Macedonia: Hopeless Eyes

Here I am, sitting in another noisy classroom observing yet another Macedonian teacher. I am here observing a young woman teach English to a typical group of Junior High students whose main objective seems to be chatting with friends. From my vantage point in the room I can observe both the teacher and the students rather unobtrusively. I take advantage of my viewpoint and I begin to casually glance around the room. As my eyes sweep by various students, I notice that most of the students don’t even care or notice that I am in their room with them. For many of them, I am just another “adult” to ignore. But then my sweeping eyes stop and lock with an intense blue-gray stare. Even if all the other students didn’t care if I was in that room these blue-gray eyes did. She knew I was there. She knew I was sitting here and that I was looking in on her world for this split second. The intensity of her gaze made me break eye contact, but my mind would not allow me to forget the look in her eyes. In that brief moment when our eyes locked I saw something much more than a young teenage girl. I saw pain. As I sat there during the rest of the lesson I found it difficult to focus on what the teacher said, or even what the other students were doing. The image I kept seeing was pain filled, blue-gray eyes.

Near the end of the class I dared to glance around the room once again, and sure enough those same blue-gray eyes were waiting for me. Again, we locked eyes and this time I realized something more. There was more than simple pain in her eyes; there was defiance. What I found in her eyes was an attempt at survival –a cold, painful survival.

The pain in her eyes was hopelessness.

I quietly watched as the students filed out of the classroom and headed back to their homes, and again I could not shake the image of one face from my mind. A circle of questions kept spinning through me: Will anyone else see her pain? Will anyone take the time to notice her eyes? Will anyone share a reason for hope with this girl? Here I was, sitting in her class on this one day, but I will never see her again. I will never be able to help this girl in her pain. Her eyes are still haunting me, and I want desperately to show her that I care –that there is a reason for hope. I want desperately to know her, but I cannot.

It makes me wonder, if I saw this pain in the eyes of a girl I met only once…have I missed the pain in the eyes of others around me? Have I missed chances to share hope, to care, to know someone? Have I allowed people I know to walk around with pain in their eyes when I could have helped them? How many times have I glanced past the blue-gray eyes of hopelessness? How many times have you found eyes of hopelessness?

Jerusalem: Singing at St. Anne's

Each weekend, my classmates and I set off on “field studies.” This basically is code for a ten hour class session that begins at 7 AM during which we are responsible to hear, retain, and remember any and all information presented in these full day excursions as we walk for miles looking at ancient ruins and famous sites; basically, it’s exhausting. All that to say, Saturday morning when my alarm went off I was stuck between excitement about discovering more about this land, and the strong belief that it could not possibly be morning yet. Stumbling out of bed to energize myself for the day took more effort than I had anticipated, and for the first few hours of the morning I operated under a sort of haze. But, one of our first stops gave me a huge boost of energy. Standing near the historical site of the pools of Bethesda is St. Anne’s Church. I walked into this structure with my fellow classmates and soon found myself in the midst of reverberating worship. Standing within that structure listening to voices rising upward, mingling in the air, praising God gave me a replenishing in my soul. There is something magically about a group of imperfect individuals imperfectly singing praises within an imperfect structure to a perfect God. I felt cloaked in peace and I was reminded again of the surpassing calm that only the Lord has to offer. It lasted only a few moments out of my day, and yet that is the moment I will remember most vividly from those ten hours. That is a moment I will look back upon from my days in Jerusalem. I walked away from that church renewed and relieved. It is easy it seems to psyche yourself up so much for an exciting upcoming event that in the end you wind up disappointed when events do not ultimately live up to your expectations. This has been my experience thus far in Jerusalem until our time at St. Anne’s. I expected there to be many intense moments of realizing the power of God and feeling His presence while walking along these history clad streets, but this short period of praise was my first acute encounter with God. My hopes had been unrealized until we were standing near these ancient pools of Bethesda in an imperfectly designed, unsymmetrical building. There, God made himself known.

Israel: Wilderness Rains

Some experiences in my life remind me of just how small I am in the grand scheme of my surroundings. Some experiences remind me of the vastness of this world, the history of people who have walked before me, and the feebleness of my own humanity. Today, standing atop a high ridge and overlooking Jericho, the thin Wadi Quilt, and the true desolation surrounding the high place on which I stood brought me face to face with issues of survival. Standing up there I could not help but imagine the parched throats and trudging steps of so many people who forced their way back and forth across these wilderness ridge routes. I could not imagine surviving in such a place and I know that despair could come so easily in such a harsh environment. There is no water. There is no shade. There is no food. There is…silence. Sitting atop of that ridge and listening to the worlds of Psalm 139 and then picturing Jesus walking through temptations in these same places brought so much into perspective. This morning forced me to ask myself, “Would I be able to praise the Lord as the psalmist does? Would I stand firm under temptation in such dire circumstances?” I am still not certain of my answer. Standing there it was easy to sense the anguish of so many, and yet as soon as I began to sink into dark thoughts of suffering the rains came. That slight sprinkling we encountered on that ridge top reminded me that life is possible; that even in our humanity we can conquer great odds and stand firm. It reminded me that we all have times of wilderness and that even when we are seeking for freedom from the bounds of the wild -even when we are waiting impatiently for the end of our testing- eventually the rain will come again. It may only be a slight sprinkling, but that sprinkling is an offering of hope. The rain came today. The rain came today in a wilderness that should not have seen rain until next February. Eventually the rain does come, whether it is in season or out of season.

A Long Time Coming

New location, new language, new culture, new set of expectations; this has been the pattern for my summer. Since I have last written in the space of this blog I have traveled through Romania, Albania, Greece, Italy, France, and Spain. I have visited community centers which love on street kids, fed meals to refugees in parks, taught English, stared into the eyes of hungry, hurting people, and participated in kid’s camps. I have learned a smattering of phrases from about 7 different languages, and traveled by bus, car, plane, train, bike, and even ferry. I have slept in hostels, on floors, on couches, and on many trains and buses. I have made friends from every continent and heard stories about dreams, hopes, aspirations, and fears. My world has been rocked to its core on numerous occasions and I am humbling admitting to my own current brokenness. I am being reshaped and reformed more drastically and quickly than I ever have before. I am far from fixed at this point, but piano a piano (little by little) I know I will gain more understanding. I have not updated this space because I have not had the energy, time, or opportunity to do so. I now have the time. So I am now beginning again. My hope is to share current stories as I live out my time here in Jerusalem as well as share moments and glimpses from these past months. It may seem scattered and confusing as you read it, but that is simply the state of my mind right now. I cannot live life here without remembering these past months. I cannot separate current situations and events from memories, because in the end it is all the story of Life. In the end it is all one story with different chapters that pull from and lead into other sections.

So, I will begin with now.

I am living in the land of Israel. I am walking along the same paths that Abraham used when he climbed from his homeland into Hebron. I am walking the same paths that Jesus and his disciples took as they travelled about this land. I can look out from the roof of my school and stare into the Hinnom valley and beyond to the city of Bethlehem. I can take a walk and within five minutes I am standing in the location of the last supper. I can visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and imagine the hill of Calvary that once stood on the same ground. I can sit atop the Old City wall and watch as the lights blaze up in late evening around what used to be the City of David. This is the place I can call home. This is the place I am for this next semester. I am learning –slowly- how to shift from a traveler, friend, and helper back into a student. I am learning how to live within a highly Western environment while surrounded by extreme cultural tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. I am investigating this land from a Biblical, historical, cultural, and personal perspective, and trying to pull the pieces together into the semblance of some partial whole. This is my world for the next 3 months.