May 07

AMMAN, JORDAN:  I've prayed with lots of unexpected people over the last few days.  The staff of an Al Jazeera bureau, for instance.  Three different Shiite leaders, one protected by lots of men with machine guns.  An ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem rabbi.  A Palestinian cabinet minister and his family.  A Jerusalem businessman fresh off a meeting with Nancy Pelosi and her entourage.  I've prayed with the imam of a Palestinian refugee camp, with an apocalyptic Jewish leader, with a man who'd lost his entire family to one bomb in last July's war in Lebanon, and with an Arab Christian who struck me as a modern-day Gandhi or Martin Luther King (he'd been beaten by soldiers just that previous Friday). 

While everyone we met was eager to expound upon his or her political grievance (and the suffering here is often-to a Westerner-unimaginable), prayer was a surprising common ground.  One man said that, since he's been old enough to think, politics has taken up sixty to seventy percent of his thoughts, and he was eager for the day when that burden would be over.  But just about everyone we talked with had despaired of politics, even their own.  One of the most powerful men we met plaintively asked a politically-connected American in our group if there was any hope for the Middle East from either party in Washington.  My friend erupted in laughter.

And yet.

Small signs of goodwill seem to go a surprisingly long way.  Some friends of mine moved to Beirut just after the civil war there.  A few years in, they visited the neighborhood next to the Palestinian refugee camp just outside of town, only to be told that it wasn't safe for Westerners.  They met some folks anyhow, made some friends-including some in the camp-and helped spearhead some helpful enterprises there.  Since then, a flow of Westerners have come through and been welcomed, including ourselves.

A man we met in Bethlehem leads retreats for Christians, Jews and Muslims.  They ride out into the desert, two faith backgrounds per camel.  He does that with about a thousand people a year.

And there are even things like our own little trip.  The gang at Al Jazeera said we were the first Westerners who'd come to their bureau.  We were treated royally by the great and the humble alike. 

This is not to suggest that these problems are going away because of such modest efforts.  It's just to wonder out loud if there's a noteworthy power behind encouragements along the line of Jesus' "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."

I can't tell you how many political conversations I've had over the last ten days.  Three a day?  Four?  Each at least an hour?  I'm overflowing with opinions about who's more right in each conflict here.

But I'll content myself at the moment with images of praying with the family of the Palestinian cabinet minister, tears streaming down the wife's face, even as their thirty-year-old son stops us until he can go get his sleeping infant son to receive prayer as well.  Three cheers for peacemaking, even if it comes in itty-bitty doses.