Interfaith Reconciliation

2009-08-09T11:51:00.000-07:00

I was privileged to be invited to join a meeting last week between the Jordanian Interfaith Coexistence Research Center (JICRC) and the International Affairs Council (IAC), an organization that works with the US State Department to host foreign diplomats, professionals and religious leaders in the United States.

The JICRC and the IAC are forging a partnership to craft grass roots program initiatives in follow up to President Obama’s Cairo speech. If you have not seen President Obama’s speech I strongly recommend that you take some time to watch it. You can find it on You Tube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANk9qydfGe4

Our president’s speech has created a stirring of hope particularly among young people in the Middle East. Everywhere I go in Jordan people have been eager to talk about the speech and the vision for peace that President Obama has cast. JICRC and IAC are attempting to work with the US Embassies in the Middle East, the US State Department and other NGO’s in the region to craft program initiatives that will involve people at the grass roots level and build on the momentum created by this visionary speech.

There are two things which I think block us internally from believing that peace is possible. The first is the emotional strain of hoping in peace only to see the hope dashed by yet another round of conflict in the Middle East. That happened to me in 1994 the last time I traveled to Jordan. I came here with some of my Israeli friends. The peace treaty between Jordan and Israel had just been signed and we were so excited and hopeful. One of my Israeli friends whose childhood home had been on the west banks of the Jordan River recalled looking at the lights in the houses on the east bank of the Jordan River in the hills and wondering what the children were like on that side of the river. She would lie awake at night and watch as one by one the lights went out in the houses on those Jordanian hills. She imagined Jordanian parents tucking in their children, reading them a story and kissing them goodnight as they turned out the lights. It was truly remarkable that for the first time in my friend’s lives they were able to meet the people in Jordan and talk with them about the growing peace. We rented a car and spent a week driving through Jordan having our own mini peace talks at every restaurant we ate in and at every hotel we slept in. Then Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated a month later and the peace process ground to a halt. I remember the feeling of deflation and shock. We don’t want to believe in hope if it is false. The other internal impediment to believing in peace is the fear of naiveté.

I agree with our President that peace in the Middle East is possible. I think it is even inevitable if history is prophetic. Apartied ended in South Africa. The institutionalized segregation of blacks and whites in the America is no longer state supported. Catholics and Protestants are no longer at war in Northern Ireland. None of these monumental social changes happened quickly, and these movements toward equality and peace are still in need of further development, but the changes are real and lasting. There will be steps forward and steps backward, and it may take decades, but I truly believe that in my lifetime I will see peace come to the Middle East.

It is exciting to be seated at the same table with these great creative thinkers. These are the behind-the-scenes, on-the-ground folks who are going to help nurture the vision of peace in the hearts of the people in this region.

We also met this week to discuss the possibility of arranging a formal invitation for Prince Ghazi and Princess Areej to attend this year’s Appeal of Conscience Foundation Awards Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in New York where British Prime Minster, the Honorable Gordon Brown, will be speaking. The ACF hosts a dinner each year to kick off the September session of the general assembly of the United Nations. Father Haddad and his wife have also been invited. I will be accompanying our guests to the dinner and helping to host them during their stay in New York next month.

It was a very exciting week of furthering the cause of interfaith coexistence.

Now, it’s back to the grind stone. My final exams in Arabic are a week from tomorrow. Where has the summer gone?

Mid-term exams

2009-07-20T08:08:00.000-07:00

You may wonder why you haven't heard from me in a while. I'm cramming for mid-term exams which will be given at the end of this week. I'm really enjoying learning Arabic and am finding so many similarities between Biblical Hebrew and the Arabic language. I understand that there is an even closer relationship between Arabic and Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. I have a lot that I want to say about the study of Arabic, but it will have to wait until next week. For now, back to studying!

Celebrating the Liturgy with Father Nabil Haddad

2009-07-12T14:47:00.000-07:00

When people think of the religion of Arabs, they generally think of the majority faith – Islam. At around 5% of the population, Arab Christians are an extreme minority, but they are an enduring presence in the Middle East. Father Nabil Haddad, a Greek Melekite Catholic Priest and Executive Director of the Jordanian Interfaith Coexistence Research Center (JICRC) likes to tell the story about the time he visited the United States and spoke to a group of Evangelical Christians in Iowa. A man in the audience asked him when he converted to Christianity. He answered, “My brother, I was born a Christian. My people, the Arabs, have been Christians since the day of Pentecost. Look it up in your Bible, The Book of Acts, Chapter 2, the Arabs were there on Pentecost when the church was born.”

In fact there are about 12 Christian denominations in Jordan. There are Greek Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Greek Melekite Catholic, Roman Catholic, Marionites, Lutherans, Anglicans, Pentecostals, The Church of Nazarene, and a couple of other unrecognized evangelical churches.

I have not had the chance to worship since I have been in Amman. I have engaged in many discussions about faith. I have visited with religious leaders and listened to their thoughts about relationships between the faiths. I have toured the sacred sites of our faiths, but I have not had much chance to worship. Worship is essential to practicing faith. It provides the orientation to God, the instruction, the inspiration for practice.

This morning I arrived at Father Nabil Haddad’s Greek Melekite Catholic Church in Amman for worship. As I mentioned Father Haddad is also the Executive Director of the Jordanian Interfaith Coexistence Research Center (JICRC) http://www.coexistencejordan.org/, an initiative to promote peace between faith traditions in the region. Jordan’s King Abdullah assigned Father Nabil to greet and accompany Pope Benedict XVI on his recent visit to Jordan while he was touring the Holy Land this past May. Father Haddad was also chosen by the King to give the Christian address at the King Hussein Mosque in the pope’s presence during his visit to the Muslim house of worship.

I met with Father Haddad last week at the JICRC offices. He welcomed me with open arms as a brother in Christ and a fellow worker for the cause of interfaith understanding. He gave me an office to work from and I offered to volunteer for JICRC two mornings each week. We have been writing a proposal together for a series of upcoming interfaith youth conferences that JICRC is hosting next year designed to bring youth from various faith traditions in the Middle East together so that they can design grass roots program initiatives related to the "Common Word" document, the "Amman Message" and the "Document on Islamic / Christian Interfaith Coexistence". I'll write more about these documents in a future blog. They are some of the most exciting and promising documents affirm peace between the religions that have been written in the past decade. The documents have been signed by many world and religious leaders. Now the task is to bring the excitement to the congregational level. In addition to writing the proposal, Father Haddad has invited me to co-present with him at local events which I have done twice now. Once for a group of university professors from America who are doing research in Amman, and once for a group of American students from the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman. This has been a very fruitful partnership.

When I arrived in the sanctuary this morning, Father Haddad motioned for me to come back to the vestry with him. He said, “I want you to celebrate the Divine Liturgy with me this morning.” He gave me an alb and a stole and together we walked to the room with the altar to begin the liturgy. I warned him that I could not speak Arabic much less sing in Arabic. He said, “No problem!” and showed me where to stand.

The altar is in a separate room from the congregation. Three Romanesque arches open from the altar room into the sanctuary where the congregation sits. The square stone eucharistic table, sheltered with a marble canopy, is an obvious descendant of ancient Byzantine altars complete with dimensions described in the Old Testament.

The entire two hour worship service is a sung liturgy, accompanied only by the beautiful lone voice of the celebrant and the responses of the congregation, and amplified by the stark acoustic echoes from the cavernous polished stone. As I stood by Father Haddad and felt the presence of God’s Holy Spirit as the beautiful liturgy reached a place in our souls that the spoken word cannot access, I was struck by how similar this liturgy sounded to the Muslim call to prayer. I have gotten used to hearing the sung call to prayer amplified from speakers at the top of every Mosque’s minarette five times each day. I can’t understand much Arabic yet, but I can always hear the proclamation that “God is the greatest” with the words, “Allah Achbar”. It is a soothing and in some ways mournful sound. What struck me about the Orthodox liturgy in Arabic, is that it sounds so similar to the Muslim call to prayer. My Western ears can hardly tell the difference. The name of God is sung as “Allah” in the Christian Churches just as in the mosques. Listen to these video clips I found on You Tube which I think illustrates the similarity.

A Muslim Call to Prayer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNIBb6fqdWc

A divine Eastern Orthodox Christian liturgy in Arabic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHT1-PkDlWA

At one point in the service Father Haddad pushed the microphone in front of me and asked me to sing the Lord’s Prayer in English. I’m glad there is no You Tube recording of that. Hopefully my singing didn’t distract too much from the liturgy and through some miracle of God’s sovereign grace people were still able to worship.

One of the most beautiful moments in the service was the reading of the Holy Gospel. It is bound in ornate silver. When Father Haddad brings it from the altar to be read, the deacons kiss it with great reverence and respect. Then the senior elder of the church is honored to serve as a human stand as the Gospel is read. The elder humbles himself and allows the Gospel to be placed on his head as its words are sung into new life and hope.

I was also struck by the similarities in all congregations. As unceremonial as it sounds, they, just like us, rush around minutes before the service lighting their candles with butane barbeque lighters. There were only about 20 people in Church and Father Haddad was complaining that attendance is always worse in the summer. Most of the congregation was women becuase not enough husbands come to church with their wives. After church some congregants complained that he was never in the church office when they dropped by to see him. He rolled his eyes in my direction and we later agreed that so much of the work of building and tending to God’s Kingdom does not happen behind a desk in the church office. Others looked at their watches and teased him for being finished with his work for the week. How many times have I heard the well intended joke, “It must be nice working for one hour each week.” If they only knew. And his congregation complains that Father Haddad is always off doing interfaith work in some other country. Oh how universal church work is.

The Living Water of Baptism

2009-07-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

Deacon Sawalha of St. George’s Orthodox Church in Madaba took me to see the site where Jesus was thought to have been baptized in the Jordan River. The region has not changed much since Jesus was baptized here nearly 2000 years ago by John the Baptist. It says in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 3, verse 4 that John was wearing a “garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist and his food was locusts and wild honey.” As we walked along the dessert path to the baptism site, we saw a group of Bedouins resting their camels in the meager shade of the knarled scrub bushes. We heard the din of mid-summer locusts. Local honey is sold at desert farm stands nearby. And I thought, ‘if this is not the exact location of Jesus’ baptism, it is indeed the region where John would have lived the austere life of an hermitic dessert monk dressing in camel skins and eating the food that Bedouins still survive on today. If this is not the exact location, we are close.’

While working in Israel 15 years ago, I went to see the supposed baptism site of Jesus. In those days the Israeli tourism department identified a serene bend in the Jordan River North of the Dead Sea and named it as the spot where Jesus’ baptism had taken place. The Israeli location was not far from the Jordanian location, only a few miles away. It is impossible to be certain about where the baptism occurred. Though, it is safe to assume that it did not happen in any location where the Jordan River flows today. Rivers wander hundreds of meters on both sides of a river plane. If we could see a river’s movement sped up so that a second equaled 100 years of geological time we would see the river whipping back and forth within its plane.

This begs the question, what is a holy site? None of the site locations can be proven with certainty. One of my Jordanian friends suggested that the importance of a holy site is not finding the actual location, but awakening the imagination within and feeling a connection with the spirit of an event. I appreciate that, but there is a part of me that wants to know the actual location of an event with as much historical and scientific evidence as possible. I want to stand where Jesus stood. I want to touch the baptismal water and know that I have seen the place where Jesus was immersed; though certainty and faith are not companions.

Two things had always bothered me about the Israeli site. First, as I mentioned, due to the movement of rivers, the actual location of Jesus’ baptism is very unlikely to have taken place in a spot where the Jordan River flows today. Second, Jesus’ followers grew quickly into the movement which became the Christian Church. Congregations were gathering and church buildings being constructed already within the first few years after Jesus’ ministry on earth. Within 30 years of the beginning of the Christian movement, there would have been a church on every significant site. Why then was there no evidence of a church on the supposed site of the baptism in Israel?

A few years ago a team of archaeologists made an astonishing discovery in Jordan. They discovered the remains of an ancient Byzantine Church about 60 meters from the Jordan River. The church had a set of marble stairs leading down from the sanctuary into a baptistery. The church was a pilgrimage destination and was mentioned in the ancient writings of early Christian pilgrims who claimed that the church was built over the place where Jesus had been baptized. Pilgrims would have come from all over the Christian world to be baptized in that place. The evidence was mounting that this may have actually been the location of Jesus’ baptism. But this new evidence also raised more questions. The Byzantine church would have been constructed around 350 AD, late enough that its’ builders could have been wrong about the location. I asked our tour guide about this. He said that the Byzantine Church was only the latest church to have been constructed on the site. They found the foundations of two earlier churches built on the same site, each on top of the other. The earliest church dates back to the first century. And another piece of evidence, the Gospel of John says in chapter 1 verse 28 that Jesus’ baptism took place in Bethany beyond the Jordan. “Beyond the Jordan” would mean “on the other side of the Jordan from Jerusalem”. This ancient church foundation was beyond the Jordan, on the east side of the Jordan from Jerusalem, and the original name of this region was Bethany. The evidence does strongly support this as the actual location of Jesus’ baptism. Soon after this archaeological discovery was made, Israel moved their official site too to a point on the West bank of the Jordan River just across from the ruins of the newly discovered Byzantine Church.

So I stood there gazing at the recently excavated ancient marble steps leading down into the probable spot where Jesus was baptized. It is a deep spot and so ground water seeps into the ancient baptistery. I wanted to fill my water bottle with water from this location to use in future baptisms. I did fill a bottle with Jordan River water. But as I was watching the water flow into my bottle, I thought, “I am missing the point.” Tourists come here and want to take something away. They want to take away actual Jordan River water from the actual site of Jesus’ Baptism. They want to take pictures away. They want to take a stone away. They want to take information away. People kneel down to the water and touch it to their foreheads. They want to be blessed by the location and the water. But we have all missed the point. In the Gospel of Mark, chapter 1, verses 7 and 8, John the Baptist said, “After me one is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandal. I baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” We are still looking for the actual water. We are still searching for the real location of the event. And now that we have most likely found it; now what? The tourist site is interesting from an historical point of view. The water of the Jordan River is just water. It is not magical. It is not going to bless you. In fact, it is a bit murky and stagnant. It may make you sick. In the Gospel of John, chapter 4, verse 13, Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give them shall never thirst: but the water that I shall give them shall become in them a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

I want to seek this water.

The Red Rock City

2009-06-28T23:58:00.000-07:00

Around 2,500 years ago the Nabateans, a tribe from the Arabian Peninsula moved into a spacious red rock canyon in what is today southern Jordan. The canyon is called Petra, which is Greek for rock. If you have ever been to Bryce Canyon in Utah, USA, it looks strikingly similar. The Nabateans were not the first inhabitants of Petra. It is probable that the civilizations of Petra date back tens of thousands of years. The book of Genesis in the Bible, chapter 14, verse 6 refers to Petra as Mount Seir and names the Horites as the people of Petra. And in 2 Kings, Chapter 14, verse 7 the Edomites resided in Petra. The Nabateans who arrived in the canyon in the 6th Century BC are credited with having carved the large ornate buildings into the face of the red sandstone cliffs. The décor of these buildings combines elements of Egyptian, Roman and Greek architecture. By the 1st Century BC Petra would have been a bustling trade hub seeing the flow of tens of thousands of people exchanging goods between European, Mediteranean and Oriental caravans.

As I wound my way through the crevice like entrance to the city I was stunned by the beauty of the rock alternating in stripes of red sandstone and white limestone. The narrow entrance to the canyon is no wider than 4 meters in places and opens into the canyon to dramatically reveal the elaborately carved Treasury at the entrance to the city. You may remember the 1989 blockbuster film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The movie closes with a scene from Petra as Harrison Ford gallops through this crevice or siq to arrive at the Treasury of Petra, in the movie the mythic location of the Holy Grail.

While I had been impressed initially with the beauty of the stone and fascinated with the Nabatean feat of carving entire buildings into the cliff faces, the longer I lingered and hiked among the abandoned city, the more interested I became in the culture and religion of the Petra's many past civilizations. Like most of the region east of Israel, Petra became Christian in the early centuries of the Eastern Christian movement. The monastery has empty porticos where statues would have stood. What did those statues depict: early saints, Moses and Aaron, the Virgin Mary or Jesus? There was a Byzantine Church in the center of the abandoned city. Why was the baptistery in a private room behind the sanctuary? Why do the beautiful mosaic floors depict animals and not Biblical figures? And I’m curious about the 200 years or so of pre-Christian Petra. What was the religion of the Nabateans, and why is there a stone alter at the highest mountain peak? The alter is framed with carved channels for blood to flow into basins. How often did they sacrifice animals to the Gods? Did they use the blood for ritual cleansing?

Understanding the Nabateans and their customs of ritual animal sacrifice, might uncover a deeper understanding of the related ancient Jewish customs of animal sacrifice. The more we understand of ancient Jewish sacrifice, the more we can begin to understand the theology of the early Christians who began to interpret Christ’s crucifixion as a ritual sacrifice.

I’d love to scan the web for these answers, but the questions will have to wait. There is an Arabic test to cram for, and more importantly an America vs. Brazil soccer game to watch. Priorities!

A visit with Deacon Sawalha

2009-06-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

Arch Bishop Michael Champion of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church put me in touch with Deacon Mothanna Sawalha of the Orthodox Church in Jordan. Deacon Sawalha is a cousin of Father Samir, one of the officiating priests of the Orthodox Church in Montrose. The Deacon met me in Amman and drove me to his home village of Madaba. I was surprised that I recognized him. Some of you may remember that Deacon Sawalha came to the Reformed Church of Cortlandtown with Father Samir during one of their first Orthodox worship services in our church. He also attended our living nativity last winter and was impressed with our celebration of Christ’s birth. It is a small world, and our little church on the hill has become something of an ecumenical cross roads.

Deacon Sawalha brought me first to the site of his Orthodox parish which is a famous tourist destination in Jordan, famous because adjacent to the Orthodox church is a Byzantine mosaic depicting an ancient map of Jerusalem. 15 years ago when I was working on an archaeological dig in Beit Shean Israel and touring the Middle East I went out of my way to come to Madaba just to see this famous Byzantine mosaic. The twists and turns of life are so unexpected. Who would have thought that 15 years later I’d be back in Madaba as the guest of the officiating Deacon of this church.

As we sat on his veranda drinking Turkish coffee, we discussed religion and politics. We began by affirming our brotherhood in the same body of Jesus Christ and marveled at how amazing it is that our baptisms which took place in such different traditions of the Christian faith have united us in the same body of Christ. We are brothers who grew up speaking unrelated languages half way around the world, in cultures that have often found themselves at odds with each other, and yet it is not primarily our national citizenship nor our culture that defines us, but our membership in the one body of our Lord under God’s love and grace. And we are humbled to serve as fellow colleagues in the building of God’s peaceable kingdom on earth, which we were both careful to acknowledge that we are not privileged to define. Only God can define its borders and I believe its borders are broader and wider in God’s love and grace than either of us are able to imagine.

Deacon Sawalha finished seminary in Lebanon around the same time that I finished seminary in New Jersey. He plans to be ordained as a priest in the near future and hopes to be appointed to an Orthodox parish in the United States (either New York or Chicago). He hopes to minister both to English and Arabic speaking Christians in the US.

I asked him about the treatment of Christians in Jordan and in other Middle Eastern Countries. He echoed what we have heard in the news of late, that there have been serious persecutions against Christians in Egypt with the killing of swine herds which has decimated their livelihood. Jordan is a much more moderate and tolerant country. This region, the nation of Jordan, or what is now called the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, was a Christian region in the first several centuries of the Common Era. The countryside is marked with church ruins from the Byzantine Empire, a 1,000 year era of Christian hegemony from around 400 AD to the 15th Century when the Ottoman Turks began to rule this part of the Middle East. Christianity is older here than in any place in Europe.

As with most Islamic states, Jordan is very tolerant of other religions. It is a conviction of Islam that there can be no coercion or compulsion in religion. Muslims are required to share their faith in the one God of heaven and earth, but it is up to the individual whether or not to believe. Islamic states protect the freedom of the unconverted to practice their own religions freely. The Prophet Mohammed considered Jews and Christians to be “people of the book” and a part of God’s salvific plan; that said, even in Jordan a Christian may experience some restrictions which feel confining. All non-Muslims including Christians pay higher taxes than Muslims. I have heard Muslims explain that this is not a form of persecution, but rather a way of equalizing society since Muslims are required by their faith to give 2.5% of their income each year to the poor.

In another restriction, Christians are not allowed to proselytize. The Deacon was explaining to me that this law, while it is intended to protect against abuses can be misused when a well meaning dialogue between a Christian and a Muslim grows tense. A Muslim has the power to call the police and have the Christian investigated on charges of proselytizing. Apparently there have been cases when Christians have been arrested for theologizing, or casually exchanging views of God. There does seem to be the perception among some Christians in Jordan that it is not entirely safe to enter into interfaith conversations for this reason. I imagine that such a misapplication of the law which prohibits proselytizing could inhibit dialogue. I am curious about this prohibition. In a few days I will be visiting The Jordanian Interfaith Coexistence Research Center. JICRC is headed by Orthodox Priest, Father Nabil and supported by the Jordanian Royal Family. www.coexistencejordan.org The organization works for the peaceful coexistence of all religions in the region. I’d like to ask the Father Nabil, the Executive Director how he thinks this reasonable law against proselytizing may unintentionally discourage dialogue, and what is done to create a safe space for dialogue to take place.

I asked Deacon Sawalha to share with me how he came to be called to the priesthood. He mentioned the faith of his mother. From the time he was a child she taught him about faith in God as revealed in Christ and illumined by the Holy Spirit. And that is how faith comes to us all, by way of a significant relationship. Think about how you received your faith, and I imagine that it included a significant relationship with someone who loved you guiding, teaching and bringing the faith to you. For some it was a mother or father, for some a brother or sister, for others a good friend, a minister or neighbor. Someone gave you the gift of guidance in faith. By the time Deacon Sawalha was a teenager he felt God’s strong presence in his life leading him to become a priest. He serves now with humility, gentleness, intelligence and submission to God.

Once again I was overwhelmed with his hospitality. He insisted that I see his home and meet his family. After drinking coffee on his veranda he took me to a café in Madaba where we enjoyed another drink and he refused to let me pay. He then brought me to a restaurant where we had a delicious meat, tomato and onion dish rolled in pita bread with yogurt. Deacon Sawalha drove me from place to place reiterating often that I am to consider him and his family as my own family while I am in Jordan. He then mentioned all of the places he wants to take me to over the next 9 weeks: the baptism site of Jesus at the Jordan River, Mt. Nebo where Moses died, the desert of Wadi Rum and his family’s olive farm. I thanked him for his wonderful hospitality.

It was 2:00 AM when he drove me back to my apartment. I felt badly that I had taken so much of his time. He assured me that his faith is what motivates him to show hospitality and he quoted from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, verse 35 when Jesus said, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” I have often preached about this passage and encouraged our congregation in Montrose to apply this teaching of Jesus to the current immigrant situation in the Town of Cortlandt as people from Central and South America come to live in our area. We have been doing all we can to extend hospitality to sojourners in our midst. But this is the first time in a long time that I am on the other side of that passage. I am the stranger. I am the foreigner. I am the one who is vulnerable and would be lost without the kindness of hosts. Thank God! Thank God for faithful people like Deacon Sawalha, Samir’s family and Ahmad’s family who have taken their faith seriously enough to do as their faith requires – to welcome the stranger. I only hope that we too will take our faith seriously enough to welcome every kind of stranger in our communities. There is another passage in the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews in chapter 13, verse 2, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it.” While I thanked Deacon Sawalha for honoring these scriptures, I assured him that I am not an angel. He laughed.

Inter-cultural hospitality

2009-06-18T08:17:00.000-07:00

Two months ago my brother met a teenager in Palm Bay Florida named Ahmad. Ahmad had recently arrived in Florida’s east coast from Jordan to begin college. After meeting Ahmad, my brother noticed that he seemed isolated and homesick. English was not Ahmad’s first language so he found himself even more alone. My brother Greg, took Ahmad under his wing and drove him to a Jordanian Restaurant where Ahmad would be able to meet other Jordanians, to speak in Arabic and to relax in the comforts of home. Ahmad and Greg became friends and Greg checks in on Ahmad to be sure that he is taken care of. Soon after Greg met Ahmad, he received a phone call from Jordan. It was Ahmad’s father Akaram. Akaram was in tears on the phone as he spoke to Greg saying, “Thank you. Thank you. Praise God. Thank you. You have looked after my son. Thank you.” (This is a picture of Akaram and I in his law office in Amman, and Akaram's youngest son.)

When Greg learned that I was going to be studying Arabic in Ahmad’s home city of Amman Jordan this summer, Greg put me in touch with Ahmad who insisted that I contact his family when I arrived. It took some aimless driving in a Jordanian Taxi cab with arrivals at many false locations as the cab driver and I mis-communicated through his broken English and my three words of Arabic supplemented with my own version of sign language. We eventually found Akaram’s law office. He greeted me like a long lost member of his family and invited me to his house where they served me large portions of spiced chicken, fresh yogurt, cauliflour, stew, tomatoes, fresh olive oil and the best hummus I have ever eaten. After dinner we moved into their living room and drank cup after cup of Arabic coffee. Starbucks has not discovered Arabic coffee yet, but when they do I think it will become a favorite option on their menu.

I noticed that there was no television in their living room. When I asked them about the absence of a TV they said that they spend time together each night as a family after dinner sitting around in the living room, telling stories of the day and talking with each other. They do have a television in another room, but watch it only occasionally. How different this is from some American households where there is a TV in nearly every room and at least one of them is on almost constantly as white noise in the back ground. Family members each watch their own show disconnected from the company of the house. We would do well to schedule our TV watching, turn them off the rest of the time and renew the family value of relating daily with good conversation.

2009-06-14T10:54:00.001-07:00

It's 2:00 PM on Sunday after church. We had a nice worship service today with the children assisting in candle lighting, liturgy, anthem, scripture readings and benediction. We called the children to the front of the church during the pastoral prayer and many of us surrounded them with a circle of prayer.

This is a bitter sweet moment. I know it is only 9 weeks, and it will go by quickly, but I will miss everyone. Melissa, and the kids, my parents, friends, everyone in the congregation. I will be missing my cousin's visit with her children to NY, and my brother's visit this summer. I will also be missing my aunt and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary. There will be no taking my canoe out for a glide on the Adirondack waters, no hiking, no camping. I am excited to meet with the leaders of Protestant and Orthodox Churches, and Mosques. It will be an educational summer.

My plane leaves at 9:30 tonight. So I am finishing up my packing and saying my goodbyes.

Preparations for Jordan

2009-05-31T18:27:00.000-07:00

Bishop Michael Champion and I are scheduling a meeting with Prince Ghazi for the third week of June. We will be discussing the Prince's letter "A Common Word Between Us". The Common Word letter was written by Prince Ghazi and signed by 138 Islamic leaders as a gesture of reconciliation between Islam and Christianity. The letter references the teaching of Christ to "love your neighbors as you love yourself." and a smiliar statement of the Prophet Mohammed from the Hadith. Over the past two years, Christian leaders have been invited to give their response to this letter of reconciliation.