won't be so bad if I come home for Christmas, all the while sucking back the tears myself. Who can find a woman like this, willing to stay with me after I left, never knowing when we would be together again? That would walk blindly off a precipice hoping that God would be faithful catch her.


God, through some generous supporters, did of course catch her and I both, some 6 or 7 months after I first left. When she was here it was like a day hadn’t past away from her, nothing between us had changed, and here for the first time I was able to try out just how exactly her and I work together in this kind of setting.

I don’t like to admit to learning anything from people less than 30 years my senior with anything less than multiple degrees in higher learning, but I find myself, half grumbling and half giddy, to admit just how much I've learned from her and how much potential there is for more in the future. Learning from a bubbly newly minted 20 something girl is something I can’t underestimated, or underappreciate. Where did she come from? It’s the sort of thing that makes me suspicious God has been interfering (thanks!)

We are full of plans for the future, dreams would probably be better. Ambitious notions that wouldn't be possible by one without the other. I Only wish I could act and feel in such a way deserving of this sort of attention. I've learned that in ministries such as this, where life lessons and prospects are extracted like soil is tilled, that all life’s rocks are forced to the surface begging for a toe to stub. For me they are more accurately a few boulders, and their impact more akin to life crippling. This is where I pray God (and Maddison) will deal graciously and gently with me, as I attempt shove off these limitations, or perhaps more realistically, become accustomed to their continual impeding.

It’s interesting, as gushingly romantic as it sounds, I love her more, and I’m closer to her with each goodbye. In such a way that I don’t know if I would be capable of this sort of depth of affinity to someone otherwise through any means available to me in the past. This is better, its different, closer, more legitimately God focused (however you take that), and it’s getting stronger all the time.

In the hours following Maddison’s takeoff I struggled with the temptation to follow her on the next flight, or book my next flight one way. While the latter is not out of the question, the next day, which I spent in the hospital I was reminded of how pure and meaningful this work can be, even in the mundane activities, and remembered that it was Maddison who helped turn my attention to this. She wants me to stay, as long as God would have me, because as I grow so does she, until we are reunited in His timing.

Dignity

Mohammed Hamdan died the other day, less than a week after returning to the Gaza strip to be near to his family as he went. The quickness in which his condition deteriorated once at home was much more rapid than we expected. It took several weeks to prepare to take him home. The 28 medications he was on needed to be changed to those available in the Gaza Strip, and he was taken off of the ones with a narcotic effect, and arrangements for direct ambulance transport needed to be arranged. His last day at the hospital was spend making sure all of his meds were in order, saying goodbye to everyone in the hospital, and the most surprising thing: making him human.

The appearance of Mohammed in the ICU has been that of a corpse, blue and nearly bloated beyond recognition. The ICU patients lay there nearly naked like cadavers, with various parts missing and instruments plugged into them; a cable from the skull, amputations and black extremities, IV holes and chest wounds which do not heal. So gruesome that when they look up at you or cry for their mother you are startled that what is before you really is alive, it’s not some sick plastic doll or horror movie prop.

But, because he was not on certain drugs the day he left, he looked like a little boy. His mother bought him a new set of clothes for the journey back home. It was not until after I had dressed him that I realized that in the 5 months he has been here I had not once seen him wearing clothes. There, seated before me, was a human being. It was surprising to me how much a little normalcy and dignity go in making the weak and helpless endlessly more human.


I have often felt guilty for giving up hope on Mohammed Hamdan, so much effort is put into sustaining him and there was so little chance that he would survive, and I found myself put to shame by most of the doctors who faithfully assessed him every day and treated him like any other patient. I would always pray for him, for his mother, and the situation surrounding them but I always struggled to get specific. I still do not know if it is right to pray that a child might die in this circumstance, that their suffering would end, that it would just be finished. To think of him as the moving cadaver in the ICU or the little boy dressed his finest to go home adds much to the question.

Not What I Want, or What I Need Yet, but a Merciful Portion

After a long day of hospital visits and driving I was tired, frustrated, and discouraged. After reaching home, when everyone else had already gone inside and just as I finished the checklist of things to do before getting out of the van myself, I heard someone say “Justin” me from outside. The tone of voice seemed warm and whoever it was sounded excited to see me, and while I only heard it faintly I assumed it was quiet because I was still in the van. I looked up from my checklist with a spike of energy and anticipation, but saw no one there. I looked in either direction, moved in my seat in the hopes of seeing someone obstructed by a pillar, no one. Then, almost desperately, I moved again the other way in case when I moved to see around the pillar the first time they had come into view from the other perspective. There was no one. I realized then there is no one here that is excited to see me, who would call out my name in that tone. I sank back into my worn and beaten seat, defeated. The unsatisfied anticipation and spike of energy coupled with this realization only created more momentum to drain me even further. I understand the conscious sometimes supplies what the subconscious really wants in times of extreme stress; it must have been a random memory firing or my senses failing because of how tired I was. Just the same, I would rather have had nothing than to have this.

I realized that while someone calling my name was common back home it hadn’t happened since I've been here in Israel; it’s another one of those things I didn’t realize I missed until I noticed it was gone. Having someone be excited to see me is something that is easy to distinguish between genuine and rehearsed or forced, probably for this reason it’s one of few things that can penetrate what I admit can be a cynical defensiveness. Feeling valued by others and in this sense feeling pure love is something I have missed dearly in person.

I spent the next few hours alone in my room (as alone as I can be in a bedroom that doubles as a hallway), confronting the truth of this realization. Digging out the root of its past influence and anticipating its future discomfort I concluded there was little hope for a remedy.

I went upstairs, probably frustrated at myself for feeling self pity, exchanging one defeat for another, when I walked through the upstairs dining room. Halo (nine years old), one of our Iraqi children came into the room and, upon seeing me, smiled and called out, “Justin!” At this Alaa (six years old) trotted in and Omed (twelve years old) as well, excited to see me and eager to be involved with whatever I had come up there to do. We spent the next half an hour playing with a balloon, so easy to impress, they marveled at my strength as I knocked the balloon all the way to the ceiling. While children are perhaps not who I had in mind when I was so sunken over this, the Lord knows what I need, and he has supplied all my needs, perhaps in this circumstance better than what my own heart wills.