Stardate: January 25,2020
Welcome to Sabbath. Sabbath has been one of those things that I talk about often. It’s one of those things that my pastor and mentor and advisor have really pushed me to do, to take a Sabbath. And I always pay lip service to taking a Sabbath. But I’m not sure that I really knew what it meant until today.
I spent the morning walking around in old Jerusalem after sleeping in a bit. It was really cool, we went to a bookstore which was a lot of fun, just to see the different books that were available. Then we walked into the old city through the gate that we have been through before, but we had time to meander and to look. We were with Wyal and so we were able to have a lot of questions answered along the way.
There were four of us and Trevor and I ended up being split off from Wyal and Rachel and so we just kinda toured the city, not in a hurried way but in a slow, meandering kind of way. Then we came back to the hotel. Trevor and I both were very interested in getting tattoos while we were in Jerusalem and we went to the Jaffa gate where the tattoo artist was in hopes that even though we knew they didn’t open until noon, we hoped that they would be open.
They were not, but it was part of the adventure. I will express my deep sadness that I didn’t get a tattoo. Something that I’ve never wanted before but this seemed like a monumental occasion. So much so, that I was willing to have a tattoo to mark the moment. I still regret that I didn’t get the tattoo.
We went to lunch with some rabbinical students and when we arrived at our destination, two of the students came out to greet us and one of them was named Emily. My grandmother has kind of been a part of this journey with me. As I was leaving for my trip I was very nervous about it and had been thinking a lot about my grandmother who had visited the “Holy Land” in the seventies. I have this plant that I call the “grandma plant”. It’s a Christmas cactus that I had given to her many years ago and when she died in 2000, it came back to me. It’s the only plant that I haven’t killed completely. I kill them all, but I have been able to keep a small amount of this plant alive. It hasn’t bloomed in the last 18 years, but it bloomed just before my trip and it bloomed in this beautiful orange color which is my color. (Which you probably know because you traveled with me.) I took that as a sign that my grandmother was with me. When we arrived for Sabbath and the first person who greeted me was named Emily, my grandmother’s name, it seemed that it was another sign that my grandma was with me. It was neat. We went into the apartment and there were a number of people there and we stood around and talked for a long time and then we sat down for lunch, One of the students shared some scripture with us and there were these deep theological arguments that were going on among the students, which just all made us kind of laugh because it’s the idea that theology nerds are theology nerds no matter what theology they’re arguing. But what really struck me was when I asked them, “Is this a typical Sabbath for you guys or is this something that you’re doing special for us?” And I was told that yes, this is what they do every Saturday and that they were only slightly putting on a show for us but that this group comes together every Saturday and that they spend their time eating together and playing games together and arguing theology and having deep discussions together and that it was just something that they did every Saturday. They had this time set aside where they just were unplugged and relaxing. It reminded me of Sundays when I was a child growing up. We would get up, we would go to church, we would come home and have lunch and then there was nothing the rest of the day. I used to think it was the most boring day ever where we did absolutely nothing. My parents built two houses, and when I say built two houses I mean that they nailed each nail. They did all of the work themselves and yet they never worked on a Sunday, they always took that Sunday off, it was their Sabbath. It’s not a practice that I have developed in my life, where I take a day off, where I truly have this down time that is not scheduled time, that is not time that I feel guilty about. Spending the afternoon with these rabbinical students made me think of what this Sabbath practice might look like in my life and how I might develop it as a practice for myself, this true day of rest. I think that it will become my goal for the Spring to really develop the idea of a Sabbath and not just the idea of a Sabbath but the practice of a day of rest.
We spent our evening with the African Palestinian Community with Adam Be Lal Awi. I will say that the food was pretty good on that occasion. I found it incredibly interesting to walk over into the Courtyard and hear about the number of families that lived in this courtyard in old Jerusalem. It really was an alleyway off of a main corridor we had walked earlier in the day. But there were many families living in this small area and the ways that the buildings were illegal and yet allowed to continue, but constantly in this fear that they might be required to be removed. I was struck by the tangle of electrical wires on the outside of the building. It just looked like this rats nest of wire.
I was struck by how absolutely unsafe it was with this small child running around in the courtyard and this mama cat with kittens and the way that it all seemed so normal and yet not. It was very interesting to hear Adam speak and I was surprised to hear him be very anti our current administration and thinking how difficult that was for me to hear people outside the United States being critical of my government when I am critical of it myself, when I am one who would speak out against this current administration. To hear people who were outside the US speaking about it, in some way bothered me more than I would have imagined. I kind of likened it to “I can say whatever I want to about my sister but no one else can talk about her.” It was an odd phenomena for me at that moment.
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