Peacemaking

 No thanks are necessary

 

On 17 June 2006, I sat in a pew at Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbus, Ohio, listening to Naim Ateek, recipient along with Madeleine Trichel of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship's John Nevin Sayre Award for their ministries in peacemaking, nonviolence, and reconciliation.

 

Ateek lifted up the baptismal covenant in which we promise to strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being'. This, along with the promise to "seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself" underpin, as they should, my work with Christian Peacemaker Teams in the Hebron District of Palestine.

 

What took me back to Hebron on this day was an Arabic saying "la shukr ala wajeb": No thanks are necessary for doing one's duty. I heard another version of these words in 2002, near the end of a nearly three month rotation on the team in Hebron. Late one morning, we got a call alerting us to two demolitions of Palestinian homes by the Israeli military. Bob headed to the one near the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, east of Hebron. Our primary translator and I headed to the ones in the village of Qilkis, near another Israeli settlement. We were there for the entire afternoon. I was on the roof of a house in which a family lived on the ground floor, with the upper floors still under construction, taking pictures as the Caterpillar bulldozer knocked down the house next door. The house was ready for the family to move in. The translator interviewed the family. We moved across the fields and up a hill to another home, used as a chicken coop, site of the family's livelihood, the next target. I took pictures. Our translator interviewed the family.

 

We didn't get back to the office and our apartments until late that afternoon. Our translator sat down at the table and transcribed all her notes from Arabic into English. By then it was past supper time and getting dark. When I thanked her for going with me and interviewing the families and then translating everything into English, she said, "No thanks are necessary. It is my duty."

 

In our work, we are often asked to tell the stories of the people whom we accompany, with whom we work. The piece of this with which I struggle is making the connections between the stories I hear in the Hebron District and that which happens here at home.

 

I connected the other day when I attended a vigil for a young African-American man murdered in a dodgy Durham, North Carolina, neighborhood earlier this year. As I listened to his mother talk about her experiences with law enforcement personnel and with the media and about the assumptions made about her son, I felt as if I were listening to a Palestinian mother recounting what happened to her son when he was detained at an Israeli military checkpoint in Hebron, or arrested in the middle of the night. Assumptions about terrorism, guilt, criminal activity. Racial or ethnic profiling.

 

The connection resonated again as I read syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts on New Orleans a year after Katrina. He recounted the invitation he had received to come visit: A small group of people...who came to help a family...sat in my living room...and said their lives would never be the same after seeing what they have seen in the last few days. They said that people back home are tired of the story and don't understand why New Orleans isn't "fixed" yet.... They cried in my living room over decaf and pie and promised to bear witness for my city. Will you come? He continued, So here I am and here we are, bearing witness.

 

As I prepare to head to Hebron, I am called to bear witness.

 

As we are called to strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being and to seek and serve Christ in others, loving our neighbors as ourselves, we are called to bear witness wherever we are.

 

No thanks are necessary. It is my duty.

 

8 September 2006
Durham NC

 

NOTE: I leave for a three month rotation with CPT Hebron on 13 September. I greatly appreciate emails recounting everyday sorts of things where you live. Reach me at my regular email address if you have it or