This large and detailed  map, 20110612_btselem_map_of_wb_eng  created by Btselem  in June 2011, shows the current conditions of the West Bank in terms of settlements, road closures, road blocks and so on.  It is a pdf suitable for printing, and useful for anyone who wants to better understand the Israeli-Palestinian context.  Btselem is an Israeli organization that tracks the human rights issues in the Occupation; they have created a number of useful reports documenting the situation over many years.  Check out the map and their website.

Recently, a friend reading this blog suggested I take a look at a video about lack of freedom of movement in the West Bank. (Thank you, Kathee.)  The video was posted on the ELCA’s Peace Not Walls page. This is a good resource to learn more about the current issues in the West Bank from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  The video detailed the frustrations of people trying to move about in the West Bank.  But there was more.  There was a link to lots more videos.  So I’m just now getting into this rich resource for telling the story of what’s going on, and the question the videos raise: are these our values?  The videos are full of witness reports.  For instance, Jeff Halper, a Jewish man who has been the coordinator for the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, speaks passionately in one of the videos about the anguish of ethnic cleansing he has been witnessing, and the appalling policy of demolition of an astounding number of Palestinian homes.  Since we provide Israel with $3 billion dollars of aid each year, it is a question that has to be raised.  What are we buying?  To see these videos and learn more about the project that created them, go to The Chicago Hearing page.  It’s worth your time.

Jesus said that He had nowhere to lay his head.  He knew the pain of having no fixed abode, no place of security on this earth.
Hold that thought.

Today my great neice and great nephew, along with other family members, walked the low tide beach together  and found a strange collection of about 20 hermit crabs, inside their little periwinkle houses, walking around at the edge of the waves.  Now, to find a single hermit crab is always fun for a small child, but to find so many in one place is quite exceptional and we had a great time watching them.

One little crab had no shell, and he (she?) became the subject of everyone’s concern. It was homeless.  No doubt it had outgrown its previous shell and was out looking for new digs, but we were concerned. Compassion for homeless creatures apparently begins early in life. How could we help?  Maybe a seagull would eat the poor wee thing!  We looked in vain for an empty shell for the homeless crab to move into, something just the right size, but alas, nothing suitable could be found. Thankfully, the vulnerable crab washed out on a wave before any hungry birds could spot him and gulp him down.  We all expressed a hope that he would find a new home out in the sea.

Btselem, a human rights watchdog organization, and EAPPI, the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, have been observing the sudden homelessness of more and more Palestinian and Bedouin people in the Occupied Territories this year.  This is due to the loss, due to illegal demolition, of far too many homes of far too many people in the first half of 2011. The pace of demolitions is speeding up. Where do the homeless and impoverished people go when they find everything they own turned to a pile of rubble? Unlike the hermit crab, this is not a natural process, a sort of evolution.  Human beings without shelter. Do they disappear into the sea of humanity?

Is there a threshold effect?   How many does it take? Is 706 illegally displaced persons enough for half a year?  Or is one too many? One diabetic or one child without shelter in the desert. Isn’t even one enough for us to take notice, and worry, and weep?

William Shatner, whose career careened into brilliance when he played Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek series, has of late become a TV commercial icon.  Those of us who watched him in his sci-fi years wonder about this, but work is work after all.  And, advertising is big business.  Who are we to comment?

In contrast,  Archbishop Desmond Tutu, nobel laureate and prominent member of The Elders, a group of global humanitarian leaders,

From http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/tut0gal-1

recently made a public video endorsing a product.  The product in question is a song that can be downloaded on ITunes,  Freedom for Palestine, by FreedomOneWorld.  The Archbishop’s move is unusual, to say the least.  Why would a clergyperson endorse a product? Is this a descent into advertising?  Listen to Desmond Tutu’s remarks and see for yourself how the Archbishop uses his fame in championing human rights to come to the aid of Palestine.  The Archbishop recognizes the work of artists throughout history in shaping public opinion by opening up public discourse and putting issues on the front burner.  His comment is made, not for a fee, or for any kind of fame or glory, or to be employed, but because the Archbishop believes that the cause of human rights is worth coming out of retirement for.

The endorsement is not in contrast to his career, but in the context of it.  Throughout his life, he has worked to reconcile oppressed and oppressor, to recognize and live the South African concept of Ubuntu, that each of us is a human being because of our shared and common humanity, and to recognize that the only way to freedom for one is for all to be free.  Thus, his support of freedom for Palestine is expressly so that true liberation can come not only to Palestine but also to Israel.  Only with justice available to all can peace that lasts be achieved.

On the other side of the issue, the song is being called propaganda by Glenn Beck, who issued an impassioned call to “anyone with talent” to respond to this threat.  Beck is feeling threatened because the video is being endorsed by many artists and, most significantly, because it is being played and endorsed by “churches, yes, churches.”

Churches.  We are called to engagement in the moral and the ethical, and this does not lead to quietism but to activity in the sphere of the world.   As Mike Nicol wrote (in his biography of Tutu on page 19 of  Believe. The Words and Inspiration of Desmond Tutu), ” in the 1980s during South African apartheid, Tutu “was not a political priest, rather a priest driven to politics” by the situation in which God had placed him.  In endorsing the music video, Tutu is endorsing a Gospel rhythm of life in which God endorses, not occupation, but common human rights; not oppression, but our need for reconciliation; and not despair that leads to war, but the hope that eventually we will all see that “I am because we are.”

So check out the music video and see what you think.

So yesterday my computer went into the shop and I’ve just gotten it back, now with new speakers.  It was in the shop all of 24 hours, and I found this to be a bit of a surreal experience.  It’s amazing – and a little disturbing — how much of my daily life has come to be centered in this piece of hardware and all that it does for me.  This is partly due to the fact that my family and friends are scattered all over the world and partly due to the fact that I am a graduate student.  But as I sit outside the Apple store to type this and check my email, I can’t avoid the fact that we are truly in a world radically different from the one I grew up in: communication is an entirely different affair from what it used to be.

Is the hold that tech has on us a good thing? Yes and no.  I slept in this morning, read a book and took a long walk by the lakes.  I saw two great blue herons (one in flight at close range), two Baltimore orioles, several redwing blackbirds (one of which was scolding and chasing  a ferret),  a mother bird teaching a baby to fly, a large number of geese and ducks, and lots of amazing prairie grasses and flowers. I painted in a journal.  While I can walk and look and rest and paint when I have my computer, these activities have a different flavor in the digital silence.

Well, I’ve scanned my email accounts and checked facebook.  Time to take my silicon-brain-friend home.  This experience has me thinking about how the computer humanizes me, by bringing my friends just a bit closer, and yet how important it probably is to take vacations from the digital world.

I’ve just spent a week in a seminary worship intensive and today we did the Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday Vigil services back to back over a marathon 6 hours, and then debriefed. And yes, we did the whole vigil —  and then some.

Well, that is not how one usually does these services (generally, the remembrance of Christ’s self-offering takes place over three days), and I am both spiritually filled up and totally blitzed.  But that is not what happened too fast.  I guess what you could say is that the fellowship is over too fast.  We arrive here and reconnect in deep love and fellowship from all over the country, we live intensely together for a week, we do all this awesome worship, we picnic and go out to eat and drink coffee at Dunn Brothers,  and tomorrow we get into cars and planes and it’s done.

And yet the fellowship doesn’t end.  Only the residential piece is really done. Thank God for the prayers and the ‘net and the phone that somehow sustain the ties that bind.

It’s time to pack and sleep , but as I sit and look out the window one more time at the brightly lit Minneapolis skyline, I know I have been blessed here, deeply blessed, despite how tightly crammed the week has been.

I’m sitting in my dorm room (I’ve never actually lived in a building with giant stone pillars at the front entrance before) looking out over the Minneapolis skyline and preparing to make an airport run to bring in a friend.  Yes, the distance education students are gathering from around the country again for a week of intensive.  I’ve missed them since January, and I’m looking forward to greeting them anew.

Everything’s being redefined for me as I go through this program.  I guess this is part of pastoral formation, this disconnection and reconnection.  That is, old ideas of community and belonging are expanded. The old is not lost, but embraced in the new.

My mind is restless these days, between Ames and Des Moines and St. Paul, between Maine and Boston and rural Iowa and South Africa, between Ireland and Germany and Palestine.  I’m becoming more fully aware of the connectedness of it all, a connectedness that is spiritual as well as technological. I feel like I’m drifting into a new conscious awareness.

We move from the belonging that is family to embrace the family of humanity.  We move from the community that is neighborhood to embrace the community that is global.  We move from the idea that “charity begins at home” to an understanding that we are who we are only in that we are formed by the broader community.  The African “Ubuntu,” “I am because we are”, becomes significant. We only begin now to know what that will mean in practice.

Indeed my practice has changed from a monastic style of art-studio life into a life of books and lectures, but also into a life of activism, listening and lobbying.  It is a life that becomes familiar with airports and international phone calls and cross-cultural awareness. It isn’t quite what I expected, and I’m sure it’s a lot more than I know as of yet.

So, back at the seminary, everyone is arriving from hither and yon, and we will be intensively together and then disperse, into our own contexts and then, well, only God knows where.  May God continue to expand our hearts with the Divine love.

If I were going to paint the word “disconnected” at this point I’d paint a dandylion in its puffball stage, or a milkweed in seed.  On this Pentecost weekend, I pray we will be open to the wind of the Spirit.

In the book, Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_Everybody), the author describes the epochal change we are experiencing as social media evolve. Shirky writes that the real effects of these changes will lag behind their creation, because it requires a critical mass of users for the effects to become apparent (Shirky, 270).  Of course, we may be well beyond critical mass and already seeing the effects of social networking by email, and with social networking sites, blogs and other internet connecting  as well.

One effect we may be seeing is the evolution of lobbying behavior. I was intrigued by Shirky’s description of the effects of these changes on expressions of political will.  As a person with some interest in human rights, I’ve ended up on a fair number of email lists.  The organizers of these lists like to keep me abreast of bills moving through Congress, issues of concern to the Secretary of State, and the like.  I can’t count the number of on-line petitions I’ve signed.  This, of course, is the lowest level of cost for an activist, like one-click on-line shopping.  The next step up from there is the e-letter.  The savvy activist organization will provide the would-be letter-writer with a sample letter than just needs a signature.  This reduces the effort on the part of the signer to do research.  All that is required is a measure of trust in one’s organization’s research. The signer is encouraged to personalize the letter with any pertinent information the signer might personally have, of course.  One types in one’s zip code, one’s representatives or senators are identified, and once again, one hits “sign” or “send” and gets instant gratification. Shirky calls the value of this behavior into question.

These e-letters do, in fact, arrive on the desks of at least the staffers of senators and representatives.  I know this because I regularly get letters in return, by U.S. Mail and by email, from those I have written to.  The responses are, of course, sometimes stock responses.  The fact that there was a response at all suggests that my opinion was probably at least registered.  Nevertheless, my organized groups probably know that, as Shirky writes, “the cost of lobbying Congress by email is so low that an email message has become effectively meaningless” and that email is therefore “the wrong tool for lobbying Congress” (287).

What, then, is the right tool? One, apparently, that elevates the cost in order to gather attention to the message.  Shirky suggests a number of surprising things, like sending flowers along with one’s message (288), which, because they are costly, are harder to ignore than emails, and tend to stand out in the office.  While sending prairie flowers to my Iowa Congress members is an interesting idea, potentially adding allergens to the mix, and leading to other possibilities (ears of corn? Roasted soybeans?), I think that personal presence (“Hi, my name is ______ and I am a constituent…”) seems to trump it.  Phone calls are good.  Staffers usually listen and take notes.  Because phone calls are inherently intrusive and not by appointment, I try to be brief.

In addition, I’ve done it the old-fashioned way, face to face. I’ve been on the Hill twice now, and once, to the state offices.  I was listened to attentively.  Staffers took careful notes at the meetings and engaged in clarifying dialog.  So far, however, I have yet to actually sit down with the Senators or Congressmen/women I am seeking. (I’ve had more face-time with presidential candidates, being from Iowa, than with members of Congress, but that was when they were stumping, and does not count.) There have been sightings, smiles and waves (“Hi, Senator Harkin!”), but I am hoping for more than that, one of these days.

The problem is, of course, that personal presence on the Hill is costly indeed for one who lives in the middle of this vast nation.  I can’t afford to be there regularly.  So I return to the question.  Given what we know about social networking, the power inherent in new communication tools, what is the most effective way to participate in this representative democracy, to demonstrate that something matters a great deal, and should rise to the top of the in-box?

In my media and faith class, we are reading a book by Clay Shirkey, Here Comes Everybody (New York: Penguin, 2008).  Shirkey invites and reflects on participation in internet discourse by referring to us as “not just readers…but…members of the former audience.” (Shirkey, 10).   I would like to respond by saying that for some in the Church, this is probably wishful thinking; some are still quite content to be the audience.

I’m very interested in issues of global human rights.  I’m aware of various United Nations documents related to human rights.  I’m also aware of how little policing of such rights exists in the world and how capriciously the subject is attended to (or not).

So I found an article a friend recently posted on Facebook of interest.  Quite content to be the audience at the time, I did not post in response. It is a  philosophical article by Michael Boylan in The New York Times Opinion Page, May 29, 2011. The article was about whether there are natural human rights, or whether human rights are merely a social construction, subject to the relativity of one’s location in the world. How we answer has significant implications.(You can read it at http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/are-there-natural-human-rights/.)

This is an important discussion for both church and society.  If we recognize human rights as only relative, then conversations about the denial of human rights in our reaction to the news (as with understanding the Holocaust or, more recently, the Arab Spring) really have no meaning, and governments can choose for themselves how they use power in relation to their citizens and neighbors. If the converse is true, then the “golden rule” applies and human rights ought to be internationally recognized and defensible.  If there are no “natural human rights” (originating in what it means to be human), and if, as some say, there is no moral compass external to human nature (God, the Divine, etc), then all we have left are social constructs, and when we impose one social construct over another, we can fall prey to Machiavellian, Orwellian, colonial, imperial, and other indefensible social constructs that raise one group of human beings over others for utilitarian purposes.

The fact that this issue has become an international subject of discussion in the Times and, more importantly perhaps, propagated onto the web, is good news and ought to encourage the Church and have us sit up and take notice. Responders were quick to bring Plato, Bentham, and Maslow into the equation, but the idea of an external moral source was not commonly ascribed to.

A quick look at just a few of the comments posted (282) was interesting. Some expressed the opinion that the idea of natural human rights was absurd.  One writer said that the idea of a true moral order is “grimly persistent” (“Sere”, May 29, in Comments).  In the same place, “Ilya” responded that merely human (stateless) persons have no rights.   A Zen Buddhist (“Musho”) reframed the question in terms of the causes of human suffering.  “RPW” said the article was not philosophical but psychiatric, a symptom of our collective loss of love.  Others cited the Founding Fathers relative to the Bill of Rights, spoke of rights as mere social contracts, or wandered into deep waters with Kierkegaardian and Hegelian discussions.

Of course, no one can respond to everything. And God does not need us to defend the Divine Existence and the Divine call for a true moral order, which, by the way I find to be wonderfully, not grimly, persistent.  Still, I’m curious. Do we still hold with the Founding Fathers that there are self-evident human rights? If so, are they God-given?  If so, what do we do about competing divine claims about human rights as expressed by the plethora of religious authorities Or, are they inherent to the nature of humanity? Or, are they social constructs and if so, do they have universal significance or are they relative only to their society?  Are there, as the UN states, universal human rights? Are they real if we do not enforce them?  How can they be enforced if they are not recognized? How do they apply to refugees and stateless people? In short, how would you respond to Boylan’s provocative question?

Greetings!

Many of you know that, as part of our course requirements, I went in 2008 on my seminary cross-cultural immersion to Israel and Palestine.  Our professor made certain that, in addition to worship and history/archeology, we were deeply immersed in the context of contemporary Palestine.  At that time, I learned of the hardships of the people living in the Occupied Territories (the West Bank).  The Occupation influences everything: whether water is available in one’s home; whether one has access to green space to play; where one can live; whether one can live with one’s spouse; whether one can get a job; whether farmers can harvest their crops; whether crops can be brought to markets; whether children can safely go to school; where one is allowed to worship; whether one gets health care, or not; whether one can leave one’s home; what roads one can use; etc.

When I got home, I couldn’t get Palestine out of my mind, so I followed the first trip with a second one, this time going to Bethlehem in order to work with Dar Al Kalima College as a visiting artist for three weeks, assisting in providing educational opportunities to students living behind the Separation Wall. (If you scroll back to older posts in this blog, you will find posts from that trip.) By making a more personal contact with a number of young adults in my classes, I learned even more about what daily life is like for these people, and it is a hard life.

In fact, our sister church body, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, has joined other Christian churches in the Holy Land in denouncing the Occupation as a situation that brings harm to Palestinians and Jews alike, and have labeled it a sin against God and humanity.  (http://www.kairospalestine.ps/). Such luminaries as President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have called the Occupation of Palestine by Israel a system of Apartheid, and it is, complete with passes, curfews, closures, separate and unequal living arrangements and opportunities, armed presence, removals, and imprisonments based upon race.

One of the organizations I encountered in Palestine is EAPPI, the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel. (See http://www.eappi.org.) This organization, administered as an international ministry of the World Council of Churches, is committed to non-violence and to accompaniment, which I find similar in focus to chaplaincy. The role of the accompanier  (EA) is to live among the people, and to stand as a visible sign of peace in the midst of conflict, in schools, neighborhoods, at checkpoints, and in rural areas.  EAs are positioned to promote peace; by their presence as internationals, they help reduce conflict, and also provide eyewitness reports of what they have seen.  EAs participate in support of the end of the Occupation through non-confrontational means.  During my first trip to the region, my seminary group and I participated with “Women in Black”, a group of Jewish women who demonstrate in Jerusalem every Friday afternoon against the Occupation.  The EAs were there in support of the women, and we stood with them. During my second trip to Palestine, I went with the EA group in Jerusalem to visit a family that had been evicted from their home at gunpoint by settlers.  This was a very formative experience for me. (You can read blogs of returned U.S. volunteers at this site: http://www.eappi-us.org/index.php?page=blogs/.)

A number of people involved in the EAPPI have been/are clergy, but not everyone goes for religious reasons. All are committed to working for peace and justice, and to do so non-violently. The Jerusalem office places EAs into international teams that are sent to the specific regions where they are needed.  I have been told by associates in Palestine that EAs are among the most helpful of all those working in the West Bank in terms of what they have been able to do for the people.

I have been following the EA eyewitness reports for a couple years now on the web. I find them to be compassionate and insightful.  This spring, I completed the application process, and as a result have been accepted as an EA for the fall service window, roughly from September 6 until December 15.

People come from all over the world to be EAs: Sweden, France, Australia, Britain, South Africa,  Canada, South America, you name it.  Most of the volunteers are either young adults or retirees, but some people take leaves or sabbaticals in order to participate.

It would be great for more Americans to be part of this service, because our country funds the Israeli military with our tax dollars, to the tune of $3 billion a year, while giving comparatively very little to the Palestinian people. The value of the American presence on EAPPI teams can not be overstated, because in this grassroots way it is possible to show that we care about what is happening to the people there.

Some would say that those who stand against the Occupation are anti-Semitic.  This is not true.  Many Israeli Jews are joining the movement against the Occupation because they have come to believe that the Occupation hurts both Palestinians and Israelis. Real peace and security cannot be obtained by one people by repression of the other. Even a number of former Israeli soldiers have broken their silence and chosen no longer to serve in the military because of human rights issues (http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/). Moreover, the Palestinian people are also Semitic. EAs do not stand against the nation of Israel, nor against Jewish people. They stand for peace.

This is an exciting and big commitment.  I would not have chosen it for myself, because I actually don’t like politics, and have shied away from it all my life.  I would not even have been aware of this issue if it hadn’t been for the seminary. Certainly, being in EAPPI is an opportunity, an opportunity to build bridges across cultures and between faiths.  It is an opportunity to connect with our brothers and sisters in the Christian Churches of the Holy Land as well, and to let them know that we are praying with them in their struggle. And as a Franciscan, it is an opportunity to connect with St.Francis, a man of peace who also engaged in cross-cultural conversations.

September will be here before I know it.  I look forward to blogging during my time in Palestine, and also to sharing this experience with the seminary community in the Spring. Seminary professors have agreed to follow my blog and help me process this experience and present it to the Seminary in Spring semester.  I will receive independent study credit for this experience.

Some will want to know how they can help.  First of all, I covet your prayers for the peace process between Palestine and Israel, as well as for the effectiveness of my ministry there.  Second, if you know of any groups that would be interested in a presentation in Spring or Summer of 2012 about the experience of being an EA in Palestine, or about daily life and its challenges there, please let me know.  Part of my service involves educating and informing others. I am actively looking for presentation opportunities. I would like to get at least a few of these onto my calendar before I leave. If you reply to the blog telling me how to reach you, I will respond.

Third, I hope we can intentionally work against that tide of opinion that wishes to paint all Arabs, and all Moslems, with the brush of radicalism. I believe that it is essential, as people of peace,  that we work against racial profiling.  No one should be vilified merely because he or she belongs to a particular religion or race. Just as Jesus was a crosser of boundaries, who came in peace and acted in love for the Roman centurion, the Tyro-Phoenician woman, the disturbed man in Gentile Gerasa,  the Samaritans, and for us, we also must be willing to act in love toward all peoples.

Finally, there is the matter of funding. Some countries provide financial support for their EA volunteers.  In the U.S.A., this is not the case. The cost to me is $7500 (including my plane fare and cost of living for 3 months in the West Bank.)  I am committed to this service, and it will go forward.  If you wish to provide financial support, please know I thank you for contributing to a global ministry of peace and reconciliation, in a place direly in need of such a witness, on behalf of human beings, all God’s children, whether Christian, Moslem, or Jewish.

The best way to send support to me is through my church, Lord of Life Lutheran Church, 2126 Gable Lane, Ames, IA 50014.  In that case, write the check to Lord of Life Lutheran Church, with the subject line “EAPPI.”  If you prefer not to go through the church, an account has been set up for donations at Greater Iowa Credit Union, PO Box 665, 801 Lincoln Way, Ames, IA 50010.  Please direct any contributions to Chris Cowan with the subject line on the check reading “EAPPI”. 

Once I leave, you will be able to follow my blog posts here.  In addition, I may set up other blogs; if so, they will be connected to this one. Thanks, and God bless!

Chris Cowan, TSSF, EA.