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There’s Room for One More

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.  All went to their own towns to be registered.  Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.  He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. (Luke 2:1-7)

2020 has been not only the year of the pandemic, but the year of the census. So along with a daily accounting of infections and sadly, deaths, we have also been busy counting the people in our country.

It reminds me as I read this passage and eyeball that word census, my own family had a way of counting its members a long time ago, and there was always room for one more…

The Piskac Family trophy. That tag that shows a little face is mine, December 19, 1958.

For many years the trophy sat on a shelf in our kitchen. It was tarnished with age, and dangling from its edges were little markers strung on ribbons. On each marker was a photo on one side and a birth date on the other. After WWII, one of the aunts (I’m guessing my dad’s sister Heddy), thought it would be a great way to commemorate their growing families. When one of them had a baby, the trophy would be passed to that house, the marker would be added, and then they would wait for the next baby before passing it along again.

My dad arrived eight years after Heddy, who was at the time the youngest of four. My dad took her place as the baby, and when he got married and started the pack known as the Prescott cousins, the others had finished having their families. 1956 marked the year when the trophy came to our house…and stayed. Many years later, it was passed on as the generation represented on those markers began their own families. There was always room for one more. My cousin Gay has it now, as she is the keeper of all things related to our Piskac family.

That was our census taking mechanism.

I am writing about this on Christmas Eve, because I know my own birth story as recounted by my dad to me, reminds me of the birth of Jesus into his family, and that is what I am reflecting on this night, Christmas Eve in quarantine, 2020.

Christmas Eve, 1958, Grandma and Grandpa’s house at 1213 D Street in Omaha. There are the Omaha cousins whose names hung on the trophy. Seated to the far right is my mom Jeanne, holding baby Julie.

My birthday is December 19th, and I always wished I was born on Christmas. My dad told me that he and mom were worried that might be the case, and if so, they and I would miss the big annual gathering at Grandpa and Grandma Piskac’s house, where all the Omaha aunts, uncles, in-laws, and cousins would gather. So they had Dr. Baum induce me. Mom and I spent a few days in the hospital, and then they brought me home. And they made room for me at Grandpa’s on Christmas Eve. I can imagine that I was passed from one aunt to another, and that the grandmas present also took their turn. Such love in a big family all gathered together on such a night! There was room for one more, and that was me.

On the porch of Grandpa’s house at 1402 B Street, 1965. See how that family has grown? All of them, including Baby Cathy born the previous December (being held by our cousin Joyce) have markers on that trophy. And obviously there was room for one more, because Joyce’s then boyfriend is standing behind Grandpa. There was room for him in 1965, but Joyce didn’t marry him. She married another.

In this time of quarantine, we miss the big family gatherings where you pack everyone at the table, where there was always room for one more, just like there was room for me. With that in mind, here’s a new way to arrange your Christmas nativity set this year.

Dr. Ken Bailey, in his book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, writes of “critical flaws” in our simple, black-and-white reading of Luke’s text. Joseph and Mary were renounced by their family. Arriving in Bethlehem for the census, there is no room for them at the inn. They are forced to reside in a stable where Jesus is born and placed in a manger. It has been told as a story of rejection and loneliness.

But what if Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, was born into the bosom of family, not rejected at birth, but fully embraced in the community of his extended family? What if, in the culture of the place where family and hospitality are important, a pregnant Mary was brought in and cared for by the women of the family? What if the “inn” is actually a small guest room in a house already stuffed with other family members there for the census? The Greek word used by Luke for inn is “katalyma,” which is more like a guest room. These small homes would also hold the livestock at night, adding warmth to the house and keeping the ox and ass safe from thieves. And the manger where they put the baby Jesus was the feeding trough for the animals…inside the house. (Isn’t it amazing that the text never mentions an innkeeper, and yet somehow every year churches put on pageants featuring this man who is not there?)

Family and hospitality are key aspects of Middle Eastern culture as I have experienced it firsthand on my trips to Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. I have been invited to tea by shopkeepers in souqs, while they packed up my purchases. I have been offered cool refreshment in especially hot weather by observant Muslims during Ramadan, when they go without until sunset. I have watched from afar as a devastating blast on August 4, in the port of Beirut made 300,000 instantly homeless, and they were invited into the homes of others. Why would Joseph’s family treat him and his young bride any differently in their circumstance? There is always room for one more.

I checked this out with a friend of mine, Syrian by birth, who lives in Lebanon and is a pastor and a theologian. Riad assured me that this is how the people of the Middle East, those who live where Jesus was born, lived and had his ministry, would understand this story. He said that he remembers small houses like this, where the guest room, the katalyma, was a small, elevated platform over the main living area.

Can’t you just imagine the gathered aunts and grandmas and young cousins, all together to be counted for the census, passing that little baby from one set of arms to another? I am sure it was just like Christmas Eve at Grandpa’s house in 1958 when I was born.

This, to me, is the good news of Jesus’ coming: he came to be with us, and he got that start with us, in the warmth of a house filled with family, which is what we all celebrate at Christmas…and how we celebrate it! He showed us how to do it…now, let us all make room for more.

Earlier this year at a memorial service, I heard a wise pastor explain that sometimes we need some help with the translations from the original words. He gave me new perspective on Psalm 23. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life” is better translated as “surely goodness and mercy shall RUN AFTER ME, PURSUE ME, all the days of my life.”

God-with-us, Emmanuel, Jesus, the same One whose grace and mercy doesn’t merely follow me, but actively runs me down, is bold enough to live His name and be born within the bosom of family.

We all put out our lonely manger scenes with animals, feeding trough, and those three kings who come later. But right now to keep in tune with the real story, go find all those trolls and pocket pals and miniature Beanie Babies, whatever you have, and stuff them in. It’s Christmas! There is always room for one more!

Kenneth Bailey, “Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels,” InterVarsity Press, 2008.

https://www.1517.org/articles/three-hidden-hebrew-treasures-in-psalm-23

 

Together, Apart

Eight weeks into a pandemic that has us quarantined at home, I know I am one of the lucky ones. Where I work is just a walk through a door of the place where I live. Keeping away from people – in the physical distance sense of away – is easy. My circle of safety at home is Steve and Jana and I. At work in the family printing business, now so much smaller than when I started there after high school, the circle is of similar size: Mike, Kirk, Adrienne on some days, and sometimes Barb. Jana joins us as well, and Steve, now working from home next door, comes for lunch at least once a week. He is our hunter/gatherer as he searches for elusive items like toilet paper and now, meat.

My social needs have been met by Facebook connections, texts and phone calls, and even a Zoom meeting for a church committee on which I serve. Four glorious times I have been called to church to participate on the worship team, singing in harmony with good friends for the recorded services we have attended since the second Sunday of March.

This is life in the pandemic for my family in Omaha. Maybe some day we will all sit around and reminisce about how we stayed together while apart. I know, we all hope that day comes sooner than later!

I did manage to carve out some special time this week from the routine of life lived inside for these past eight weeks. Facebook provided the opportunity to join a Zoom gathering called “Singing Our Way Back Home.” It was led by a woman I know from Facebook, Ana Hernandez, who is a mystic, spiritual musician and singer. I don’t have a better way to explain her multitude of gifts other than those words. We did sing a bit with her, and we all voiced a mantra as well. I found myself finding the note that would harmonize with the other voices, creating peaceful and moving chords that were healing.

Ana has a great knowledge of sacred music from many traditions and shared about a number of pieces. One of the ones that really struck me was this hymn based on a scripture from Luke:

A Christmas Hymn by Richard Wilbur

“And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.”—St. Luke XIX, 39-40

A stable-lamp is lighted Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven,
A stall become a shrine.

This child through David’s city
Shall ride in triumph by;
The palm shall strew its branches,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
Though heavy, dull, and dumb,
And lie within the roadway
To pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken,
And yielded up to die;
The sky shall groan and darken,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
For stony hearts of men:
God’s blood upon the spearhead,
God’s love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,
The low is lifted high;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
In praises of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.

Ana gave us homework to do that reflected on this hymn, especially that doubled line at the middle of each stanza: “And every stone shall cry.” Amazingly enough, the creator who gave us voice has connected us to the rest of his creation. “Walk outside,” she told us. “Look around at the inanimate objects as simple as rocks, and know that they sing, too.” We are all in this together, animate and inanimate, even though apart.

She told us to find the object that revealed this connection in a personal way. And I knew just what I would choose as I ended the meeting. Being me, it couldn’t be just one, as I have a hard time choosing; indeed, there were two things I chose.

I have written about that little Roo before. In a trip to Syria in January, 2017, my group had the chance to sit with about thirty women who had all been displaced by ISIS from their homes in Homs. I was drawn to a beautiful woman with dark curly hair named Mahassen as she told her story. It was very much like the others, but her English was so good I really was able to capture the depth of loss.

Her family had mere minutes to get out as extremists came calling; there was no time to pack or gather what they would need to set up in a new place. Other than the clothes on her back, her husband and her children, all she took was that little Roo. I don’t know the meaning of the Roo to her, but it must have been special. It was the only thing she took.

After sitting with her at lunch, and spending time head-to-head and heart-to-heart, our time of parting was upon us. She took that little stuffed animal and placed it in my hands. “Oh, no! I can’t take it. It is too precious.” She would not leave until I accepted this gift.

It was all she had, and she gave it to me. Everything. She gave me everything.

The other item in the photo is a piece of broken blue glass. It was once part of a stained glass window in the Presbyterian Church in Aleppo, Syria. I had the opportunity to worship there in August, 2010, before the war, in community with that congregation. Like many churches, the sun shines through those colored windows and glows in different colors. That church was destroyed by extremists in November, 2012. Only rubble remained. The glow disappeared.

Returning to Aleppo in 2018, we had the opportunity to walk around the rubble with those same congregation members who still live and worship in Aleppo. Bits of Sunday school lessons littered the piles of stones, piled up for safekeeping and rebuilding. And there, winking at me as the sun caught its plane, was the piece of glass. Assis Ibrahim said I could take it as a reminder of what was, what is and what will be.

Those two objects, for me, define the idea of being connected in this time of being together, apart. As far as I am from Mahassen, Roo connects me to her and her story of losing everything, but still being able to give everything. We all have too much, really too, too much. But this little thing, this Roo, is enough. And what we have, we share. It may be the kind word on the phone, the personal card to a family suffering death, or the uplifting blending of voices in song. It is a little thing, yet it is everything, and it is enough.

That piece of glass reminds me that in the brokenness of pandemic and quarantine and isolation and social distancing, the light still shines through. Brokenness does not keep the light from shining through, and I see that in those same simple gestures of love, the drive-by birthday parties, the cheering for health care workers, a Kansas farmer sending his one extra N95 mask to the governor of New York.

Together, apart. The rocks sing out, and so do we. Let us join together in this song of love. Let the light shine through us and in us, and let that be enough.

Christmas 2019: Most Welcome

I’ve just had a wonderful weekend in the bosom of my birth family. Five of seven Prescott siblings spent time together at Lake McConaughy in the Nebraska sand hills. It has become a sort of tradition as we make our ways from eastern Colorado and eastern Nebraska to meet in the middle. It is the way we spend Christmas together, if not actually on Christmas day. The next generation and their significant others join us and are not too put off by the goofiness and teasing of those who are now the elders.

Yup. With Susan crossing over to her sixth decade in a few months, we are now officially a majority of sixty-somethings.

Prescott siblings 1966. FIrst Christmas without mom.

That seems weird as I contemplate the Christmases of our youth. Our gang of seven kids would descend upon Grandpa and Grandma Piskac’s home along with the cousins who are the children of my dad’s siblings. I can only remember it vaguely because I was so young, but I think my grandparents on that side must have been saints to invite such mayhem into their house. People were everywhere! As we got older, and grew to ten, it moved to our house. How those gatherings can still make me smile as I remember the fort of presents around the tree and Aunt Hon’s Christmas tree cake and Aunt Tillie’s box of perfect cookies. And people were everywhere! When Jana and I bought a house to ease the burden on our parents, the celebration moved to Chicago Street. Potluck food! More Christmas cookies! Even more cousins! People were everywhere!

I appreciate the quietness of Christmas now, as Jana, Steve and I will open our gifts on Christmas day after spending Christmas Eve at the candlelighting service at our church. The advent wreath will be fully lit: purple, purple, pink and purple, for hope, peace, joy and love. The center white candle will also glow with the incarnation, the presence we have anticipated and waited for these past weeks. The quiet singing of Silent Night, Holy Night, as the church family passes the light from candle to candle has come to represent for me the perfect experience of oh holy night, the night that Christ was born. Because it was quiet, right? Says so in the song.

I have come to believe that it is especially those moments, in the bosom of family gathered, whether birth family, adopted family or church family, that is the Christmas story of Christ’s birth. In traveling back and forth to the Middle East for almost ten years, I have been a grateful student of those of who live in that context. They live and raise families in the place where Christ was born. They introduced me to a scholar named Kenneth Bailey who gave me a whole new vision of how that holy night was experienced by the family of Jesus, the Immanuel, God-with-us. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a silent night!

We think of the words of Luke 2:7, “And she brought forth her firstborn son; and she wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn,” and believe that Jesus was born to his parents alone in the night, rejected by everyone. Oh, that innkeeper! How rude! But read that link and discover this word: kataluma. That is the Greek word used in the passage that is not the same word for inn used in the story of the Good Samaritan. It is a word that describes a part of a typical house of that place and time where guests would stay. At this time in the world, all were gathering for the census and people coming from all over would go to their ancestral homes for the count.

In other words, Joseph’s family’s home was packed! People everywhere! No room in the kataluma, because the house was stuffed! Middle Eastern hospitality says, “Family! Come in anyway! All we have left is the place where we brought the animals in to warm and be warm, but you are most welcome!”

That’s where Jesus was born…in the bosom of family. Most welcome.

“Most welcome” are two words I hear over and over as I travel to be in the bosom of family in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Right now it is nine time zones ahead of me and the darkness of night has settled in there. Candles are being lit. Hymns are being sung. And the darkness of war and protest and violence does not overcome the light that is born this night. If I was there, I would be most welcome, and so would you. We would gather around that manger and marvel at the gift of God-with-us.

Jesus is born in the bosom of family. Oh come, let us adore him. You are most welcome.

Holy Week Reflection

Notre Dame Cathedral burned this week. Of all the great holy cathedrals and the humble worship spaces I have been in, I have never been in Notre Dame. Maybe it will be rebuilt in as little as five years and I will get my chance, but I just don’t know. I do know that the congregation who gather there every Sunday will not be celebrating Easter within its 850 year old walls and that is sad.

The fact that it burned during Holy Week  just added to the melancholy I was already feeling in my own version of Lent in Omaha, Nebraska.

During the Lenten season many Christians practice a spiritual discipline of giving something up to mirror the forty days of Jesus’ fasting and praying in the desert. Tempted as he was by the devil, he kept to his discipline of fasting and praying and gave the devil his due. I didn’t choose to give up anything this Lent, but it was kind of foisted upon me by circumstance: no choir on Maundy Thursday.

My little church choir has diminished over time and no one seems to want to commit to a church choir with weekly practices anymore. With our tenor section (two great guys) out for personal reasons, we couldn’t field a choir for Maundy Thursday this week. We couldn’t sing this past Christmas Eve for the same reason: not enough vocal mass.

It is so sad to mourn the slow death of something so beloved.

That was not the only loss. The same night we learned we would not be singing on Maundy Thursday, I asked a question at the end of rehearsal:

“Are we going to sing the Hallelujah Chorus at the end of Easter services?”

It is one of the great traditions of our church. As a church consultant once told us, we shouldn’t violate the DNA, the code, of our church. Singing the Hallelujah Chorus by Handel at the end of Easter service would be one of those things that I would say defines the code of our church. Led by the choir, anyone in the congregation who wanted to come up to sing was invited. Even as our choir has diminished over my twenty years as an alto, the choir was always magnified by the multitude who came up. Generations of families would come together. Indeed, Jana and I used to join our dad back before we were choir members. The congregation becomes the choir and it was glorious!

“No. We are not doing that this year. We’re closing with Christ the Lord Is Risen Today. The choir is too small.”

It is a glorious piece to be in the midst of when it is sung. Contrary to popular belief it is not the closing chorus of Handel’s Messiah. That is an even better piece, Worthy Is the Lamb and the great Amen. I am blessed enough to sing them both every year with a large community chorus at Thanksgiving time. But this year in my own church, no.

I gave into my disappointment and went home that Wednesday night to search YouTube files for the Hallelujah Chorus. I was looking for a particular version that I was a part of in 2010 when I organized a flash mob to sing it at our local mall. 2,500 people turned out to sing on the Saturday before my birthday. My pastor/mentor/boss/friend George Moore recorded my favorite version. At the end he gives a “whoop!” and a “happy birthday, Julie!” I have listened to it every day this week, feeling the loss of George two years later, and now the loss of the tradition at my church.

But Maundy Thursday worship went on without the choir, and it was a lovely mournful service as it is every year. Hymns. Readings. The sorrowful rumble of organ and cello together. It sets the mood as we remember why it is we celebrate communion, why we break the bread and lift the cup. That same Jesus who spent forty days in the desert with the devil yapping at him, trying to trip up his holiness, said that when we eat this bread and drink this cup we should remember him and what he was about to go through for our sakes, even for mine.

The church had set up a something called Journey to the Cross. It was a Presbyterian version of the stations of the cross I had walked every Good Friday while I worshiped in the Roman Catholic Church. I thought of the congregation of Notre Dame Cathedral and that they could not walk those stations this year, or next year, or who knows when again. Their DNA had been clipped, their code altered, just like my church.

I didn’t take the journey of the cross at church this week, but I have contemplated and reflected on the stations of the cross that I walked last summer at St. Benedict Center in Schuyler, Nebraska, on a silent retreat with my sister Jana. The stations are beautiful bronze plaques set on a circular path in a cornfield. On one side is a picture in relief of each of the fourteen stations, and on the reverse is a prayer of remembrance.

I contemplated how many of them showed women who were walking that way with Jesus. He reached out to them, and they reached back. In his suffering, they offered care and love and their tears. He accepted it all, and he accepts mine as well.

So it is the end of holy week. We remember. We remember in the bread, in the cup. We remember in words and in music. We remember in steps of a painful journey. We remember those who have gone before us and shown us the way.

And tomorrow is Easter, and although there will be no public Hallelujah Chorus at my church, and no Easter worship in Notre Dame, we will remember and celebrate the one who walked the way of the cross, was dead and buried, and rose again.

Christ the Lord is risen today! Hallelujah! Amen.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus

I haven’t blogged in a while. It’s not that I don’t have things to say that I hope others will read, it’s just that my bank of time seems to be overdrawn these days. Life interrupts, eh? I made a tough decision earlier this year between the two retreats I speak of in this blog. The decision was, for now, to withdraw from my master’s program in ministry. I hope to resume one year from now, but we will see what life throws at me in the interim…travel to Syria in February, to Lebanon in August, Jana’s medical needs, family. You all have a similar list; the blanks may be filled in differently, but that is life.

Over the last three summers plus two weeks online in the fall I have had what has been the most fulfilling and filling class: The History of Christian Spirituality, taught by Dr. Wendy M. Wright. You should look her up and buy her books! You will be most blessed. From the beginning, people who have been called to follow the way of Jesus have expressed their understanding of him through traditions of spirituality. Just how has that wild goose of a Holy Spirit manifested to them how to experience and share the love of God in Christ…that is spirituality, at least as I understand it. The trajectory from the beginning has been, as St. Isaac the Syrian says, love. That is what I have learned from the martyrs and monks, the mendicants and mystics, and finally in part three, the early modern disciples who carried on in reformation times.

Throughout this course of study I have written two previous papers. The readings I did, the voices I heard, all had prominent connections for me in this age with those I have journeyed with in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Throughout my class discussions and in those papers I have used example after example to illustrate how these streams of spirituality still flow in God’s saints walking the earth today. This third class was different, and even more personal as I connected these stories with my life with my sister Jana.

Here then is my final paper. I write it in honor of and in gratitude to Jana whose life has modeled mercy, charity, love, light, faith and hope for me. Footnotes, bibliography and all, I hope you find a blessing in it.

“Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal…envisioned a transformed world of conjoined human and divine hearts. They taught that through the practice of the little virtues, spiritual friendship, prayer and service to one another, the hearts of each ‘Theotimus’ or ‘Philothia’ (God lovers) can be transformed and the gentle heart of Jesus live anew.”[1]

I begin my reflection on the back page of one of our texts that came with me to our cohort’s silent retreat following our day of class on June 16, 2018. I was struck by a group of people I had never heard of, and this quote drew me in. As I walked the labyrinth at Griswold, I had a sense that some how God’s heart was in the middle of its twists and turns, and the only way for me to find God’s heart was to keep walking until I got to the center. It was so frustrating! I would get so close and then a twist would take me all the way to the outer ring, as far from the center as I could be. “Oh Lord,” I prayed as continued walking, “why is my pitiful human heart so far from yours? Why can’t you just grab mine right now and fuse it to yours?” Upon reaching the middle and calming down, I was struck by the realization that God had been with me the whole time. His heart was not in the middle of the labyrinth, but had been guiding me the whole way, enabling me to joyfully walk back out.

Labyrinth, Creighton Retreat Center, Griswold, Iowa, June, 2018.

There is much to reflect on in this final section of the history of Christian spirituality, and I cannot do any of it justice, so I will restrict my reflection to what has captured my attention in the weeks of reading and the weeks since where life has intersected with our assignments.

The fifteenth century was a time of reformation, birthing protestant churches and reforms in the Catholic church.[2] What does it mean to be a Christian? How is the spirit of God made manifest in those who profess Jesus Christ? For people like Martin Luther and John Calvin it was about finding God’s authority in scripture, and understanding that our only hope of being restored to God’s image was through grace freely offered.[3] Sometimes I struggle with Luther and his “solas,” especially, sola scriptura (I find so much to augment scripture in tradition and reason!), but there is this: “For Luther, spirituality consists in a heartfelt trust in Christ’s work ‘for me’ and in generous service to the neighbor.”[4] If I could put this back into a language of hearts being joined, God’s grace informs my heart to see his heart in those around me. For me this is the essence of Matthew 25: “…for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink…‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’” (vs. 35-40)

I know there is much more to reflect on the protestant traditions – I could do a whole reflection just on the beautiful poetry and hymns and the piety they portray – but what really moved me in this class were the Catholic traditions, beginning with the Carmelites. The vision statement of my church is to be on the journey with the living Christ, and that is the language that struck me in the story of the Carmelites. Their journey is modeled on Elijah, “a man on a journey, always on the way from ‘here’ to ‘there’ in response to God’s call…”[5] Scripture tells us that God calls Elijah to the Wadi Cherith, to drink from the stream. (I Kings 17:2-7) Cherith means love: God quenches our thirst with his love. This love transforms us as we are drenched in the presence of God.

Out of this tradition of the Carmelites come people like Teresa of Avila. A reformer of her order, she also spoke of a journey and left writings (such as The Way of Perfection,) behind to help us take that inner journey with God. “For Teresa the inner journey is one where the love and mercy of God transform her. However, she does this while being very conscious that the way forward is to allow her humanity to be transformed and linked to the humanity of Christ.”[6] “Friendship with God and entry into the life of the Trinity is the end of the journey…Again it is the humanity of Christ as found in the Gospels that is the way for Teresa. Christ is the teacher and the ‘Our Father’ is the great prayer that he gives us.”[7] As I shared in one of my discussion posts, that prayer has been often prayed and contemplated in my sixty years of life. To share it with Teresa as a guidepost on the journey is a gift.

Technology of the time – the printing press! – was able to put the words of the scriptures in many more hands. For Teresa of Avila, it was the great teachings of Jesus from which the Our Father poured forth, the sermon on the mount. For Francis de Sales, the great defining scripture of his spirituality can be found a bit later in the book of Matthew: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (11:28) “Jesus reveals the heart of God.”[8] And so “Hearts that are claimed by the gentle Heart of Jesus inspire and draw other hearts to them, beating and breathing with the force of love.”[9] The community of women he built with Jane de Chantal, the Visitation of Holy Mary, modeled for non-ordained people like me what the picture of Christian community looks like. For someone who lives with and cares for a handicapped sister, knowing that Jane, a widow with children, could have a life of ministry in her every day life gave me pause to reflect on what Jana and I have together in our own little community. “What her director [Francis de Sales] was teaching her was to ‘Live Jesus!’, to make of her heart a vessel through which the divine life could enter the world.”[10]

First communion scapular from 1966.

This beautiful Salesian spirituality of the heart has moved me greatly. I left the Catholic church a long time ago, but have often thought on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. As I was reading about Margaret Mary Alacoque and her vision, which inspired this devotion, I went to my jewelry box where an old and tattered scapular has remained with me since my first communion in second grade. There were the depictions of the two sacred hearts, one of Jesus and the other of Mary. This tradition had been entwined with my life for a long time, but now there were words and people who could give voice to what it means to me:

This divine Heart is an inexhaustible fountain from which three streams are continually flowing. The first is the stream of mercy, which flows down upon sinners and brings the spirit of sorrow and repentance. The second is the stream of charity which brings relief to all those who are suffering under some need, and especially those who are striving for perfection…The third is the stream of love and light for perfect friends whom He wills to unite with Himself.”[11]

Finally, I want to touch on Vincent de Paul. The story we heard of Vincent de Paul in the Creighton podcast brought me back again to the Matthew 25 story I mentioned earlier. As I noted while listening, “Assigned to a rural parish, he fell in love with the poor and his ministry to them.”[12] He “fell in love” with the poor and experienced the “privileged presence of grace, the poor as masters and teachers…he turned the medal over and saw the face of Jesus.”[13] This to me is a continuation of that idea of joining the human and divine hearts, and this is an expression of grace that moves me to tears. I believe that to see the face of God in those around us is exactly what God calls us to. This is the heart of the gospel: to love God and to love our neighbor as ourself. We cannot love God without loving neighbor, and we cannot love neighbor unless we see God on the other side of that medal!

This has been a rich and deep study of many traditions, and it happened too quickly. As the expression goes, it was like drinking from a firehose! But as I stated at the beginning of my reflection, life in the present day intersected with my reading and my pondering. One week after I began with a whole day of class followed by a silent retreat where I read the back cover of Heart to Heart, I found myself at yet another silent retreat. This one was directed by two women of my own church and was held at the Benedictine Center in Schuyler, Nebraska. I went with my afore-mentioned sister Jana. She is handicapped from a car/train collision in 1983, which occurred on her way home from a Bible study. Just as at Griswold, there is a labyrinth in Schuyler. I really wanted Jana to experience the journey of the walk in, and the inner journey that is part of it. Unfortunately, Jana cannot walk rough ground by herself, and the wheelchair we used for longer distances was no help either. And so we parked it, and made our way slowly through the deep grass until we arrived.

Holding up together, St. Benedict Center, Schuyler, Nebraska, June, 2018.

As I held on to her to stabilize her, we took very slow steps. Violating the silence of the retreat, I whispered to her what I had discovered the prior weekend at Griswold: “Jana, look…there is the center, where we find God’s heart. It is so far away and yet so close. Oh my! We have to go by it again! When will we get there and throw ourselves into his loving embrace?”

 

In the middle of the Labyrinth, St. Benedict Center, Schuyler, Nebr., June, 2018.

It took an entire hour to get to the middle. Slow step. Foot drag. Slow step. Foot drag. But we made it and I shared my revelation with her. “God was WITH us the whole time! He is not a place we have to find! He finds us and walks WITH us!”

Being proud of my revelation from the week before, I was convicted once again that not only my Christology, but the way I experience God was still being refined. My revelation was that not only was Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us, is always there, but that indeed for me personally he has been speaking to me, caring for me, loving me up close through the broken body of my sister for the past thirty-five years. I may have been holding her up through the labyrinth, but she has held me up through life, inviting me back into the community of the church. When I flip the medal of Jana’s face over, there is Jesus. When my body aches from holding her up, that is the privileged presence of grace. When we have walked the halls of Congress advocating for the poor around the world with Bread For the World, we are living Jesus. On that dark night in 1983 when she was struck, “thy will be done” became more than just a line in the Our Father to be repeated unthinkingly every night. Thy will be done is what you pray as you journey with the living Christ on a pilgrimage to join your heart with his in the dance that partners humanity and divinity. Through thirty-five years of sharing her heart with me in words and deeds, three streams of mercy, charity, love and light have flowed from her like living streams.

Let me finish this reflection with this quote which illustrates what I have just tried to say about my life with and for my sister Jana. In speaking of Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth:

And as the mark of divine visitation is transformation, in the course of this most ordinary event of a cousins’ reunion, the two women are transformed. They are transformed as the world is transformed by the action of God’s love. In their heart to heart meeting these women are the images of both the individual and communal life inspired by the Spirit of love…The kingdom of God, the reign of divine love, is thus in Salesian spirituality aptly named as a visitation – a union of divine and human love, a love most vividly realized on earth as spiritual friendship.[14]

Some people might have looked at us that day at the labyrinth and thought, “Isn’t that nice…one woman holding up another so she can walk the labyrinth?” What they did not comprehend was that Jana was holding me up through this journey. Human love and divine love, joined in a spiritual friendship. And that has made all the difference for us both.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

McGreal, Wilfrid. At the Fountain of Elijah: The Carmelite Tradition. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999.

Raitt, Jill. “European Reformations of Christian Spirituality.” In The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality, edited by Arthur Holder, 122-138. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

Wright, Wendy M. Heart Speaks to Heart: The Salesian Tradition. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004.

Wright, Wendy M. MAM769C Lecture notes, June 16, 2018.

Wright, Wendy M. “St. Vincent De Paul.” Catholic Comments Podcast, 22 Sept. 2014, cucatholicctr.org/2014/09/st-vincent-de-paul/.

[1] Wendy M. Wright, Heart Speaks to Heart: The Salesian Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), Back cover.

[2] MAM769C lecture notes, June 16, 2018.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Jill Raitt. “European Reformations of Christian Spirituality.” In The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality, edited by Arthur Holder, 122-138. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 124,

[5] Wilfrid McGreal, At the Fountain of Elijah: The Carmelite Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 38.

[6] Ibid, 56.

[7] Ibid, 58.

[8] Lecture notes, June 16, 2018.

[9] Ibid, Wright, 34.

[10] Ibid, 46.

[11] Ibid, 102.

[12] Wendy M. Wright. “St. Vincent De Paul.” Catholic Comments Podcast, 22 Sept. 2014, cucatholicctr.org/2014/09/st-vincent-de-paul/.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid, Wright, 53.

Remembrance and Community

After a full Saturday, I ask that you walk through it with us in reverse, for that is how I found the message of today that birthed the title of this blog.

Marilyn, Grace, Reem (refugee from Mosul, Iraq, who serves at OLD), Sheryl, Evangeline, Rola, me

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? 5 It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages[a] and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly. “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7 The poor you will always have with you,[b] and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8 She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.9 Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” (Mark 14:3-9)

We ended our day at a beautiful treasure in Beirut, the Beirut National Museum. Like many museums housing artifacts of the ancient world, the treasures housed within its stone walls remind us of just how old the world is. Civilizations left markers – remembrances – that people have walked these lands for way longer than the average attention span of smart-phone-wielding 21st century folk would care to think about. We are people who live in the moment. Yesterday’s news is, well, yesterday’s news. But even as we have marked our days here on this trip with data-draining amounts of photos on those smart phones to remember, the ancients left markers as well so they would be remembered.

Tombstone of Theoros and Alaphatha, Beirut National Museum

From a Roman period tomb, these words are carved in the lid of the sarcophagus: “Theoros. Alaphatha who purchased and built [this tomb].” Clearly, Theoros and Alaphatha wanted to be remembered, and on this day some twenty centuries later, they are. In a museum, a place that stands filled with what has happened in the past, we remember: Here is a marker that is witness to the fact that Theoros and Alaphatha walked this earth in this place.

Two-sided sheet of Syriac hymns, ink on paper, Beirut National Museum.

There are mummies in this museum that date to the 13th century, CE, found in a nearly inaccessible cave. Not only the mummies themselves, but due to the climate in that area, clothing and even paper items with ink writings were preserved. There apparently was a community of people who left a nearby region due to the clashes between Crusaders and Muslims for the control of that area and settled in these caves for safety. The finding of these tombs and relics helps us to fill in a bit of history and remember them. We may not know their names like Theoros and Alaphatha, but we know they could read, they could write (hymns!), they could sew and embroider, they sought refuge in times of crisis, and they lost children at a very young age.

These things struck me as I wandered the museum because we had just come from a visit to the Our Lady Dispensary (OLD), a ministry partner that is supported by The Outreach Foundation. Founded in the 1980s during the midst of the Lebanese Civil War, it is located in a second-story apartment in a Christian area of Beirut that houses the very poor. If Jesus was walking the earth today instead of first century Palestine, this is most likely where he would have pitched his tent! In the more than thirty years since this ministry moved into this neighborhood, they have served waves of poor refugees who have knocked at their doors. Where once it was Lebanese trying to survive in the conflict that raged from 1975-1990, now it is more likely Syrians who started arriving in 2012 and Iraqis in 2014.

Knock on the door and you will meet Grace Boustani, the social worker who is herself a survivor of the Lebanese war. Her family fled to Canada, but Grace felt the call to return to her homeland to serve. An angel of God if ever there was one, no one has been more aptly named. With support from ministry partners, Grace and OLD have provided relief for up to 1,000 families monthly over the past six years. Rola al Kattar, another angel of God, serves along with Grace at OLD in providing trauma recovery programs for women and children.

Today Grace and Rola introduced us to two Syrian families. Khadija from Raqqa and Aisha from Aleppo have been in this poor neighborhood for two years and one and half years respectively. Each woman has two sons. Both Muslim, they did not know each other except that one lived on the first floor of an apartment, and one lived below. The community they have formed, almost combining families really, came out of tragedy. Khadija’s then less than two-year old, Sami, got hold of a lighter and lit the crib of his baby brother on fire, burning the baby severely. As with most refugee families, there are limited resources. Fathers find only day work in Beirut. There is no health insurance. Daily bread is not assured. How would they get treatment for this severely burned child?

Aisha, whose home and family were also impacted by the fire in the building, stepped forward to help. She would care for Sami, along with her own two sons, Mahmoud and Abed al Kadr, while Khadija went north to Tripoli to find emergency care and surgery for the baby. “I put myself in her shoes: What if this had happened to me? Would anyone step forward to help?”

Looking at these two women who have endured so much in a world where it seems that everyone around you is only thinking of self-survival, there was a bond of community – of family – that reminded us of the empathy, the compassion, that Jesus modeled. Aisha, a woman with nothing, gave all she had to care for Khadija’s Sami.

The reason we can know – and remember! – their story is because of OLD. Aisha came seeking medical help for her own sons, caring also for the son of another. When Grace heard the story, she and OLD have provided the small relief they can. In a poor community in the midst of a refugee crisis where so many need so much, OLD stands in the gap where it can to serve the Khadijas and Aishas of this world. Praise God for the faithfulness of this ministry and those who support it! As the woman in that passage from Mark is remembered by us today for something more beautiful and sacrificial than a tombstone in a museum, Aisha’s love and the love of Grace and Rola and OLD will be remembered by the God who created them. We remember them with this story and are grateful to carry it to you.

Rev. Najla breaks the bread in remembrance

I said we were walking this day in reverse. We began it this morning with the culmination of the women’s conference as we gathered for a communion service led by Rev. Najla Kassab. Marilyn read the words of institution for us from 1 Corinthians, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

Rev. Najla lifts the cup in remembrance

We celebrated communion this morning with the community of faith, the same community of faith that has birthed ministries like OLD and serves through the hands of people like Grace and Rola and Najla in the name of Jesus, whom we remember in the breaking of the bread and covenant of the cup. The only marker is a simple plate and plain cup, not a painted tomb in a museum. The words remind us. The community remembers. May it ever be.

P.S. This is a long narrative, but I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you a bit more about Reem. She is a refugee (with her family) from the Mosul area of Iraq who has been in the neighborhood for three years. They are stuck here, refusing to return to Iraq (there is nothing to return to, all is lost there for them) and rejected for emigration by other countries. It is a difficult existence for people like Reem.

Even in such difficult conditions, Reem, who was embraced with small bits of hope from OLD, now serves with OLD as a kind of right-hand to Grace. She knows and reaches out to hundreds of Iraqi families in this poor neighborhood. Grace to grace, that is the story of Reem and OLD.

City of Hope

Dhour Chouier women’s conference’s City of Hope

…but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. (Isaiah 40:31)

How did it get to be Friday already? Now nearing the end of the women’s conference, the hour for goodbyes is not far away. What this means is that the rate of picture taking increases among us so we can capture that one last special moment of hugs and smiles before we part in tears. Where our cameras had measured the photos in hundreds per day, we will probably be in the thousands by later this evening! How special it is when sisters in Christ gather to share their faith, their hope, and their love.

Each day when we have gathered in the morning, we have a time of worship. Elias and Petra lead us in song and prayer, we have a Bible study (these have centered on scriptures about women) and sandwiched in between is a theological reflection on our theme of hope. I had the great privilege today of presenting that reflection, and I took my cue from Marilyn’s on Tuesday about the people in our lives who have been witnesses of this hope that does not disappoint.

I get the chance to tell about my sister Jana, on the screen behind me, as I speak of our journey of hope.

I shared with the group that hope is a journey. Where fear freezes us in our tracks, tells us to stop, hope tells us to go. God is with us. He has already written the end of the story. I told them that I thank God every day for Facebook because it keeps this global community hooked together across the miles so that we can share each other’s stories. Most of my posts fall into three categories: my husband, the people of Syria and Lebanon (you can read my message about that in the most recent edition of The Outreach Foundation magazine here, just go to page 12), and my sister Jana.

Jana’s life verse is that passage from Isaiah. She is head injured. She cannot speak clearly and walks with support, but has no strength in her body. And yet her life of hope brought me back to the community of faith, my church in Omaha. It was there I met my husband. Together the three of us are a family of faith. And it was from joining that church that I met Marilyn Borst who introduced me to the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon and engaged me with the community in this place. Jana’s witness of hope, her waiting on the Lord, renewed her strength and mine, has allowed us to walk and run and soar in the journey that Jesus calls us to.

Our worship leaders Petra and Elias Jabbour surround our trip leader Marilyn Borst on the steps of the Cedar House in the city of hope.

Elias’ Bible study on the story-in-a-story of the bleeding woman (Mark 5:21-43) was just the extra blessing I needed today about hope. As Elias told it, this story is the meat in the “Mark sandwich.” It interrupts the story of Jairus who wanted Jesus to heal his daughter. It was a great reminder that Jesus’ miracles are not feats of magic, but an invitation to those who are weak physically (like Jana) or spiritually (like me) to reach out in faith and grab onto Jesus, if only onto the hem of his cloak. Her healing restored her to the community, in fact, put her right back into the center of it as he singled her out for her faith. You see, fear says stop, but hope says go!

Amal (which means hope) sits with Marilyn on the terrace. Amal is from Sweida, the town that lost over 200 in a terrorist attack on Wednesday.

For some of us this day of hope began with sad news, a reminder that the war continues. At last report, 238 people had died in Sweida, a city in the south of Syria near the border of Jordan. Surprise and suicide attacks by ISIS decimated families and neighborhoods in this place that is mostly Druze, but Christians are there as well. At least one woman at the conference lives there, so she would know by name those who died and were buried today.

Here in this place of peace and calm, we rely on that word from God that says he is with us always, and we recover our hope. Indeed, hope remains with us and in us, and tonight we gathered all the houses of hope – all those signs in shining lights – into one great village. And we remember where we began our journey of hope this week in God’s word:

For you have been my hope, Sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth. From birth I have relied on you; you brought me forth from my mother’s womb. I will ever praise you. I have become a sign to many; you are my strong refuge. (Psalm 71:5-7)

But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. (1 Peter 3:15a)

Jesus is our hope. The sign has been given to us by others.

Jesus is our reason for our hope. That is, and remains, our answer.

Evangeline, Marilyn, Me and Sheryl on the center’s terrace for afternoon coffee.

And so we gathered at the Cedar House tonight, little houses of hope lit from within, like the spirit of God lights us from within. We circled up for a prayer service, a community of hope. Sheryl opened us in English, and Arabic voices followed, as we prayed for couples, for children, for new families just forming, and for women. We punctuated each prayer by singing the Kyrie Elieson to a haunting Middle Eastern tune.

Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.

Back now on the porch of the Carslaw House, we can look up the short road to Cedar and see the lights brightening the dusky night. Here there is hope. Here there is light. Here there is Jesus.

Houses of Hope

For you have been my hope, Sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth. From birth I have relied on you; you brought me forth from my mother’s womb. I will ever praise you. I have become a sign to many; you are my strong refuge. (Psalm 71:5-7)

But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. (1 Peter 3:15a)

Marilyn gathered our little team at the front of the conference center for the morning worship portion of the daily schedule. Sweet Elias Jabbour, now assigned as pastor to the congregation in Yazdieh, Syria, and his beautiful wife Petra, lead worship each morning so beautifully in word and song. Marilyn was doing a reflection for the group on hope, which is this year’s theme. You read about it yesterday. The theme verse is Psalm 71:5, but she took us two verses farther into the text.

“I have become a sign to many…”

As Christians, followers of Jesus, we do have this hope. It is not the wish kind of hope: I hope I get a close parking space. I hope I get into the university I want. I hope the cancer goes away. No, this hope is not about circumstance, but the assurance that a gracious God has already written the end of our story and accompanies us along the journey. The verse puts the emphasis on the I have, but Marilyn took the moments to remind us all that we have because others have been those signs for us.

She invited Evangeline and me to model this by each of us offering a story of someone who had been a sign of hope to us in our own journeys. Everyone has these signs, whether it is the nurse from Ghana in a one-night hospital encounter who reminds you that your faith is strong and will see you through the anxiety, or the pastor who walked with you for ten years using his terminal cancer to point you to the reason for your faith.

We have this hope. It is modeled to us by others. And as Peter says in his first epistle, we are prepared to give an answer for why we carry this hope inside us: Jesus and his sacrificial redeeming love.

That hope resides in us like we reside in our houses. The light shines forth from those who have this hope as a testimony about our Jesus to the world around us. It shines the light you might have burning in your kitchen, that lights the center of the house and spreads outward.

Houses of hope, lit from within. It is a powerful image.

And so we spent this afternoon down in the old conference hall setting up tables of welcome. Four chairs per table, one cardboard house per seat, six cups of paint, one cup of gesso and an assortment of brushes, were the tools for the women to create their own individual house of hope. Our sister and friend Izdihar Kassis, who shared her ministries with us last week in Zahle, is an artist of the finest kind. In the previous months, she had taken various sizes of these cardboard houses and buildings and painted them in different shades, each having the iconic red roof of this country. They were arranged in the hall before our ladies as the City of Hope. It was a great reminder of what it means when the houses of hope and light form a community.

We invited half of the conference attendees in for a two-hour session. Izdihar showed them how to proceed: first the gesso is applied and allowed to dry. Then just paint away. Apply glitter to your roof for a good sparkle! What would your house look like? Would it be green or blue or red? Would it have a red roof? Would the window frames be a different color? Well, picture yours in your mind, but take a look at the beauty that came out of the house of hope studio at Dhour Chouier today. Magnificent!

The final addition to each house was a small flickering battery light. Oh yes! These houses of hope radiate light. As we finish the project tomorrow afternoon with the rest of the ladies, we will have a city of hope that contains around one hundred shining houses of hope. We hope to arrange them along the paths here on Friday so that the whole place will be shining with hope.

The sign has been given to us. We take it and shine it for the world to see. Our reason is sure: Jesus. Jesus. Give us Jesus.

Amen and amen.

Roads and Boundaries

But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. (Eph. 2:13-14)

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” (Mark 6:30-31)

It is the Sabbath, the Lord’s day, and one of the joys of traveling to be with the church in the world is the gathering with brothers and sisters to celebrate and worship together. Language barriers don’t have to be a problem: hymn tunes are recognizable and if we don’t know the Arabic, we can sing the English snippets we know or create whole new hymns. We can confess in any language. And we stretch out our hands to receive the benediction. We were made to worship and to glorify our Lord, and that is what we set out to do on this Sabbath day.

Dear Rev. Nuhad Tomeh had us loaded into the car and on the road from Beirut at 8:30 this morning. Our destination was the church in Deir Mimas, in the far south of Lebanon, right by the Lebanon-Israel border. We drove through Sidon and by the old crusader castle ruins there and the same fishermen from yesterday with a fresh catch. We turned east before Tyre, where we had spent such wonderful hours yesterday. The view changed from seacoast to rolling hills and eventually the low mountains. We rose on the twisted roads as we came to Deir Mimas, a beautiful mountain town with at least seven churches, one of them the Presbyterian church where we would gather.

Worship with Deir Memas congregation, July 22, 2018.

Deir Mimas church dates to 1861 when the missionaries planted it. It once had around 300 members and an evangelical school, where Dr. Assad Skoury, an elder and leader of the church, told us his father had attended. Many people have left this area due to the long occupation by Israel, and the church now worships about 20-25 people on summer Sundays like this one. Families who have emigrated return in the summer, as the climate is beautiful. In the winter, they only worship two Sundays per month. The numbers don’t matter because as we know, where two or more are gathered in his name, there he is among us.

It was a very special treat today, as two Syrian seminary students supported by The Outreach Foundation were on a two-week temporary assignment with this congregation. Adon Naaman of Latakia was preaching and George Shammas of Aleppo was assisting. Dr. Skoury, who runs an amazing clinic and dispensary for those in the area (including Syrian refugees) was our accompanist. As Adon preached his well-presented sermon, Dr. Assad sat next to me and whispered a translation into my ear, most of which I caught.

“What is an apostle? An apostle is one who is sent, not to be in charge, but to serve and to encourage. They are sent to the wilderness, where they are challenged and strengthened.”

Adon told a very personal story of visiting a gentleman in his Latakia congregation who had been made quadriplegic by a surgical accident. Expecting to be the comforter and encourage to this man, Adon instead found himself the receiver of encouragement when the man reminded him that he should always remember the spirit of life inside him that made him smile.

“That smile will invite people to ask, ‘Why do you smile?’ and you will be quick to tell them it is because of Jesus. This is the best way to share the gospel.”

Indeed. As each of us is sent to a wilderness – a wild place, a desert place, a place to be the ambassador of the incarnate one – let us be the smile that begs the question why? and thus share the gospel in the best way.

Map from my Bible showing Tyre on the west coast of the land near the top. Deir Mimas would be just a bit south of Caesarea Philippi.

After worship we hit the road again, this time for lunch. The twisting mountain road took us right up to the border, not easily missed due to razor wire, electric fences and a wall of tall concrete panels. Looking across from an observation point, it was my first experience confronting the reality of not just a geographic boundary line on a map, but a separation of people. In the map in the back of my Bible you can see where Tyre is in the time of Jesus. Due east and a bit south is Deir Mimas, which is not marked but you know where it is by a modern map. What is interesting on that map in my Bible is that there are no national borders. It is one land. But here, we were confronted by that fence and wall. No entry.

Ducks on the Israeli side of the river. There is no border for them.

From there we continued on to lunch outside at a restaurant on the Wezani River. Sitting by the small stream with young people swimming to cool off on the hot day, our hosts explained that the center of the river marked that border again. The river was not deep or wide. It was easy to cross the middle and even get out on the other side, and yet the young people never made the attempt. The invisible boundary kept them on the Lebanese side, even as high up on the hill there were two military checkpoints keeping watch, one Lebanese, the other the U.N. I couldn’t help but notice that the ducks in the water could get in on one side and out on the other, but not the people. There wasn’t a difference in the water; it all ran together.

Lunch along the Wezani River, dividing line in this place between Lebanon and Israel. You can see the watch posts at the very top of the hill.

I went back to the earlier reading from worship, the one from Ephesians above. “In his flesh” he joins the groups together and erases the boundary. On a night when we have finally arrived at our destination for the women’s conference, driving three hours north to Dhour Chouier on those same twisty roads, my prayer is that one day the boundaries will be truly erased like they are on the map in my bible, and all shall be one in his flesh, and in his name. On this Sabbath, I can pray for no less.

Commencement

The simplest definition for the word commencement is the start of something new, which seems counter-intuitive as I tend to think of commencement as the end of something. We graduate from high school or college (or even kindergarten nowaways) and we celebrate commencement. We’re done! School is over! No more teachers, no more books… you know how the old rhyme goes. But of course commencement is not about the end of something, but the beginning of the new thing: first grade, college, life.

Today, our first full day traveling with The Outreach Foundation, we found ourselves climbing up 105 steps to visit one of the six schools for Syrian refugee students run by the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon (NESSL). This was the last day of the short summer session of the school at Kab Elias, the building itself an old Synod school now replaced by a state of the art school down in the valley. It commenced a new life three years ago when the Synod’s vision of reaching out to Syrian children living in the camps was realized.

Evangeline, Marilyn, Ramak, me, Sheryl in Ramak’s office at Kab Elias school. Next fall this room will become a much needed classroom.

When we arrived today, all the children were sitting quietly outside with their teachers waiting for us. Once we arrived, Ramak Aboud, the principal of this school, called up nine children, aged 8-13, who represented the graduating class, having completed up to the second elementary grade, the highest the school offers. They had been learning from the ground up – reading, writing, math, science, Christian ethics – for three years. Today was their commencement to something new. Two of the kids were heading back to Syria with their families. One was emigrating to Canada with his. One, a 13-year old girl named Shama’a was now old enough to be married and start her own family; her mother had advocated to keep her in the school for as long as possible, so she will take more classes next term. For the rest, maybe they would be able to enroll in the government schools. Sometimes the something new doesn’t seem so bright or sure.

Ramak gives the commencement speech

There were tears from these children as they realized that something new was coming. Why tears? Because in this place, high up on the hill in Kab Elias, children whose families had been treated as less than human as they fled Syria and arrived in refugee camps, had found the love of God through the intercession of their teachers. The teachers were teary-eyed as well as they sent these new graduates off to the new unknown.

As with all commencements, there was a speech, this one given by Ramak. “Remember what you learned here. Support each other and help others. Find people you can help. Remember there is a God who loves you and cares for you. Seek his help. We love you. May God go with you.”

And with all good commencement proceedings, it ended well with food and music and party games, so smiles and laughter were our final memories with these kids.

Evangeline gets close with sweet kids at Kab Elias refugee school

As the refugee crisis continues with nearly 1.2 million displaced Syrians in Lebanon, Ramak and other leaders of these schools are planning for another year. What began with fifty-eight students in 2016 in Kab Elias, will continue with 180 when the new fall term begins. They are not only changing the lives of the children they teach, but they have huge impact on their families. They unashamedly share the love of Christ with the children, and families who have only ever been taught that Christians are infidels and evil are standing in line to have their children come. Fathers who have taught their children to steal, have been lectured by their children that this is not the right way to live. Ramak will tell them, “Do you want your child to grow up as a criminal or to find a good job? No one will hire a criminal.”

Izdihar preaches the gospel

We ended our day in Zahle with our dear friend Izdihar Kassis whose ministry Together For the Family does amazing outreach in many ways. Today we went with her to visit fifteen mothers, each of who had a new baby. They were given a blanket stuffed with onesies, socks, diapers and formula. But they were also given a very direct message of the Jesus who came as a baby, was loved by a mother (just like them!), and who gives us all the gift of life.

“Wow, Izdihar, you were so direct sharing the gospel with them.”

“I don’t have time to waste. God gave me a message and I need to take every chance to share it.”

Two-day old boy in Zahle refugee camp

This was a different kind of commencement, but a commencement nonetheless. Each pregnancy for these women had commenced with something new: a new life, swaddled and bundled and settled into a mother’s arms. As we sat there with fifteen moms, fifteen new babies and the other children those moms already had, we heard the hard news of this life. Although each of those children had been given a birth certificate, none of them was registered. Not in Lebanon. Not in Syria. For governments, these very lives are not recognized and have no rights. There would most likely be no school for any of them, and there are many under the age of seven, born in refugee camps, in this predicament. Maybe one day they might get the opportunity to climb the steps of Kab Elias to go to school. Maybe. The something new of this commencement is harsh, and yet God has called Izdihar to his ministry in this place.

“Sometimes I get angry at God. Why do you let this happen? Why does this have to be so hard? You call me to love my enemy, and these are my enemies. They have killed and maimed so many Christians in Syria, my family, my friends.”

And God answers her. “Yes I know. For this I have gone to the cross. For all were my enemy, even you.”

It is a privilege to walk the steps of Kab Elias and into the tents near Zahle with these ministries that The Outreach Foundation partners with. There is joy and there is sadness, and sometimes at the end of a day, all we can do is pray. So I am ending with words of the psalmist, who questions God’s love but ends with words of trust and rejoicing. And we can do no less.

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
    and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
    How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
    and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love;
    my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the Lord’s praise,
    for he has been good to me. (Psalm 13)