Church

An olive tree near our apartment

Last Sunday, we visited a Lutheran church. It was the only church in Bethlehem with a website indicating service times, which was a good match for our plan-ahead preferences.

On the way to the same place this week, we heard the most beautiful singing coming from a Greek Orthodox church, which gripped us like the songs of sirens, and we went there instead.

I cannot get over the white stones of Palestine/Israel. Everything is made of white stone.

There's one church (no service hours posted) called the Milk Grotto. It is the most 'feminine' church I have seen. It is deep in the belly of the ground, and has few corners. The circling corridors and round rooms remind me of a labyrinth, of a womb. Rather than statues and icons of men, and mostly men in pain, the Milk Grotto has a dozen different versions of a breast feeding mother and comforted child.

By legend, the Milk Grotto is as a cave where Mary and Joseph hid on their way to Egypt. While Mary was feeding Jesus, a drop of Her milk hit the stone, turning it white.

I like to think that all of the stone in this area is stained white from a mother's milk.

I heard once that we "drink our religion with our mother's milk". To say, we make the choices we make and become the people we are in the contexts we are born. It would take a very pungent milk, the kind that would turn all the stones in an area white, to nourish the faith traditions of so many.

All this to say that the stones in the church we attended this morning were also white.

The white walls highlighted a wagging tail of gray smoke that came from the incense the Father distributed as he circled his flock.

The Father's voice was enchanting, rising and expanding like the trail of smoke behind him. The entire congregation sang out with voices as shining as the golden icons near the altar.

The side walls told stories with giant pictures where people the color of the stones would disappear into the land if it were not for their brightly colored clothing.

The Lord's prayer sounds a little different here. "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors".

I don't see the need for it so obviously in my own context, the need to come together regularly and collectively, with great ceremony, to state intentions to forgive. In my experience, there is more of a focus on being forgiven. But entering a mindset of forgiveness regularly is a practice I value with new eyes.

So many Palestinians congregate here this morning for the body and blood of a Jewish man.

A Jewish man who lived in this same pita-colored terrain, under a different occupation.

In all the stories I hear, there is a clear distinction between what is Jewish, and what is the current situation between Israel and Palestine. Even more, between what is Israeli and what is Israeli and foreign policy.

A shopkeeper's three-year-old daughter was diagnosed with cancer around the time the wall between Israel and Palestine was raised. He and his wife had a lot of difficulty getting their daughter to hospitals where she could be treated. It was also a struggle to stay with her or visit frequently.

In Bethlehem, they sell many manger scenes. It is, after all, the "Christmas town". And that is the focus of this man's work - shaping the nativity from olive branches.

During this time of extraordinary challenge traveling just a few miles for medical treatment for his daughter, he began to put walls in his manger scenes. These imitation towers stand between Jesus and his visitors.

With good reason, this man has been frustrated by the occupation. But what he spoke about most was his love for the doctors who treated his daughter. Doctors who cared for his family holistically. Doctors who happened to be Israeli.

I want to get these stories in here, too. The stories of people on the other side of the wall, struggling with the politics and morals of the current situation. I am not on that side of the wall, so I do not hear them as much. but they are reflected in the interactions we have here.

I wrote earlier about a bereaved mother in a refugee camp. Part of the story I heard later was that while she was at the hospital, soldiers were trying to arrest her family members, but the hospital staff (again, Israeli), stood between them and made the soldiers leave.