To be with...

Friday, February 13, 2009
4:21AM

I was a junior in college twenty-five years ago – long before college students carried cell phones – and even before most had their own phones in their rooms. The dorms at Oxy had central lines which were proctored from morning until midnight. When a call came in, the proctor would buzz the person’s room and she’d go off running down the hall, hoping that the nearest phone would be available. If it was occupied, the trek continued upstairs, downstairs or around to the next wing. Or perhaps the next.

These were the days before voice mail. Proctors – a few paid, mostly volunteers putting in their required hours - scribbled phone messages on little pieces of paper and stuck them in the little boxes assigned to every room. Twenty-five years ago, on a February day at the end of mid-terms, I returned to the dorm at mid-day to find two messages: “Your mom called.” And “Your brother Steve called.” Highly unusual but I thought little of it. When I returned later that afternoon, there was yet another message. “Your brother will be here at 6:00.” Again, I thought it odd but gave it little more thought. Late that afternoon, I was on duty at the proctor’s desk when my mom called.

“What’s up?” I asked. “Why are Steve and Donna coming to see me?”

“They’re not coming to see you. They’re coming to be with you,” she replied. “Your father died this morning.”

“They’re not coming to see you. They’re coming to be with you.”

I’ve become so immersed in the details of planning our spring break trip to the Holy Land that it has been easy to lose sight of our true purpose in going. Not merely to see people but to be with them.

• To be with the people of our companion Synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL).
  
• To be with our sisters and brothers whose lives are made impossibly difficult as they continue to live under the oppression of occupation. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. Year after endless year.
  
• To be with them so that they know that our love for them is not mere sappy sentiment but the kind of love that causes us to go to great lengths to be with them.
  
• To be with our kindred, to experience a bit of their lives, to learn their stories so that we, then, can return to the U.S. to share their stories with others.
  

So often, people doubt the harsh realities of the occupation. After all, it is much easier to swallow the diluted pabulum served day after day by the American media than to go and see for ourselves, to put our feet on the soil of the holy land and walk where so many contemporary angels fear to tread.

It is much simpler to hold fast to one extremist position or another than it is to face the far more complicated, nuanced and painful realities extant on the ground. The truth is that the occupation erodes the hope of the Palestinian people to the point that some no longer feel their lives worth living. In a much more subtle but no less insidious way, the occupation eats away at the souls of the Israelis. Occupation is a losing proposition for all involved.

More than a decade of ordained ministry - and three decades of living before that - have helped me to realize the importance of what we call "the ministry of presence," which is - quite simply - to be with those who are suffering. There are illnesses we cannot cure. Hurts we cannot heal. Systems we cannot single-handedly change. But even when we feel utterly impotent in our ability to care for those who suffer, we can offer them ourselves by being with them.

In these troubled times, it is easy to become so inwardly focused - so anxious about the difficulties of our own lives - that we forget how well off, in fact, most of us are. And how very many others are not as fortunate as we. We are even less inclined to set aside an hour, day or week of our time to step out of our own lives to be with those who feel they've been forgotten. And have lived with that sense for many decades.

So, we will go to be with the people of the land called "holy." To be with them as they face the challenges of daily life. To be with them as they share their lives with us. To be with them so that they will know that they are heard, that their names are known and their stories will be shared with those who cannot (or will not) visit them in person but nonetheless need to find ways to be with them, too.