Praying without ceasing in Hebron

Ten days after the end of my three-month service with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Al-Khalil (Hebron), Palestine, I still struggle with conflicting urgencies in choosing what to report.

I want to report accurately about how, day after day, you can unexpectedly run into squads of soldiers with their fingers near their triggers, or clouds of tear gas, or someone being searched from head to toes, or checkpoints closed with no explanation. At the same time, you can expect daily encounters with playful children, helpful strangers, cries of "welcome to Hebron" on all sides, delicious food, parties with fireworks nearly every evening,

In other words, I want to convey a situation that is, all at once, both outrageously abnormal (the conditions of occupation) and persistently normal (the life that the people of Hebron make for themselves despite the occupation). Whatever I say, I don't want to discourage you from visiting this lively and friendly city, and seeing for yourself.

Furthermore, I want to report in my own voice -- that's my sole channel, and I want to draw on whatever credibility and connection with readers that I might already have. At the same time, I don't want to exaggerate my voice or my role. Every day CPT observers, and others in similar teams, are on the streets monitoring the interactions of citizens and soldiers, documenting irregularities, and sending our observations to a variety of agencies ... but it would be hard to prove that we have made a huge difference.

In any case, CPT's writers are encouraged to keep in mind a "balancing act between humility and presence." CPT and others are there in common cause with Palestinians working nonviolently for justice rather than claiming superior knowledge or attempting to be freelance heroes.

Personally, I didn't go to Palestine with any heroic illusions. All I hoped to do was to learn more about praying without ceasing. In that sense my three months were a success.

On most days, I woke up at 5 a.m. to have time for prayer, Bible reading, and a brief video chat with Judy before beginning the day's activities. Usually we started the day with an hour at each of two checkpoints through which hundreds of people pass during that one hour -- including around two hundred children. Two of us monitored each checkpoint.

The checkpoints were for me a perfect occasion for prayer. For example, I used a counter app on my mobile phone to keep track of people passing through the checkpoints in both directions. Each click of the counter prompted me to pray a blessing on that person ... although when they were coming through in larger bunches, I would fall behind and miss some blessings. I doubt this practice would measure up to the great Christian mystics, but it reminded me frequently of my commitment to pray without ceasing.

Breakfast and a team meeting followed the school arrival hour. During the team meeting, we took turns providing a devotional reflection before we reviewed plans for the rest of the day. We also made sure that people were signed up to take care of dinner and dishes. Our practice of checking in with each other about how we were doing also helped me stay oriented to prayer.

In the afternoon, I was often one member of the pairs assigned to accompany the kindergarten children whose path home was parallel to a path used by Israeli settlers. It was a very natural exercise to pray a blessing on their path home. On my last day on duty, I made a video of this walk, to remind myself of the experience and honor of accompanying those children.

There were other regular occasions of street monitoring -- some weekly, some annually. Each Friday we watched as Palestinians passed through checkpoints (at least two) to worship at the Ibrahimi mosque. On Saturdays, Israeli settlers often toured sites in the Old City. Each tour group was guarded by several squads of Israeli soldiers, and their passage through the markets and passageways of the Old City put them in immediate contact with Palestinian shopkeepers, customers, and pedestrians.

Annually, such events as Sukkot and Sarah's Day brought thousands of visiting Israelis to these same crowded streets, along with additional soldiers to provide security for the visitors and impose additional restrictions on the local Palestinian population. The tensions raised by each of these potential flashpoints was an occasion for prayer. Even when I wasn't on the street during one of those occasions, we coordinated continuously via social media.

Last week I reported on another seasonal event, the olive harvest.

The most stressful monitoring assignments were the ones not on the calendar -- for example, responding to reports of arrests, temporary road blocks and checkpoints, or the use of tear gas and other munitions. Sometimes these occasions would lead to stone-throwing by Palestinian young people, aimed at the checkpoints or at the vehicles doing the blocking, with a response of varying (but always disproportionate) severity from Israeli forces.

Part of the stress for me was finding vantage points to observe as closely as possible while not getting directly in the line of fire. On the "Day of Rage," my teammate and I were temporarily right in the middle, finding percussion grenades landing nearby (one hitting the metal awning over my head with a shower of sparks, while I was trying to cope with tear gas). As smoke from burning tires made it hard to see farther than a half block, things quieted down for a while, but resumed later in the evening. Prayer was never far from my mind.

For me, the most difficult assignment was the home demolitions on November 28 in Beit Kahil town near Hebron. After being part of an interview team with the families whose homes were to be destroyed (the conversation resulted in this article), we were all waiting for the seemingly inevitable conclusion. Even so it was a shock to be awakened at about 1 a.m. on November 28 and told "the demolitions have begun." By the time we were able to organize transportation, get to the town, climb over walls and fences with our heavy cameras, meet up with journalists, and find a vantage point, it was nearly 2 a.m. and the destruction was in full swing.



One of my prayer concerns during that hellish scene was for the souls of the equipment operators. who could not have been in any doubt that they were destroying homes of innocent people, regardless of the guilt or innocence (as yet undetermined in court) of the suspects in custody.

My school of prayer for those three months included, as you might expect, pleas for safety, intercessions and blessings for others, and sheer inarticulate lament. Sometimes it boiled down to just one word: "Why?"

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Christianity Today editorial: Trump should be removed from office. (Related observations from the Washington Post's Sarah Pulliam Bailey, and Emma Green in The Atlantic.)

 Josh Marshall's three essential points on impeachment.

This process has been so clotted with tantrums, goalpost-moving and dissimulation that it can be hard to keep one’s bearings. For me, those three essential points clarify the matter and drown out the yelling and stomping.

Thanks to Danny Coleman for this timely reminder: Dietrich Bonhoeffer on stupidity.

 A photo-essay on winter in Murmansk, Russia.

An update on Hebron from Curt Bell.

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Steve Guyger Band:

 

What is our vocation? (Twelve years later)

Source: 
christart.com, all rights reserved.  

About twelve years ago I wrote a blog post on things that I appreciated about being a Friend. Somewhere in there I asked,

So what is our vocation among the larger body of Christians? We are called to shape a community around the simplicity of New Testament Christianity. Our central testimony is trust in the promises and power of God, freeing us from the endless searches for control, security, and wealth. Trust is our central testimony; all the others spring from it. With trust in the promises and mandates that Jesus made in person to our family 2000 years ago and confirms daily, we can lay down our dependence on weapons, false social distinctions, and affluence.

Three factors (at least) weaken us in our contemporary realization of this calling: not enough of us know our own spiritual gifts and how they mesh together in the community; we pay far too little attention to making our communities accessible to those who would find spiritual liberation among us; and too often we cover up the weaknesses caused by these failures by the usual counterfeits: legalism (either a Christian legalism or an absurdly thorough mastery of Quaker trivia); lame imitation of "successful" models outside Friends; uncritical sentimentality; a social quakerism devoid of belief in the power of God -- what Parker Palmer called functional atheism.

Twelve years later, do I stand by this diagnosis of our weaknesses? I've become far more optimistic, actually. The first and third points (lack of knowledge of spiritual gifts, and the counterfeits we employ to distract ourselves) are being addressed by a new generation of Friends. Many of these Friends cross the lines of Quaker divisions far more easily than we did decades ago when I first jointed the Friends World Committee staff, where crossing those lines, sometimes slipping past the gatekeepers, was my job. I dare to hope that these Friends are remixing the creative elements of our legacy (to use Wess Daniels's verb) to good effect, and questioning some of the old cliches and assumptions.

As for the remaining weakness, making our communities accessible: Instead of addressing this with a tone of discontent, I'd like to be encouraging. I think we are becoming more aware of our spiritual gifts and how they strengthen each other, and we also seem to be loosening up the old false polarities of salvation-first vs Quaker distinctives. These developments free us to look directly at the task of becoming more accessible and welcoming.

(By the way, I don't mean to set up a generational comparison -- the renewal I see crosses those lines, too. For example, I love the mutual encouragement I see in our new yearly meeting, Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends.)

Here are some aspects of the task that seem very realistic to me. You can add more, or challenge me on what I'm listing.

The freedom to explore spiritual gifts unleashes the gift of evangelism. I'm still convinced that most -- maybe all -- Friends meetings and churches have people with this gift, no matter how alien the word is to the local subculture. We just need to liberate, encourage, and if necessary train these Friends instead of marginalizing them or being totally unaware of them. It's correct that we Friends don't "proselytize" but we still need to communicate our faith. The concern is to communicate with integrity.

The Friends testimonies work together. At the center of Friends discipleship is trust in God. (Elsewhere I've argued that "trust" is the first testimony.) That trust allows us to experiment with letting Jesus be at the center of our church governance and discipleship, rather than a fearful reliance on status and coercion. Evangelism involves not only a winsome and honest expression of faith, but also an invitation to experience a community formed by that faith, so proclamation and witness reinforce each other.

(NOTE: I'm not asserting Quaker exceptionalism; we retreat to those fallbacks far too often ourselves; and other churches have produced amazing legacies of faithful witness. We just have fewer excuses for wriggling out of our own claims.)

(Related post: Division of labor, part two, on what this collaboration might look like.)

A community empowered by spiritual gifts is not culturally narrow. This assertion is backed by vast hopes and very little experience. Many Friends meetings and churches yearn for cultural and racial diversity, but seem to be stuck arguing about theoretical ideals rather than choosing to examine hurdles: location, unintended or unexamined "we-they" messages (no matter how benevolent or progressive the intention), and a tendency to see non-members as objects of service rather than co-equal participants already part of "us" in God's story. But most of all, I believe that spiritual power unites while cerebral analysis divides.

Russian translation of Christ in Catastrophe
by Emil Fuchs. Very relevant.

Let empathy and creativity loose in new ways!  A decade ago, I became involved in choosing Quaker literature for translation into Russian, and our committee did some marketing research into other Christian publishers' priorities, and the apparent demands of the market. One thing I noticed early on: much religious publishing begins by prioritizing the audience, not the church organization behind the publication. Some books address addiction, some address loneliness or financial stress or raising children, some directly address spiritual hunger, and some simply aim to deliver an entertaining read. Whatever the specific issue in the reader's life, the writer and publisher bring biblical or theological or devotional insights to bear on that issue.

In contrast, so much Quaker literature seems to be concerned with delivering nuggets of Quaker goodness -- our history, our testimonies, our famous ancestors, our social justice arguments, our "wisdom." Much of that stuff is wonderful, but maybe we can become more audience-centric, addressing actual life situations of our readers.

What have I left out? And am I right to feel hopeful?

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Nancy Thomas continues her series on Bolivian Quaker history. Catch up on her blog, mil gracias.

Nadia Bolz-Weber on talking to our children about sex without shame.

Kirill Medvedev on the anti-fascist legacy of Stanislav Markelov, ten years after his death.

Palestinians, Israelis, and others protest an apartheid-style highway and its implications for the future.

The atomic scientists' Doomsday Clock and a new abnormal.

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Blues singer and guitarist Mike Ledbetter leaves us, dying at age 33.

What makes a church trustworthy? Seeking YOUR input.

Art by Bob Henry.

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I've put together this survey to help me think through the theme that's been preoccupying me the last few years: building a trustworthy church. I hope you'll help me by filling out the survey ... as much or as little of it as you have time for.

It's not a scientific survey; I've hopelessly mashed together qualitative and quantitative elements, there's no randomizing of the order of questions; and I've probably done a poor job of concealing my own biases. In compensation, I've also put in lots of places where you can comment, introduce concerns that I've left out, and in general let me know your priorities. I may make changes in the survey form based on your feedback.

Among the sources and biases: I've adapted some of the "eight essential qualities of healthy churches" advocated by Natural Church Development, although I've not used their wording for any of them. I've tried not to make it too obviously a Quaker-derived survey, although that too probably leaks through.

Here it is! (Below.) And here's a link to the bare survey form without decoration or commentary: maurers.org/survey

UPDATE: I'm no longer collecting new survey responses. Here is the series of posts that followed this initial survey post:

Trustworthy, part one: The cost of betrayal

Part two: A colony of heaven

Part three: Choices

Part four: Churches' choices

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A lot of Quaker energy has gone into reassuring skeptics and wounded refugees that we Friends are not like "those people," referring to the zealots, authoritarians, and religious entrepreneurs who have sometimes given faith a bad name. But what are we affirmatively promising? And how do we increase our capacity to keep our promises and become more trustworthy?

Let's say you are someone who's presently not in a church, but you're not totally allergic to the idea of being among people of faith, and are ready to learn what guides and motivates us believers, and to see whether it confirms a growing sense of faith already within you -- but you are not in the market for theatrics or manipulation or enmeshment with nationalist politics. What can our church promise you?

It's those concrete promises, and earning a reputation for keeping them, and using that reputation to increase our accessibility, that I'm interested in learning about. If you have already had experiences with churches that are trustworthy, or, sadly, with untrustworthy churches, or simply have an idea of what such a community might include, I'd like to learn from you. 

(I may have finished with this survey, but I am always eager to hear from you on this theme.)

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Nancy Thomas's next chapter in her selected stories from Bolivian Quaker history.

Here's what a war on Christmas might really look like. (Thanks to Fulcrum Anglican for the link.)

More on John Allen Chau (my subject last week): Arthur Davis has more questions; and Todd Whitmore is angry.

It seems, then, that Chau failed not just in secular terms, but in theological and evangelical terms as well, and so my anger is also directed—unless they did whatever was in their power to stop him—at whoever trained and formed him in ministry, for they are also otherwise culpable for his death.

Peter Marks describes a fascinating collaborative process within the creation of the musical Hamilton.

An update on Internet regulations in Russia.

Russian scholar of Pentecostalism loses his teaching position.

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Kat Baloun goes to Finland ...

Thanksgiving and Ferguson, Missouri

"Ferguson quiets down in anticipation of Thanksgiving." Story on Russia's Channel 1. Screen grab. Source.

Even among predominantly white North American Friends, the story of Ferguson, Missouri, and the grand jury decision not to charge the policeman who killed unarmed Michael Brown, cause dissension.

Two of the pastoral staff at Reedwood Friends Church, Portland, Oregon, joined the Albina Ministerial Alliance to express distress at the events in Ferguson. (Even Portland protesters are significantly divided.) Quakerly reactions varied to our Reedwood pastors' participation in the Portland event. Some supported their involvement, recognizing the very different experiences of black and white citizens in relation to law enforcement. Others said they were upset that Friends seem willing to protest without determining the facts first, or without examining the evidence that was considered by the grand jury. Still others reminded us that by standing in solidarity with black brothers and sisters in ministry, they are granting that black Christians' long-term perceptions of American reality are at least as valid as white perceptions.

I think that these divisions point to the spiritual-warfare dimension of racism. After all, racism is an aspect of the primordial sin of objectification, a perfect expression of violating the commandment against false witness. In many countries and empires, fortunes and whole economic systems are built on a tacit conspiracy not to account for the generational sins of racism and slavery. Is it any wonder that racism's manifestations continue to show the fingerprints of the Author of Confusion?

This Thanksgiving Day, I'm grateful that the USA has erupted over Ferguson. It's past time to raise holy hell. But let's not forget how deviously this spiritual poison acts. When we are tempted to attack police as a class, or an individual policeman, we shouldn't let class prejudice compound the sin. (How many police officers come from the same social circles as their archest critics?) Police must accept that the license to carry lethal weapons carries huge expectations of accountability, but the rest of us ought to support adequate budgets, training, and basic fairness for the police as well. Don't let police become proxy villains, whose vilification would help to conceal the systemic racism that continues to morph and mutate under our inadequate analyses. That too would be a violation of the commandment against bearing false witness.

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Russian media have made a lot of the Ferguson tragedy, despite the persistent racism evident in Russia. In fact, a lot of the Russian commentary about Ferguson is itself blatantly racist.

It also reminds me and some of my friends of the Soviet practice of highlighting American racism in contrast to the supposed internationalism and worker solidarity of the Soviet system. Some of my older acquaintances in Russia became so habitually skeptical of the Soviet line on American racism that they assumed that the opposite must be true--it must be black Americans who are on top and whites who are subordinate. In other words, if the Soviet media said something (they were in the habit of assuming), the opposite is likely closer to the truth. We've had to tell our students and their parents that whatever the reality was in the Soviet Union, their reports on the USA were not always entirely wrong.

Here are several items concerning recent Russia coverage of the Ferguson story:

• "Soviet Propaganda Back in Play with Ferguson Coverage." (The Moscow Times.)
• "The Kremlin is loving the Ferguson riots." (Globalpost.)
• "Putin critics and the racist discourse on Ferguson." (Eastern Profiles.)

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"If Black lives don't matter, nobody's life matters."

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Nancy Thomas: "We’re realizing that the story of William Abel is not meant only for the Quakers of Bolivia. It will be a gift to the San Pasqual Band of Kumeyaay Indians."

"Pacifism isn't sensible, but then neither is the Christian life."

"Dissident artist's Lego portraits of injustice do time on Alcatraz." Thanks to Owais Abdul-Kafi via David Finke.

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Johnny Shines, 1979. Many thanks to YouTube user Gerard Herzhaft.