More From Our Travels

So here I sit at Ben Gurion, my plane leaves in a couple of hours. My heart is so full, and my body, mind and spirit are overflowing. I want to tell you - I want to tell you EVERYTHING. Because where we are now has been a labor of love between all of us for 3 years now and it feels like nothing short of a miracle.

I hear again and again in my mind how important it is to stay. God, we stayed. We stayed through wars and bombs, and atrocities and horror. I see how long it takes to open our eyes to each other. I see how much patience and faith we need to go somewhere new. I see how we must make a commitment to doing the work. This is not a fast process- it takes time, it takes education, it takes courageous hearts, it takes everything we have.

I see how bringing in the outside, bringing in witnesses, bringing in other hearts and minds who know how to show up with respect and courage and humility and full heartedness helps us. We cannot do this alone. I want to ask you - are you willing? Please be willing. The world is crying out for you.

This module brought us to places that I don’t think any of us could have imagined when we began. It brought understanding, it brought revelation, it brought beauty, and it took the wisdom of each of us to get where we got. I believe it, I can’t believe it, I believe it, I can’t believe it- I believe it, I can’t believe it. I believe it. There is a deep faith in us. We fought our way through doubt and mistrust and misunderstanding and pain- oh the pain. We doubted and still we returned. Over and over again.

I think I will try to give you the rest of our trip in order though I don’t know how I am going to do it. But I will try.

Our third day we went to the West Bank. That tour was supposed to be planned by two of our Jewish members and two of our Palestinian members and it almost blew us apart. There was so much feeling, anger at me- despair at our inability to speak to each other. But the trip got planned in the end by one of our members who lives in the West Bank. We got on the bus, and he spoke as we drove. He spoke of his life, of what happens with checkpoints and water and settlers and electricity and bulldozers and soldiers and terror and humiliation.

We went to visit Basil and his father and their family from the movie No Other Land. We listened to these people who have fought for their village for a lifetime. We saw the school that the women built secretly in the night. And again, we were reminded that when the world gets involved, when eyes and ears are watching and listening there can be a little more safety.

And we listened to a recording of one of our Jewish members who told us of a village that was inhabited by Jews and a huge synagogue that was there centuries ago. I can’t go into the complexity of the fight around the tour - it has to do with pain on both sides around narratives of the right to exist in this land. But that was the compromise - to hear this voice as we went past an ancient Jewish village that is no longer there.

We visited an amazing man who helped to found Combatants for Peace, who told of his transformation from hate to a non-violent fighter for justice with his Jewish comrades. It is a story that includes the murder of his 15-year-old brother by soldiers - and a mother - who cried during the Second Intifada when she heard that Jewish children were murdered in a terrorist attack. In his angry young body and mind, he asked - why are you crying? That mother then taught her son that all societies are made of good and bad people, and that our blood runs red no matter who we are. She taught him that all mothers are broken hearted when their children are killed and that her heart knew no us and them. Those tears from one who had lost a son for others who had lost theirs, began his transformation to a peacemaker. We honored that mother, with all her wisdom and we were awed by the human heart that can choose this path. A path that chooses not to take revenge. A heart that can cry for humanity. That is what we are fighting for. We are fighting for humanity.

And then we went to Bethlehem and visited that beautiful city and again we feasted together. And full and exhausted we returned to our hotel in the West Bank.

The courageous Jewish woman who had wanted her message to be heard came to meet us. I want to tell you that I could see in her face how hard she had to fight with herself to come that night. She was angry at me. She was doubting everything. But by God she came and sat with us and told our group about her doubts, her despair that they had not been able to plan the tour together, her disappointment that after all this time she felt the group was failing. But she showed up, she had the faith to come to speak. Complexity. We are holding it. I thought of both of their faces, his and hers. The exhaustion, the pain. And yet somehow, they had not given up. They had both found the way to speak what was true for them. And when I saw him that day and her that night I felt all the hard work that had allowed them to stay.

Our visiting group added fire to a process that had begun the module before. Before they even came, they brought up mistrust and a feeling that everything was slipping through our fingers. But when I saw both of our leaders that day, my heart said, we can do this. I KNOW WE CAN DO THIS.

I am grateful beyond words to the courageous people in this group who have stayed and stayed. I am so grateful for my partner Silvia, and for Dror, who hold this group with me. I am in love with humanity. I am getting older. Who knows how long any of us has? But I know one thing. I am full of hope. And sitting here at the airport I am tired. And grateful. And ready to go home, and longing to never leave. I am in love. I am in love. I am in love. ann