Carrying on

We leave tomorrow for Palestine, so we are busy packing and tying up loose ends. And contemplating what lies before us.

We are carrying with us the usual travel stuff, and also some Asheville-flavored gifts for our Palestinian and Israeli hosts: coffee, chocolate, note cards, barbecue rub. Also some warm slippers for our two Palestinian group leaders, based in Hebron, who have been visibly cold in our zoom calls. Among other hardships they have to endure is a lack of heat in the house.

Every day we have been reading and watching videos about what’s going on in the West Bank, not just Gaza. We try to imagine what it’s like for people in Hebron living under such intense occupation with such unpredictably violent troops and settlers all around them. Very soon, we won’t have to depend on our imaginations so much. We’ll be there.

We also are carrying with us our tears, love, and solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters. We are going just to accompany and witness, under no pretense that we are there “to help.” We understand Australian artist and activist Lilla Watson’s well-known comment, "If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

In our trip to Palestine ten years ago, Melody and I did indeed come away with a sense of our own liberation being connected to that of Palestinians, not to mention so many others struggling to be free. We were more free from the hold on our minds by a life time of being fed propaganda about Israel. We were freed from our fears of going there. Freed from worrying about our own privileged selves.

We know how privileged we are as “white,” middle class, well educated, retired, cis elders. We’re aware that going to the West Bank at this moment in time is something we can do much more easily than so many of our like-minded friends and comrades. And so we’ll use that privilege. We’ll go and feel and see and learn as much as we can, and then come back to tell about it. Inshallah.

Above all, we are carrying our hearts with us - to share, to fill, to have broken. That’s what hearts are for, I think.

Someone asked me recently if I was excited to go. I demurred on the excitement part, but said I felt committed. But it’s more than that. I feel at ease about going, because I know I am following a kind of calling - from within my spirit. I recall Dan Berrigan’s comment to “find where you stand, and then stand there.” Yes.

But I feel that what we will be doing will be more like walking than standing. I have a shirt from a peace walk I once did on Jeju Island, South Korea, that says “Let us walk together.” As someone who does a lot of walking, I know there is a lot of expanded consciousness to find when you’re moving through the right place at the right time, especially with the right people.

That’s my hope. May Melody and I be walking in the right place at the right time. We already know we will be with the right people.