You Shall Go Out in Joy...

For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. -Isaiah 55:12

I leave Monday, May 15, to (hopefully) spend the summer working with CPT in Iraq. However, I am having a little trouble getting a visa. I arrive in Israel on Tuesday, May 16 & will go by land to Jordan to work on a visa for Iraq. (I've been working on that for 2 months here in the U.S., but with no success... I haven't been denied a visa. I just haven't recieved the permission that I need for a visa. Hopefully, we'll have better luck in Amman!) After I talk to the embassy in Amman and if it looks like the visa process is going to take a while, I'll cross back over to Palestine and join CPT there until I get an Iraqi visa.

You can find details about Christian Peacemaker Teams at http://www.cpt.org/. CPT is an interdenominational effort with roots in traditional peace churches whose mission is to reduce violence and to promote conflict resolution through nonviolent means, seeking "to overcome evil with good" (Rom 12:21). These next 2 paragraphs are directly from the website & give some background of CPT's involvement in Palestine & Iraq.

CPT has been in Hebron since 1995, witnessing to the need for peace in a violent and sometimes desperate situation. Team members have sometimes (especially following Al-Aqsa Intifada)provided an alternative, first hand perspective for scores of foreign journalists who wanted to look beyond Israeli and American government analyses of the crisis. In addition to repeated bombardment of their neighborhoods, Palestinian families in the Hebron District continue to suffer ongoing effects of military occupation. Israeli authorities persist in confiscating land to expand Jewish-only settlements, tightening access to water resources and threatening to demolish homes. School accompaniment, documentation and human rights reporting, nonviolent trainings, regular visits to families involved in the Campaign for Secure Dwellings (CSD) and joining with Palestinians and Israeli peace groups to develop action campaigns that expose the face of the Occupation are all part of the Hebron Team's work.

CPT initiated a long-term presence in Iraq in October 2002, six months before the beginning of the U.S. led invasion in March of 2003. The primary focus of the team for eighteen months following the invasion was documenting and focusing attention on the issue of detainee abuses and basic legal and human rights being denied them. Issues related to detainees remain but the current focus of the team has expanded to include efforts to end occupation and militarization of the country and to foster nonviolent and just alternatives for a free and independent Iraq.

I decided to go to Iraq in the Spring of 2003, though I did not actually go until 2 years later. As the U.S. prepared to bomb Iraq in "Shock & Awe," I was hearing different perspectives from people of faith about what was really going on. As a senior in college, this was the first time that I seriously considered war alongside my faith. As I read the Bible and prayed about the situation, I was not able to reconcile bombing Iraq with what I experienced of a just and loving God. Once I decided that I thought going to war with Iraq was wrong, I felt like I had to do something. As time goes on and as Iraq is pushed deeper and deeper into destruction, I still cannot reconcile this war with my faith. I cannot reconcile hundreds of thousands of lives lost with the justice that the prophets proclaimed or with the love that Jesus demonstrated. I go to Iraq still trying to do something, though I am not always clear what that something is. I know part of it is to declare that another way is possible- that good can overcome evil and love can overcome fear. Part of it is to be with Iraqi and Palestinian sisters and brothers in this struggle and part of it is to learn more and to seek Truth...

I would greatly appreciate your prayers- Please pray that I would speak and act in love and that I would be open to the Spirit's guiding. & Please pray that children in Palestine & in Iraq (& the U.S. & the world) may walk to school without risking their lives, that parents may send children to school without fearing that their children will not return, and that we, the whole body of Christ, would rise up and act upon Jesus' command to love God, our neighbors, our enemies, and ourselves.