I’m enjoying week two of vacation, now in Cyprus after a marathon day of travel from Malaga, Spain, back to Tel Aviv airport via Brussels and then right back out to Larnaca for a regional staff retreat. It was cheaper than flying direct, with the added bonus of going through Israeli airport security an extra round. But given the routine humiliations of Palestinians at Ben Gurion Airport, I really can’t complain.

Vacation is a good time to contemplate how beautiful life is in spite of the ugliness of wars and occupations, and I’ve had ample opportunity. So here are a few favorites from the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. Or as I like to call it, “the La Alhambra.” If you don’t speak Spanish or Arabic, that means “the the the Hambra”. It was intriguing to have traveled so far from Palestine and still be surrounded by the beauty of the Arabic culture and language—at times, literally. I came to refer to the cumulative effect of square meter after square meter of dense, intricate and ornate reliefs as “grandeur fatigue”.

We’re on vacation in Granada, Spain. Highlight so far: a 6 Euro flamenco performance in a little cave of a place, with a very elderly male vocalist, a guitarist, and a dancer that everyone in the joint craned their necks this way and that to catch all the moves. Too bad I didn’t have a sound recorder with me…

Gathering for the Easter sunrise service on the Mount of Olives.

I started writing this poem last September while on retreat in Jordan. It’s my usual theo-political rant concluding with eschatological hope and borrowed hymns. It seemed especially appropriate to post at Easter. For what it’s worth, my margin notes say that I worked on it in the following locations: between interrogations and searches at the King Hussein border crossing on my return to Palestine (and was asked by multiple security personnel what I was writing—one even asked to see it); on the taxi passing through the checkpoint entering Jerusalem; at the Dome of the Rock, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; at East Jerusalem Baptist Church, at Redeemer Lutheran Church; at Aida Refugee Camp; on the highway to Haifa; and at sunset over the Red Sea in Nuweiba, Egypt.

As Lent is now over, I’ll be taking an indefinite break from this season of daily posts, but hopefully have learned something about what a sustainable rhythm for posting photos and thoughts here might be in the future. Thanks for the kind words of affirmation and encouragement that many of you have shared with me. Happy Easter to you all. Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Hallelujah!

Bower to the Beeble

All you party people pack your pencils for the power play
principalities press pundits to plausibly deny oppression
proudly pumping propaganda portraying Palestinian pride as propagating hate
perpetuate perceptions that negate the nascent state
stacking the deck with settlements
staking claims to the cake and eating it too while waiting to negotiate in bad faith
a unilateral peace in pre-sliced pie pieces processed
packaged with percentages promoted as generous offers until you check the charts
mapping a masticated mass of dismembered scraps
an emasculated state swapping fertile aquifers for desert dregs
dropping from the table set for settlers and their cynical sponsors
touting Torah texts to take the cake casting crumbs
trailing interminable talks stalled and
stalked by lop-sided cycles of 100-eyes-for-one-eyed-attacks
pride providing pretense for pounding the predictable resistance
insisting on insurgency in spite of spirals sparking collective spanking
spinning from the radii of radicals
making martyrs of militants mothers brothers and bystanders
survivors embracing any means necessary
inoculated against nonviolence by the abrasions by bastards grinding them down
daily dehumanizing or deadly deeds degrading doses diverse in degree and frequency
unless the best angels emerge as in At-Tuwani
where Hafez refuses to lift a fist to fight the fiends who beat his mother with bars
her blood and bones refused revenge
but resistance isn’t restricted to the ruts of ruinous wheels
wearing tracks across the backs bent to breaking
but spine straightened he shakes off the evil intent and bends toward justice and
instead takes the law in his hands head high demands his haq
win or lose his soul remains unstained by hate
still the state leaves no room for debate labeling unarmed demonstrations “illegal”
locking up Pollack, Juma, Abu Rahmah, Tamimi, Othman and
unnamed unarmed others rotting in Robin Islands
while Rabin was the closest thing to a DeKlerk
all the Mandelas remain repressed and remanded
demanding self-determination determined to detract
dodging the darts of drafted brats boasting of abuses in Nabi Saleh, Nilin, Bilin
blasting tear gas flashbangs skunk trucks scream beams scattering shabab
blinding some with bullets rubber-coated steel
or steel-coated lead “shot at legs” exiting necks
making unarmed martyrs unnoticed in newspapers
New York Times of “relative calm” not naming
settler assaults scorched-earth olive tree massacres mosques burned
minus the circus circulated by mindless media memes
focusing on fifty percent saccharine fifty percent sounding the fury
fantasies of fundamentalist fears of
finding secret socialists under every effort at domestic equity with
ignorant malignant myths limiting the licit language for foreign affairs
Israeli Afghan Iraqi atrocities embraced to accelerate apocalypse
punishing the progeny of Sykes-Picot and other imperial partitions now
Apache helicopter parents patrons of independence
conditioned on obedience to Washington consensus
condescending colonialism with a Cold War attention span
easily distracted from past basket cases
caused by last administrations’ adventures
arrogance avarice and inertia launch us toward the next lynch
eating Muslims for lunch dinner breakfast
ignoring interventions’ inevitable indigestion
insurgency’s urgency invariably appealing to oppressed people
despite appalling tactics attacking soft targets with wicked weapons
that won’t work to wrest real rights
relying on repeating the wrongs of repressive regimes
regardless of righteous rhetoric
revenge validates victors’ victimhood
invites incites excited escalation in spirals
a sliding scale of state violence versus insurgent versions
versed in vengeance if not victory much less legitimacy
the right to resist exists
but insist instead of stones, stabbings, Qassams, and bombs
built by boys infamous few and far between a fraction of a faction
facts and figures find super-majorities supporting
peaceful not passive
opposition to occupation
the activation for liberation
latent longing long-suffering solidarity
seeking solid strategies such as sanctions divestment and boycott
breaking the silence on abuses buried behind code words
and conventional conversation conditioned on
so-called consensus concerning compromises on
final status quo cantons Quartet tunes toe the line laid by
lords and liars from Balfour to Bibi to Hagee
all abusing the Bible with tribal translations
texts of terror torn from context
killing the spirit but keeping the letter
without the Word Made Flesh
and his foolish favoritism for
foreigners
aliens
enemies
outcasts
caught-in-the-act-women unstoned
by those without sin
tree-climbing tax-collecting collaborators
worn-out world weary well-women
half-breed helpers of highway robbery bait
beaten on roads now closed by barriers built by
bullies bowing to the Baal of Security encircled by
idols of stone steel and iron
sons and daughters sacrificed
forced to face the fires of Gehenna
a military Moloch machine
marching to the rhythmic myth of the sacred state
simultaneously invincible and on the brink of extinction
existential insecurity complexes compelling conscription
a prescription for general jingoism
seeking exceptionalism in all arenas except scrutiny
squealing double-standard when held to norms also violated by the vile
superior to Saudi Arabia is not an acceptable standard for human rights and democracy
so drop the dances
the dream you willed was a Nakba nightmare
now the apartheid ethnocracy needs another notion of nationhood
so either end the occupation and send the settlers somewhere else
or end the apartheid and announce elections from the river to the sea
free and fair one human one vote
this is what democracy looks like love it or leave it
and label your little land likewise
size matters less when the West writes blank checks
but beware the bankruptcy of Babylon that extends your exile
as expectant extremists promise apocalypse
we seek another Savior as seen in Scripture
a slain lamb whose two-edged sword is symbolic not atomic
with weapons not of this world but
with the Word of His Mouth slaying sealing salving and saving
sheep and goats weeds and wheat justice and peace
kiss each other and make love not war no more
the score is settled
the fight fixed in favor of a feast foisted on the faithful
found through fruits not forced confessions
the foundation of the house upon the rock was action of the doer
not the heart of the hearer still let the one with ears hear
let the one with eyes see the facts on the ground
and still sound strong in faith amid doubt tell to all the joyful gospel
no spelling bee of elimination by tribulation
but a standing invitation to the standing ovation
with every tribe and tongue and nation
tables turned in the upside-down kingdom come on earth
as on Easter when Holy Fire fell
and filled the streets with singing shebab
shouting shoving past police to proclaim power to the powerless
the voices of the voiceless echoing off Jerusalem’s dead stones
as living stones rolled by in raucous revelry
revealing the victory real but unrealized until a time unknown
by prophet preacher or pre-millenialist dispensationalist prognosticator
the pregnant pangs continue apace
contractions contort distort our reports on potential portents
but the Babe is in the womb and can’t but be born
Advent, Easter, and ordinary time tumble toward eternity
taking their sweet time as
sour grapes of wrath dump their vats on vile and virtuous alike
unlike our sense of right and wrong wrecked on theodicy’s rocks
reckoning righteousness is rough sailing
still we’re standing on the Solid Rock so big it can’t be lifted
even logic won’t allow the luxury of Loveless suffering
so we stay wait
watch and pray
watch and pray
expecting the worst
not wanting to repeat Peter’s daggers and denials
fast forward we’re restored with refrains of
feed my sheep
tend my lambs
feed my sheep
follow me
but meanwhile back on Maundy midnight
mourning wrongful arrests trials and tortures
‘till Bad Friday’s finality
the banality of daily death numbs us dumbs us dulls us
mulling the math of male theologians
multiplying history times chemistry minus mystery of
amazing grace that saves slave trading wretches like me
makes Magnificat manifestos that
fill poor fools full and sends sophisticated smarty-pants packing
posting requests for proposals to pass camels through eyes of needles
nonetheless the Nazarene’s narrative gives hope against all odds
even evil empires’ perpetrators parasites and proletarians are
ready for the revolution rolling like a spring
surprising uprisings outpouring waters in win-win class warfare
a worldwide welfare of unmerited mercy
made manifest in the final feast where all are invited
many are called but few have chosen to chow down indefinitely
when from death we’re free and through eternity
while millions join the theme
of praise to God with seraph team
all praise to God the One-in-Three
community in trinity
hailed by heavenly hosts and hostesses in harmony singing 606
with all creatures here below longing for the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
to haunt our hemisphere in the here and now
if you can’t say hallelujah
say hallelujah anyhow
hallelujah
hallelujah
hallelujah anyhow
anyhow
hallelujah anyhow
hallelujah anyhow

Celebrating communion as the sun breaks through the early morning haze over the Jordan Valley.

A Palestinian shepherd tends his flocks near the West Bank village of Sebastia.

1 Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 2 For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account. 4 Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 8 By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. 9 They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. (Isaiah 53:1-9)

Today, we went for a long, hot hike in the northern West Bank near Sebastia. Though today’s heat was a taste of the long, dry summer ahead, the hills were still bathed in green and bursting with life. Lots of “young plants”. Also, lots of sheep. To be honest, despite the difficulty of the hike—or maybe because of it—the beauty of the countryside completely distracted me from the significance of the day: Holy Saturday. I was also distracted from the many “perversions of justice” that saturate my mind most days. Though a few came up in conversation.

(As an aside, we were using the new guidebook, Walking Palestine. Speaking of guidebooks, Rick Steves has had an epiphany on Israel and Palestine. Good for him, and may many more have the courage to speak up as he did.)

Early morning procession along the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem's Old City.

Today I enjoyed several privileges. One was to get up at 5:45 a.m. and walk the Via Dolorosa (way of suffering) through the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem. The Stations of the Cross are marked along the way and signify the traditional path by which Jesus carried his cross to his crucifixion. I say “traditional” because the size and shape of Jerusalem have changed significantly in the last 2000 years. But it’s still a privilege to be able to commemorate Christ’s passion at least approximately where it all went down.

Second, I got to hear Naomi Tutu—daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu—speak at Bethlehem Bible College later this morning. Her designated theme was “Shared Humanity”, and she shared a traditional Xhosa proverb that she was raised with: ”A person is a person through other people.”

Her interpretive paraphrase: “If you are dehumanizing somebody else, you are dehumanizing yourself.” She explained that it is also applied positively to mean that any achievement of an individual is always a result of that person’s relationships with others.

Obviously this has many applications in the Israel-Palestine context, and she discussed this and many other connections between the South African freedom struggle and that of Palestine. I wish I could detail them all here, but I will only take time for a few quick points:

• Grassroots education was key to securing U.S. sanctions against the apartheid regime. People had a distorted picture of South African history and needed to be made aware of the reality on the ground.
• With South Africa, churches made connections with churches, students with students, labor unions with labor unions, etc. to bring their stories to average Americans.
• Voices of privilege need have the courage to challenge and change their own communities—rather than just spend their time “helping” the oppressed to get warm fuzzies.
• In the midst of the freedom struggle in South Africa, it mostly felt hopeless—and that apartheid would never end. This offers hope to those struggling now—that each inch gained brings us closer to the finish line. But we need to “see the inch”.

Third, I observed a weekly demonstration against the separation wall that could separate the West Bank town of Al-Masara from its village agricultural lands. Though Israeli soldiers always prevent the people from marching to their land, the event is typically relatively calm, and today was no exception. I witnessed many one-way conversations where the men and boys of the village stood toe-to-toe and face to face with heavily armed Israeli soldiers. I couldn’t understand most of the words, but the quiet, almost intimate tone of several of these exchanges was remarkable. Every now and the a soldier would crack a smile, or perhaps shift his gaze nervously. I daresay some sense of shared humanity was established. This is not to suggest or advocate cheap grace or superficial reconciliation. The Palestinians went home to a town that will very likely be cut off from its lands by the separation barrier. The Israelis went home with their guns. But hopefully there was at least some mutual recognition of humanity that will make violence against the other less thinkable, if not unthinkable.

A Palestinian man tries to reason with Israeli soldiers blocking a nonviolent march from the West Bank town of Al-Masara to village lands that may eventually be cut off by the Israeli separation barrier.

And here is where I tie it all up with a reflection on how Jesus made the ultimate gesture of shared humanity. But because I am tired, I will simply quote a Bible verse:

1 If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, 2 make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:1-8)

Under the watchful eye of Israeli soldiers, Palestinian Christians lead a Maundy Thursday procession from the Old City toward the Garden of Gethsemane.

This evening I attended the Lutheran Maundy Thursday service in the Old City of Jerusalem, followed by a procession to the Garden of Gethsemane for a candlelight vigil. One of the songs in the service was an Arabic hymn Wa Habibi, “My Beloved”, that Sabeel had sung during its Contemporary Way of the Cross that I participated in a few weeks back. They used the Fairuz version as the soundtrack for a  video slide show they made with some of my photos and posted on YouTube:

UPDATE: I found the liturgy with the English translation we used in the service last night:

So much wrong,
a great injustice,
for you had to bear the cross.
My dreams have been lost and shattered,
my heart hangs, too on the cross.

My beloved, my beloved,
tell me: where can I find you?
You who drank the cup of suffering
that your people might have life

Graffiti on the Israeli separation barrier dividing the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis.

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was “well timed,” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation.

—Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter from Birmingham Jail

MLK was assassinated 44 years ago today. I think of this quote every time I hear someone say that a campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) will not work to pressure Israel to end its occupation of Palestine or grant equal rights to Palestinians, because such pressure would force Israel into a corner and only tighten its grip. Tom Friedman makes a similar assertion in his New York  Times column yesterday claiming that Israel must feel “strategically secure” before it will make peace. I must ask Friedman, what nation in the history of humankind, with superior military might and political (i.e. U.S.) power,  feeling “strategically secure”, would be willing to offer any concessions whatsoever to its opponent? For the answer, check the status quo in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. And they’re building more settlements every day.

So I’m glad the BDS conversation is getting greater coverage, however imperfectly. Peter Beinart’s recent op-ed in The New York Times promoting boycott of settlement products and new book, The Crisis of Zionism, are in the words of blogger Philip Weiss, “…brave. And this is an important conversation. But let’s be clear. The parameters of this conversation are racist. Palestinians, the group most affected by these deliberations, are not invited into the conversation.”

This dynamic of debate among the privileged was on display in a recent Daily Show segment by Samantha Bee on the efforts to get a New York City food coop in an upscale Jewish neighborhood to boycott Israeli products. Bee’s approach lacked the sophistication of other recent coverage of Israel-Palestine by Jon Stewart and co., but heck, I was just glad they were giving the story airtime. The Nation‘s Kiera Feldman has a more serious analysis, including these nuggets:

It doesn’t actually matter if the Coop boycotts Israel or not. Just having the debate is a symbolic victory for the pro-boycott camp. It might once have been safe to assume that in Park Slope, Brooklyn, progressive Jews would side with their more conservative co-religionists on matters pertaining to Israel. No longer. …

In the months leading up to the vote, Nadia Saah, a blonde Palestinian-American Coop-er, said her Semitic looks led to some interesting exchanges at the Coop, where members are required to log a shift per month. (Saah works the front desk, noting with a laugh, “Ironically, my work slot is check-in, so everyone has to show me their ID!’”) Saah’s parents fled Jerusalem in 1948 after the Deir Yassin massacre, but fellow Coopers passing through the check-in desk often assume two things: first that she’s Jewish and second that all Jews feel compelled to commiserate about BDS. “I’ve heard first hand how frightened people are about the BDS vote,” Saah said. Her heart went out to them. Having grown up in the U.S., Saah said she understands and has “compassion for the historical traumas that have engendered this fear.” But, she added, “Sadly, we’re the unfortunate inheritors of Jewish fear.” Like Rosenberg, Saah said the 60/40 split showed there are “a significant number of coop members who care about Palestinians and their struggle for human rights.”

As a Coop member, my impression has been that that existential fear seems to underpin all Jewish opposition to the Coop’s adoption of BDS. …

I ended up sitting next to Maricia Duplessis, a lively 20-something black woman who spent her early years in Apartheid South Africa. She and Rubin Salz, a white-haired Cooper, got to talking. It did not take long for them to reach a roadblock. “Boycotting and sanctioning was part of my liberation,” Duplessis told him. “Time is of the essence. People are dying. This is what we can do right now. I think international pressure was invaluable to my liberation.” Salz noted he was against the Occupation but said, when it comes to BDS, “It’s not a no-brainer like Apartheid.” … When it came down to it, Salz would not budge on his bottom line on BDS: “I think they’re saying that Israel as a state shouldn’t exist.” With kindness in her voice, Duplessis asked, “You really think so, Rubin?” Salz replied, “Yes, I really do.” Duplessis thanked him and ended the conversation.

I further witnessed the nuances within the liberal Zionist discussion of BDS recently when listening to a lecture by an Israeli Jewish theologian. When asked about BDS, she responded that she personally boycotts products made in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. However, she’s opposed to public campaigns advocating this because boycotting anything Jewish reminds her of Germany in the 1930s. (She didn’t mention that Israel has also passed laws punishing the promotion of boycotts against any Israeli entity.)

How long will the (very real and historically grounded) existential fears of Israeli Jews prevent them from making a just peace with Palestinians? I don’t know. But if history and its greatest moral leaders are any guide, I do not think this question can be answered by protesting the injustice of the occupation only in ways that make sure that Israel feels “strategically secure”. Such an indefinitely moving goalpost smacks of the immorality of keeping Guantanamo Bay prisons in operation until we’ve won the so-called “global war on terror”. I repeat the words of MLK: “Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but … freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

I conclude with a somewhat random anecdote: A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with an American friend and an Israeli activist in a Bethlehem restaurant. The Israeli noticed that the ketchup was an Israeli brand, and had the temerity to ask the Palestinian staff why they weren’t boycotting Israeli products. I returned to the same restaurant today, and lo and behold, their ketchup brand has since changed to a non-Israeli brand! Did the urging of an Israeli activist encourage a Palestinian restaurant to boycott Israeli ketchup? I didn’t have the temerity to ask.

Muhammad Arafa at 12:50 p.m. Friday, March 30.

Muhammad Arafa at 1:30 p.m. Friday, March 30.

Muhammad remains hospitalized in critical condition, but friends report that his injuries are not permanent or life-threatening and that within a few months he should make a full recovery.

The Jordan River is chilly and wide, hallelujah. Milk and honey on the other side, hallelujah. Re-reading the Exodus story in light of new facts on the ground. Case in point: the Jordan isn't as wide as it used to be.

While I’m enjoying some downtime in Tiberias, I was sorry to miss the Palm Sunday festivities in Jerusalem this year. At the same time, while Christians gear up for Holy Week and Easter, it’s important to remember the other holy week—the one that Jesus was observing at the time of his crucifixion: Passover. I just read an excellent reflection on the subject at the Micah’s Paradigm Shift blog, which describes itself as “a blog about Israel-Palestine from a United Kingdom and progressive Jewish perspective.” An excerpt:

… do we revere the Exodus text while dishonouring its message? Each year we celebrate our freedom but fail to recognise the Pharaoh that shares our Seder night meal with us, lodged somewhere in our soul, distorting our view of ourselves and others.

We are mistaken if we think our own suffering at the hands of countless Pharaohs throughout our history has somehow made us immune from the seductive powers of Pharaoh-ism.

We sit down to celebrate our survival as if survival were an end in itself. We forget that we were forged in the heat of the desert for a meaning and a purpose. Survival cannot be for survival’s sake, just as freedom was not given for freedom’s sake.

The encounter at Mount Sinai set for us a demanding (perhaps impossible) mission – to do right by God and right by each other. Wandering in the desert, without our own land or borders, we recorded the commandments that were meant to shape us as a people.

“You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.” Exodus 23:9

“You shall not stand idly by while your neighbour’s blood is being shed.” Leviticus 19:16

“Love your neighbour as yourself.” Leviticus 19:18

“The strangers who resides with you, shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Leviticus 19:34

And here’s the showstopper!

“Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may live, and inherit the land which the Lord your God gives you” Deuteronomy 16:20

Limping back to Egypt

But when it comes to the most fundamental issue facing Judaism and Jewish identity in the 21st century, we have not just failed the mission, we have turned our back on it. We have limped back to the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s chariots have caught up with us.In spite of all we have experienced in our two millennium of wanderings, we prefer to keep ourselves ignorant of the meaning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and the condition of Palestinian Israelis and refugees.

We choose not to see the house demolitions, collective punishments, land confiscations, water appropriations, the olive groves up-rooted, the wells blocked. The harassment, intimidation and murder of Palestinian men, women and children goes unnoticed. Settler violence and a brutalised army of occupation means nothing to us.

And on the other side of the wall, we insist we are the only democracy in the Middle-East despite a fifth of the population (the Israeli Palestinians) feeling like, and being treated as, unwanted strangers in their own land.

We choose to see another people’s displacement, another people’s exile, another people’s daily humiliation and discrimination as an acceptable price for our own national renewal.

I encourage you to read the full post here.

That little pom-pom on the church pictogram indicating a Christian holy site is where some zealot has used spray paint to blot out the cross. So it goes. Blessed are the graffitied.

Five years ago yesterday I got married to Ingrid Rodrick. That year it was also the day before an April 1st Palm Sunday, or as Kurt Vonnegut puts it, “Palm Sunday Eve … what we might call “Spikenard Saturday.” Vonnegut, one of my favorite authors, passed away about a week after our honeymoon, and I posted a tribute on the Sojourners blog, which I will excerpt here with little commentary, as I am in the midst of an anniversary weekend away in Tiberias and don’t want to take much time for blogging:

Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward – and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.

That quote comes from Vonnegut’s book Palm Sunday, from a sermon he delivered on Palm Sunday in 1980. I recently bought this book after some belabored indecision among the decaying stacks in the used book store, really wanting a funny novel for honeymoon reading more than this compilation of essays and biography. But it was the day before my wedding on Palm Sunday Eve, and I couldn’t resist the convergence. Perhaps because of these deliberations, the book ended up costing me $256 due to a ticket I received for unwittingly parking in a poorly-marked handicapped zone. In the spirit of Vonnegut, I could only curse and laugh: So it goes.

With his death following only 12 days later, I’m glad now to have the added insight into his life that this book provided, filling in the cracks that before I had only pieced together from the biographical fragments present in his fiction. So, as my new wife and I enjoyed our first Sunday as a married couple at a remote West Virginia cabin, Vonnegut provided our Palm Sunday sermon, which I excerpt for you free of charge:

I am enchanted by the Sermon on the Mount. Being merciful, it seems to me, is the only good idea we have received so far. Perhaps we will get another idea that good by and by – and then we will have two good ideas. What might that second good idea be? I don’t know. How could I know? I will make a wild guess that it will come from music somehow. …

I choose as my text the first eight verses of John 12, which deal not with Palm Sunday but with the night before – with Palm Sunday Eve, with what we might call “Spikenard Saturday.” I hope that will be close enough to Palm Sunday to leave you more or less satisfied. …

Now, as to the verses about Palm Sunday Eve: I choose them because Jesus says something in the eighth verse which many people I have known have taken as proof that Jesus himself occasionally got sick and tired of people who needed mercy all the time. I read from the Revised Standard Bible rather than the King James, because it is easier for me to understand. Also, I will argue afterward that Jesus was only joking, and it is impossible to joke in King James English. The funniest joke in the world, if told in King James English, is doomed to sound like Charlton Heston.

I read: “Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. There they made him supper; Martha served, but Lazarus was one of those at table with him.”

“Mary took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment.”

“But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was to betray him) said, ‘Why was this ointment not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?’ This, he said, not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief, and, as he had the money box, he used to take what was put into it. “

“Jesus said, ‘Let her alone, let her keep it for the day of my burial. The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.’” …

Whatever it was that Jesus really said to Judas was said in Aramaic, of course – and has come to us through Hebrew and Greek and Latin and archaic English. Maybe he only said something a lot like, “The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.” Perhaps a little something has been lost in translation. And let us remember, too, that in translations jokes are commonly the first things to go.

I would like to recapture what has been lost. Why? Because I, as a Christ-worshipping agnostic, have seen so much un-Christian impatience with the poor encouraged by the quotation “For the poor always ye have with you.”

…

This is too much for that envious hypocrite Judas, who says, trying to be more Catholic than the Pope: “Hey-this is very un-Christian. Instead of wasting that stuff on Your feet, we should have sold it and given the money to the poor people.” To which Jesus replies in Aramaic: “Judas, don’t worry about it. There will still be plenty of poor people left long after I’m gone.”

This is about what Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln would have said under similar circumstances.

If Jesus did in fact say that, it is a divine black joke, well-suited to the occasion. It says everything about hypocrisy and nothing about the poor. It is a Christian joke, which allows Jesus to remain civil to Judas, but to chide him for his hypocrisy all the same.

“Judas, don’t worry about it. There will still be plenty of poor people left long after I’m gone.” Shall I re-garble it for you? “The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have Me.”

My own translation does no violence to the words in the Bible. I have changed their order some, not merely to make them into the joke the situation calls for but to harmonize them, too, with the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount suggests a mercifulness that can never waver or fade.

This has no doubt been a silly sermon. I am sure you do not mind. People don’t come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.