Pause for thought

Into the eye of the storm

I wouldn't go there if I were you - 'it's really dangerous' said girl at the call center. I'd asked her to switch my mobile over so I could use it in Israel and Jordan. 'Thanks for caring; but it'll be OK' I said, 'the safest place is always the in eye of the storm'.

Israel is hardly twice the size of Wales and yet it has been 'in the eye of the storm' for thousands of years. It still is. Another Suicide bomb, more dead and injured, 'you bash us and we'll bash you even harder.' You can wake up to the news almost every day and not be surprised at the violence, in what is almost tragically called 'The Holy Land'. This land is Holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims. It has never really been a peaceful place but there have been times when the different faith communities have all lived together more peacefully than they do now.

For Jewish people this land is their identity, the place where they find God and struggle to obey Him. For Christians this land was the home of Jesus, the place where he lived and died. The Prophet Mohammed was carried up to heaven in this land and it is Holy to Muslims. For thousands of years, this land has seen war and bloodshed in the name of religion and it continues today.

My postman always says, 'Religion! More trouble than it's worth'. He has a point. But here 'in the eye of the storm' people don't agree with him. Here religion matters. Like it really matters. It tells you who you are, where you can live and where you can travel. Some people would say that politics is the problem not religion. Well, perhaps it's both. Religion tends to make demons out of people when it wants to defeat them, and when religion holds hands with power it becomes a dangerous force which I doubt has anything to do with God. The daft thing is, at the heart of all of the great world religions is a God of Justice and Peace who demands that all people are to be respected. This is very conveniently forgotten an awful lot.

Tourism is a major earner in this land. There are no tourists. Many hotels have been closed down. There is no work. Ordinary people go hungry in this ongoing and murderous squabble which nobody wins.

My Grandfather, who was a wise man, always said

'what people want is food inside them, a roof over their heads a chance to give their kids a decent education, and to die in their beds of old age; and if politics and religion can't give them that then they ain't worth a halfpenny between 'em!'

Standing in the eye of the storm , with Jerusalem in front of me, a church, a mosque and the Israeli parliament either side of me; I don't feel in any danger; but I can't help thinking he's right.

Oh Little Town of Bethlehem

Dressing as a Clergyman sometimes has its uses. This time it gets me past an Israeli checkpoint, not something which you do everyday! I was heading for Bethlehem. No, I wasn't on a donkey and it wasn't Christmas either! I was visiting Israel a month or so ago and I was driving in a 4x4.

What you wear obviously makes a difference in this part of the world. My guide was a Muslim called Mohammed. He wore a trilby hat for the Israelis and passed off as a Christian. After entering Bethlehem, which is a Palestinian town, he swapped it for the traditional Muslim crotched hat and put an Arabic Newspaper on the dashboard. 'Safer this way' he said!'

Forget 'Oh little town of Bethlehem' and forget seeing it 'lying still'. Bethlehem is not still and it is not little. It's a large Town with hotels, shops and a University. The Hotels are closed, some of them have been destroyed.

There had been a small war here not long ago and the signs of destruction were obvious: bulldozed shops and houses, lamp posts bent over like broken pencils.

We parked in Manger Square. I had watched with the rest of the world as a couple of hundred Palestinians had been trapped in the Church of the Nativity, the site believed to be the birth place of Jesus. On TV I had seen smoke and tanks and gunfire, but now it was almost silent. I can remember when it was packed full of noisy tourists and pilgrims. Now it was as if the whole square had been winded and the silence was that painful moment before it gasped for breath and began to recover from the blow.

Stepping inside the church I expected to see the squatter camp shown on TV. Men and women had lived inside for 38 days with almost no food, water, or sanitation, but inside everything had been scrubbed by priests and monks with mops and rubber gloves! The overwhelming smell was a strange mixture of incense and bleach!

I was amazed that a place which had recently been so full of fear and anger could feel so peaceful so quickly. Perhaps 1,800 years of prayer and devotion sticks to the walls. I wondered what the people inside the church had thought and felt during those 38 days? As we were leaving a fellow visitor handed me a torn piece of paper. 'Look at this' she said. On it was written

'Goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate. Light is stronger than darkness. Life is stronger than death. In this place where I have seen despair give us all hope"

It was written on the label from an ammunition box!

You have to be carefully taught

If you drive north of Bethlehem for about two miles you come to the town of Bet Jallah. It's on the West Bank and is surrounded by checkpoints, and 'look out' towers. I was on my way to visit a School. My friend Solomon is the Principal. Many of the kids at the school have only one parent, the other one either killed or in prison. They had just gone back after a curfew which put them under house arrest for over 30 days. 'How do they cope with it?' I asked. 'Solomon laughed. 'They are Palestinian Kids' - he says they have grown used to this kind of thing. They were going about their lessons, being noisy and boisterous just like any other teenagers. As I left the room, one of them asked me how Beckham's foot was!

The school teaches Christians and Muslims alongside each other. Solomon is proud of this and sees it as his reason for being there. 'We teach peace and tolerance here' he says. 'Here is where young people will learn to live together and to respect each other; this is my duty'.

This is a hard call in his part of the world. Between Bethlehem and Bet Jallah is a large Israeli settlement, surrounded by high fences and barbed wire. Any child educated around here lives daily with a fear of the other side. 'Don't trust them - they'll blow you up or shoot you on the way to school, or bulldoze your house'. Sadly it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Solomon tells me 'here no Arab ever goes into a Jewish house and no Jew ever goes into an Arab house.' 'How will they ever learn to respect each other?' says Solomon, 'if they can't see just how much they are the same?'

Solomon is very clear about his duty. 'I must protect them against extremists;' he says passionately, 'the pressure on them is so great at this age to fight back in anger. They feel that they have no choice. I tell them that violence will not solve this problem only learning to live together in peace. It is harder for them to learn, but better' To me the only things these kids seemed extreme about was football and computers!! However, Solomon had noticed the boys being more aggressive after this recent curfew.

I admire Solomon and people like him. He is a lonely voice in this part of the world, but he's right. Education is the key. We are not born hating people; we are taught to do it. 'You have to be taught to be afraid of people whose skin is a different shade. You have to be taught before it's too late. Before you are 6 or 7 or 8, to hate all the people your relatives hate. You have to be carefully taught'. Wise words from the Musical South Pacific by the way!

Thank God for Solomon and for people like him who don't teach 'hate'.

Crossing the border

Crossing borders in the Middle East isn't quite the same as crossing the English Channel. Almost everywhere you go is a barrier which tells you who's in charge on either side, who is welcome and who isn't. At the border there is tension: checks and searches, passports and ID cards. In this part of the world the people on the other side is almost certainly your enemy. They may have a bomb. You must be stopped and checked, held up and examined. You end up believing that you are the enemy.

Crossing the border back into Israel from Jordan we met the security police. They were young Israeli women. As we passed through the various luggage checks there was a lot of talking to each other through ear pieces and walkie-talkies. Suddenly all six of them appeared across our path. Ok, I thought, maybe spending the rest of my time in an Israeli Jail will save on my hotel bills!! Then I noticed they were all laughing. This is a rare sight in Israeli security circles believe me! I asked what they were laughing at. Pointing at my traveling companion one of them spoke, 'we all thought she was Kylie Minogue and we wanted to have a look'. Well, sadly my friend was not Kylie Minogue but she was as delighted as they were disappointed when they took a closer look!!

In Israel they are building a wall along the West Bank between Palestinians and Israelis - to guarantee security, they say. As I see people queuing in their hundreds to cross the borders to get to work, I remember the human cost of the lines we draw between us. My Guide Mohammed cannot cross the border to meet us in the morning so he has to stay in my hotel. He comes from 'the wrong side of the wall'.

Walls have been done before. I find it hard to believe that this land will be more successful in the long term than say, Berlin. We spent a generation trying to pull that wall down. In the end walls don't work. Ask Pink Floyd!

There must be better ways to solve the problem, ways which treat people more like human beings. The security guards were certainly human enough. They laughed like mad when, in the middle of barbed wire and machine-gun posts, we crossed the border singing 'I should be so lucky. Lucky, Lucky Lucky'..! I guess that Kylie had the last laugh over the barriers we put up between each other!! Perhaps we should get her involved in the peace process!! Hey, come on - not everything in the Middle East is doom and gloom.

When I am in special places my priorities change. It is not just because I am religious it is because of the place. This land is a Desert. The Desert has always been a place of Big issues. In the Holy Land, it is hard to carry on worrying about paying the electricity bill or getting to the supermarket before the Friday rush!

I was in Jordan standing on the top of Mount Nebo. It is the place where Moses looked out on the Land which is now Israel.The Promised Land. I had just conducted a service of Holy Communion in the Church built on the site over 1600 years ago.

At the end of the service a man and a woman, both British, came up to me to thank me. I noticed that they both had tears in their eyes. As they told their story I understood why. Only a few weeks ago, on the first day of a family holiday, they had lost their 19 year old son. He had fallen to his death from the Balcony of their hotel room. All of their dreams and hopes had been snatched from them on that day.

I had come to the end of a trip filled with stories of pain and confusion and after meeting these people I had found yet more. They had come to the Desert to try and make some sense of what had happened. Perhaps the Desert and its history of ‘God finding’ still holds a powerful message. Perhaps the holiness of the place stands firm over the centuries while all around it the world seems to be going mad. Perhaps a place which is so wracked with pain itself, is the only place which can take our own pain seriously. Perhaps religion still has something to say about not to beng crushed in the face of despair, pain, death and disappointment

The fact is that Moses never entered the promised land. He died before he could see his vision. Just like their young Son and just like all the people’ young and old; Israeli and Palestinian, who are killed in this conflict day by day. They never see their dream.

I had a letter from that father and mother recently. It said that Mount Nebo had given them hope. To many the Holy Land, even in its Chaos is still a place of Hope. I hope and pray that the people who live in that land live to see peace and I pray that it will be soon. So.. I bid them and you ..Shalom.. Salam Aleikum…. Peace be with you!