Villanelle for Our Time

Tonight I sat in the dark, candlelit (Anglican) cathedral of St. George the Martyr in Jerusalem, and listened first as the Palestinian priest went through the Easter liturgy in both English and Arabic, and then as a London choir filled the spaces of the church, and I thought of all of you. I've been trying to read this blog as often as I can since you started it, but to be honest, I've never known quite what to post myself, partly because I'm sure that most of you would love to be where I am (the ME I mean), and because of that it it seemed somehow strange and almost unfair to write to you about a new semester that doesn't include you. So in the end, I've just been reading and thinking, and really hoping that we're all going to be OK.

I'm grateful for many reasons to still be in the ME, but one of the big reasons, one of the reasons that I always think of when I read the blog, is that I'm still "allowed" to "live in the grey" so to speak. I'm still in the midst of people who are seeing and experiencing and questioning and thinking and re-assessing, and it has kept me from reaching the point I feel like a lot of you have hit. From what I know of returning to North America after MESP, one of the hardest things is that many people will no longer allow you to live in the grey, especially when it comes to issues of theology/faith/religion/salvation etc. They want black-and-white answers to questions that don't really have answers, and they seem to be even more insistent that they get the answers quickly from you, since they may feel that since you have observed Islam or Orthodox Christianity, or Judaism, or Middle Eastern conflicts in general, you therefore must have a greater and more clear sense of "right" and "wrong" (which, as we all know, is definitely not true). I find that this pressure can make people either go one way or the other, or give up altogether, and I guess I just wanted to encourage all of you to continue asking the questions, and fighting both against black-and-white, and against giving in (giving in would include deciding to hate your country, abandon God, and/or conclude that the majority of North Americans are just ignorant/clueless/hopeless).

The other day when we heard from Elias Chacour, and tonight when I listened to the Palestinian priest say in both English and Arabic "Alleluia! Christ is risen!", it made me think again of the talk Jim Wright (Heather Keaney's husband - just in case you forgot) gave at the end of my semester as a student. He played a Leonard Cohen song (I'm putting the words at the end), and talked about the circle many MESPers go through, and kind of categorized the post-MESP experience. He said there are three kinds of MESPers (I'm paraphrasing here, and acknowleding that we obviously can't put people in neat little categories):

1. Those who come, see Islam, see suffering (conflict, poverty, refugees, etc.) and the effects of "Western" foreign policy, and decide to "overidentify" (one of Dave's phrases, as you know) and get lost in their overidentification
2. Those who come, see all of the above, "underidentify", and get lost in their underidentification (i.e. hate Islam, decide that Western ideas/democracy/culture etc. really just is "superior", think that Middle Eastern Christianity is missing something, etc.)
3. Those who can find a balance and who can be open and accepting, while still thinking critically, and can, as Dave says, "use what they learn at MESP to hold a mirror up to their own culture" and allow their experience to continue to shape them long after they get back home. Those who fit this category struggle at lot, and that struggle doesn't end when they arrive back in North America. However through the struggle, they come full circle, having both underidentified and overidentified along the way.

Jim pointed out that MESP is kind of a failure for those in the first two categories, and either overidentifying or underidentifying does neither the MESPer, nor anyone else, much good. When he talked about faith, and the struggles that most, if not all, MESPers face in terms of beginning to define "faith", some of his last words (that I've always remembered) were, "[even if you're not in "category" 1 or 2] if, at the end of the day, you don't have the spirit of God, you're just wasting your time." When I think about that, and about everything I've seen, and everything I've heard during my 3 semesters at MESP, I wonder why I even have the right to decide whether or not God does, or doesn't exist, and whether or not he does or does not love us, particularly considering the status I have as a white, upper middle class North American. This is not to say I don't struggle with it, and don't very often wonder why the crap I'm here ("here" being life), but it does mean that everything I've seen and learned at MESP has confirmed that I have to believe in the holiness and redemption and love of God - if not, then what's the point?

Now, at the end of this long and rambling (and somewhat unfinished) post, I'll acknowledge again that I'm still here, and you're still there, and although I remember where you guys are at right now, I'm not exactly having to face it (at least not yet) so it's easy for me to ramble about these kinds of things. I would also like to qualify by saying that at this point in my life (and hopefully for all of my life actually), everything that I say and do is a "work in progress" so to speak. What that means is that everything I said here is still being worked out in my head. Tomorrow I may decide that the way I wrote things yesterday isn't the way I think today, but I'm going to post anyways. I guess most of all, I just want you to know that I love all of you, and I think of you often, and I hope you're seeing grace and redemption, even in the crap of life.

Now for those lyrics from your favourite Canadian poet and singer, Leonard Cohen. I'm not saying they'll necessarily be all that meaningful or inspirational to you, but they're something, and I like Leonard in general, so here he is: (to get the full effect of the song you really have to listen to it - it's wild)

"Villanelle For Our Time" (Leonard Cohen)

From bitter searching of the heart,
Quickened with passion and with pain
We rise to play a greater part.
This is the faith from which we start:
Men shall know commonwealth again
From bitter searching of the heart.
We loved the easy and the smart,
But now, with keener hand and brain,
We rise to play a greater part.
The lesser loyalties depart,
And neither race nor creed remain
From bitter searching of the heart.
Not steering by the venal chart
That tricked the mass for private gain,
We rise to play a greater part.
Reshaping narrow law and art
Whose symbols are the millions slain,
From bitter searching of the heart
We rise to play a greater part.

Happy Easter . . .