Final Reflections

I Had a Dream
Rick Marson
The Candler School of Theology at Emory University

My most recent home project is the staining of my deck and screened-in porch. It is a large project that I have been planning for several months. Now comes the arduous task of applying stain to wood, one brush at a time. It is sweltering today—the July Georgia sun is baking everything in its path. My application routine is simple and uneventful: stick the brush into the bucket, wipe off the excess, apply the stain to the wood with even strokes, feather in the edges, and then back to the bucket—stroke after stroke, board after board, hour after hour. Oppressed by such a mundane task, my mind races to other places; planning out a list of projects and other responsibilities of life. It seems as if any thought is a pleasant distraction from the next board, the smell of stain, and the beads of sweat dripping from my forehead; and then I thought of a dream I had the other night—at least it think is was a dream.
I dreamed that I went on a whirlwind tour of the Middle East, of all places, with a couple of seminary professors and twenty perfect strangers. How strange is that? We went from Syria to Jordan, to Egypt, to Israel and finally to Greece, stopping at every historical, religious, archaeological, cultural and political site our minds could contain. We climbed every mountain, rode every camel, ate in every restaurant, swam in every body of water, laid siege to every castle, prayed at every church, chapel, mosque, altar, and temple, shopped in every market, swallowed every spoonful of hummus, drank every bottle of water, and used every bathroom from Damascus to Athens. Now that’s a dream worth remembering, and certainly a wonderful diversion from these deck boards that keep staring me in the face as if to say, “What about me, I’m next?” I’ll gladly entertain the dream a while longer.
I decided to keep mementos from the trip, picking up a small stone from every major historical site: Mt. Sinai, the mountains of Petra, the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the ruins of Palmyra, the Dead Sea Scrolls cave, the fortress at Masada, and the Parthenon. That way, I could physically touch the locations once I got home; I could maintain my connection with the land. Several of my fellow travelers assisted in this effort, helping me to find the perfect stone for each location. I envisioned somehow placing each stone on top of a picture of the location when I got home—it could be added to my long list of projects. Once I got home, the stones would continue to tell the story of the Middle East. The land of the Middle East speaks that way; it tells a story of many different peoples, and their relationships with God and each other.
Water was the first issue that became apparent to me on my (dream) trip. Although crude oil is the most obvious precious natural resource of the Middle East in the last century, it is not the most important commodity, at least not to the people who live there. Water is, and has been, the key to development in the Middle East. I saw a map of the historical sites, superimposed upon the current map. I noticed that all of the development, from the earliest until the most recent, follows the path of the Fertile Crescent—a downward shaping arc that goes around the northern edge of the Shamiyeh Desert. The Fertile Crescent is basically located on or near the waterways in the region: the Mediterranean and the Euphrates River. It arcs from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Iraq, then northward around the desert, then back to the south along the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, and then into northern Egypt. The earliest civilizations had no choice but to go where the water was. The center of the Fertile Crescent is nothing but desert, and humans cannot easily survive in the desert.
While driving through the desert on our tour bus, it was easy to spot an oasis—anything green was one. Our guide said that the single common ingredient of all oases is the presence of an underground water supply; without that, the area would look like everything else—dead. It reminded me of flying over Los Angeles where, from the sky, one can see two basic realities: green and brown. Everything that is watered is green and everything that is not watered is brown. The residents of Los Angeles are fortunate enough to have ample rain runoff from the surrounding mountains to provide for the city. Other places around the world are not so fortunate, especially the Middle East.
In the United States, water sometimes seems like an unlimited natural resource—we simply turn on the faucet and out gushes as much as we want, for as long as we want. It is painful to realize that most of the world does not have that luxury, one that clouds our judgment so. My fellow travelers and I were warned not to drink the water in every country but Israel; bacteria in the water would surely make us ill. Most of us got sick anyway. It was difficult to stay completely away from local water: most of the fresh vegetables were washed in it, most of the dishes were rinsed in it, most of the drinks were made with it. I rationed my bottled water through morning activities, brushing my teeth, rinsing, never knowing for what necessity I might need to save my last few ounces of precious bottled water.
I was troubled by the sight of teenage boys swimming in the polluted river that passed through the giant water wheels of Hama, Syria. The river smelled of sewage. The boys did not seem to mind. The giant water wheels were turned by the force of the river, the buckets on the wheel emptied at the top of the wheel into an elevated channel that led back into the city. I was troubled when I realized that the water was not going to a water treatment facility, but into the city for some type of consumption. I was also troubled by the fact that the Jordan River is drying up, along with its repository, the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is once again dying, at the rate of one meter per year. There is a great political conflict over Israel’s siphoning of the Jordan River for development of the West Bank and for use in Israel. This problem will not go away—indeed it will only get worse as Syria, Jordan and Israel all compete for precious water resources. I recently heard former Secretary of State, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeline Albright suggest that the coming battle in the Middle East is not over oil, but water. Having been there, I see the reason for her concern. Water has always been the most important resource for the residents of the area. Oil is what the world needs from the Middle East. Water is what the residents of the Middle East need to survive. Our concern for the Middle East cannot be limited to exploitation of their exportable resources, for that will only wind up imprisoning the people of the region to the whims of the West, and will never provide a basis for lasting peace.
A lasting peace in the Middle East, perhaps I’m dreaming in my dream? However, since I have now wandered onto the slippery subject of peace, please allow me continue in my slumbering imagination. Jerusalem is the holy city for the three great monotheistic faiths: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. There is a reason the Israel/Palestine area is called the Holy Land; it would not be too long a stretch to say that everything here is informed by religion. However, it would also be accurate to say that everything is political as well—you cannot get into Syria if you have an Israeli stamp in your passport, and we did not dare mention to the people in Israel that we visited Syria a few days earlier. There are many stark differences between the Arabs and the Israelis, and my three-week visit doesn’t make me much of an expert on the subject. It did, however, allow me to observe the structure of the language in the current debate.
Most of the Arabs I met on the trip seemed to view Israel as an illegal occupant of Palestinian territory. The map of Syria in the National Museum included the Golan Heights, without even a reference to the fact that they have been occupied by the Israelis for 40 years. When I asked our guide about it he gently bristled, “It’s part of our country.” Arabs most certainly have trouble recognizing the right of the United Nations to carve out a block of Palestinian land at the end of World War II, giving that land to the Jews, who shortly thereafter established the State of Israel (1948). They have even more trouble accepting Israeli control of the occupied territories—the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip, all of which was taken over by Israel during the Six-Day War (1967). They don’t think that traditionally Arab land should be given to the Jews simply because of the persecution of the Jews primarily by European nations.
I am not a Jew. There are things about the Holocaust that I can never understand, because it did not happen to me, or to my family. Our visit to the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem gave me an idea what it was like to fear extermination as a people. There can be no sufficient explanation of the horror of Nazi Germany’s attempted annihilation of the Jews. The poem of 14-year-old Jewish Auschwitz detainee Abramek Koplowicz illustrates the depth of the tragedy. I copied the words from a display holding the 15-page schoolbook notepaper written in the young Koplowicz’s clean handwriting.

Dreams
By Abramek Koplowicz, 14 years old

When I grow up and get to be twenty
I’ll travel and see this world of plenty.
In a bird with an engine I will set myself down;
take off and fly into space, far above the ground.
I’ll fly, I’ll cruise and soar up high,
above a world so lovely, into the sky.
And so delighted by all the worlds charms,
into the heavens I will take off, and not have a bother.
The cloud is my sister; the wind is my brother.

“Abramek Koplowicz was murdered at Auschwitz at 14”

I couldn’t move for several minutes after reading the poem—my mind ran through a series of reactions; thoughts of anger, fear, rage, hopelessness, revenge, sorrow and bitterness. For me, the rest of the exhibit was just more of the same information I had seen before Abramek’s notebook; the young poet had captured my heart, may he rest in peace with God.
Our Palestinian Christian guide Peter seemed to move away from the Holocaust experience too quickly for me. He immediately read some newspaper headlines relating to Israel’s unfair treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank, and in Israel. It was as if to say, “The treatment of the Jews by the Nazis is unrelated to the current conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis.” Jews see them as directly related via the comments of some conservative Arabs who want to push the Jews back into the Mediterranean Sea. The difference, however, is that Hitler simply wanted to exterminate the Jews because of who they were—he hated them—whereas many Arabs simply want their land back.
Some members of our group noticed the apparent irony that many Jews in Israel do not recognize their participation in the confiscation of Palestinian assets (land) the same way that Hitler and the Nazis plundered the personal property of the Jews prior to his attempts at exterminating them. Many Palestinians make the same observation. As much as I am against what President Carter and others have called the apartheid-like treatment of the Palestinians, the issue cannot simply be treated as a land/justice issue; what the Arabs see as enforced property rights, the Jews see as another attempt at annihilation. Israel’s motivation for entering the Six-Day War in 1967 was security, addressing the mounting threat of surrounding Arab nations.
Thus, the structure of the language for peace will have to attend to both concerns. It will never be simply a matter of land justice for the Palestinians or security for the Israelis; it can only be both. In my view, peace will not come while the Israelis continue to violate the land rights of residents of the occupied territories of the Golan Heights and the West Bank, while the Palestinians ignore the understandable Jewish fears of extermination. Life in the Holy Land is indeed complex.
And then there was the visit to the sweet little town of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. However, Bethlehem is no longer the little town that we sing about in Christmas carols. It is a busy town, and has been under Palestinian (Muslim) control for most of the last 1,000 years. It is in the West Bank. In an effort to stop Arab suicide bombers from hitting Israel proper or Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the Israelites have built a 20-foot concrete wall in various parts of the West Bank, including certain parts of Jerusalem and the city of Bethlehem. The wall around Bethlehem is not designed to keep Muslims out, but to keep them in. Bethlehem is a Muslim city that is surrounded by a wall, and it can only be entered or left by going through an Israeli checkpoint. Palestinians going into or out of Bethlehem always have to go through security screening, scanning devices and metal detectors, and they must also have the written permission of the Israeli army. They must carry utility bills with them to prove that they are residents of Bethlehem before they can enter, and they can always be turned away with no explanation. The surrounding hillsides of Bethlehem are the sites of numerous Israeli settlements.
Most parties in the international community, and most Israelis, agree that the occupied territories will have to be given back to the Palestinians at some point in time. These settlements, however, are not what I would call settlements; they are fortresses on a hill. They are palaces compared to the surrounding communities. They are modern constructed houses and buildings, that all carry the same design and construction. Our guide told us that their construction is at the behest and control of the government of Israel, and not through private ownership. He said that 85% of the residents in the settlements are economically motivated, cheap government subsidized housing, much larger water allocations, etc. Again, according to our guide only 15% of the settlers are ideologically motivated, believing that they are simply possessing the land that God had promised to Moses. These sites are as nice as any residential place I have seen in Israel, and in my view, the Israelis will never leave these sites. Thus, we may never have peace between the Israelis and the Arabs in Palestine. I noticed that cities in ancient Israel were always protected by an outer stone wall. It is sad that after a several-hundred-year hiatus, security walls are now being built in Palestine again.
In other parts of my dream I was struck by the warm acceptance of Americans by the local residents. This is sometimes hard to see because a large percentage of the people make their living from the tourist trade—many of the people were friendly to us simply because they wanted to sell us something. At every standard tourist stop we could hardly get off the bus without engaging a barrage of vendors, many of them children, selling postcards, jewelry, bottled water, etc. They were aggressive and persistent. The shopkeepers in the souqs were your best friend, at least until you walked out of their shop without purchasing something. The acceptance I’m referring to was the friendly wave and smile of virtually every child the bus passed along the way, the engaging conversation of street corners, the assistance given with directions in the cities and the souqs. Hassim was one such acquaintance of mine on the trip.
We were staying the night at the Morgan Valley Land Resort at the base of Mt. Sinai. We were going to get up at 1:30 a.m. to ride/climb to the top of Mt. Sinai in time to see the sunrise over the mountains. We were told it would be very cold on the top of the mountain and were encouraged to dress warmly. My problem was I had lost my golf jacket a few days earlier on the trip; I had no jacket and nothing long-sleeved in my suitcase. I decided to see if one of the stores outside the hotel had any long-sleeved shirts. However, my second problem was financial. We were two-thirds of the way through the trip and I had brought half of my money in traveler’s checks. So far on our trip no one would cash traveler’s checks, and most places would not take credit cards, and it was next to impossible to find an ATM machine. I had only $10 in cash to find something warm to wear.
Hassim was the Muslim owner of the shop into which I ventured. I told him of my dilemma—I only had $10 to spend and I needed something long-sleeved for the trip up the mountain. The only long-sleeved items in the store were traditional Islam prayer garments. I wear size XL, and we tried on everything XL in his store, but they were all too small across the shoulders. He had no 2XL items in the store—I guess there are not too many large people climbing up Mt. Sinai. After 20 minutes of trying on shirt after shirt only to be disappointed, I finally saw…the coat, a double-breasted, shimmering, midnight-blue, full-length, lightweight overcoat hanging on the wall. It looked like it was my size. I said, “What about that?” He said it was $40, a very reasonable price. I thought perhaps he would be able to take my credit card for the purchase.
The coat fit beautifully! It even had buttons in the lower back that would allow me to wear the coat while riding the camel. It was perfect! I asked him again if there was any way he could take traveler’s checks, or a credit card, or point me to an ATM machine. He reminded me that we were in the desert—there was nothing he could do. Then he said an amazing thing, “Just take the coat and bring it back tomorrow, no charge.” I reminded him that I would be climbing a mountain, and that I would be sweating on the trip, and that we would be walking dusty trails. He said not to worry about it. I offered to give him my $10, but he said no, it was his gift to me.
I wore that coat up the mountain the next morning. Several of my fellow travelers were impressed, saying that I looked a little like Clint Eastwood in The Pale Rider, or Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark; I should only be so lucky. When I returned the coat to Hassim in the morning I thanked him once again and offered him the $10 just to clean the coat. He refused, saying that it was his gift to me. I was surprised at his generosity and his trust in me—after all, he was a vendor and I was just another customer. I learned once again the importance of looking at the heart and not at outward appearances. Was this a great dream, or what? I was learning things.
Perhaps the most surprising revelations of the trip were the commonalities of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, the great monotheistic religions. They share the same land, the same people, and many of the same stories. I was surprised, for example, to see an elaborate tomb for John the Baptist in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. I did not realize that Islam recognized John the Baptist as a prophet. I was also surprised to see the Jesus Minaret (tower) on that same facility. Our guide told us that this is the location where Muslims expect Jesus to come again for the final judgment of the sins of the world.
Purely by accident, I happened upon the annual procession of the Madonna (on May 31 each year) through the old city streets of Jerusalem. Hundreds of dancers, marchers, singers, priests, monks and the like led the parade through the narrow alleys of the souq. Finally, after a cadre of monks and priests, came the bishop carrying a 1 x 1.5 foot mosaic of the Virgin Mary around his neck. People were flocking around the bishop, everyone either kissing their fingers and then touching the mosaic, or actually bending over and kissing the mosaic itself. It was pandemonium. It was riveting, the open expressions of such emotion and faith. Surprisingly, the Muslim bystanders were participating as well, running to touch the Madonna, smiling and enjoying the parade, laughing with joy at the sight of others in the spectacle. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
I have always thought of the conflict in the Middle East as fundamentally religious, a holy war, if you will. I am beginning to understand it has always been a political war, one which periodically uses religious fundamentalism as a tool to harden the hearts of its soldiers, and to demonize its enemies. Jerusalem has been besieged more that 50 times, conquered 36 times and destroyed 10 times. Sometimes, the religious sites have been destroyed by the conquering forces, sometimes not. More often, mosques have been converted to temples, and then to churches, and then to mosques again. I wonder if God cares which religion is in power, the fruit of religious conviction often being the same—worship. More often, the conquering forces (the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, and Assyrians) were content to let the local religious practices stand as long as they did not interfere with government.
It seems that the religious zealots, on each side of the monotheistic faiths, are the ones turning the conflict into a religious war—the ones calling for the expansion of Israel into the occupied territories as a fulfillment of God’s gift of the Promised Land to the Jews, the ones calling for the justification of the State of Israel as a necessary precondition of the return of Christ, the ones calling for jihad—desiring to remove Jews and westerners from the Holy Land (even though they misappropriate the term from its proper context as an individual’s battle against the temptations of the flesh). Certainly, calmer judgments must prevail! You can see it in the faces of the people; they want to live in peace, showing respect for the beliefs of others, kissing the Madonna, praying in a mosque, temple or church of another’s faith, being generous to a stranger.
I must remind myself that Judas’ zealotry was responsible for the betrayal of Christ. According to one gospel account, Judas turned Christ over to the authorities hoping that it would force Christ’s hand to become the political leader that Israel needed to cast off Roman domination. Judas was looking for a political solution by framing the situation as a holy war; Jesus was providing a spiritual solution, without the mention of war, refusing to fight. It seems as if the three faiths should simply “let God be God,” not forcing God’s hand for a military victory, believing we are the instruments of God’s final solution; but rather demonstrating patience with God’s forbearance, knowing that ultimately, God will not be thwarted, but will be worshiped.
Wow, I learned so much from my dream. Can you really learn something from a dream? I think so, although maybe it wasn’t really a dream. However, many of my fellow travelers claimed they were dreaming as well, saying things like, “I am standing on top of Mt. Sinai at 5:00 in the morning, I must be dreaming,” or, “Am I really swimming in the Dead Sea, or am I just dreaming,” or, “I never dreamed that I would be walking the streets of Damascus.” Perhaps we were all dreaming. In any case I am grateful that there is a dream maker, one who made it seem so real.
Well, only a few more deck boards to go. The hot sun must be playing with my mind. Surely the trip was just a dream, a momentary oasis from the tasks of the day. It just could not have happened…and yet, what about that small bag of stones I found on my desk today?