Peacemaking

Heaven in Ordinary

I've known for several months that I would be speaking on the theme heaven in ordinary with my Hebron teammate Jan Benvie at Greenbelt, the Christian (arts festival) gathering held August bank holiday weekend in the UK - speaking not in one of the big tent venues, but as part of a small evening program in the Peace Zone. I've helped staff the Peace Zone off and on since 1999, as a member of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship and the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, and two years ago as a member of Christian Peacemaker Teams as well.

Jan just came off team in Hebron, and we've been e-mailing about this theme – heaven in ordinary. She commented that Hebron could be described as hell in ordinary, and indeed it can be much of the time, especially looking at the deteriorating political situation between Israel and Palestine.

Heaven in ordinary sounded ominously like a quotation I should know – ominously because I couldn't remember who said it, nor could one of my reliable sources. Then I thought, oh – google it. Oh – check the Greenbelt web site.

Its George Herbert, the 17th century priest and poet whose little church at Bemerton sits on an island surrounded by a road outside of Salisbury, where one year a group of us sat in silence and prayed and then read his poetry and sang some of it.

Of course. I knew that. Sort of.

When I envision what is "heaven in ordinary", I see all those little things which make up our lives together in community:

• the Palestinian shopkeeper in the Bab iBaladeyyah who, under threat of closure by the Israeli military, refuses to close his shop near the yeshiva at Beit Romano;
• the international observers who have opened an office in the Old City and offer hospitality to the Palestinians struggling to keep their homes and businesses, making it easier for them to file complaints of adverse actions by Israeli settlers and military and law enforcement;
• the Israeli soldier who joins briefly in the football game with the Palestinian children whose field is the street below CPT's apartments.

When I envision what is "heaven in ordinary" I see those larger things which come out of "living into the mystery":

• long-time Northern Ireland enemies Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness sitting down together in May to form a government together – something I thought I would never see in my lifetime;
• Jonathan Daniels, civil rights worker in Alabama, taking the blast from a shotgun and saving Ruby Sales from death in 1965;

Paul Jones, forced to resign as Bishop of Utah in 1918, for stating that "war is unchristian", saying in his farewell, "Where I serve the Church is of small importance, so long as I can make my life count in the cause of Christ".

And all of this is undergirded by prayer, expressed so excruciatingly by George Herbert: "The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage... A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear... Heaven in ordinary..."

Of course. I knew that. Sort of.

Durham NC
16 August 2007

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