Book Published - 10/10

Friday night I happened to check my publisher's web site – like I've been doing every day for the past several weeks – to see if my book was available. And there it was . I'm very excited to finally have this book come out. In some ways this book is the product of the last 15 years of research on Hebrews, which started with my doctoral dissertation. It was only Nov. 2007 when I was able to present my thesis about comparison (synkrisis) in Hebrews during the Society of Biblical Literature conference. Several years ago I began studying Hebrews again and preached messages each Sunday at Salem Friends Church in Liberty, Indiana. During the week I spent many hours researching and studying the Greek text of Hebrews and compiling an exegetical outline. Then on Friday and Saturday I would set the scholarly research aside, so to speak, and work through the same text, seeking a way to communicate its message to my congregation. After six months of writing and preaching, I came to the realization that what I had written out in outline format might be of interest to a wider audience. I converted my format to paragraphs and began the process of editing. ESR writing students assisted me, but only with proofing for grammatical and punctuation errors. First Roni Lynn worked with me and then Carrie Drees read through the whole manuscript. Wipf & Stock Publishers accepted my book proposal and I submitted the manuscript. Wipf & Stock did the typesetting and had their artist design the cover (I had no say about the cover). It's especially meaningful for the book to come out while I'm teaching the book of Hebrews here at Bethlehem Bible College. I'll be teaching Hebrews at Earlham School of Religion during the spring semester. I hope people will read the book. I hope church groups will read the book together and use it to encourage them to form strong communities of faith.

The book is available directly from Wipf & Stock . Amazon.com has the information but it might be a week or so before all of the information is included there. It was unfortunate that the book appeared there with two copies, and now it shows as being out of print. Wipf & Stock is a print-on-demand publishing company. More copies are in production now.

Sunday – 10/12

I was determined to find my way to a local church this morning. I had asked about churches and at least knew that south on Hebron Rd. there was a Presbyterian church. Once again, however, I realized that I hadn't asked what time the church service was. I did manage to find a listing on a web page of Arabic Christian churches. I also had seen a sign along the road for Baraka Bible Presbyterian Church. So I set off walking at about 10 am. I couldn't remember if I had seen the sign while walking or when riding in a car. If it had been while walking, then I knew it wasn't too far away. If it was by car, then I had no idea how far away the church was. I walked until I came to the farthest point I had walked before, where I have been getting groceries. I hoped I hadn't missed the sign or I might be walking a long time before I decide to turn around. To my delight the sign for the church was just a little further than the grocery store. I saw a van going down the drive, so it was a good assumption the church was just down the hill.

When I found the entrance to the church, I began meeting people that I knew. The assistant pastor, Danny Awad, greeted me. I saw several students from Bethlehem Bible College (BBC). I met a young man from New York state who is volunteering with a school nearby. The church has Arabic/English song books. I hope to buy a copy soon and learn some of their songs. They provide non-Arabic speaking people with headsets to hear an English translation. Very nice. The music was different than churches sing in the States, but otherwise the worship format is very similar. As a Quaker, I'm not accustomed anymore to participating in communion services. It just so happened this was communion Sunday. Following communion the church recited the Apostle's Creed and sang the doxology. The sermon focused on religious practice within people's homes and the witness they have to others in their neighborhood.

On the walk home I stopped at a restaurant called Fawannees. I had a hummus appetizer (three pita bread, plate of hummus with seasonings and olive oil, and a small relish plate), a mixed grill of tasty meats, and a diet coke. I was trying to get their attention so I could order a coffee and baklava. I think there are two restaurants connected, one a pastry shop and the other a restaurant. I couldn't get anyone to come to the table, so I just got up and paid at the counter. Better for me to stay away from the baklava as much as possible.

After a stop at the grocery store to restock my empty pantry, I made my way back to the apartment. I was checking my email and responding to someone on Facebook, when one of the BBC students began chatting with me in Facebook. We exchanged pleasantries, and then he told me he was from Gaza. He had left there because it was dangerous for Christians. He told me he has friends living in Gaza who want to convert to Christianity but they are afraid of the Islamic militants who would punish them for leaving Islam. We agreed that not all Muslims are bad and not all Christians are good. But it's more than many of us can imagine that our decision of where to worship could get us killed.

Arabic Class – 10/6

I worked all day Monday on Arabic. Our teacher focuses on learning conversation patterns and on verb formation. We use English letters, sometimes called "romanized" text, so that we learn to pronounce words with the right vowels sounds. I find it difficult to be a language class with a group of people. I experience anxiety in those situations in any sort of meeting. Even speaking English in a small group makes my brain not work well. It's doubly difficult to speak in Arabic to the class. Although I study and know the words, I can't get my brain to work fast enough to process the information. I find it funny the way the teacher seems disappointed if I don't do well. But if I do respond correctly, he looks surprised.

I stopped on the way back at a restaurant near Bethlehem University called Bonjour. I had a very good vegetarian pizza. It was close to the kind of pizzas I had while in Italy this summer.

Trip to Herodion (Herodium) – 10/7

This afternoon Rami asked me if I would like to take a quick trip to visit Herodion. It's not very far from Bethlehem. Fortunately for me you drive halfway up the hillside and park. There were hardly any people there. You get to the top by walking through ancient tunnels dug either for the purpose of hiding or for accessing cisterns. It was quite a climb for me walking up stone steps and then the metal stairway. We took a little breather half way, since Rami didn't want to have to carry me back down.

At the top was the palatial fortress of Herod. On one side was a colonnade, a rectangular series of columns, where there would have been a garden in the center and a peristyle around the outside for taking a stroll. What I found interesting is that Roman practice seemed to be to have a water attraction, a fountain, in the center. Here there was a mikveh off to the side. The room that looked like a dining room has now been labeled by the Israelis as a synagogue. There was a bath area for a steam bath, a cold room for cooling off.

The views from the top of Herodion were spectacular. You could look to the west and see Bethlehem and Beit Jalla. Looking to the northwest you see Jerusalem. On the other side of Herodion you can look to the southeast and see one of the many examples of Jewish settlements (illegal Jewish settlements). The most spectacular vista is looking east and seeing the Dead Sea with the mountains of Jordan looming on the horizon.

I kept telling myself, you're really here. It's so real to be walking in the dirt and stones, but in a few months it will only be a memory.

Upcoming Plans

I'm planning to travel to Ramallah on Sunday and worship with Friends at the Friends Meeting House. I've asked numerous times about how to get there. Everyone gives me the same three or four optoins but never something definite. Next week I'm going to attend a conference held at Bethlehem University on The Influence of Media and Education on Christian-Muslim Relations . Then in mid-November I'll be participating in Sabeel's 7th International Conference , this one called "A Time To Remember, A Time For Truth:  The Nakba, Memory, Reality, And Beyond."

Weekend

The weekend was very uneventful. I went shopping on Friday afternoon. I went to the supermarket down the street and bought essentials. Then went to the fruit & vegetable store. And I still had to go to the next door shop to pick up a few other things. What I need to figure out is where you get fresh meat and where the bakery is. I joke with people here about missing Wal-Mart where you can do all of your shopping in one place.

I had planned to go with someone to their church Sunday morning. I made the mistake of not finding out what time and where to meet him. I expected him to knock on my door when he was ready to go. Later I realized that all was quiet in the dorm and I had been left behind. I will try not to make that mistake again.

Arabic Class 9/29

Arabic class went okay. There are times when the teacher gives us a few minutes to memorize a conversation in pairs. I did okay with mine. Then there was an exercise we were supposed to do and I just didn't understand. We were suppose to take a conversation and then change it to make it about ourselves and someone else in the class. I felt like an idiot, but I couldn't do it because I don't know anyone well enough in the class. He helped me through it, but I still felt stupid. I did okay when he called on me to recite a noun with pronoun endings.

At the end of class we worked on numbers. I had studied them in the afternoon, so I did okay. He gave each of us a CD that apparently has him reading the text of the book. I'm glad to have that. I would like to buy the second book and CD at the end of the term so I can keep studying.

It turns out that Ramadan is ending and Muslims are out shopping. Where my Arabic class is held is a suq with many shops. The street was very busy. I was sort of laughing to myself. I came here to see Palestinians and I'm getting an eye full. Apart from the merchants shouting out to people to buy their goods, the people are quiet, friendly, and courteous. The street may have some clutter and be streaked with the result of years of traffic, but people are clean and dressed nicely. Friends greet each other with a hand shake or maybe even a kiss on each cheek, men and women both. Even in the midst of a shopping spree, Bethlehem is a very hospitable place.

Daily Life

My daily life is structured by the morning tea time at 10:30 am and the lunch at 1:00 pm. Since many people leave home early in the morning in order to commute to Bethlehem, there are, what we would call, sub sandwiches for sale. Many people buy a sandwich and put it in the sandwich press to heat it up.

The lunch is usually rice with some kind of topping and pita bread. On the table will be bowls of "salad" to add to your plate and what we would call a "relish" tray of pickles and olives. I don't have any indication that anyone is paying for the lunch. I sat with the Dean of Administration during a lunch and it sounded like he tries to get people to pay something for lunch – but no one does. That's my kind of common meal.

It gets dark here in Bethlehem by 6pm. It's now 5pm and the sun is beginning to set behind the mountain west of us. This usually brings with it a period of strong breeze. There have been some nights that the wind is blowing so hard my curtains are sailing up in the air. Beautiful sleeping weather. But in the morning the air is usually very still.

I get that sense that Palestinian Christians here get annoyed with hearing the meuzin call Muslims to prayer. I can hear the chanting of the Qur'an, but to me it's like listening to Gregorian chant. One person said he can sit in his living room and hear well enough to listen to the Friday sermon. I suppose, if you could understand Arabic, that might be distracting. During the past six months I listened to Muslim chanting of the Qur'an as a meditative or spiritual practice. So it doesn't bother me the way it does the Christian residents here. I recorded a minute of sound from my window (mp3).

Trip to Jerusalem – 10/2

Rami arrived this morning at about 9 am to take me on a half-day tour of Jerusalem. Rami has majored in Bible geography and archaeology and is a trained tour guide. Besides being a knowledgeable guide, he's also a wonderful person to be with and to talk with.

Rami took the back roads into Jerusalem that avoid the main highways with their checkpoints. Rami is a Jerusalem citizen, so he is able to move around quite freely. Just looking at the scenery is spectacular, but I often was so engrossed in our conversation that I didn't notice much of what was around us.

Rami pulled over to the side of the road so I could get a good view of the old city of Jerusalem, the site of the Jerusalem temple, and the al-Aqsa mosque with its gleaming gold dome. He explained that the Mt. of Olives is a chain of mountains along this ridge.

As we descended toward the Christian sites on the Mt. of Olives we stopped to take a picture. Here was an opportunity to have a camel ride. I just couldn't see taking a camel ride around a parking lot. If I'm going to ride a camel, I want it to be in the desert not on a city street with a man leading the camel around.

We traveled on down the road, which is a very narrow path between stone walls. One could easily imagine this to be an ancient path people would have traveled in the first century.

We stopped at the site of the Garden of Gethsemane. Rami showed me around and talked about the ancient olive trees, some of which might be as much as 1,000 years old. I went into the church where Rami said was the stone on which Jesus was thought to have prayed and wept. The inside of the church is kept dark to symbolize the darkness of the night of Christ's suffering. It's too bad actually, because the byzantine artwork was quite beautiful. There was a Latin mass going on as people came walking through. I couldn't find the rock anywhere. There was a rock in one corner, so I wondered if that was "the" rock. Rami didn't go inside with me; in fact he said he would go back to the van because it wouldn't be good for him to hang around in front of the building. He told me later that the rock was in the center where the group of people were gathered around in worship.

I didn't spend much time in the church. I stopped for a minute and paid two shekels to relieve myself. There's just something funny about paying shekels to use the bathroom. There's no sign posted. There's just an Arab guy telling people it costs two shekels once they get there. You think you could haggle over the price, especially if you weren't going to spend much time in there, if you know what I mean.

We must have stopped again where I took some more pictures of the eastern side of the temple mount. It is a spectacular view. I had hoped to get a closer view today, but our timing was off and the mosques were not open. I hope to make another trip and be able to visit the Mosque of Omar and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

We parked the van near the southwest of the temple mount and walked along an old wall. You could see at the bottom the ancient wall, then stones in the wall that were reused Herodian stones, and what remains above are the later building work from the Ottoman period. What was also interesting were the ancient ritual baths (mikvaoth) that lined the walkway. I was surprised to see how many tombs were also there. I hadn't realized tombs were so close to where people walked.

We decided not to go through the archaeological park, but to walk alongside toward the western wall, known by Jews as the Wailing Wall. An odd thing happened here. There was a young Muslim couple walking in front of us. A woman was coming from the other direction and bumped into the Muslim woman. It was more like a shoulder block by a football player. The older woman didn't seem to care one bit what she had done. It even looked intentional, but there was no way of knowing. I was shocked. The Muslim woman turned and looked at the woman but then turned back around and kept walking. This will stick in my mind. Even if it was an accident, it was inhuman to bump into someone like that without any apology.

The southwestern corner of the temple mount shows some of the original stone from the temple wall. Here is the area where archaeologists discovered a stone with an inscription leading to the conclusion that it might have been the top corner stone, the so-called "pinnacle" of the temple. To the right is the southern wall where steps lead up to the Huldah Gates. We walked around to the left toward the western wall.

We went through a metal detector to enter the courtyard. The small section of the western wall, the Wailing Wall, is a bustle of activity. To the right is a women's section and on the left is the men's section. There are many plastic tables and chairs giving the area the feel of a piazza. On the men's side was a group celebrating a boy's bar mitzvah. Standing at the wall were various people in prayer, some chanting prayers and bowing. There were of course Israeli police around everywhere.

Rami brought me to a place where we could walk around in the old city. We wanted to have lunch, so Rami took me to a wonderful Arab diner. He knew the people, some of them having connections to where he goes to church. I ordered another falafel sandwich. The problem is ordering a falafel sandwich is like going to Subway. You're supposed to tell them what you want inside the pita bread along with the falafel. I was about to get up to look at the display case so I could point to things, but the guy waiting on me asked if he should make it like he likes it. I gave him the thumbs up, the universal sign that in Arabic means tayyib. I asked Rami if we could have our picture taken in front of the restaurant. The man whom he met outside was actually a well-to-do businessman or political official. It was actually amazing how many people Rami knew, which shouldn't be so surprising since he grew up in this part of Jerusalem. What was even more surprising was our running into his mother-in-law.

We went walking through the buildings. Rami tried to explain to me about the various sections of the city: the Jewish quarter, the Christian quarter, the Armenian quarter, and the Muslim quarter. If I'm remembering correctly, the area he showed me was a section that had been a place where Christian Palestinians lived, but Jews drove them out and rebuilt the homes for themselves. It was a beautiful walk through the narrow street, an urban canyon with women walking with children or pushing strollers with infants.

We came out on an area where you could see first century ruins. The main street, the cardo, with the Roman columns running down the center and shops lining either side were visible below the current street level. We saw further remnants of the cardo. At another place there were open excavations of an ancient wall thought to have been built during the time of Hezekiah.

We then spent some time looking through a museum built around the remains of a first-century aristocrat's house. The lower levels were built further down the slope of a hill, while the upper-level living spaces were further up. The lower levels contained much of the water for the house, a cistern, baths, and the ritual mikvaoth. The floors contained mosaic tile floors with simple but elegant geometrical shapes. Some of the walls of the rooms showed remnants of the fresco wall-paintings. In many ways the rooms of the house resembled those I saw in Italy a few months ago. The architectural had similarities but the artistic subject was different. There were no images of people. The wall-painting seemed to imitate the type of stonework with inlaid edges. Unfortunately the museum had a "no photography" sign posted, so I didn't take any pictures.

When we left this part of the city, we traveled to south-western Jerusalem to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Park. I was most interested in the areas in which the park commemorated the "righteous gentiles" who sacrificed themselves on behalf of Jewish people during the Holocaust. It was particularly meaningful for me to take a picture beside the memorial. To me it was also significant to be there with a Palestinian. The current Middle East conflict is directly related to the mass murder of Jews in Europe and their desire to live in peace and security. But in many ways the Palestinians now experience what the Jews did in Europe, even to the extent of all of Gaza being a concentration camp in which people are being slowly strangled to death. What Rami and I have in common is being a follower of a Jew who gave his life for others. One of the highest callings of our faith is to be willing to lay our lives down for others.

Our ride back to Bethlehem was uneventful. We only spent about six hours in Jerusalem but it felt like a lifetime, millennia of history packed into a few short hours.

Class Day & a Quick Trip

I think I'm getting better at making it through the class time. Whenever I mention something that is a difficult theological issue, there are some students who want to discuss or debate the issue. These are important theological topics, but they are the typical ones Christians have argued about for two thousand years. Most of the students have not yet had systematic theology, so they are very eager to figure out what they believe. On the one hand, they are deeply influenced by what Muslims teach about Islamic doctrine and what Muslims teach against Christianity. They also have learned about Christian doctrine from the various catholic traditions. At the end of class some people were debating the nature of Mary and the sinlessness of Christ. I wasn't going to try to explain that one.

At lunch some people wanted to know more about my views on the book of Hebrews. So I tried to give them the basics of my approach to Hebrews. They seemed genuinely interested and wanted to have a time when I could give a public presentation of my work on Hebrews. A couple of days ago, by the way, my editor emailed me saying that my book has been printed, he had a copy sitting on his desk, and he said it looked great. Now I have to wait a few days before I get to see what it looks like on the Wipf and Stock web site and hopefully Amazon.com.

A visitor here for a few days is from New Zealand. He works with Tearfund , a Christian aid agency, and is on his way to a conference in Europe somewhere. I joined him on a quick trip around Bethlehem. It turned out to be about the same tour as Rami gave me a week ago, when we looked at Solomon's Pools. Our guide this time was Atallah, the Dean of Administration at Bethlehem Bible College (BBC). He drove south on Hebron Rd. and pointed out the refugee camps. I knew there was a camp across the street from BBC, but didn't realize that the buildings we saw on the other side of a vacant lot is actually the sort of apartment building complexes that have grown up around this refugee camp. I suppose we might refer to it as a "ghetto." There's a very narrow street that runs through the middle of it. People who live there are still waiting to be able to return to their homes that were either taken over by Israeli's or to the land where their homes once stood.

We also passed by a vacant lot that at one time had been the Palestinian Police station. Israeli bombers blew it up. There's a stark contradiction when Palestinians are blamed for not being able to provide security but Israeli's destroy the police infrastructure.

We went further down Hebron Rd. to the place where the Israeli's have a gate. Whenever they choose they can close the gate and prevent Palestinians from leaving. Nearby you can see the new highway the Israeli's built for the settlers to get quickly to Jerusalem.

Saturday, 9/20

Saturday morning was a time for shopping. First, I walked down, what I now know is, Hebron Rd., back to the same grocery store. After unloading my bags of groceries, I set off again. I went down Hebron Rd. again, but went left at the first street. That leads to what I think is Manger Street. On that intersection is Cafe Sima's. I happened to meet one of the staff members of the English Administration of Bethlehem Bible College (BBC). We talked for at least a half hour. There are so many questions I have, and everyone is so patient and willing to explain things and tell me where things are.

Cafe Sima's is a very nice place, but it does provide a more European atmosphere. I was amused at the irony of just having been in Rome, come all the way to the Middle East, and then end up having to order European coffee -- I had a Cafe Americano. I also had a sandwich, something that seemed a little bit Middle eastern but not really.

I met a young woman there who is Aramaic/Syrian Christian. She told me she was planning to attend Liberty University. I tried to tell her that people at Liberty would be Christian Zionists. We had a very nice conversation. I suggest some other colleges she might think about, including Earlham College.

I decided, as long as I was on Manger Street, I would try to walk to the Church of the Nativity. What a trek that was. I came by a sculpture in the middle of the road. I didn't think it could be Manger Square. I went to the left and ended up by a sports center on King David St. I went back and asked, and people directed me on down what is more of a single lane side street. It wound around and came by an Arab market. I must have looked lost and certainly looked like a tourist. A man "hustled" me into his shop, brought me tea, had me sit on a stool, and talked about how much he needed me to buy something from him. I finally bought some nice things, a few cups I liked, a genuine Palestinian scarf, and maybe that was it. He then proceeded to show me his jewelry shop and then his wood carving shop. He finally let me go and showed me where Manger Square was. He explained that there were guides who would show me around.

Sure enough, I didn't get very close before a man approached me. He had a badge as an official guide. We didn't linger very long. He offered to take pictures of me. One was by the Greek Orthodox church and then one where he had me kneel down and touch the star that's on the floor marking the traditional place of Jesus' birth. I suppose people believe they'll receive a miracle by touching the star or kissing it. My miracle was just getting up from my knees. He showed me the ancient mosaic floor beneath the current floor, the contemporary Roman Catholic Church, and the bell tower. While he was showing me around outside the church and trying to bring me near souvenir shops so I would spend some more money, a young boy was trying to get me to give him some money. I said no several times and finally the guide shooed him away. Before I knew it we were done. He told me how to get back to Manger Street.

In Manger Square there is a large building called the Bethlehem Peace Center . I went inside and looked around for a minute.

I don't think I went the way I was supposed to. I think I took the long way around to get back to the intersection where Cafe Sima's is. I didn't get very far before a man came after me with necklaces. I felt bad for the man. He looked tearful as he begged me to buy some necklaces from him. The necklaces were ugly. I tried to say no and get rid of him, but he kept following, kept offering me a better deal. I stopped and tried to reason with him, but nothing I said made any difference. He then began accusing me of being the kind of tourist who only buys from the Jews and doesn't care about the Palestinians. I don't blame him, but it was extremely frustrating. I had a mile or so more to walk. My feet were hurting, I was thirsty, and I was beginning to feel the effects of the heat. As I struggled to keep walking and try to find my way back, I struggled with the thoughts of not wanting to walk anywhere again, of wanting to take a taxi next time and avoid having to deal with people on the street. There's no way I can buy stuff from people every time I want to walk somewhere. I finally came around a bend to stores I recognized. Just a little further and I would be back where I started.

I still needed to walk further down the street and find the fruit and vegetable store.  It took me a few attempts to find it, but just a little further on I could see all the bustle of activity in front of a store. I bought some potatoes, some carrots, and some bananas. When I was checking out, I noticed an American looking woman. I heard her say thank you. So I said Hello to her. We made our way outside and kept talking. She had on a vest that said World Council of Churches. She is from Chicago and is here working as an "Ecumenical Accompanier." The organization is Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel. She mentioned how they are a sort of "watchdog" group at Israeli checkpoints. I described the experience I had just had. She was of course sympathetic of my experience but also helpful in reiterating what I had already heard several times: the tourist groups are brought in to visit sites from Jerusalem and then whisked back off again. The people who live here have no opportunity to sell to tourists. The olive wood figurines are practically given away by Palestinians in Bethlehem, but sold to tourists for three or four times the amount in Jerusalem. She did have some helpful advice. She said to try to tell people that I'm not a tourist, that I live here. I'll give that a try next time.

I had one more stop. There was a little sweet shop, so I stopped in a bought some baklava; well, it was probably a lot of little squares of baklava. Very yummy. The thought of enjoying some of my morning's purchases urged me on the final few blocks to get back to my apartment.

Sunday, 9/21

I found that I was not the only one from here going to the East Jerusalem Baptist Church. There have been four guys from Presbyterian churches in Seattle working at BBC this past week on laying the groundwork for developing a degree program in computer science. We loaded up the van and set off for Jerusalem. There are apparently two ways to get to Jerusalem. Brenda, the wife of Alex Awad, chose to go the way that goes through tunnels. Apparently this was a way designed for Jewish settlers in the West Bank to enter Jerusalem quickly. We breezed through the Israeli checkpoint, since all the guards did was "profile" the vehicle and see that we were all very Western-looking.

I noticed as we drove into Jerusalem that it seemed like I saw as many Arab/Muslim people as I did Jewish (those wearing clothing styles that indicate their religious/ethnic identity). It also seemed like signs everywhere were written in Hebrew and in Arabic.

The East Jerusalem Baptist Church sits on a beautiful plot of ground, perhaps a half a block in size. The landscaping around the church gives one the sense of being in the Garden of Gethsemane. The church building is nice. There were about 30 people there. They were mainly Westerners who work in Jerusalem in one capacity or another. We had a typical, protestant, contemporary-style service. We sang some choruses with words shown on a screen while several guitarists and a percussionist led us. We sang a few standard hymns from a Untied Methodist hymnal. We had some time of welcoming and prayer. Rev. Alex Awad gave a message focused on overcoming fear in the modern world by responding to others with faith, hope, and love. We had a fellowship time afterward. I talked with one man who is a missionary with the Assemblies of God. He works with a school in Gaza. He hasn't been allowed to re-enter Gaza for awhile now. I spoke with a woman who works with Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. The young man who played guitar also works with Sabeel. Another woman I talked to teaches kindergarten.

I talked briefly with Alex and happened to mention my experience walking to the Church of the Nativity. He felt sorry I had experienced the shopkeeper pressuring me to buy from him. When I told him about the man who hassled me about buying some necklaces from him, Alex was a little more perturbed. He said if he knew who that man was he would report him to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The man would be disciplined for his treatment of a tourist. They recognize that people who act like that are only hurting themselves and others. And in reality they are not even the poorest people in Bethlehem who need the most help.

Monday 9/22

Today I made sure I had directions and a map to find the International Center of Bethlehem, where the Dar An-nadwa Center is located. I even knew how to take a little bit of a shortcut. I walked past Bethlehem University. The houses and buildings along the street looked nice. Then the rode began to get narrower and began to wind around a little bit. All of a sudden I came out on the busy Paul IV Street. The street was lined with shops, people were walking everywhere, and cars were trying to make their way through. After walking a few blocks, I began to wonder if I was lost. So I got my map out and asked someone. After we figured out where I was trying to go and where I was, it turned out I was almost there. Sure enough a little further down I came to the V in the road and then just ahead on my right was the place.

I guess I was early, maybe two minutes. People came trickling in. I finally asked someone who came by and he invited me to go upstairs to the room they were using for the Arabic class. Many of the people seemed European, some German, some Dutch, and a smattering of others including a few Americans. Dr. Moin Halloun (http://www.bethlehem.edu/images/archive/2005/2005_030.jpg) arrived finally and he started off full tilt. The class textbook is one he wrote himself and published. He drilled us frequently and had us work with another person too. Most of the time the students are doing the speaking. He left me alone for awhile, but near the end he came around to me. We were reciting nouns with pronoun endings: beti, betak, betik, etc. (my house, your house, etc.). My word was "wife," mara. I did fine until I got to maratik, "her wife." So he made jokes about Holland and Norway where you could say "her wife," but not in Palestine. He is a very good natured man, very funny, but high energy and loud.

At the break I went up and paid my money. He started to have me write my name, but then remembered I was already on his list. Unfortunately he didn't bring a copy of the textbook; he did have a copy of the dictionary (now my third or fourth Arabic dictionary)  We just arranged for me to come to Bethlehem University tomorrow, find his office, and pick up a copy of the book. It will be interesting to see the university.

On the walk back I didn't notice where the shortcut street was. So I walked down to the main intersection of Hebron Rd. My walk there reminded me of the frequent trips I made in Rome up and down the steps of Trastavere. Now I'm going to get to walk up and down the hill of Paul IV Street. I'll have to come up with a better name.

Tuesday, 9/23

Today I decided to walk down the street to where I had seen the Israeli wall. It's a very eerie feeling to see this huge prison wall looming up in the middle of a neighborhood. The corner of the wall has a guard tower. Just around the corner on Manger St. there's a painting someone has done on the side of a building in full view of the Israeli guard tower. The painting depicts a dove of peace wearing a flak jacket. In the center it shows the dove of peace is in the target sites of the enemy's weapon.

From here I walked on up the street to Bethlehem University. It's quite a little trek up the hill. Bethlehem University has a beautiful campus, very modern buildings, and friendly people willing to help an American find his way. I took a few wrong turns but managed to find Dr. Halloun and get my Arabic book.

Wednesday, 9/24

One of the events of the day was to have a quick tour through the new building Bethlehem Bible College is constructing. There is still need for more funding, but they are well on their way to providing the community with a great place for education and various forms of ministry. Everyone at BBC works very hard and is committed to encouraging not only Palestinian Christians and their churches but the quality of life for all Palestinians.

In the afternoon I worked very hard at Arabic, trying to catch up, since I missed the first few classes. I think I'm doing okay. I find it very difficult to try to speak in Arabic when put on the spot in front of the class. Our teacher knows that we have to be forced to speak in Arabic in order to learn how to converse with people. He also knows we have to learn to speak quickly, which is very hard.

On the way home from class, I ended up walking with a girl from Norway until we got to Hebron Rd. She is volunteering at the YMCA in Beit Jala. She told me her story of entering Israel at the airport. The Israeli authorities questioned her about what she was doing going there. She told them exactly what she was doing and where. They finally stamped her passport, even though she asked them not to (because with an Israeli stamped passport you can't enter countries like Lebanon). Then the person wrote a one over where it says three for length of visa. So now she has been calling and calling trying to get someone to help her renew her visa for longer. Sometimes they yell at her, tell her it's not their problem, or just hang up. Once the woman said, "Why do you keep calling me?" Instead of transferring her to the right place, she transferred her call back to the beginning place. What a nightmare for her.

Thursday, 9/25

I finally decided I had to do laundry. The laundry room is actually on the roof the building. I go outside on to the roof and then enter a little laundry room. Fortunately the machines have English instructions, so it wasn't too difficult to figure out how to use the two washing machines. I did use the dryer for my "whites," but hung all the rest on the clothes line. I meant to take a picture of my clothes flying over Bethlehem. It was a windy day, but none of my clothes actually flew away.

You may have heard about this incident in Jerusalem. A young man swerved his car into a median where Israeli police were and hit a bunch of people before crashing the car into a wall. After he was already stopped someone shot and killed him. There's no evidence he had any desire  to become a martyr. The family says he wasn't a good driver and didn't even have a license. They claim it was a traffic accident and the police had no reason to shoot the boy, especially after he was already crashed into a wall. The Israelis have a law that says a Palestinian who commits a terrorist act will have his home demolished. In the last two cases, a court has overturned that from what I understand. Ehud Barak is calling for a swifter execution of the demolition orders in order to prevent further "terrorist" attacks.

Thursday is chapel day. I'm really enjoying hearing them sing Christian songs in Arabic. Someone told me that many of the Arabic Christian songs come from Egypt, where there is a larger population of Christians. I sat near the front, so that's probably why no one offered to translate for me. Next time I'll be sure to sit in the back. One of the instructors preached a message from the Revelation concerning John on the island of Patmos. You can be guaranteed he didn't present the topic according to a dispensationalist, Zionistic approach.

I spent a greater part of the afternoon preparing for class on Friday. I tried to outline my lectures and shorten the material more. By the time I finished it had gotten dark out, which happens about 5 or 5:30 in Bethlehem. I shut the light off in my office and then discovered there were no lights on anywhere. I had to feel my way down the corridor, turn left, walk a little further, and then turn left again. I could make out the door to the outside. The thing is the doors lock and unlock with a key both from the inside and the outside. Fortunately, I had been given a key. It took me a couple of tries, but I made it out. Next time I'll carry my flashlight with me, or just go home when everyone else does.

Friday, 9/26

My class went a little bit better than last Friday. The students seem to get hung up on very fine theological points. Because the book of Hebrews begins with comparing Christ, as the "son of God," with the angels, who are called in the Bible, "sons of God." It may be that Palestinian Christians are influenced by Muslim beliefs about angels. I showed them the texts in the Hebrew Bible (and the translations in Greek, English, and Arabic) where angels are called "sons of God." It took a long time before I was able to move on.

Then we got stuck on the issue of God's will in the world. Do bad things happen because God is punishing people for sin? I happened to use the example of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina to illustrate a different point. Apparently the students had been told by someone else that Katrina was a judgment because of some naked parade or something. Not something I had heard about.

Point is, doing cross cultural exegesis is a very difficult task. I'm learning that the hard way. Somehow I've got to get the point across that we can't discuss (and solve) every theological and moral issue, if we expect to finish going through the book of Hebrews.

Speaking of Hebrews, my book, which was supposed to have been printed last week, is now supposed to be printed and available next week. At this point, I'll believe it when I see it.

This afternoon I went with Rami, my interpreter for my class and my personal guide to the Holy Land, to take in a quick visit to Solomon's Pools. We first stopped for a bite to eat at a local diner. I had my first authentic falafel sandwich. It was good and I had fun experiencing their culture. The restaurant is actually run by a Palestinian Christian, and it is on my way to Arabic class. I'll have to make it a regular stop after Arabic class.

We drove south through several towns, one of which is named after St. George, who lived for sometime in the area.

We stopped first at the highest and largest of the pools. It's thought that this is the pool of Solomon, because in the Song of Songs 4:12 the woman is addressed as "A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a garden locked, a fountain sealed." The nearby springs would fill the pool and the other pools lower down the hill. Herod used the water via aqueducts to supply Herodion and even Jerusalem.

As we drove further down, we looked at the convent built in the valley. A town grew up around the convent. It's quite a spectacular site to see the rugged mountains and valleys.

The rest of Friday was spent doing my shopping. I ran myself completely out of food on Thursday. Now I'm well-stocked and eager to enjoy my locally grown fruits and vegetables along with tea sweetened with local honey.

Monday (9/15) I left home for the next three months. My flight began in Dayton, OH with a quick trip to Atlanta, GA. I was relieved on that flight when some people got bumped up to first class and the guy sitting next to me (or should I say crammed in next to me) ran for an empty seat. He was in such a hurry he left his bag behind. After a few minutes he came back and got his bag but didn't ever make eye contact with me. So I had a comfortable ride to Atlanta.

At the Atlanta airport I made my way to the international flights area. I don't actually know whether that area serves other international flights or just flights to Tel Aviv. The waiting area seemed to have two main kinds of people, typical Jewish-looking people (men with yarmulke's, tassels, or even more orthodox style) and a group of white, mid-western looking church-goers (Wal-Mart style clothes and tour IDs around their neck). I was among the latter group, though without an ID. I couldn't tell whether any Arabs were present or not. Even though we all had already gone through airport security, we went through another security check before boarding the plane. There was one other difference on the flight. Apparently Israel has a law that people cannot move around on a plane within 30 minutes of landing. Everyone was warned to get their potty breaks done before the 30 minute mark.

This Delta flight was one of my best experiences. This was the first time I've been on a plane where each person his/her own TV monitor in the back of the seat in front of them. They had a touch screen, so it was very easy to navigate. There were episodes from major TV shows as well as documentaries. It wasn't until half way there that I discovered there were movies also. I had wanted to watch the Indiana Jones movie before leaving and just didn't find the time. I got to watch it in flight as well as The Iron Man and most of Kung Fu Panda.

I was a bit nervous going through the Israeli passport check. The woman wanted to know how long I was staying and wanted to see my return ticket. I tried to explain that it is an electronic ticket. I did have my itinerary printed out, so I showed her that. She also wanted to know where I was staying. Then she asked me what religion I was. I wanted to say, as any American would, "what business is it of yours?" But I said I was a Christian, then I added that I was a Quaker. She didn't seem very impressed, but I guess any answer was acceptable as long as I didn't say Muslim. Last of all, she wanted to know my father's name and my paternal grandfather's name. I felt rather stupid, because I always get confused about my grandfather's name. I always called him Grandpa. I gave her the name Edgar. I think that's right. I wouldn't want to lie ... twice.

I had arranged with Bethlehem Bible College (BBC) to have a driver pick me up at the airport. We hadn't really had much time to make the arrangements. After getting my baggage, walking through customs, and passing the passport checkpoint, I entered the front area of the airport where people were waiting to greet their loved one. I started looking around at people with signs to see if I could find my driver. I looked for about 45 minutes. Then I tried to call someone at BBC. I couldn't get the phone number to work. A security guard even let me try her cell phone. I finally went back to the front of the airport. Within a minute I saw a person I hadn't seen before with a sign. As I walked closer I finally made out that it said in large capital letters TIM. He had been walking around trying to find me. After loading up his car, we sped off -- and I mean that literally -- into the evening. Because of traffic he said we would go around Jerusalem. The ride probably took an hour at least. It was dark by the time we arrived in Bethlehem. We passed one police barrier, but it wasn't a checkpoint. I guess we avoided any checkpoint. The police officer just looked into the car. The driver told me people think he looks Russian and he agreed that I look Jewish. We were just waved on.

A young man was sitting on the steps to BBC and he helped me get to the right door. We finally got the guesthouse and the woman there, Esther, came down and showed me to my apartment. I suppose it's about what I expected. It's quite small with a sitting room, kitchenette, bathroom(ette), and bedroom. There's a small kitchen table across from the couch. The kitchen has a large sink and counter area, a tiny gas stove (looks new), medium sized frig, and microwave. Someone provided me with a box of milk, a baggie of cereal, a couple of eggs, and some coffee and tea packets. The bathroom has a tub with a spray hose. It's not intended to be a shower -- no shower curtain. Here's the kicker, no toilet paper down the toilet. Another way that my Honduras visit has prepared me for international travel. The bedroom has a large wardrobe. The bed is nice and comfortable. The room has a medium sized floor-stand fan. It has made sleeping quite comfortable.

The night was very quiet. In the evening I heard the Muslim call to prayer and I heard it again early in the morning. From my bedroom window I look out at Bethlehem stretching up the hillside.

Wed. morning I woke up every few hours. I would make myself go back to bed. Then when it got to be 7 or 8 in the morning, I didn't want to get up. I finally got up, took a shower(ette) and got dressed. I ate a bowl of the cereal and had a cup of coffee while doing some reading. At 1:30 a guy named Al knocked on my door and invited me to lunch. The school provides a free lunch to staff, teachers, and students. There I met Rami, my translator, for a brief second and later met Alex Awad, the Dean of Students, full-time instructor, and senior pastor of the East Jerusalem Baptist Church. I sat with several people who are not locals and they answered my many questions.

Wed. afternoon I walked down the street that runs in front of BBC to find the grocery store. Maybe it was a mile, probably less. Actually, I only crossed one street and one busy intersection. I felt okay walking down the sidewalk. For the most part people ignored me. I tried to smile and nod my head at people I passed.  I bought some food and supplies. The store clerk seemed very happy for my business. He kept saying, "God bless you." He did well communicating in English.

My contact at BBC has been Munther Isaac. He came to my room Thursday morning. We went to chapel, which I'm assuming is every Thursday at 11am. There were about 40 - 50 students in the room. The songs were in Arabic, of course. I could sort of follow along on the screen which words they were singing. I did sing a little when they repeated a line that went something like Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, his name is Jesus. When Alex Awad began to give a chapel message, a woman came and sat next to me and translated. She did a terrific job. Apparently the students knew I was coming and have been asking about me. Several people have been calling me Dr. Tim, which I find very flattering and endearing. Everyone is very kind and gracious. After chapel Munther gave me a little tour. He is leaving soon for a month and a half in England, where he is beginning a research doctorate at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.

Friday morning I made my way over to the main office at 8:30 am to make sure I knew where my classroom would be. Because I would have not only third year students but also second year students, the number would be 18. They are a wonderful group of mainly young people. They responded in a way students do in the States when you begin the class by questioning common assumptions. For instance, they were perplexed by my assertion that we didn't know who wrote Hebrews or to whom it was written. It turns out the Arabic Bible commonly used, called the Van Dyke translation, makes use of the Greek manuscripts which include a subscription at the end of Hebrews. I have not given that much thought over the years. I'm aware of its existence, but it is no longer an issue for modern English translations of the New Testament. It was described to me that young people are regularly taught by Muslims two things: Christians are infidels and the Bible is corrupt. This means I will need to spend some time talking about the text of the New Testament.

I'm not surprised I didn't get very far with my written lectures. I will need to do better with summarizing what I've written. That will mean spending some more time thinking about Hebrews and how best to communicate the central message to these students. I was very impressed with their inquisitiveness and the quality of their questions. I hope they all stick with me and not drop after a difficult and challenging first class.

After class Rami and I went to a nearby restaurant. The meal was largely the appetizers—pita bread and dishes of stuff like hummus, babaganoush, and a half dozen other dishes I didn't recognize. We also ordered a single order of lamb kabob. We couldn't finish everything. We had a cup of Arabic coffee, which came with small slices of baklava. In my blogs from Rome I complained about the size of the Italian espresso. If you can believe it, it seems like Arab coffee cups are half the size of Italian espressos.

I hope that everyone who reads this blog will check out the Gift Shop online at BBC . I met the man who coordinates the gift shop. One of the best ways you can support personally what I'm doing here, support BBC, and help local Palestinian Christians is to buy Christmas presents from this gift shop. I've been impressed by the quality of the work and its beauty. Order soon, order often. Imagine, Christmas presents from Bethlehem.

I now have an ethernet connection for internet in my apartment. I also figured out how to call my wife. She was trying to call me but the number we were told to use would get rejected. So I went ahead and called her from the phone in my apartment. We hadn't really talked to each other since Monday. Everything has been worked out now so we can stay connected. I also have an office to use. I've been a little uncomfortable working at the kitchen table and sitting in a straight back kitchen chair.

On Saturday I'll do some shopping, walk around Bethlehem on my own, and probably do some reading. I'm planning to catch a ride to the East Jerusalem Baptist Church this Sunday. Eventually I'll work out how to get to Ramallah for worship at the Friends meetinghouse.

I feel especially blessed to have met Rami. Besides the fact that he's one of the nicest people I've ever met, he is an experienced and professional tour guide and a trained archaeologist. We are making plans for him to give me weekly private tours around Israel/Palestine. We've already had conversations about what it might mean for Earlham School of Religion to bring students here for a two-week intensive. He loves the idea that we would want to combine visiting archaeological sites with time spent meeting Palestinians and learning about Arab culture. Great things are on the way and we're just starting.

In my previous blog I was ready to return to home to Indiana from Rome. I was then reminded of song lyrics like "Homeward Bound" and "Indiana Wants Me." What popped into my head now is "I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane." I will be leaving on Monday, Sept. 15th to live in Bethlehem for three months (but my bags are not packed and I'm not quite ready to go).

I've had to adjust my plans somewhat due to the increased cost of everything. I had planned to stay at the Tantur Ecumenical Study Centre in Bethlehem. To do that would have taken all of the rest of my sabbatical funds plus hundreds of dollars of my own money, which we can't afford. I wouldn't have had any money to do much of anything else. I even tried to sell my exercise bike just to get some extra cash to have on hand, in case I wanted to buy a falafel or something. We've had a very tense week trying to figure out how I was going to do this. Then a few days ago Bethlehem Bible College (BBC) offered me a small apartment to live in for free. That's just an incredible blessing. I feel bad for not being able to follow through on my plans with Tantur.  But this other opportunity will allow me to experience much more of the local culture, while still being able to do research and writing. Plus my apartment will have internet access. I've been scanning books for several days to make sure I have with me the most important resources I need and which are the most unlikely to find in libraries there -- not to mention the heaviest ones I don't want to bring with me.

 Munther Isaac at BBC (the college, not the UK media giant) has been extremely helpful. He works with the BBC choir, which has toured the US several times recently. I know who my interpreter is going to be for my class and am looking forward to working with him. I've found video clips and images of BBC students on the internet. They look like a great group of people, many of whom are doing incredible things while living under great duress.

I haven't made a great deal of advances in Arabic lately it seems. I've been listening to Pimsleur recordings for Eastern Arabic. What I've found most frustrating is trying to figure out what to learn. Trying to learn Modern Standard Arabic, classical Arabic, and colloquial Arabic at the same time is very confusing. Not only is the vocabulary and grammar different, books on colloquial Arabic always seem to be written in transliteration. I've spent a great deal of time learning to read Arabic script, so I hate having to read transliteration. I keep trying to figure out what the Arabic letters are. So not only am I trying to translate the Arabic into English -- so to speak -- I'm also first translating the transliteration into Arabic script. Fortunately there is a Jerusalem dialect Arabic class starting now and running for the next 15 weeks. A professor at Bethlehem University, Dr. Moin Halloun, has written a series of books on the Jerusalem dialect for foreign speakers. I've signed up for the class and will start on the 22nd. I really hope I know enough to be able to be in the intermediate level. I don't want to start from scratch, although it's always best to have a firm basis for starting a language. I'm also trying to arrange for someone to tutor me and maybe that person can help me more with reading classical and Modern Standard Arabic.

Soon I will have my bags packed and will be leaving on a jet plane. I do know when I'll be back, however, Dec. 15th. I'll be home in time to bring with me Christmas cheer from Bethlehem.

I'm beginning to think I might try to locate myself in Bethlehem rather than Ramallah during my sabbatical Fall semester in Palestine. I've applied to participate in the Scholar's Program at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute for Theological Studies . This will enable me to continue my research project and locate me close to the Bethlehem Bible College , where I expect to be teaching a class during the semester. I still hope to travel frequently to Ramallah, especially on the weekends to attend the Friend's meeting there Sunday morning.

It would really top off my sabbatical plans to be at Tantur. However, it would cost me more than I had originally budgeted when I was considering staying in the home of a family. I have yet to hear if I'm accepted and to see whether I can figure out the budget to make it work. Stay tuned.

[This is a message I gave at Salem Friends Meeting, Liberty, IN, April, 2008.]

On Friday my wife, Suann, and I drove our daughter back to Indianapolis for her last week of the school year. We've made numerous trips into Indy over the past year and each time presented its own challenges of navigation. Because of the construction going on until the end of 2007 we tried to avoid going straight into Indy on 70 and then from the south attempt to find our way north to the Butler University campus. Instead, we first tried to go from Post Rd. with an east-west approach on 38^th Street. That was complicated by the State Fair traffic, the myriad of intersections, and crazy drivers weaving in and out of traffic. We then decided just to go around Indy on 465 to the north and come at the city from the north taking exit five on route 5, which is Meridian, and that takes us right near Butler. Obviously, that's going the long way around. It's easy to do, but it makes a long trip even longer. If we go that far, we might as well just keep going to West Lafayette [inside joke about Purdue University]. We tried numerous times to find ways to attack or retreat from Indy on a southerly route. On one trip in I turned the wrong direction—I went south instead of north —after getting off 65 and it wasn't until we hit countryside and saw planes landing nearby that we realized we were in the wrong place. Other times we tried to leave Butler going to the south only to discover we were in a scary part of town and construction prevented us from getting on 70. I finally made progress when I figured out how to get from the Butler campus to 38^th Street, to Martin Luther King Drive, on to 65 south, and then 70 east. After several attempts to make the reverse trip, I finally accomplished it and knew where I was going. I commented to Suann, "It's taken us a whole year, but we've finally figured out how to get to and from Butler."

For many of us growing up in small towns or in the country, the big city can be a challenging world. Remember the first time you, who grew up here in Liberty, Indiana, visited the big city of Connersville, Oxford, Ohio, or even Richmond. During elementary school years, you probably went with your family or on a school trip to see Cincinnati, Dayton, or Indianapolis. When you got older, you had your first trip to Chicago. Maybe you visited other major cities, perhaps even going to Washington, DC or New York City. That progression may have continued to the point of having your passport stamped in cities around the world. From some small neighborhood your perspective developed over time as you grew up to include a greater area and a larger concept of what and whom your world includes.

You learned about the world in school, but you didn't really broaden your mind until you experienced places and people different than you and your own. Maybe you stared the first time you saw someone with a different color skin than what you were used to. The first time you saw people dressed differently and speaking a different language you might have thought they were strange or perhaps even dangerous. You began to become accustomed to the fact that, although you share the world with people who look and live differently than you, people are basically the same wherever you go. They are no better and no worse than people like you. In fact, you might even have come to the conclusion that the values and customs of people from somewhere else are even better than your own.

As a teenager you thought the whole world revolved around you. As a young adult, you focused your energy on how to make your life better and to make a good life for your family. Somewhere during that time you will have realized that the world is much bigger than you, and there are more important issues than whether you own a nice home in a good neighborhood, drive a new car, and have the best entertainment center or home theater system in your family room.

That doesn't happen for everyone. Many adults are still children in the way they view the world. Their town is the best. They identify closely with their own political or geographical region and their local sports teams. Everyone ought to speak the same language they do, belong to the same religion and denomination they do, and hold to the same moral values. Perhaps they even want their own ethnic group to do better than others and to be in power. They want their own country to be the superpower and dominate the world. Since God has come to them in a particular way, that must mean it's the only right way, and only people who accept that way have real value and deserve to receive God's blessings and benefits. If others can't agree with their idea of how the world should be, they must be forced to comply even if it takes imperialistic policies, aggressive actions, or the violence of "shock and awe" indiscriminate bombings.

How do you see yourself? What is your primary self-identification? I'm speaking from within the context of a church, so you might expect I want you to say Christian. We're in a Friend's meetinghouse, so you might guess the most important identification is Quaker. Most of your are sitting with family members, so maybe family is the most important. We're a few months away from July 4^th; you're all good, patriotic Americans. Some people put their flag outside their home everyday or wear a flag as a lapel pin. There are churches in which people get tears in their eyes when they hear the words of the song "I'm proud to be an American."

How would it change our way of thinking to say my primary way of thinking about myself is that I belong to the human species? I am related to every human being in the world irrespective of how that other human's ancestors evolved in other places in the world and the ways they developed to think, believe, and act. Or perhaps to even go one step further, we humans share this planet within an interdependent ecosystem and do not have the right to destroy the rest of the planet for our own benefits. In religious language, we are part of God's creation. It's debatable whether we are really the pinnacle of the ascent of evolution or if we are in fact the malignancy that will eventually destroy our own home. You might recall the word's of Agent Smith in the movie "Matrix."

I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we... are the cure.

Christians like us have come to read the Bible in a very selective way to reinforce our own provincialism and chauvinism. Even when we talk about the Bible's own history of transmission and translation, we think of it as beginning with Hebrew and Greek in the Middle East, becoming readily available in the language of the people in German during the reformation, and eventually culminating with English translations in Britain and in the U.S. From the United States, then, the Bible gets translated to the other languages of the world—from us goes forth the gospel. Where did we get such an idea? How chauvinistic! We are neither the terminus to which the gospel was destined nor the terminus from which God's message goes forth to the world to gather the world's sheep into our fold.

The stories of the Old Testament point again and again to the way in which humans should not turn their attention to themselves and their own but realize they are part of a much larger world. Adam and Eve were forced to leave their gated-community called Eden. When people started going in a wrong direction, one man and his family were preserved while God treated all the rest of the human family as one. The story of the Tower of Babel relates how, when one group decided they were the best and only divinity remained to be conquered by erecting a pyramid to the sky, God caused humans to have a variety of cultures and languages and to spread throughout the world. Our Bible traces one ethnic group's belief that God uniquely called their ancestor to come from northern Mesopotamia, from modern-day Iraq, to be given a corridor of land on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Abraham, whom Genesis calls "the father of many nations," recognized the rights of others to live together and share ownership of the land. According to Gen 23, when Abraham wants to have a burial place, he insists on buying the property from "the people of the land" living there rather than taking it by force. When his descendants find themselves living as slaves in Egypt, it is an adopted, Egyptian-raised child of the Pharaoh who leads the Hebrew people from the foreign land. Although this monotheistic Semitic group with its own particular cultural values seeks to remove their idol-worshipping cousins from some of their cities in the Land of Canaan, to a large extent they find ways to live together with them. Even their national constitution demands they respect the alien living among them. Hear what the Torah says, "When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God" (Lev 19:33-34).

The Israelite and Judean kings often marry foreign wives and adopt the ways of others, beginning with David and Solomon. The philosophy and literature of other groups become assimilated into theirs. Their prophets often speak about their need to be a light to the other nations of people. They tell the story of the prophet Jonah, whom God actually tells to go to Iraq—what was then the Assyrian city of Nineveh—to call them to repent of their misdeeds because God cares for them. God tells the pouting Jonah, when God does not destroy them with "shock and awe" like Jonah wants God to, "And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?" (Jonah 4:11).

Progressive Jews of the centuries before Christ sought to become a part of the world scene instead of being isolated with their own language, culture, and religious texts and ceremonies. Jesus comes out of that tradition as someone who moves outside of his own village and territory. He cares for people from all walks of life: the rich and poor; men, women, and children; Jews, Samaritans, Greeks, and Romans; rural people as well as urban elites; farmers, fishmongers, trades people, merchants, tax-collectors, religious authorities; people suffering from diseases, injuries, blindness, deafness, mental illnesses. Jesus talked about God's kingdom not the kingdom of Israel (and certainly not the kingdom of the United States of America). When the church is born at Pentecost, the gospel message was not proclaimed in one language. Everyone there heard God's message in their own native language. Hear what Acts says.

Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs-- in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power (Acts 2:7-11)

Many people have the view that the earliest Christianity was a Jewish Christianity that became suppressed and was eventually lost. Some people have tried to recreate a kind of Jewish Christianity with Jewish customs and claim that Christians should all adopt this kind of Christian Judaism. But that's not how it happened. The Christianity that took root and spread was a Hellenistic Jewish form of Christianity. The lingua franca of the day was Greek. It was the language of commerce and travel. It was the language that was the most common to people within the Roman empire. The good news about God's kingdom was for all people--for all people equally, for all people regardless of their particular geographical location, language, and culture.

Christianity quickly became the tool of empires, whether that was the Holy Roman empire, the British empire, or the empire the United States seeks to develop. Those Christians who identify their place in the world as centered in their own group of people and their own nation are allowing themselves to be used in this way in many subtle and not so subtle ways.

How big is your world? Do you spend most of your time thinking about yourself, your own needs, your own condition, your own future, and those near and dear? Or do you see your world as a much larger place, filled with people who look, think, and act differently than you but are essentially the same? Do you give some part of your day to read the newspaper and watch the evening news, not as a voyeur into the sensationalistic and sentimental, but to be informed about the lives of people around the world because you care for all the people of the world? Do you find ways to educate yourself about how the rest of the world lives—how they speak, how they practice their faith, how they express themselves in art and literature, how they feel about their own opportunities for health, safety, and freedom? Do you give some of your money and time to help those who are strangers and foreigners, even those some might call enemies?

The measure of our world is the measure of own souls. Our devotion to God is only as deep as our world is wide. We cannot afford to live our lives any longer in isolation, in selfishness, narcissism, or even well-intentioned patriotism. We are extremely privileged people upon whom is placed a huge burden of responsibility to the rest of the world. Each of us owes it to ourselves and to the world to broaden our horizons, to live responsibly in the world, and in this way to serve God the creator and sustainer of all.

A few days ago I received an email from the Academic Dean at Bethlehem Bible College confirming they would like for me to teach several classes.I am very excited about this opportunity. I'm in conversation with them about which classes I might teach for them.

[This is a message I gave at my church, Salem Friends Meeting]

A few years ago, my wife, Suann, and I became homeowners. I’ve not been convinced that it was a wise decision for us. Sure, the house has served us well. It has kept us warm – at least warmer than the out-of-doors. It has kept us dry – except for the leak in the roof and the puddles in the basement. There is the security we have – the security of knowing no sensible thief would try to rob a house like ours. We primarily bought the house because of its location. It is located on the southwest side of the city where the high school is and it’s across the street from where I work at Earlham School of Religion. We thought the advantage of its location outweighed any of the other problems the house might have. However, the children hardly ever walk to school and I’m still always at least ten minutes late for work.

Along with the house comes a nice piece of property. It’s my property. I own it. I’ve looked online and have seen the official boundary of my property. When we first moved in there was a playground set in the back yard. I drove into the driveway one day and saw a little boy in my backyard. I went down there and told him he couldn’t be on my property. I defended my land and prevented an incursion from occurring on my land.

My land has given me many fruitful harvests for which I continually curse mother nature. If only there would be less rain and less sun, perhaps the grass would not grow so quickly and the weeds wouldn’t force themselves through every nook and cranny of my property. Besides the occasional patch of mushrooms that appear in my front yard and some kind of wild strawberry that showed up where it didn’t belong, there hasn’t been much produce from the dirt that hides below the surface of my ill-manicured lawn.

There are other families for whom land has greater significance. My parents have a plot of land they bought as a retirement home. My father has put a great deal of sweat and probably some blood – I know it’s taken a fair amount of money – into his handful of acres. But he’s only lived there for maybe a dozen years or so. He’s tended a large garden most years and that’s helped them with the cost of food. But it’s not been his livelihood.

I can imagine that farm families have a greater attachment to their land. For some farm families their land has been in the family for generations. Until recent years farm families could expect the land to provide a livelihood for a next generation of their family. They could tell you about what the land has meant to them over the years. Not only have the farmers had an intimate connection with the land by their blood, sweat, and tears, there may well be ancestors buried in the dirt on their land.

Nowadays it seems farmers are a different breed. In order to do well on a farm, they need to have a knowledge of business management and understand the market. They are biologists and soil scientists. I suspect the modern day farmers see their land more as their field of business than the dirt which gave birth to their families and which holds their ancestors in trust until resurrection day.

In the olden days, as in antiquity, people had a greater spiritual connection to their land. The stories of how their tribes of people came to settle the land are passed down through generations. For them, it was God or the gods who gave them their land and provided life to them through it. God blessed their land with the heat and life-giving force of the sun. God showered them and sent streams of water to quench the thirst of their land. The cycles of life were the seasons of planting and harvest; God gave life from the ground and to the ground people returned. To you and your people the land was a God-given trust; not just property to own or an asset of your business but a part of the earth God gave to you and your people.

I can explain what that means to some people, but I obviously can’t really understand it. I think there are many people like me who don’t have a real connection to the ground they live upon. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but that’s the reality we live with.

The fact is, here in the United States of America, we live on land that only a few hundred years ago belonged to another group of people. We think of our ancestors as people who fled religious persecution and were led to this new world as a promised land flowing with milk and honey. It was okay for us to displace the people living here. After all, they hadn’t made anything of the land. The natives lived like animals. They had no technology, no industry, no literature, no philosophy, and no God – or at least not ours. We have now successfully removed the aboriginal people and confined them to small reservations where they can leave in freedom. We’re sorry about that, but it’s okay because we were following God’s leading, fleeing religious persecution, and we were establishing a great country founded on religious principles.

I’ve been thinking about this because of my plans to live in Palestine for a few months. That has caused me to begin thinking more about the Middle East crisis. How does one look at this conflict fairly? What is our perspective as US citizens? What is our perspective as Christians? How is that different for us as Quakers?

We cherish Holy Scripture and consider ourselves as part of the religious and spiritual heirs of its stories and teachings. The Jewish people are our religious and spiritual ancestors. Their God is our God; their Bible is our Bible. We read their Scripture in which God tells them God will give them a land and God will bless them there. God makes a covenant with Israel to be their God. That same Bible prophecies of a future blessing of God when Israel is returned to their land and when everything God gave them in the past is restored. The more literal of our brothers and sisters in the faith take that to mean the future of God’s work in the world is directly connected to the future of the modern state of Israel.

The recent history of our world saw a terrible event happen to those whose Bible we share. European Jews were persecuted: tormented, tortured, and executed by the train-loads. We ignored their plight in the beginning and refused them protection in the end. Through a series of politically and economically motivated decisions, a place was secured for them to go. There was a problem however. Author Ghada Karmi titles her book on the dilemma of modern Israel with an allusion to a famous message. When rabbis visited the land of Palestine in the 19th century looking to return to their former homeland, they sent back word: "The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man." There’s no other way to see it than that we have been complicit in the taking of that bride from her husband and giving her to another. But what can we do? Say that a religious people has no right to claim land from an indigenous people, virtually wipe them out as savages, and then declare themselves God’s people and their country as blessed of God?

Jimmy Carter, in his recent book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, describes making this connection in 1973, when he visited the Holy Land ahead of his plan to run for the presidency. Carter understood this comparison having been a farmer himself.

I have to admit that, at the time, I equated the ejection of Palestinians from their previous homes within the State of Israel to the forcing of Lower Creek Indians from the Georgia land where our family farm was now located; they had been moved west to Oklahoma on the “Trail of Tears” to make room for our white ancestors. In this most recent case, although equally harsh, the taking of land had been ordained by the international community through an official decision of the United Nations. The Palestinians had to comply and, after all, they could return or be compensated in the future, and they were guaranteed undisputed ownership of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.

I’m trying to understand what it means for Palestinians to have their land taken from them. What it means to be removed from their homes and forced to live in refugee camps. What it means to have their homes and their orchards taken over by others or simply to have them bulldozed. What does it mean to soak the dirt with their tears and their blood, the dirt that contains the life of their people from thousands of years. How do I really understand what that means and what do I do about it?

My Christian theology has little room for the value of dirt. For us, heaven is our home and in this world we are only resident aliens. Our life is in the spirit, not in flesh, bone, and dirt. We save the soul, not the body and the land on which it resides. Our heritage comes from the merging of middle eastern culture and the western culture of Greece and Rome. Our values are not in the maintenance of property and wealth. Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafini, in his novella Men in the Sun, has Abul Khaizuran tell Marwan, “The first thing you will learn is: money comes first, and then morals.” Our ethical system says the opposite. But then we judge that from a place of privilege. Easy for us to say. “Why are you fighting over worldly goods: land, wealth, oil? Be like us and live in the spirit – now that we have our land of prosperity and security.”

Our Christian theology may not have much to say about valuing land and dirt, but it does have a great deal to say about justice, fairness, and peace. It is our responsibility to think about what this means. Just because we made a mistake in the past and have learned to live it, doesn’t mean we should be willing to be partners in doing it again to another group of people.

As I prepare myself to live in Palestine in the fall, I have a satellite image on my computer screen that shows me the city of Ramallah. It will be home from Sept. through December. It’s not much to look at, really. There is little vegetation to be seen, mostly sandy and rocky soil. But it’s their dirt and it’s their home, at least for a little while longer.

A few weeks ago the Dean of ESR informed me that I was going to be permitted to take a six-month sabbatical. I began researching what I would want to do on my sabbatical.

For a few years I have thought about studying Arabic. For the past several years we have talked at ESR about the necessity for thinking about theological education and ministry within a multi-cultural context. Several people have been learning Spanish and traveling to Mexico and Central America to engage in cross-cultural ministry and theological education. It seemed to me to be a good idea to work at the same concept but in a different language, culture, and part of the world. So I began thinking about how I would go about learning Arabic and where I might want to travel to experience Arab and Islamic culture.

I didn't have to think long before I came upon the idea of traveling to Ramallah, Palestine and the Ramallah Friends School. After thinking about that for a few days and beginning to talk to the director of the school. I became aware of the local university, Birzeit University, and its Palestine and Arabic Studies Program. What became clear to me is that if I really wanted to make the most of this opportunity, I would need to spend the complete semester in Palestine.

The Dean has approved my sabbatical plans and has funding available to support me. Right now my plans are to focus on three main areas.

1. To be a Friend in Residence at Ramallah Friends School. I will want to participate in the life of the school and in the classroom. I will seek to find ways to be a part of the Friends community in Ramallah through the Friends International Center in Ramallah.
2. To take two classes at Birzeit University, hopefully one on Arabic and one Palestinian/Arabic culture. I've started to learn Arabic and look forward to the challenge of not only learning a language for reading but also for conversation.
3. I'm also hoping to teach a class at a theological school. Our work at ESR is in Christian theological education. I want to be a part of what Palestinian Christians are doing to train people for ministry. I've been in contact with Bethlehem Bible College and am awaiting an answer from them.

As the time approaches I'm sure my plans will develop and might even change. I am keeping up with the news in Palestine and sincerely hope that progress will be made for peaceful negotiations and the resolution of the conflict.

I have other plans for my sabbatical and will write about them in another blog. I am hoping to participate in an NEH summer seminar at the American Academy in Rome. I'll know about that in April. I hope to begin working on a book on Paul. It will be extremely interesting to work on a book on Paul, first in Rome and then in Palestine.

Those are my plans at the moment.