What is on your feet?

 Ok, so here’s the deal, I am not a girl who gets excited about shoes.  Actually, I would go so far as to say I really do not like shoes at all…well, except Chacos. I do love my Chacos!  I would much rather live in a world where I could roam around barefoot without fear of stepping on broken glass, having frost bitten feet or getting weird looks from people. I often joke that I am pretty sure my feet are claustrophobic.  So when some genius decided to make five-finger barefoot shoes, I was ecstatic. About the same time research was coming out that for some people with foot and ankle problems running barefoot could be beneficial.  So in summer 2010 got my first pair of Vibram Five Finger shoes and immediately fell in love:

For the past year, they kept my feet company.  I wore them running.  I wore them to work.  I wore them walking around.  They often got weird looks, and sometimes people would stop and ask me about them.  What are you wearing? Are they comfortable?  Don’t your feet hurt? I was always quick to explain that they were five finger shoes.  Yes, they are incredibly comfortable.  They only hurt if I stepped on a rocks or rough surfaces. 

However, when it came time to move to Palestine, they didn’t quite make the cut.  After all, I didn’t want to be the strange foreigner with weird shoes.  Not wanting to be the strange foreigner also meant that for the first four months I was here, I stopped running.

But as January rolled around, I had already realized that I was always going to be the strange foreigner, no matter how hard I tried to fit in.  So I decided to embrace that strange-ness by putting on my running shoes again.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have my five-fingers with me, but I did have my New Balance Minimalist shoes with me:

Not that much different right?  Well…yes not that much different, but my feet missed their five finger-ed running friends. So off went the e-mail begging my mom to please send the running shoes, PLEASE! So being a wonderful mother, she did.  On Wednesday, they arrived safe and sound to be re-united with my feet.

Now, at this point, I can hear most of you saying to yourselves, “This is great Alma.  We are excited that you got your shoes, but what does this have to do with YAGM?”

Well, let me tell you.  I had forgotten two really important things when I decided to leave my five fingered shoes at home.  The first was the role that running played in my care for my mental and emotional health.  It is when I am running that I sort through the events of the past days, take some time to focus on my breathing and reflect on how I am really doing. It is during this time that I find the space to deal with the stress,  find some space to relax and clear my head all which allow me to approach struggles and challenges of the day from a new, and likely more healthy angle.  Plus there is the added benefit of the endorphin boast.  

The second, and perhaps most important thing, I had forgotten was that running is how I learn about and familiarize myself with a community and the geography of an area.  So when I decided not to run while I was here, I also decided to forfeit this understanding.  When I decided to start running again, also decided to start working for this understanding.  About three weeks into my running again, and it is working.  I am gaining a better idea of how things are situated, where things are in relation to one another and new ways to get to places. 

The thing that I surprised me about starting to run again was not only that I was learning to recognize the what and who of the area around me but also that “the who” of the area around me were learning to recognize me.  

I am a creature of habit, so I run about the same route at about the same time of day every time I run. About half way through my run, I run past the Catholic Shepherd’s field (yes the Catholic is an important distinction because there is also an Orthodox Shepherd’s Field), which is surrounded by several souvenir shops. As I run past these shops, I pass the same group of people, ok same group of men, every day.  The other day as I ran past one particular group and waved, they yelled after me, asking me where I was from.  So I stopped to talk and we had a lovely conversation.  As I turned to run off again, one of the men commented that they see me run past every day, and would see me again soon.

By embracing the strange-ness of my running and, yes, the strange-ness of my running shoes, I was also embracing the way that I get to know a community.   And in doing so, helping myself become more than just another tourist and actually becoming a recognized face in the community, even if it is as the “strange foreigner with strange shoes.”

As a side note, here is a great TED talk by Christopher McDougall about the benefits of barefoot running, and running in general:

Stones in the River

The ELCA’s model of mission is one of accompaniment, which means a focus on “being” rather than “doing.” Before I left, I spoke about this often.  I talked about how I was going to walk with people and hear their stories.   It all sounded relatively simple, I mean I was going to do something that I love.  However, coming from a culture that bases a persons worth on measurable productivity and outcomes, this is much easier said than done.

After being here for four months and learning about the complexity of life here, I often find myself despairing. Is my time here is “worth it.”  Am I creating any change?  Am I actually doing any good?  Am I actually accomplishing anything?  These doubts and struggles came to the forefront during our recent tour of a settlement.   It was here that I began to understand just how much I don’t understand.   I have spent a lot of time struggling with this experience, talking about my reactions journaling to sort out my thoughts, and writing a blog sharing my reflections.   I am sure I will continue to do these things for a long time to try to wrap my head around this entire experience.  I don’t yet have any answers to the questions that were raised for me that day and I am not sure I ever will.

However, while I was journaling the other night listening to Carrie Newcomer, I heard her song “Stones in the River” with new ears.    The lyrics to the chorus are:

So today I’ll drop stones into the river

And the current takes them out into forever

And the truth is most of us will never know

Where our best intentions go

And still I’ll drop another stone

I think that for most YAGMs, our year of service is a year of learning to drop stones into the river and being contend with never knowing where they will go.  In fact, the YAGM year is one big stone and we when decided to release it into the river, we don’t know the impact it will have on the lives of the people we work with, or on our lives.   Despite the uncertainty, each one of us commits to living a year in accompaniment with the people we work with and opening our hearts and minds to the inevitable change that will come.

I recently listened to a TED talk given by Joan Halifax called “Compassion and the true meaning of empathy.”  In this TED talk, she proposes that:

Compassion has another component, and that component is really essential.  That component is that we cannot be attached to outcome…any attachment to outcome would distort deeply my capacity to be fully present.  

The more I reflect on her words, the more I find myself agreeing with her.  After all, if I care about more about outcome of my actions than the story of the people I am interacting with, it is easy to become overwhelmed with the seeming impossibility of it all.  When I become overwhelmed I decide it is easier just to hold on to my stone until I can be guaranteed of a positive outcome, after all what can one stone do?

But each day I go to school, each greeting I offer, each high five I give, each story I hear, each blog I write, is a stone I drop into the river.  With this in mind, I am striving each day to make a conscious choice to let go of my attachment to measurable outcomes.  I am striving to release each stone, blessing its journey and trusting that it will end up where it is most needed.

Stories

Disclaimer:  I wrote this on Saturday after we had a bit of challenging encounter with Jewish settlers. So when I say yesterday-I am referring to is Friday, January 13^th.   I struggled for a while with whether or not to share these words and to share my struggles.  In the end, I decided it was worth it because this is part of the reality of my time here.  If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear them and you can e-mail me gastal01@luther.edu, while this is true of any of my blogs, I feel it is particularly important on this one. 

I love stories.  Just ask anybody who knows me decently well; they will tell you I love stories.  I love hearing them, reading them, collecting them and sharing them. One of my closest friends and I have a tradition of sharing “Funny Random Stories of the Day.” I eagerly look forward to receiving my daily StoryPeople story.  In fact, just short of 2 years ago, using some of these StoryPeople stories, I stood in the CFL Main Hall at Luther and gave my senior chapel, all about the role of stories in my four years of college.   As a social work major, I learned about the healing power of allowing people to share their stories.  Much of my senior year revolved around stories from my time spent in Journey Conversations to my second semester internship with Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC).   Through these experiences, I heard over and over again that nobody could tell you that your story was wrong.  After all, it was YOUR experience, YOUR human-ness, YOUR STORY!  It belongs to you, you own it, and only you know its reality in your life.  I have always firmly believed in the power of the story to heal, to bring people together, to find common ground, to see the human in the “other.”

However, during my time here in Jerusalem/West Bank my firm belief in the power of stories has begun to crumble a bit and yesterday, the foundation of that belief was shattered.   Yesterday, as a YAGM continuing education day we toured some of the Jewish settlements in the Jerusalem area.   As a part of this tour, we sat in the homes of 2 settlers, and had a third as our tour guide.  We listened to them tell their stories.  Stories about their faith, stories about the settlements, stories about why they choose to settle. 

As I listened to the stories they shared, I heard the same story that I hear every day from the Palestinians I work with daily:  stories of oppression, stories of victimization, stories of stolen land, stories of an ancient claim to land.  However, in these stories, the settlers, Israeli’s and sometimes Jews in general, took the place of the Palestinians.   What I heard was a complete role reversal.

When either group tells these stories, the “other” is a made-up people.  The “other” is terroristic and violent.  The “other” must be feared.  The “other” wants to wipe “us’ of the face of the planet.  The “other” stole the land.  With these two conflicting narratives that seem to stand in complete opposition of each other, there is little recognition of each other’s human-ness, little recognition of each other’s pain and little recognition of the validity of each other’s stories.  

In short, these stories have become tools to cause division and incite fear as opposed to the tools to create healing and bring comfort that I had believed them to be.

Because of the place where I live and the people I encounter on a daily basis, I sympathize with one side of the story over the other.  My experiences tend to give credibility to one side of the story over the other.  My understanding of facts and history favors one side of the story over the other.  But, as previously mentioned, it is not my place to tell the other side that their story is wrong.   So what happens when stories stand so completely in opposition?  What happens when my experience completely contradicts somebody else’s story? One side has to be wrong….right?

Before we came here, we were told:

Come for a week, you want to write a book.

Come for a month, you want to write an article

Come for a year, you no longer know what to write.

In many ways, yesterday marked that turning point.  Yesterday was the day that my brain finally began to understand how complex the situation here is.  It isn’t just about ownership of land, it is about the STORY of the land.  It isn’t about the nationality you claim, it is about the STORY of the nation.   It isn’t just about having human rights, it is about having the STORY of your human-ness recognized. 

They say that the winner writes history.  I am learning just how true that statement is. How the winner decides to tell the story here will make all the difference in the world.   My hope is that some day, the stories that will be told, and that I will be able to tell my children, will recognize the pain, the joy and  the human-ness of both sides.

For now, I will begin to pick-up the pieces of my shattered foundation of my belief in the power of stories, because the truth is, I do still believe. I still believe they can bring people healing.  I still believe in the power of stories to bring people together.  I still believe they can bring people to a place where they can see the human in a person who was previously “other.” The power of stories does not exist solely in the story itself, but also in the way they are used. 

While yesterday was incredibly frustrating, I will continue to listen to stories, read stories, collect stories and share stories. For now, I will continue to struggle with these stories, and figure out how they work together.  I will continue to use the stories that I hear as tools for good and tools for change.  Because at the end of the day, it is our stories, combined with the stories around us, that make us who we are and give us our human-ness.   

Laylat Al-Milad- On Christmas Night

Growing up, I always had a pretty clear picture of what the first Christmas looked like-Mary, dressed in blue, and Joseph have been relegated to the stable by a grouchy inn-keeper who “has no room for them at the inn,” despite the unconventional settings they are warm and comfortable. Together, with looks of love and tenderness, they are kneeling quietly in a pristine stable (ok, so this was usually a big red barn), bright shining star above indicating that this is THE stable where baby Jesus lying in a manager full of hay surrounded by sheep, cows, donkeys serenely watching over him as he slept. 

Ok, so my visions of this scene look identical to the nativity set that I grew up with and are incredibly influenced by my growing up in Northeast Iowa. However, having had the chance to spend the past four months getting to know Bethlehem, and then to celebrate Christmas in Bethlehem, my vision of the nativity is changing.  I am beginning to realize there aren’t a lot of barns in the area, much less any giant red barns.  I am reminded when I see the shepherds with there sheep that animals are rarely quiet or clean (one would think I would know this, I mean I grew up in rural Iowa…).   I am reminded teach time night falls here, that even if the days are semi-warm, it is anything but warm here without the sun and some nights it can be absolutely freezing.

However, perhaps the biggest change I am beginning to see is in the way I visualized the innkeeper.  No longer is this man a gruff man firmly refusing to give shelter to a very weary and pregnant Mary because he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make room for them who at the last minute takes pity on them and offers them the bare minimum.   As I encounter the people of Bethlehem and the surrounding area, I begin to understand this as an incredible act of hospitality. 

On Christmas Eve, I listened to Pastor Fred Strickert speak about the culture of hospitality here saying:

But these are not merely nostalgic episodes of what might have been, but testimonies of faith and hope.  People came to Bethlehem, because they knew that Bethlehemites would take them in…What else would one expect when hospitality reigns chief among virtues?  What else would one expect from people whose first words that role off their lips are Ahlan wa-sahlan? (side note: Ahlan Wa-Sahlan essentially means “welcome, feel at home" see blog here.) They would not think of turning away Joseph and his pregnant wife.  That was not the culture of Bethlehem.  They would find a place for them, even if it was in the cave below the house.

This hospitality isn’t something of the distant past either.  It showing up in my every day life.  It shows up in the pastor of my church always asking if I have been able to talk to my family and inquiring about their well-being.  It shows up in the teachers at my school calling to make sure I would not be lonely over the Christmas Break.  It shows up in being taken is as an “eighth daughter”  twenty minutes after meeting a neighbor woman.  

In the past Christmas has always been a time of gathering with family and friends.  Of being surrounded with the chaos of all the familiar celebrations, gift exchanges and carol sings.  This year, as I celebrated Christmas far from home, just as I began to picture the nativity in a new way, I also  began to understand Christmas in new way- as a time of hospitality, welcoming in the stranger and being open to the new and unfamiliar.    In concluding his sermon, Pastor Fred reminded us that:

Christmas is not even about safe, romantic, idyllic tales of long ago, but it is about Christ coming into our midst, now, in the present moment. Christmas is about welcoming Jesus into our midst, as we welcome the least among us, as we show hospitality to the stranger, for then we may discover that we have been entertaining angels unawares, or even God’s own son.

I will leave you with one of my new favorite Arabic Christmas carols- Laylat Al-Milad (translation: Christmas Night).  This carol was sung at every celebration I went to, every church service I attended and every gathering I attended:

So this version is a bit more jazzy then the one we normally sang. 

 Translation of the lyrics:

 Chorus:

On Christmas Eve

Hatred is gone

On Christmas Eve

The_ earth blossoms

On Christmas Eve

War is buried

On Christmas Eve

Love grows

Verse 1:

When I kiss my friends with no cheating

It's Christmas

When vengeance withers in my soul

It's Christmas

When indifference is defeated in_ my heart

It's Christmas

When my soul melts in God

It's Christmas

Verse 2:

When we offer water to the thirsty

It's Christmas

When we give a robe of love to the_ naked

It's Christmas

When we dry the tears

It's Christmas

When we spread hope in the hearts

It's Christmas