I begin a parish internship on May 14th at Trinity Church, Wall Street in lower Manhattan. It's one of the largest and most well-heeled Episcopal churches in the US, so if I'm going to get on-the-ground church experience over the summer, this will be an ideal place to do it. Many smaller churches slow down considerably in the summer months, and if I am going to gain practical experience, I certainly need to go somewhere that stays at least somewhat busy. The other reason I want to go there is that Trinity has a Faith in Action program that includes local, national and international reconciliation programs, so at least part of my work will be in this area that holds such interest for me. While I don't yet know exactly what I'll be doing, there will be no lack of work to do. I'll be living in a dorm at General Theological Seminary where I have sublet a room from a student there, and on Friday and Saturday, I'll be at home in PA with my poor, hard-working husband!
While I'm looking forward to living in the big city for the summer, I'm a bit hesitant about living in Chelsea, the neighborhood where Seth's studio was located when he was at NYU's Atlantic Studio. I spent a lot of time with him walking these streets and coming to his shows, grazing our way through the Chelsea Market when we got hungry. I don't know. Maybe this is an opportunity to continue to heal, to perhaps to mourn in a new way. I've pretty much avoided New York since he died, so this does present something new for his grieving mom.
As if this did not provide enough for me to work through and on this summer, I am also attending an Excellence in Preaching Conference sponsored by the Episcopal Preaching Foundation. That's at the end of May in Richmond, VA. Then in mid-July, I leave for Capetown, South Africa for a three-week training seminar at the Institute for Healing of Memories. More on these events later.
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With all the busy-ness of school and life since spring break, I haven't had as much time as I might have liked to write about the Holy Land trip. Just about every paper or reflection that I have written for school has included a story or a reference of some kind to what is happening in Israel-Palestine. I follow the news from there, checking at least the headlines in Haaretz daily. It usually makes my blood pressure go up. I am haunted by the stories we heard and the things that we witnessed (beyond even the life-changing visits to the holy sites). I thought I might share some of the stories here, starting with an amazing wife and mother facing challenges peculiar to her time and place:
Dina Nasser is a public
health nurse and senior health advisor on infectious diseases to the
Palestinian Authority. She is married to an American and has three children,
and they have all lived separately for the past four years because her husband
has been denied a permit to reside in Jerusalem where she lives and works, and
if she moves to Bir Zeit, fifteen miles north of Jerusalem where he lives, she forfeits
her right to live in Jerusalem along with the attendant privileges of residency
in the city as opposed to residency on the West Bank. The children live with
her but attend a co-educational Friends school in Ramallah. A spirited and
charming woman (as were all the Palestinian women we met), Mrs. Nasser’s
exasperation and frustration with her situation are palpable as she has
repeatedly tried to obtain a family reunification permit but has been denied
each time. She calls the closing of Jerusalem, which occurred as the
Palestinian Authority was established and the Oslo Accords signed in 1993,
“silent ethnic cleansing.” The Israeli authorities, she claims, throw around
the word “security” in such a way that “even a lawyer can’t challenge them.”
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