Brace for re-entry

Once upon a time in a jet airplane, I decided where I would draw the line. I was going through a list of names I could use if security asked me who I was meeting at the Ambassador Hotel. The name “Neil Bullocks” buoyed from the nether regions of my brain. Neil, this virtuous and promising young African-American of sixteen, could not possibly mind being potentially black-listed. I realized he would be twenty-three by now. That jarred me from my espionage-tinted reverie. I could not make my dead friend the centerpiece of a lie.

I do not know of anyone being black-listed in that way. If so, I apologize to all the Joseph Allens trying to enter Israel right now. I was stopped at random by a security guard just off of the plane. This should have been enough to make me nervous but my immunity was bolstered by then. This is why doctors tell you to finish your anti-biotics and rest well: pathogens like me. Before I got on the plane in Turkey, I was delayed while security deliberated over my uncertain return date. I said Mommy and Daddy were waiting to see if they could get a better price on a return ticket. After that, a random guard asked to see my passport and gave it a cursory glance; I could have flashed Morgan Freeman’s passport. The Tel Aviv guard gave-up when I told him I wanted to study theology someday and, hence, I stayed in the Holy Land for three months at a time. He must see dozens of oblivious graduate students on any given day.

Then came the hard part: the passport booth. In order to maximize my odds, I picked a male security guard who was in a good mood (my liaison told me the men were softer). He never stopped laughing and joking in Hebrew. I got a three month visa just for saying “hello” and smiling.

I waited over an hour in the Israeli bus and rode another hour to the Ambassador Hotel. I was meeting myself there. I ambled toward the door until the bus disappeared, then turned on my heels and started walking. My real destination was over a mile away, past Sheikh Jarrah and the East Jerusalem storefront, to the Damascus Gate bus station. This was early in the morning on Wednesday, since I was delayed in Geneva.

I like to pretend that I ran across the airport and made my flight. I pretend that it was actually about 10 PM in East Jerusalem and the cab-drivers were trying to convince me to hire them for 140, "no listen!", 80 shekels to ride to the check-point but I told them I had only 40. I imagine I would have sat down on a bench next to the bus stop and resolved to wait until morning, maybe do some blogging, only to discover my computer battery was not charged. Maybe a bus driver would show-up at 11:30 and offer to let me sleep in the bus until morning. “Bookra” he might say, as I try to pay him. In the middle of the night, I would be shivering and taking clothes out of my suitcase to pile on top of myself, swearing never to tell anyone because I don’t want pity. Around 4 AM another bus-driver could find me sleeping and ask me if I was going to Bethlehem. When I climb off the bus he refuses my money and gives me a cup of chai marimeeyah; all of the day-laborers at the check-point are laughing with me as I shrug it off and drink my tea—in my imagination, of course. I’m crazy like that.

*laughter*

They say when a car crash occurs, there are three impacts. All of these events were just like a car hitting a cement wall. Next, your body hits the car and then your innards hit the inside of your body. Wednesday, I was a zombie who stayed home. Thursday and Friday I was an addict, soaking-up Arab coffee and reflecting on Geneva. I learned at the end of the day that my German colleague has decided to leave. Co-workers said “burn-out”. What was she doing? It begged the question of whether I was doing enough. The Western part of my brain reasoned that I was being lazy if I did not feel closer to burn-out. The Eastern side of my brain intervened: I did leave Bethlehem tired, shouldering similar questions (do I deserve to be tired?). The second impact came at the close of that day, wedged between feelings of great happiness, seeing my host community again, and a sense that my work was incomplete.

What will I do, now that I am back?

I rediscovered a passion for immigration rights at the conference in Geneva. Ironically, I did not question my desire to go on living here but my ability to keep being an advocate in Washington D.C., apart from this culture I defend. I can digest my anger with Occupation because I partake in a Palestinian life-style that defiantly celebrates living. I worry that in Washington D.C. I would just be another angry lobbyist—and that the falafel would suck! I started speaking Spanish and dreaming of California. I imagined flying check-points in the Southwest and walls by Tijuana—I saw myself standing in solidarity with a new group of people. Selfishly, I also wondered what it would be like to finally visit my cousin in San Francisco, swim in the Pacific, and see the Northwest States I day-dreamed about over a year ago when I decided to leave Michigan.

As was the case in many areas in my life, I wanted to be the superlative advocate for Palestine two months ago: go to D.C. and kick some tail-feathers. I could not have gone on as I had, obsessed with becoming the harbinger of pure justice for Palestine. I have shifted slightly, from a justice orientation to a love-with-justice orientation. It is a topic that promises to feature prominently in my future writings but for now it is enough for me to say that I am letting go of being the best and grappling with the idea of being better. Someone even suggested to me that eighteen months in D.C. was not too much to ask when it could make me a better leader.

“Leader?” I said, “We’ll have to dig into that another time...”

Sometimes I believe that particular person’s vision for me is miscalibrated; I think instead of seeing me they are seeing the Holy Spirit’s reaction to Occupation THROUGH me and mistaking that for my essence. I want to have a garden. I want to go swimming. I want to snuggle someone I love while drinking fragrant tea. I want to go for a walk in the woods and think about lessons I might teach. I want to be an artist.

Each person should pursue their heart's fulfillment and I am willing to push against systems that prevent that. I am reluctant to call it leadership because as soon as I call myself a leader I feel like a jinx will wrap its tentacles around whatever I am doing. Leadership is less of a post, for me, than discrete acts of initiative. It is not something I want to hold on to but a tool I find in my hands when I want to get a job done. As I run out of space on the page, I feel like I want to leave this blog entry open... if I go much further, I might try to predict my trajectory. This time, I want to put to death the vision of myself as superlative. Somehow, I need to reflect the qualities that are essential to me so I can put recognition aside to shed its lingering poison—since first grade. I could love myself for being me, not for doing anything great. Maybe my innards will finally crash and I can go on with the rest of my life.

Rebels' Fatherland

Flag Day was several days ago and The Fourth of July is not far behind. My mother, sister and I are going North to visit Lake Huron at Alpena and the big bridge between peninsulas at Mackinac. Before Labor Day dawns on the United States, I will be in another country working as a missionary. It was not long ago that I was on my grandmother’s couch, watching a Memorial Day special on the battle of Gettysburg and studying the reenacted patriotic acts of Americans fighting Americans—the men in grey who fought for economic strength versus those in blue who fought for the freedom of men and the unification of the land. Neither line was wanting for men of character and conviction who loved this country above safety and family.

I lost the patriotic stirrings of my youth and I probe, pacing my apartment, for an eloquent way to explain why I do not want them back. Patriotism’s close association with war is not helpful. As a boy, I was moved to tears by the sepia images of brave men sacrificing themselves, playing like a newsreel in my imagination. A decade hence, a schoolmate of mine returned from Iraq with a serious case of PTSD that he ‘caught’ the moment his truck exploded and splattered friends’ entrails onto his face. The heroics of the silver screen era were long ago tinted red by more realistic portrayals but I believe even those images have not lost their power, whether it is determination embodied as the flag is raised on Iwo Jima or determination, again, when the flag is planted on our Moon. Someone might get the buzz watching “Saving Private Ryan” or “Apollo 13” (thanks, Tom Hanks).

Rhetorically speaking, the key phrases are worn from too much nationalistic wordsmithing. JFK promised the USA would be on the Moon before the 60s were finished. Among several iconic sound bites, he left us “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country,” a stirring piece of Americana that is also a device. There was no less pride or dedication from the citizens of Imperial Japan—to the contrary, there is a collectivist sentiment in it; ‘Do not be concerned with your own desires, determine what you can do for the nation’, or perhaps another nation. Adolf Hitler “liberated” Poland as he spurred the Third Reich across Europe. Stalin’s Soviet Union “liberated” them again. Finally, the Poles liberated Poland. Decades later, a group of desperate Al Qaeda members hijacked aircraft and crashed them into New York City buildings. Why? My guess is that they believed it was to help free souls from worldly corruption. The United States brought the most powerful military forces in the world to their homeland in the name of “enduring freedom”. I have deleted as many examples from this paragraph as are left behind. The point is that the words are just a fresh coat of paint on a given agenda: take resources from China, ethnically cleanse Europe, score points for Jihad, establish presence in the Middle East. Still, I cannot say that “liberty and justice for all” are not important, even if battling tyranny sometimes looks suspiciously like being tyrannical.

I wondered if my patriotism could be cut down by the actual lapses in liberty and justice. Hundreds of broken treaties with native peoples litter the United States’ history; that alone is enough to shame me. Our economy was at one time built upon slaves, then upon freed slaves exploited as tenant farmers. Thousands of Japanese Americans were put into concentration camps so that white people could feel more comfortable. Women still have trouble getting equitable pay in this country. I could go on without even leaving our borders. To be honest, though, I can overlook all of that. I knew all of those things at sixteen and still managed to convince myself that our nation’s mistakes were in the past. At the end, I believed my country would make restitution to the best of its abilities.

What irks me about American patriotism is the insistence that this is the best nation in the world: an addiction to the superlative. It reminds me of small-minded little boys arguing about whose Dad is the best. “My Dad has the biggest guns” “My Dad is the toughest” “My Dad buys me more stuff” “My Dad is the smartest and the nicest” Patriotism, after all, comes from the prefix “patri”, from the Latin “pater”, meaning father . That is why I have declared so bitterly that I am not patriotic and hope never to be. If our country has become the fatherland, then ours is a rich, manipulative father who gives lavishly and then expects unquestioning loyalty, like a mob boss. Our Dad is the one all the other Dads quietly hate but have to tolerate because he has clout. Our Dad buys cheap medical insurance and maxes-out his credit card on flashy, dangerous toys. Our Dad drives his SUV around the neighborhood, giving unsolicited advice. Some of the other Dads complain but most quietly wait for the bank to foreclose on him. At a bar in Belize, some locals laughingly criticized the United States’ people for electing an obvious fool like George W. Bush. I was helpless—Americans are too much like Yankee fans: our country overspends on strong arms every year and we love them for being the ‘best’. Those Belizeans are like Cubs fans: their country is theirs and that is all that matters. They do not need to be the ‘best’ to stay proud.

Entrenched in these thoughts on grandma’s couch, again, I found an unwelcome epiphany. Playing on the television was a Harrison Ford film where he plays a police officer; Brad Pitt plays his Irish houseguest, who we discover is an Irish Republican Army operative. Pitt’s character demolishes a group of gangsters in order to collect several crates of missiles to smuggle back to Ireland. On his way to New York Harbor, he has to shoot Ford’s partner to evade capture. Meanwhile, Ford refuses to help a British agent locate him, choosing to track him personally. As the film draws to a close, Ford boards the hijacked fishing vessel and insists that Pitt turn the boat around before “more innocent people die”. In my mind I knew that was right but in my heart I felt like he should go with him. In the end, the Irish American Cop shoots the IRA man. I was disappointed. Something in me wanted him to return to Ireland and blow-up some buildings.

It was my sense of patriotism. Though it may be wrong, this raw brand of Irish patriotism resonates in me.

I pushed cognitively against the thought but it pushed back much harder. When I took my stance on the Israeli conflict at a church conference I acted as if I were merely disgusted with the Israeli government yet, I admit now, I was also refusing to be disgusted with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. It makes me wince to hear them called “terrorists” when they are clearly trying to oust a foreign occupancy—like Poles in Poland, Irish in Ireland or Indians in India. I am a sympathizer. The image of an Arab boy throwing rocks at soldiers carries a familiar meme and I, in spite of myself, carry its receptor. I admire the rebels, not invaders, occupiers or even loyalists; the Royalists of our Revolutionary period must have believed that it was ‘best’ to remain part of the British empire. They were excellent patriots (God, King and Country!) but history books revere the trouble-makers who did not want to pay their tea tax. Our “founders” had even less right than the IRA and PLO to claim the land as their own, yet I remain a fan of their rebels’ patriotism. The more I think about that, the more I begin to believe that my discontent and nasty criticism for the United States actually brings me closer to the spirit that created this country. The United States that we celebrate does not share enough features with the canonized one.

If you want to see a film that makes me feel more patriotic than any other, watch a Jim Carrey movie called The Majestic; the final courtroom scene clearly places the ideological America against the historical one and allows the legend of our nation to win in a convincing way. He might not change the entire course of American history but he does marry the girl and live happily ever after.