Well readers, sorry for the lack of updates this semester. Things have been moving horribly slowly here in Jerusalem. I feel as if I've hardly done anything.
I still go to Bethlehem every Saturday to work at the school and I feel as if I live from Saturday to Saturday. It's the one thing during the week that I really look forward to. I've lived in 12 different states and probably 20 different houses but I can't seem to make myself feel at home in Jerusalem. It's intoxicatingly tense here. You could cut the political distress with a knife. I've never experienced anything quite like it. It's not necessarily hateful - though I've heard of cases where it happens. Apparently a few weeks ago Muslims threw rocks at Jews praying at Western Wall. We didn't hear about it at JUC until a week later and that's only because our families from home asked us about it. Point being... it's not a comfortable place to live in. However, I lived in Bethlehem for a few weeks and that feels more at home to me than Jerusalem ever could. If it didn't cost $4 round trip to get there, I'd go more often. But Saturday is the only day I have free that I can justify being there.
Had an interesting conversation with one of the kids from the school a few weeks ago. He's one of the high school kids and he just happened to be at their church one of the Saturdays I was there. He asked me my opinion on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Oddly enough, it's the first time anyone has really asked me that since I've been here. I expected it a lot more, but maybe no one asks because they know I could typically care less about politics. Now, I'm not sure if this kid is Muslim or if he's a Christian from a Muslim family or what, but he had an interesting opinion about the whole thing. I told him that I didn't feel like I had a right to an opinion about the conflict because I'm just an American. While I government is all too happy to throw all their support at Israel, I don't know if that's the right choice. Though, I don't know if it would be right for them to support Palestine either. The way I see it, as Americans, we can never truly know the hurt that either sides have gone through. We can never never know how they feel or what they go through on a daily basis. So I don't think that it's fair for America to throw their power and money around the way they do. Now, I have a few more opinions than that, but that's the gist of it and he seemed satisfied with my answer. What was interesting about his response, though, was that he seemed to think that Christian Palestinians would be better under Muslim rule than Israeli rule. He seemed to think that just because Christians are persecuted by Muslims in Egypt and throughout the Middle East, doesn't mean it'll happen in Palestine. Now, he's right. It doesn't mean a thing. But I don't think he's right. As little as I know about the Middle East and Muslims, I know that people are inherently the same. And if Christians are getting persecuted by Muslims every where else in the Middle East, it's likely to happen in Palestine too. A few other people had joined the conversation at that point, so I kind of stepped back and listened. I know very little on the whole thing and I wasn't about to make a fool of myself in front of people that live it on a daily basis.
Back in Jerusalem, I'm learning that I truly appreciate silence. There's nothing more that I love than to wake up to a sunny day, a cold room, and the only sounds being birds chirping outside my window. That's a little difficult with three roommates, though. Especially when three are extremely... feminine, one is uncomfortable with silence, and the other insists on grunting or sighing loudly at every thought she has. It's also difficult to have silence when living in a dorm room, in general. As an only child, I'd like to say that I've done well for myself while living in dorms. But I am over it and there's a large part of me that's looking forward to living on my own this summer.
I'm not sure what God is doing in my life this year. I think last semester was just about forcing me to know what it was like to fully rely on Him and not just say that I'm going to rely on Him. But I don't know what's going on this year. Time is passing by at an excruciatingly slow pace. I'm literally counting down the days till I go home, which seems ungrateful as I've basically been given the chance of a lifetime. My classes are fine, but I don't know that they're changing my worldview any. At least not in the way that my Egypt class did or in the way that my Physical Settings class did. I feel like if I just had a purpose to grab onto then it would at least give me something to work toward. But, as it is now, I'm just trying to get good grades and bide my time until I can get home and move onto the next part of my life. Maybe that's my problem. Maybe God is trying to slow me down. My parents said that I've always been the kind of person who was over one thing and on to the next. And I've never been very good at relaxing, but I'm suddenly becoming quite masterful at it... either quite masterful or I'm just becoming lazy in new ways. Guess we'll see. After all, you never really know God's purpose until after the fact.
