The Dirt Whispered "I'm coming Home"

(from 3 March 2012 - Jerusalem) Those words were spray painted on the Wall in East Jerusalem. (what the Israelis call the security wall and the Palestinians call the separation wall - whatever you call it is a 30ft tall concrete wall topped with razor wire) By this point in time, I'm used to messages of resistance graffitied on the wall, but this statement evoked a different sort of feeling. It was a statement I could identify with - the dirt, the land which we call holy, it doesn't care about race or religion, it simply exists as it has for thousands of years - contested, disputed, conquered, and covered in bloodshed.

Today our group (Middle East Fellowship student delegation to the Christ at the Checkpoint conference) visited Jerusalem, starting at the Mount of Olives and the garden of Gethsemane and working our way down to the old city where we walked the Via Dolorosa. It was rather off to walk such a devotional path with a group of evangelical Christians. Each site had only a brief mentioned which station it was but no prayers, no devotions. I missed it and it made me want to latch on to a Roman Catholic pilgrimage at some point to see what I would be like with that amount of devotion and ritual. At the church at the garden of Gethsemane, I happened upon a mass being spoken in Polish and stopped to listen to the homily for a bit. It was actually fairly good. The priest talked about being renewed by the Holy Land, by the garden of Gethsemane - to capitalize on the ability to become good people by accepting God's will. Yet there was nothing that I heard about discerning God's will. Acceptance of God's will cannot simply be a rationalization of what has happened - if it happened, then it must be God's will. I believe that God is good and as such, nothing evil can be part of God's will. (This of course became the topic of a very interesting dinner conversation on theodicy, creation, and the omnipotence versus the benevolence of God.)

We ended our trip to Jerusalem with a trip to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was crowded as it is most days. It seemed difficult for the evangelicals to appreciate the church. One student said, "I would like this church a lot better without the church." It was hard for me as well, but that was due mostly to the crowds. I'm a church junkie though, I love to see them, to sit in them, to pray in them - to visit an share in other people's places of worship. Though I enjoy the simple churches, especially the ones that integrate nature into the architecture of the church, I can still enjoy the ornate structures by remembering that the intent was not to show corruption but to glorify God and demonstrate devotion. In an odd way, though, in the middle east I find myself in sacred space when I walk amongst ruins of churches, remnants of what was and inspiration for what might be as well as the remembrance that "dust you are, to dust you shall return." It's like the graffiti on the Wall - these conflicts shall eventually pass away, we shall return to dust and the dirt shall come home.