I delivered the following sermon Sunday March 27, 2011 for the congregation of Harvard-Epworth United Methodist Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Following the text is an audio recording featuring my own photography that was presented to the congregation on the same day. As I am a student, please leave critique, comments, opinions, or reflections!!
I. OPENING
Greeting: Good Morning! I would like to first thank Harvard-Epworth for this opportunity and for those supporting me today. I would also like to apologize for my voice, as I have been sick.
A. INTRODUCTION
I struggled for a while in deciding how to approach today’s sermon. I was weighing options of preaching of my forthcoming graduation from Divinity School and lessons learned at my time here. I also thought of my many ministerial passions and even research interests. However, this being the liturgical season of Lent I have most often found myself contemplating the areas of faith I do not feel comfortable with.
Salvation, essentially being at the top of the list, is probably one of my least favorite subjects to talk about. Alas, in this Lenten season and in this area of divine scholarship, salvation seems to always be the elephant in the room- a subject that is both divisive and complicated. At the heart of any discussion of salvation lies a sacred dialogue of questions. My attempt here is to examine some of the questions that have been informative in my life and then use some new understanding and experience to reflect on a new understanding of salvation.
B. MY PROBLEM WITH WORDS
Growing up between Texas and North Carolina, my developmental years were spent steeped in Southern United Methodist culture. These sacred questions of salvation became, for me, a regular litany of inquisition. Are you saved? Do you have a personal relationship with the Lord, Jesus Christ? Do you know that Jesus shed his blood for you to save you?
Now, most folks that I know are accepting, loving people, however, this language became part-n-parcel for my cultural condition.
The fact was, I never really understood what any of those questions really meant. Saved? From what? Was always my mental rebuttal. I grew to become hyper critical and angry towards these kinds of questions and especially towards their language.
To this day I have a problem with certain words.
For instance, I can’t really pronounce “Jesus” without my suppressed southern accent peaking through, nor can I really pronounce “prayer” without the r’s colliding awkwardly. But “salvation” has always been such a loaded term. It has always presented as some State Fair blue ribbon, or the special key to the members only club. After experiencing the judgment of folks who wanted me to be “saved,” I rather decided against it.
C. THE WRITING ON THE WALL
As a teenager I was incredibly involved in my youth group. You name it, and I was there- car washes, community volunteer days, habitat for humanity, mission trips, camps, sending envelopes, meetings, committees, and potlucks galore. I would go to Sunday school every week, and I was the kid who always talked and asked questions- you know, the nerdy kind. The one thing I never did very much of at that time was question authority or doctrine- I simply tried my hardest to make sense out of everything set before me- whether or not it actually made sense to me. I thought that’s what a good Christian did- just believe.
In one of our youth rooms a poster hung on the wall- one of those gaudy, garish things made in bright colors to appeal to 14 year olds but really doesn’t impress anyone. In big bold letters it said: “Jesus dying for you was the most he could do; living for him is the least you can do.” Man, I h-a-ted that thing! Besides dripping with guilt, I couldn’t ever figure out what made it so wrong. I’ve now come to realize my issue with the writing on the wall was that it valued more the moment of death than it valued the acts of life.
The traditional view of salvation focuses on violence, destruction, and death and completely misses the awe-inspiring role of life.
II. THE TRADITIONAL VIEW OF SALVATION
I would like to clarify what I mean by the traditional view of salvation.
I am focusing so much on my own personal experience in order to highlight the modern, Protestant, evangelical concept of salvation. I should make note that there are many views on salvation within Christianity today, and even more when one considers the historical process of the Christian church establishing creeds and doctrines. Today, I would like to focus on some common images and phrases associated with salvation.
The basic process is this:
1. There is sin in the world
2. Christ, God incarnate, comes to Earth to forgive our sins
3. Christ crucified as a blood sacrifice to cleanse the world from sin, as a complete the ritual to purify through suffering body
4. Christ goes through a criminal’s death instead of the expected political, royal takeover
5. After three days in the tomb Christ is resurrected.
Theologians and ministers have spent their entire carriers studying just one of these tenets, and I have only this morning add in my thoughts –at least I don’t have to finish before the Cowboys kick off.
My heart has been called to this third tenet: Christ crucified as a blood sacrifice to cleanse the world from sin.
III. THE PROBLEM WITH THE TRADITIONAL VIEW
For such a long time I have had the same struggles with this tenant as I had with the poster hanging in my Youth Group room: I has always struck me as being wrong, or missing the point, but the reason for which eluded me.
During this Lenten season I have the gift of this sermon preparation in which to wrestle with these difficult, uncomfortable and long-standing questions of mine.
The doctrine of Christ as a blood-sacrifice has proven itself quite problematic both in its historical interpretation as well as its modern use.
(1) The historical interpretation has been used by Christians since the earliest church to justify and even courage violent blood-shed of fellow humans- from second-century martyrs, to the horrors of the Crusades, the Spanish inquisition, Manifest destiny, and various civil wars.
(2) A more contemporary use involves a valorization of Christian suffering, and places all of the importance of the Christ Event in the moment of his death and salvific value in accepting and propagating this view.
In this view the importance of Christ’s blood is that it ends up on the outside of his body. In other words, Christ’s blood is only useful to our relationship with God through the violent act of bloodshed. Friends, I want to change this.
IV. TEXTS
From the texts we have read this morning we are given a glimpse into the very complicated and nuanced process of the earliest Christians’ attempt to understand who/what Christ is and salvation.
John is the last gospel written, most likely after the Pauline letters. In this story of the Samaritan woman we can easily see the early church wrestle with the dual nature of Christ –both flesh and spirit, mortal and eternal- and what that means for the salvation of all –Jews, Samaritans, and Greeks.
In Paul’s letter to Rome, he is also striving to understand who has access to salvation and by what means. Does one need to be Jewish first in order to receive forgiveness and salvation? Paul answers no, that faith gives one access to justification, but that Christ and his followers are ultimately justified through Christ’s blood.
Justified, I often find as a better synonym for “salvation,” however, “right-wising” is my preference. This is because “right-wising” is not a commonly used word, and therefore caries with it less baggage and less meaning. In order to use it, we have to give it a meaning. “to be made right” “to find right-ness” “to make things balanced” There is so much action! So much involvement! “right-wising” is long journey and a constant adventure.
Then, according to Paul our right-wising is by means of Christ’s blood. Paul is referencing the violence of Christ’s death, but I would like to offer another vision of what this means.
V. BLOOD
As I have illustrated, discussions of Christian salvation center on suffering, blood, and death. At some point in the rhetoric these three separate conditions become synonymous. Suffering means death, blood is to suffer, and death comes with blood.
I want to stress that these conditions are very different from each other and each one occupies a their own significant role in the Gospel and in Christianity.
By focusing on the role of blood today I want to lead us into understand the value of salvation is not in death, but in life.
In our age of technology and modern science, we have proclivity to demonize blood. It is the disease carrier, it is contamination, a biohazard. We are afraid of “bad-blood,” just consider the social stigma placed on those with HIV/AIDS.
Somewhere, right now, some tv-network is playing an iteration of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. And in that show there is a uniformed person with protective gear swabbing and searching, hoping to find that drop of blood linking a perpetrator to a crime.
Blood is a dirty, dangerous thing.
At least, that is what our culture teaches us. In my studies this semester I have been struck with the reverence ancient peoples all over the world had for blood: from the rituals in the Ancient Near East, to ceremonies in the Aztec world. We see these rituals as violent, nay, “bloody” examples of barbarism.
For these ancient peoples however, blood is not a symbol of death, but a symbol of life. In Classical Arabic, the language of the Qur’an and famous literature, the word “dam” literally means blood, but is used interchangeably with “hayaat,” which means life. For the Aztecs, human sacrifice was a way of releasing the spirit of life from the bonds of the material world so that it can go back to the gods and bring balance to the world.
We seem to have forgotten that blood is the center of life. What is important about being justified, or of right-wising, by Christ’s blood is not that Christ shed his blood, but in Christ having blood flow through his veins. Likewise, our right-wising has as much to do with our blood, flowing through our veins like a sacred river.
VI. SACRED RIVERS
Langston Hughes writes:
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I first heard this poem in a Unitarian service, and I immediately felt the connection between my soul and the rivers that I have known. Cultures around the world worship rivers as the divine live-giving center. Water has a particular sacredness, or pneumenous role in the human experience.
-A scientist looking for signs of water on other planets, a sign of the potentiality of life.
-The flow of the Ganges in India, supporting culture for thousands of years and the dangers of re-routing the water.
-Just imagine an aerial view of the Nile, vast desert slashed by a ribbon of green- where there is water, there is life.
Spending last summer traveling through the Middle East I was surprised at how I began to note all the places I had been to by the waters that flowed through them. I swam in the Mediterranean in Beirut, I followed the Yarmouk River to get to Amman, I relaxed by Red Sea in Aqqaba, walked across the Dead Sea on my way through the desert, and I crossed the Jordan River to get to Jerusalem. I stood by the Nile and felt my soul grow deep like the rivers.
Flying from Cairo to Amman on a late Saturday afternoon I watched the rich orange sands engulf the earth in a seemingly endless expanse. Then, we flew over the Red Sea, and it appeared out of no where, a rich blue green interruption in the desert. The scene was a vibrant contrast, and the perfect image of our dependence on water to keep the land alive.
We call our rivers the “life-blood” of our lands. And just as the rivers flow keeping the land alive, blood is the sacred river flowing through our veins –keeping the soul alive.
It is easy for us to see the connection of life to rivers, and as has Langston Hughes elegantly written, the deep connection between the soul and the living waters.
VII. LENT- GETTING CLOSER TO THE LIFE OF CHRIST
Therefore I boldly claim that salvation is from the blood of Christ- but not through the act of violent suffering, not through the spilling of his blood, -but through Christ as the living God. The sacred river of life-blood flowing through Christ is where justification, right-wising, lies. For we too, have this same sacred river.
Unlike the message of the poster in my youth group, Living is not the least that we can do- but it is salvation itself. Recognizing the sanctity that is within all of us was also within God. Our veins are not filled with bio-hazard, but life.
However, recognizing that salvation flows through us is not the final step, it is the very beginning of a sacred journey of living- of flowing through the lands, cutting gorges and falling over great rocks, of flooding and receding, of lazy meandering and roaring rapids.
Go now and live, knowing that life is within you.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Photos from Alaska!!
Here's trying a new photo sharing tool: Photos!
The good 'ole facebook! I'm going to see if this works, and I'm hoping so. I already do all of my photo editing in iphoto and then upload the edited ones to facebook, but then Picasa grabs up all the photos- edited or not, and puts them into the online photo albums I have been using. Oh technology... how it helps, and hurts us. I'm beginning to believe that Tylenol holds large portions of stock in Apple and Microsoft....
Well, this is a link to some of my favorite photos from Alaska, which means that I have gone, seen, and am now back again!! Even though it has been several days I am still bleary with jet lag and culture shock, that is quickly turning into Harvard shock as classes ramp up to start again. I'm looking forward to a new semester, and you all should be looking forward to some tales of the Wild North!
The good 'ole facebook! I'm going to see if this works, and I'm hoping so. I already do all of my photo editing in iphoto and then upload the edited ones to facebook, but then Picasa grabs up all the photos- edited or not, and puts them into the online photo albums I have been using. Oh technology... how it helps, and hurts us. I'm beginning to believe that Tylenol holds large portions of stock in Apple and Microsoft....
Well, this is a link to some of my favorite photos from Alaska, which means that I have gone, seen, and am now back again!! Even though it has been several days I am still bleary with jet lag and culture shock, that is quickly turning into Harvard shock as classes ramp up to start again. I'm looking forward to a new semester, and you all should be looking forward to some tales of the Wild North!
Friday, August 13, 2010
Empire State of Mind
So I am now safely in New York City hanging out with my friend Lillie from the program! We are having a blast eating EVERYTHING! I swear I've already gained 5 lbs! Guess I'm not fasting during Ramadan... I am loving New York! This is my first time spending more than a couple of hours here and it has been great! I'm in Manhattan on a something-something side just something of Harlem and something else of Central Park (those are Jordanian directions...) So far I've been to the Public Library, Bryant Park, Chinatown, and the Met. I would have pictures but my camera screen cracked just before leaving Jordan, fortunately I was able to post a few more pictures of Irbid and the Ramadan decorations that exploded everywhere in the last couple of days of our visit. I'm way feeling the jet lag hopping the pond this direction- but all and all the return has gone smoothly, now if I can just get to Boston and to my new apartment!
Monday, August 9, 2010
Finito Arabic!
I don't want to say it, but alas my summer of being in the Middle East is coming to an end. I must admit, I'm really sad and kinda awkwardly upset about the whole thing. We took our finals on Sunday and this morning we had a little graduation ceremony. We have a free day tomorrow and then the flight back to the states on Wednesday. I know I will have more time to process this all in the future, and it still feels a little bit crazy all the things I've done this summer. But for now, I really just want to say that I'm sad, and I'm going to miss it.
I have met some absolutely wonderful people on this trip and I've laughed almost the entire time I've been here. These past months have been filled with adventure and friendship. I have experienced a truly unique combination of people and places- and as I really want to treasure what good times I've had, it also makes me sad that in some way I'm losing them. I have become really attached to my little community here and as always when a trip ends you hope to see your friends again, but you know life rolls on and that it probably won't happen. It is an odd combination of holding on to the wonderful memories that you've made and knowing that they are so unique because they will never happen again. I kinda feel like a ball that's been thrown up in the air- I've been soaring upwards all summer and now I'm at the top of the arch, in stillness, looking around and appreciating what's happened, right before I rush downward into the next part of life. I want the people that I've met here to know how much I've enjoyed their company and would love to share it again. For me, a trip like this is defined not only by the places you go and the things you learn, but by the people you spend it with. At HDS I would call it the value of the intersubjective, which means, whatever it is that you are experiencing matters if you value those whom you experience it with. So I want to thank my friends for making this trip a valuable experience for me- together we've explored exotic places and learned a new language, we've formed ridiculous memories, and some really awesome slang. Thanks! I'm really glad that I have met you!
I have met some absolutely wonderful people on this trip and I've laughed almost the entire time I've been here. These past months have been filled with adventure and friendship. I have experienced a truly unique combination of people and places- and as I really want to treasure what good times I've had, it also makes me sad that in some way I'm losing them. I have become really attached to my little community here and as always when a trip ends you hope to see your friends again, but you know life rolls on and that it probably won't happen. It is an odd combination of holding on to the wonderful memories that you've made and knowing that they are so unique because they will never happen again. I kinda feel like a ball that's been thrown up in the air- I've been soaring upwards all summer and now I'm at the top of the arch, in stillness, looking around and appreciating what's happened, right before I rush downward into the next part of life. I want the people that I've met here to know how much I've enjoyed their company and would love to share it again. For me, a trip like this is defined not only by the places you go and the things you learn, but by the people you spend it with. At HDS I would call it the value of the intersubjective, which means, whatever it is that you are experiencing matters if you value those whom you experience it with. So I want to thank my friends for making this trip a valuable experience for me- together we've explored exotic places and learned a new language, we've formed ridiculous memories, and some really awesome slang. Thanks! I'm really glad that I have met you!
Sunday, August 8, 2010
The American Colony of Israelistine
Warning: I'm an opinionated lady (sometimes).
Disclaimer: I do not agree with policy decisions made by the Israeli government, and the US government regarding issues in Israel. This does not make me an anti-semite. I struggle to understand Jewish identity, ethnography, theology, and history. This does not make me an anti-semite. I struggle to understand the Palestinian condition just like I struggle to understand other groups of people, by going to places highly populated by them and drinking their beer.
Borderlands
My Jerusalem weekend-adventure was tackled with Team All We Do Is Win, four strong and ready to take on anything. It began after class on Thursday (TGIØ®!) we all rushed to get a taxi and head out to the land-border crossing. Jordan has 3 official border crossings with Israel- The South, Allenby/King Hussein, and the North/Sheik Hussein that border various degrees of Palestine/Israel. On our way to the Northern border, after of course getting caught in a police chase through a small alleyway blocked by a giant bus, we realized that the cabbie was taking us to the wrong border- so after much discussion and a u-turn we actually ended up at the right place.
The border with Israel. Just take a moment and realize the craziness of that statement. Israel was established as a "country" in the late forties and really existed as a colony of Western-Powers in post World War I&II colonization of the Middle East. The territory of Israel expandd through the next decades to include taking over parts of Jordan, known as the West Bank and Gaza. Israel "occupied" these territories removing the Arab Palestinians who were living there. Now, all of this is extremely oversimplified and not in perfect factual order- please go read up on this issue and history from mixed biased sources; but, what I know from people living here is that the Israeli governance came out of no-where and after waves of immigrants and occupations thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homelands into places like Amman and Irbid so that others could establish a homeland. So we crossed the border from Jordan, into occupied Jordan, then into the territory of the Occupier. Thanks to HDS I spent a semester talking about the instability, danger, and chaos of borders and borderlands, but not until I had to cross over into Israel through the West Bank did I fully realize some of the themes of the class.
Through the whole process there was a sense of instability and it seemed as if all the structures were bi-products of intense fear. Crossing land borders is always a bitch. always. But for this one there was even more fear and anxiousness, see- I have stamps from Lebanon and Syria, two counties which do not recognize the sovereignty of Israel and could potentially prevent me from crossing. I also speak Arabic, the language of the enemy, the occupied, the problem, the terrorists, the ones that are in the way- according to Israeli government. The previous week some students from the program were held up close to 5 or 6 hours for having Syrian and Lebanese stamps and speaking Arabic at the border. We went in bright-eyed and acting as much as dumb American tourists as we could- paying off all the questions and constantly pulling the student card. We were afraid to speak Arabic and had to consciously prevent ourselves from using our habitual phrases. Luckily we got through with no big problems and relatively quickly. Another group of our students were held at the border for 4 hours because one of the girls is Palestinian and they were going to Ramallah, a town in the West Bank.
Once across the border we managed to make it into town just in time to catch the last bus to Jerusalem. It was completely full. Which means that we sat on the floor of a tour bus filled with Orthodox Jewish children and teenagers with M16's as we rode through the West Bank for 3 hours. Israel has a mandatory military service for young folk so the place is filled with 18-19 year-olds with giant guns either in uniforms or some just in plain-clothes. It was bizarre to see cute little teenage girls in big groups tossing their rifles around.
al-Quds
We finally got to Jerusalem (al-Quds in Arabic) that night about 8 pm and we were dropped off at a large bus station inside of a mall. We were all starving so you know what we did? That's right. Chinese food. Delicious, delicious kosher Chinese food. We then had to find our hostel- a 700 year old building in the Old City, the same part of town as all the holy sites. We magically went out of the mall and saw the bus we were supposed to take and managed to get off at the right side of town. We got a little lost and after following several different directions of "down and to the left" we ended up in a big circle and finding our Hogwarts'esqe little hobby hostel in an alleyway.
Our next adventure was to find a bar, being that we are in fact all college students and there is no alcohol in Irbid, finding bars is a usual adventure on the weekend. We found a place with an Arab atmosphere right outside of the Jaffa gate and drake Taybeh, a Palestinian beer, while we watched Arab and American music videos on a big screen. As the place was closing up the owner came out talk with us, being a Palestinian himself hew as excited to have a table full of Arabic-speaking white kids in his bar in Jerusalem. We were excited to be speaking in Arabic again and we causally talked about issues of cultural clash in Israel like people, and money, and language. The owner at getting our change picks up a sheckle- the Israeli one-piece about the size of your pinky-finger nail and says: "You see this! This is fake money! I through it on the ground sometimes because it makes me angry that it is so fake!" We talked to him until about 2am and went back to our hobby hostel for a few hours of sleep before an early sight seeing trip.
Culture
Culturally Jerusalem is just kinda bizarre, well, compared to the rest of the Arab World. You have to understand that I've been spending the past two months immersed in Arab culture and Arab towns- only venturing to a few Westernized places. Israel is incredibly Western, and not to mention Hebrew is dramatically different than Arabic. Most of the Jewish immigrants are from Eastern Europe and there is a huge portion of Russians and Americans living there. English goes very far, and our Arabic skills were mostly useless. We walked through an outdoor mall and all the stores were American chains. We honestly all felt like we had gone back to America. Even in the Old City, the only part of town that felt Arab, it was still more on the touristy-Western side as shop merchants catered to English speaking tourists. It was very strange, but I felt way more comfortable in the Muslim quarter or in the Palestinian bar because it was the kind of foreign that I am used to.
Getting used to Hebrew was the hardest part, it almost sounded like an Arabic dialect (like in Egypt) but everything felt off about it. A funny bit of translation: the town of Bethlehem, in the West Bank, is Beit Laham in Arabic, which directly translates into "house of meat," apparently the Hebrew is "house of bread," but all I hear is House of Meat. The money was also odd, the sheckle, as stated earlier is damn small to mess with and most of the bills were plastic and garish colors. Don't get me wrong, America needs to step it waaay up on the colorful currency issue, but it doesn't need to look fake.
Religion
Wow, now this could be a book in itself- you know it's kind of my thing. So on Friday morning we wake up to church bells and head out to the Old City to see the Western Wall, Dome of the Rock, and the Holy Sepulcher. My general impression was that we were at some kind of religious theme park where solemnity and sanctity were peddled in alleyways and propagated for political gain by multiple buyers and sellers. Jerusalem is not holy. There are some beautiful buildings, beautiful art, interesting co-habitation, and interesting symbols. Jerusalem is worth going to, but I don't think Jerusalem is worth believing in. If Abraham, or Christ, or Muhammad really ever walked those streets it was certainly a different time and place. Most of the monuments and markers just don't make any logical sense. I like the idea that people and places can be come sanctified, but wake up people, God isn't a voodoo doll and the most important place God should ever be in in your heart and mind. Quit killing God's creation because of this mole hill or that pile of stones, God's temple is in YOU- so quit being assholes. If Jerusalem gets nuked into space, God won't be killed- just bitter territorialists too blind by sanctity to see what they really have: a genuine opportunity to create peace in the Holy City. That's what really pisses me off- Jerusalem is supposed to be holy, but I think only suffering comes from it because instead of bolstering communication it bolsters entitlement. #soapboxoff.
After roaming around the Old City we headed out to the Holocaust Museum. It was a beautiful monument to a tragic event, but I couldn't help but catch some ironies. What the Israeli government is doing to the Palestinians- especially in Gaza Strip is exactly what happened to the Jews at the beginning of the Holocaust. Swooping statement I know, but Israel is creating Palestinian ghettos. Sure it lacks the pure hatred of Third Reich antisemitism, but there is a strong feeling that history is in some way repeating itself. By no means do I want to lessen the tragedy of the Holocaust, but it also seems to me that I cannot think of an ethnic group in America who's past isn't riddled with suffering, torture, diaspora, and even slaughter. The most common argument for an Israeli state "on the street" always seems to boil down to "we should feel bad for the Jews because of the Holocaust." Sure, but then where is the Native American Nation? Decedents of Slaves Nation? Suffering in one's past does not give justification to cause the suffering of another. Israel, quit bombing Palestinian children that you keep locked-down in walled-off neighborhoods. Palestine, quit bombing Israelis because you too have suffered encampment. When they came for me, there was no one left...
Getting Back
Well, after the Holocaust Museum and arguing with a taxi driver that called us all children and bad people, we definitely went back to the bust station and ate more Chinese food. Sweet, sweet Chinese food. At this point we thought we should check on the buses for the next day and realized that on Saturday the only bus left at 8:40 pm putting us into the border at midnight= no good. The only other option was to leave on Friday at 3:30pm, it was 2:30. The race was on! Find the bus! Rush to hobby hostel! Grab stuff! Find crazy taxi driver! Speed to bus station! Get on bus as it is leaving!! WIN! If you were counting, we were in Israel right around 24 hours, and yes, all we ate was Chinese food, and yes, eating Chinese food saved our lives getting out of Israel. Best Weekend Ever.
AAAAAAMMAN
Crossing back into Jordan was easy-peasy. We took a servicee taxi back to Amman making up a rap song about our Israelistine adventure in the style of R. Kelly along the way cracking our driver up.
We roll into Amman to luckily find 4 beds in our go-to hostel and we grabbed a bite to eat at one our favorite Arab places, Hashims. We then decided to go to bar in Amman to meet on of our friends, Shehab who's name means Shooting Star in Arabic. After the bar closed we went with Shooting Star to a house party. We definitely jumped into a car with some random Arabs to drive out to Western Amman to dance party in some person's house. Good idea? I think so! It was a blast! major dancing and major fun! Western Amman is the well, Westernized part of the city and the apartment we went too looked like Ikea. We managed to get back to the hostel at 2am after lots of dancing and sweating.
Sleeping in! Saturday morning we decided to just take it easy and head out to the big mall to catch a movie. We ended up seeing "Inception," which strangely explained how our weekend went... We stayed for about 7 hours in the mall waiting for the movie, movie, and then dinner. It was like a day in America- but with more hijabs and Arabic. We had cinnamon buns and bought Arab music cd's and for dinner we ate at Fridays. Yes, TGI Fridays filled with American kitchy crap and waiters with flash and cowboy hats. Amazing. Can you say, "soft power"?
Best Weekend Ever. and I owe it all to my TEAM.
Disclaimer: I do not agree with policy decisions made by the Israeli government, and the US government regarding issues in Israel. This does not make me an anti-semite. I struggle to understand Jewish identity, ethnography, theology, and history. This does not make me an anti-semite. I struggle to understand the Palestinian condition just like I struggle to understand other groups of people, by going to places highly populated by them and drinking their beer.
Borderlands
My Jerusalem weekend-adventure was tackled with Team All We Do Is Win, four strong and ready to take on anything. It began after class on Thursday (TGIØ®!) we all rushed to get a taxi and head out to the land-border crossing. Jordan has 3 official border crossings with Israel- The South, Allenby/King Hussein, and the North/Sheik Hussein that border various degrees of Palestine/Israel. On our way to the Northern border, after of course getting caught in a police chase through a small alleyway blocked by a giant bus, we realized that the cabbie was taking us to the wrong border- so after much discussion and a u-turn we actually ended up at the right place.
The border with Israel. Just take a moment and realize the craziness of that statement. Israel was established as a "country" in the late forties and really existed as a colony of Western-Powers in post World War I&II colonization of the Middle East. The territory of Israel expandd through the next decades to include taking over parts of Jordan, known as the West Bank and Gaza. Israel "occupied" these territories removing the Arab Palestinians who were living there. Now, all of this is extremely oversimplified and not in perfect factual order- please go read up on this issue and history from mixed biased sources; but, what I know from people living here is that the Israeli governance came out of no-where and after waves of immigrants and occupations thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homelands into places like Amman and Irbid so that others could establish a homeland. So we crossed the border from Jordan, into occupied Jordan, then into the territory of the Occupier. Thanks to HDS I spent a semester talking about the instability, danger, and chaos of borders and borderlands, but not until I had to cross over into Israel through the West Bank did I fully realize some of the themes of the class.
Through the whole process there was a sense of instability and it seemed as if all the structures were bi-products of intense fear. Crossing land borders is always a bitch. always. But for this one there was even more fear and anxiousness, see- I have stamps from Lebanon and Syria, two counties which do not recognize the sovereignty of Israel and could potentially prevent me from crossing. I also speak Arabic, the language of the enemy, the occupied, the problem, the terrorists, the ones that are in the way- according to Israeli government. The previous week some students from the program were held up close to 5 or 6 hours for having Syrian and Lebanese stamps and speaking Arabic at the border. We went in bright-eyed and acting as much as dumb American tourists as we could- paying off all the questions and constantly pulling the student card. We were afraid to speak Arabic and had to consciously prevent ourselves from using our habitual phrases. Luckily we got through with no big problems and relatively quickly. Another group of our students were held at the border for 4 hours because one of the girls is Palestinian and they were going to Ramallah, a town in the West Bank.
Once across the border we managed to make it into town just in time to catch the last bus to Jerusalem. It was completely full. Which means that we sat on the floor of a tour bus filled with Orthodox Jewish children and teenagers with M16's as we rode through the West Bank for 3 hours. Israel has a mandatory military service for young folk so the place is filled with 18-19 year-olds with giant guns either in uniforms or some just in plain-clothes. It was bizarre to see cute little teenage girls in big groups tossing their rifles around.
al-Quds
We finally got to Jerusalem (al-Quds in Arabic) that night about 8 pm and we were dropped off at a large bus station inside of a mall. We were all starving so you know what we did? That's right. Chinese food. Delicious, delicious kosher Chinese food. We then had to find our hostel- a 700 year old building in the Old City, the same part of town as all the holy sites. We magically went out of the mall and saw the bus we were supposed to take and managed to get off at the right side of town. We got a little lost and after following several different directions of "down and to the left" we ended up in a big circle and finding our Hogwarts'esqe little hobby hostel in an alleyway.
Our next adventure was to find a bar, being that we are in fact all college students and there is no alcohol in Irbid, finding bars is a usual adventure on the weekend. We found a place with an Arab atmosphere right outside of the Jaffa gate and drake Taybeh, a Palestinian beer, while we watched Arab and American music videos on a big screen. As the place was closing up the owner came out talk with us, being a Palestinian himself hew as excited to have a table full of Arabic-speaking white kids in his bar in Jerusalem. We were excited to be speaking in Arabic again and we causally talked about issues of cultural clash in Israel like people, and money, and language. The owner at getting our change picks up a sheckle- the Israeli one-piece about the size of your pinky-finger nail and says: "You see this! This is fake money! I through it on the ground sometimes because it makes me angry that it is so fake!" We talked to him until about 2am and went back to our hobby hostel for a few hours of sleep before an early sight seeing trip.
Culture
Culturally Jerusalem is just kinda bizarre, well, compared to the rest of the Arab World. You have to understand that I've been spending the past two months immersed in Arab culture and Arab towns- only venturing to a few Westernized places. Israel is incredibly Western, and not to mention Hebrew is dramatically different than Arabic. Most of the Jewish immigrants are from Eastern Europe and there is a huge portion of Russians and Americans living there. English goes very far, and our Arabic skills were mostly useless. We walked through an outdoor mall and all the stores were American chains. We honestly all felt like we had gone back to America. Even in the Old City, the only part of town that felt Arab, it was still more on the touristy-Western side as shop merchants catered to English speaking tourists. It was very strange, but I felt way more comfortable in the Muslim quarter or in the Palestinian bar because it was the kind of foreign that I am used to.
Getting used to Hebrew was the hardest part, it almost sounded like an Arabic dialect (like in Egypt) but everything felt off about it. A funny bit of translation: the town of Bethlehem, in the West Bank, is Beit Laham in Arabic, which directly translates into "house of meat," apparently the Hebrew is "house of bread," but all I hear is House of Meat. The money was also odd, the sheckle, as stated earlier is damn small to mess with and most of the bills were plastic and garish colors. Don't get me wrong, America needs to step it waaay up on the colorful currency issue, but it doesn't need to look fake.
Religion
Wow, now this could be a book in itself- you know it's kind of my thing. So on Friday morning we wake up to church bells and head out to the Old City to see the Western Wall, Dome of the Rock, and the Holy Sepulcher. My general impression was that we were at some kind of religious theme park where solemnity and sanctity were peddled in alleyways and propagated for political gain by multiple buyers and sellers. Jerusalem is not holy. There are some beautiful buildings, beautiful art, interesting co-habitation, and interesting symbols. Jerusalem is worth going to, but I don't think Jerusalem is worth believing in. If Abraham, or Christ, or Muhammad really ever walked those streets it was certainly a different time and place. Most of the monuments and markers just don't make any logical sense. I like the idea that people and places can be come sanctified, but wake up people, God isn't a voodoo doll and the most important place God should ever be in in your heart and mind. Quit killing God's creation because of this mole hill or that pile of stones, God's temple is in YOU- so quit being assholes. If Jerusalem gets nuked into space, God won't be killed- just bitter territorialists too blind by sanctity to see what they really have: a genuine opportunity to create peace in the Holy City. That's what really pisses me off- Jerusalem is supposed to be holy, but I think only suffering comes from it because instead of bolstering communication it bolsters entitlement. #soapboxoff.
After roaming around the Old City we headed out to the Holocaust Museum. It was a beautiful monument to a tragic event, but I couldn't help but catch some ironies. What the Israeli government is doing to the Palestinians- especially in Gaza Strip is exactly what happened to the Jews at the beginning of the Holocaust. Swooping statement I know, but Israel is creating Palestinian ghettos. Sure it lacks the pure hatred of Third Reich antisemitism, but there is a strong feeling that history is in some way repeating itself. By no means do I want to lessen the tragedy of the Holocaust, but it also seems to me that I cannot think of an ethnic group in America who's past isn't riddled with suffering, torture, diaspora, and even slaughter. The most common argument for an Israeli state "on the street" always seems to boil down to "we should feel bad for the Jews because of the Holocaust." Sure, but then where is the Native American Nation? Decedents of Slaves Nation? Suffering in one's past does not give justification to cause the suffering of another. Israel, quit bombing Palestinian children that you keep locked-down in walled-off neighborhoods. Palestine, quit bombing Israelis because you too have suffered encampment. When they came for me, there was no one left...
Getting Back
Well, after the Holocaust Museum and arguing with a taxi driver that called us all children and bad people, we definitely went back to the bust station and ate more Chinese food. Sweet, sweet Chinese food. At this point we thought we should check on the buses for the next day and realized that on Saturday the only bus left at 8:40 pm putting us into the border at midnight= no good. The only other option was to leave on Friday at 3:30pm, it was 2:30. The race was on! Find the bus! Rush to hobby hostel! Grab stuff! Find crazy taxi driver! Speed to bus station! Get on bus as it is leaving!! WIN! If you were counting, we were in Israel right around 24 hours, and yes, all we ate was Chinese food, and yes, eating Chinese food saved our lives getting out of Israel. Best Weekend Ever.
AAAAAAMMAN
Crossing back into Jordan was easy-peasy. We took a servicee taxi back to Amman making up a rap song about our Israelistine adventure in the style of R. Kelly along the way cracking our driver up.
We roll into Amman to luckily find 4 beds in our go-to hostel and we grabbed a bite to eat at one our favorite Arab places, Hashims. We then decided to go to bar in Amman to meet on of our friends, Shehab who's name means Shooting Star in Arabic. After the bar closed we went with Shooting Star to a house party. We definitely jumped into a car with some random Arabs to drive out to Western Amman to dance party in some person's house. Good idea? I think so! It was a blast! major dancing and major fun! Western Amman is the well, Westernized part of the city and the apartment we went too looked like Ikea. We managed to get back to the hostel at 2am after lots of dancing and sweating.
Sleeping in! Saturday morning we decided to just take it easy and head out to the big mall to catch a movie. We ended up seeing "Inception," which strangely explained how our weekend went... We stayed for about 7 hours in the mall waiting for the movie, movie, and then dinner. It was like a day in America- but with more hijabs and Arabic. We had cinnamon buns and bought Arab music cd's and for dinner we ate at Fridays. Yes, TGI Fridays filled with American kitchy crap and waiters with flash and cowboy hats. Amazing. Can you say, "soft power"?
Best Weekend Ever. and I owe it all to my TEAM.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
And now for the rest of the story...
So if anyone hasn’t noticed, I work too much on Arabic and should definitely spend more time watching dubbed Harry Potter movies and Futurama clips of Zoidberg and writing for my blag… This is our last full weeks of classes and it is absolutely crazy to think that soon I will be leaving the Hashemite Kingdom for the kingdom of Starbucks and McDonalds. I am beginning to fear some reverse culture shock, but luckily I have another trip planed to Alaska right when I get back- so no real world for me!!
Tutting it up!
So I left off with the first day of my Cairo adventure, and after that we had two more full days of deliciousness to explore- and delicious it was!. We got some much-needed sleep and explored around the city going over to American University of Cairo’s campus and going to bookstores. WE also hit a bunch of shopping in the real Kahn al-Kalili souk- a bustling street full of vendors and the bright colors of scarves and prayer rugs and the smell of spices and tea. We also spend some time in Zemmalek- the Western, modern part of Cairo situated on an island in the middle of the Nile. We had some lovely Italian food there and also bought some Egyptian beer at one of the few liquor stores. We stopped off one evening at the citadel- an ancient fortification on one of Cairo’s highest places. It is also where the Muhammad Ali Mosque is located- one of the largest in Cairo. It was a gorgeous building filled with all kinds of ornate artwork and glass light-fixtures. It was really a peaceful place. You could also go out on the walkway and see all of Cairo before you- a mass of buildings and lights.
We attempted to master the metro- a feat! So we went looking again for the Kahn al-Kalili souk which was by al-Azhar Mosque and University- the oldest degree granting university in the world. So the al-Azhar stop is on the metro map, except in one station the line is yellow, in another the line is green, and in another the line is red. There are two other lines on the metro, making the one we want the third line of ambiguous color. Guess what? The “third line” isn’t going to be built until 2014 or something like that, so all of our questions about the “third line” only garnered blank looks or strangely enough, directions to a place that doesn’t exist (man motioning to the right, “so you take a left and then another left”). So after figuring out the places that we could get to, the next obstacle was that in times of heavy traffic the cars are divided into women-only and men-only. We were a group of three gents and two ladies and dividing groups has proven to be the worst travel decision of all time, so in order to make it though the metro the gents would put us ladies in the center of a circle and try to act normal in a packed in subway car that felt to be about 150 degrees. Magic! At least it was a bit better than overpaying to cram 4 people into the back of a taxi, and much better than cramming 4 people into the back of taxi that is still moving… oh Cairo transportation!
We did manage to make it out to Coptic Cairo- the Christian corner of town. Everything looked about the same, but instead of minarets there are church bells, and instead of moons there are crosses, and instead of hijabs there are rosaries. There is also one synagogue still left in the city and we visited that too. It was surprising how similar all the buildings were on the inside- they all had the same basic features and were all built from the same materials by the same culture. I’m really interested in learning more about “Arab Christians,” but the Copts are the best examples that I am aware of. They are basically the same as Greek Orthodox but they operate in a different language (although it looks like Greek). The Coptic museum was filled with beautiful art and relics from really early on, but the downside was that this museum was also without air conditioning. Did I mention that Cairo is hot?
I did mention that it was delicious- rightfully so. We managed to find an Arab bakery that some of the most delicious chocolate croissants that I’ve ever had, and it was packed every time we went there- whether it was in the hot afternoon or at midnight. We used the metro to find a little hole in the wall restaurant, there must have been holes because the floor of the whole place was covered in sawdust. We went there to get Kushari and this sweet rice desert- both were delicious! Kushari is a dish that looks like vomit, but is mighty tasty. It has rice and noodles topped with lentils, chickpeas, fried onions and a tomato based sauce. The rice desert was very similar to other rice deserts I’ve had- rice, yogurt, sugar, the tears of unicorns. I also enjoyed the cheap little street sandwiches and of course my lemon and mint drink (soooo planning a ton of mint when I get back to Boston)!
I loved my time in Cairo- it was really crazy, but I would love to go back, at least when it is cooler! I still feel romanced by Egyptian culture and history and I would love to make it back to Alexandria and Luxor.
Tutting it up!
So I left off with the first day of my Cairo adventure, and after that we had two more full days of deliciousness to explore- and delicious it was!. We got some much-needed sleep and explored around the city going over to American University of Cairo’s campus and going to bookstores. WE also hit a bunch of shopping in the real Kahn al-Kalili souk- a bustling street full of vendors and the bright colors of scarves and prayer rugs and the smell of spices and tea. We also spend some time in Zemmalek- the Western, modern part of Cairo situated on an island in the middle of the Nile. We had some lovely Italian food there and also bought some Egyptian beer at one of the few liquor stores. We stopped off one evening at the citadel- an ancient fortification on one of Cairo’s highest places. It is also where the Muhammad Ali Mosque is located- one of the largest in Cairo. It was a gorgeous building filled with all kinds of ornate artwork and glass light-fixtures. It was really a peaceful place. You could also go out on the walkway and see all of Cairo before you- a mass of buildings and lights.
We attempted to master the metro- a feat! So we went looking again for the Kahn al-Kalili souk which was by al-Azhar Mosque and University- the oldest degree granting university in the world. So the al-Azhar stop is on the metro map, except in one station the line is yellow, in another the line is green, and in another the line is red. There are two other lines on the metro, making the one we want the third line of ambiguous color. Guess what? The “third line” isn’t going to be built until 2014 or something like that, so all of our questions about the “third line” only garnered blank looks or strangely enough, directions to a place that doesn’t exist (man motioning to the right, “so you take a left and then another left”). So after figuring out the places that we could get to, the next obstacle was that in times of heavy traffic the cars are divided into women-only and men-only. We were a group of three gents and two ladies and dividing groups has proven to be the worst travel decision of all time, so in order to make it though the metro the gents would put us ladies in the center of a circle and try to act normal in a packed in subway car that felt to be about 150 degrees. Magic! At least it was a bit better than overpaying to cram 4 people into the back of a taxi, and much better than cramming 4 people into the back of taxi that is still moving… oh Cairo transportation!
We did manage to make it out to Coptic Cairo- the Christian corner of town. Everything looked about the same, but instead of minarets there are church bells, and instead of moons there are crosses, and instead of hijabs there are rosaries. There is also one synagogue still left in the city and we visited that too. It was surprising how similar all the buildings were on the inside- they all had the same basic features and were all built from the same materials by the same culture. I’m really interested in learning more about “Arab Christians,” but the Copts are the best examples that I am aware of. They are basically the same as Greek Orthodox but they operate in a different language (although it looks like Greek). The Coptic museum was filled with beautiful art and relics from really early on, but the downside was that this museum was also without air conditioning. Did I mention that Cairo is hot?
I did mention that it was delicious- rightfully so. We managed to find an Arab bakery that some of the most delicious chocolate croissants that I’ve ever had, and it was packed every time we went there- whether it was in the hot afternoon or at midnight. We used the metro to find a little hole in the wall restaurant, there must have been holes because the floor of the whole place was covered in sawdust. We went there to get Kushari and this sweet rice desert- both were delicious! Kushari is a dish that looks like vomit, but is mighty tasty. It has rice and noodles topped with lentils, chickpeas, fried onions and a tomato based sauce. The rice desert was very similar to other rice deserts I’ve had- rice, yogurt, sugar, the tears of unicorns. I also enjoyed the cheap little street sandwiches and of course my lemon and mint drink (soooo planning a ton of mint when I get back to Boston)!
I loved my time in Cairo- it was really crazy, but I would love to go back, at least when it is cooler! I still feel romanced by Egyptian culture and history and I would love to make it back to Alexandria and Luxor.
Bombed!
Go read this article from al-Jazeera: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/08/20108264751402856.html
We stayed at that Intercontinental a few weeks ago. I stood on that street to get taxis. That could have been me. But they wanted it to be Israel. The rockets probably came from the uncontrollable and rogue area of the Sinai and sent to antagonize Israel, or retaliate after bombings in Gaza. Why can't these children play nice?
We stayed at that Intercontinental a few weeks ago. I stood on that street to get taxis. That could have been me. But they wanted it to be Israel. The rockets probably came from the uncontrollable and rogue area of the Sinai and sent to antagonize Israel, or retaliate after bombings in Gaza. Why can't these children play nice?
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