OK, a few people have encouraged me to finish this, and the underlying situation in the
Holy Land needs to be known, so here goes…
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| The Shepherds' Fields Church |
Our first day in Bethlehem began with a trip to the Shepherds Fields,
where we remembered the angels message: “Glory to God in the highest and peace
to his people on earth” which we continue to pray today. The view of the fields was not particularly
inspiring, as a recent wall and road across it was the dominant feature. There were some good murals in the church and
the acoustics made our rendition of Silent Night sound quite good. On leaving, I was lucky to capture this pic of
the sun behind the cross, which came out surprisingly well for a phone.
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| Where BC became AD |
I loved the sense of the geography of the place and was very tempted to
see how long it would take to run up the hill to the Church of the Nativity, in
the footsteps of the shepherds. Maybe I
should have as the queue there was an hour and a half, during which
occasionally shuffled forward and I absorbed some of the sense of history by
leaning against the columns polished by pilgrims of old. I was again mildly amused by the Orthodox
priest(?) who would occasionally urge the patiently queuing international throng
to be quiet out of respect for the location, whilst happily selling his wares
of candles and trinkets! Was the wait
worth it? Actually, yes – despite any scepticism I have about the exact spot, the wonder of God made man is always
worth contemplating and I was certainly much closer to the location than ever
before; we prolonged our stay down in the little grotto with a prayerful version
of “Away in a Manger”. By the time we
came out, lunch was well-overdue, and very welcome in the nearby “Tent”
restaurant (again retracing the shepherds path as this was back down the road).
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| The assault course back to the coach |
So, having done the tourist bit, we then had a much more gritty encounter at
the Tent of Nations, the ancestral
farm owned by the Christian Nasser family and now surrounded by Israeli
settlements and under huge pressure to leave.
It was hearing about their plight in an article in the BBC Magazine
that first made me want to come on this pilgrimage, and this was definitely a
highlight and one of the few rays of hope.
The settlers had done their best to block access to the farm, so we enjoyed
a walk up the track to the farm in the sunshine and had an inspiring talk from
Daoud about their peaceful legal defence against all the various threats and
intimidation against them. The reality
of this hit home when a car full of teenage settlers was waiting at the gate
when we left (the road being open from their end), with an automatic weapon clearly
on view. As a Brit, I found this quite
shocking, but Daoud calmly spoke to them.
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| 67 years and still waiting - no wonder they think that UN stands for "United Nothing" |
Then, a challenging visit to a
UN Refugee Camp, holding the (descendents of) Palestinian families still hoping
for the implementation of the UN resolution 194 (from 1948!) giving them the right
to return to their homes which they fled the wars of 1948 & 1967. We heard first-hand from a young man called
Shadi about daily life there, of poverty and overcrowding, and the less obvious
things like the complete lack of privacy and the psychological effects of this. Images of martyrs decorated the walls. Despite their
situation, the children played in the streets and followed us around, hoping
for some loose change to reward their infectious smiles. I hope that they remain immune to the despair
of their surroundings, but when all your basic rights are denied and you feel
powerless, the only option left is to struggle for freedom - it takes an
enormous amount of courage and patience to keep this peaceful and I have great
admiration for anyone who can do this. I
could not help feeling anger at the injustice of it all…
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| Amen. |
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