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.