Hope amid
the rubble
Despite all the pain, suffering, and oppression I saw and
heard about, I did not leave with a sense of despair. But
this wasn’t the dizzy optimism of so many after the
death of Yassir Arafat. It was based in the many efforts
I saw of people who were trying to create something new
in Palestine. I also came to see the many efforts of
Israelis to work for a just peace.
The many efforts at the International Center of
Bethlehem, the workshops in Taybeh are but a few of the
efforts of Palestinians to create the institutions which,
as Pastor Mitri Raheb put it, “can be important
vehicles in the future Palestinian state.” They
show the real potential of the Palestinians which has
been constricted for all too long. They offer real
nonviolent alternatives.
At the International Center of Bethlehem, I bought a few
glass ornaments. The angel and star now catch and
transform the light coming into the windows of my house
and remind me each day of these people of hope. A little
card accompanying them explains their significance:
These art pieces are made out of glass, fragments of
broken bottles thrown away or glass destroyed during the
Israeli invasion of Bethlehem. Human hands pick them from
among the rubble, then assemble them together by some of
the poorest of the poor in the Bethlehem region at the
ICB art workshops. These art pieces tell all about
“the hopes and fears of all the years” that
people have in Bethlehem today. The broken glass pieces
are a sign of the brokenness of our world, and it is also
reason for God to incarnate. Through his incarnation he
brought the divine and the human back together. He picked
what seems to be worthless and hopeless and transformed
it into a beautiful and whole creation. It is this
incarnation, which took place here in Bethlehem two
thousand years ago, which gives us the strength to
continue to look for broken lives and hopes and to
transform them through art into angels and different art
pieces, messengers of justice, peace, and dignity.
An angel from
the rubble
on my window in Ames
* * *
* *
“We
suspect deep down that the world is a much crueler place
than we dare admit; but we fear the encounter with the
poor who bring us face to face with all this evil, and we
expend enormous energy shutting out this horror from our
lives. If we let their stories break our hearts, however,
the victims will invite us to recognize that the world is
also a much more wonderful place than we dared imagine.
They will reveal to us the revolution of love that God is
bringing about in the world. ‘Where sin abound,
grace does more abound’ (Romans 5.20).”
Dean Brackley, S.J.
* * * * *
“To
live the risen Christ in a world of crucified
peoples.”
I visited the Holy Land as Advent began, the time of
preparation for the comings of Christ – in
Bethlehem, in our daily lives, in the poor, and in
judgment.
But the Pascal mystery of Christ’s death and
resurrection was a recurrent theme in my pilgrimage.
At St. Anne’s in Jerusalem I sang the Easter hymn
to Mary, remembering that the One she bore has risen as
he said.
Speaking with people like Pastor Mitri Rehab of Christmas
Lutheran Church, I witnessed people working to bring
forth seeds of hope in the midst of violence, war, and
oppression. He told me that the role of his ministry is
“not to cry out of helplessness, but to go tell our
brothers and sisters that the Lord is risen.”
As I visited the Holy Sepulcher, I head the voice of the
messengers, “He is risen! He is not here.”
A few days later. after leaving Taybeh, a thought came to
me – I am called “to live the risen Christ in
a crucified world.” About a month later I realized,
after reading some of Jon Sobrino’s book
Where
Is God?, that
it would be more appropriate to say that we are called
“to live the risen Christ in a world of crucified
people.”
And that is what I am now called to do – having
shared, once again, in the joys and sufferings of the
poor who daily live the Paschal mystery of death and
resurrection in their struggles for a decent life.