all quiet on the western bank

Just a note to say i'm back and safe. sorry i haven't had time to email anyone. i've been having visa problems - i was only given one week twice so then had to apply at the ministry of interior for an extension - find out on tuesday if i got it.
the wider situation is going very bad, but fortunately it hasn't had too much effect in the west bank yet. i arrived back up in jenin yesterday. good to be here. all fairly quiet.
tomorrow i'm going to the univeristy to sign the contract to begin teaching there in september.
when i have more of a clue as to what is actually going on i'll try to post something about the situation out here, but it probably won't be too soon as i've still got a lot to sort out.
just time to tell you though how i disgraced myself at one of the more prestigious hang outs in east jerusalem. i was expecting there to be a lot of internationals and especially english people there to watch the england-portugal game. sadly there weren't so after both the beer and the tension went to my head i was all alone singing "the referee's a wanker!" as well as a few other inapropriate shout-outs. i had to hang my head quite low next time i went in there, but i wasn't asked to leave which i hope is a good omen and the israelis won't ask me to leave the country either...

was good to see people while i was back. sorry didn't have more time so see more people.thanks to everyone who put me up and entertained me,especially bexy, kiera/trev, tim and louise.

oh, and also it was a nice suprise to see justin out here on a short trip with his special friend dan. i don't think i've seen any one less bothered than justin about seeing the holy sites!

return

After laying low and slowly testing the waters and doing some soul searching for about 10 days i returned to Jenin. It was amazing the difference a few days can make. almost immediately i felt really comfortable hanging around in the streets etc again and was able to do the rounds of various organisations etc to see how i can get involved in the community. a good few things have come up, but the most significant one has turned out to be at the university. i started doing some informal assistance with the english language students and after a few weeks the head of the department called me into his office to offer me a job! what an idiot! so nufing is oficiall yet, but all beeing well i'll ofisially start in septembre as a english teecher! it is a really sweet deal, cos i'll get a free apartment and get payed more than enough to live on as well, so i'll be able to support myself rahter than others having to have pitty on me which will be great.

also in a couple of weeks i will return home for a month. i'm going to be mostly in london and birmingham, i hope, so i'm really looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible. sometimes its been difficult being out here where i didn't know anyone before i arrived, so i hope you all know how much i'll appreciate hanging out with you. i'll be around from the 16th May until 23rd June, and i have plenty of stories, rants and photographs to share with you all!

jericho

so for the first time in my life i've had to evacuate myself from somewhere. a strange experience. so i'm writing this from my friends place in jerusalem.

last week i had begun to shift my emphasis from just language learning to more systematic research. i moved up to the northern town of jenin which has been one of the places which has suffered most brutaly from the isrli occuption over the last five years. through contacts that i've made while i've been out here i was able to get hooked up with a good bunch of people in the town who are themselves very well connected. after eight months of moving from place to place i was all set to start putting my roots down there and preparing to make that place home for the next few years of my life.

yesterday a group of about 45 internationals were making a visit to a village near by and then later on touring the refugee camp in the town itself. As i was waiting to meet the group in the village i got a few texts and then a call from my American friend, Em, in jerusalem. She was telling me about some sketchy news of an Isrli assault on the Palestinan prison in jericho. She had heard the helicopers fly over her office. the official reason given for the attack was to arrest or kill one of the inmates who was the leader of the organisation who murdered a right-wing isrli minister in 2001 - an attack which itselft was retaliation for the isrli assassination of the group's leader a few weeks earlier. But with just two weeks to go until the isrli general election and an acting prime-minister in need of proving his willingness to use brutal force against the occupied palestnian people, this seemed more like electoral campainging Middle East-style rather than for genuine security concerns.

When the group arrived i told the leaders the news i'd heard. they were more than a little suprised as they had driven past the prison on their way north just a couple of hours earlier. As they'd driven past the prison one of the women on the bus had had a strange feeling and said to the woman next to her that that place needed a lot of prayer just now.

After the group had eaten lunch and listened to various community leaders welcome all internationals to their land, pleaded for more to come and witness the situation here, and expressed their deepest desire to live in peace with members of all religions and to be free from fear of vilonence and oppression, the group got ready to leave for jenin. however news came through that the situation had worsened and angry responses were spreading through the west bank and gaza with many internationals being targeted so it wasn't a good idea for them to go to the town. As they were making plans to lay low in the village for the next hour before going on as planned to the safety of nazareth, my phone rang. It was my friend in jenin telling me the latest news but that i shouldn't worry and it would be ok for me to return to jenin. he would meet me at the bus station. by the time i returned to the group they had been adviced that they should leave immediately as the situation was increasingly unpredictable. so they made their way hastily to their bus and were whisked away.

i got into the front seat of the sevice taxi and waited for it to fill up before it could leave. the others in the car were fixed on to listening to the news on the radio from the beseiged prison to the south. there were reports coming through that internationals had been taken hostage, so there was an unspoken understanding as to why i was acting a little tense. the battery on my phone was very low so the driver obliged by charging it through his cord. i had heard the name of the man the isrlis wanted a few times while i'd been here but i hadn't realised the extent of his popularity until now. it seemed invevitable that by the end of the day he was going to be dead, presumably along with countless others in addition to the two or three who had already been killed. it was too difficult to understand any of the arabic reporting that was coming through because of the background noise of constant military activity. but the driver answered my question that the man had not yet been killed.

As the car pulled away to begin the 20 minute trip to jenin i called my friend there to make sure he'd be waiting for me at the terminal. he'd be there and he asked me not to worry about anything. i guessed that when i got there we'd just get straight in a taxi and go straight to the house. A couple of minutes later my friend Em called again and asked how i was. "A little anxious," i replied. She was extremely concerned for me and started freaking out a bit when i told her i was in a car by myself on the way to jenin. i told her i expected to be ok if i would just go and lay low in the house, but she didn't think i realised how serious the situation had become. She told me that British and American citizens were being specificaly targeted for kidnapping. riots were breaking out in towns that were normally quiet. We exchanged some choice words as the car hurtled on and the wind from the open window blew against my face. i decided that i would wait until i got to the town and see what the situation there was like. She still didn't like that idea. the isrlis were firing tank rounds into the middle of this prison and tearing the walls down. palestinians were feeling very passionately about this invasion and were looking for ways to vent their anger. this wasn't the normal shit, she said. when most people express concern its taken with a pinch of salt, but this was a girl who was not adverse to taking risks herself and who worked in a political office with palestinians.

my friend was waiting for me in the town centre. i explained that my friend felt very strongly that i shouldn't be there and that four brits had been kidnapped already. "it's just gone up to six brits," he said as we walked along the street. he adviced that if anybody asked where i was from that i should just say 'Europe'. this didn't exactly strike me as being a guarantee of immunity. Just earlier a group of masked men had been firing automatic weapons in the town centre in protest, he told me. He also let me know that he'd told his friends who knew me not to tell anybody where i was from or where i was. there's only a handful of internationals in jenin at the best of times and i had the strong feeling that even most of these were no longer there. i expressed my concern that i didn't feel safe walking around like this, but we carried on up to an upstairs cafe over-looking the road below. As we sat drinking mint tea, i said that i may have to go back to the village i had come from where i had been offered a place to stay as it would probably be less tense than in the town. He assured me that this wasn't necessary but if i felt that's what i wanted to do it was no problem. With Al Jazeera broadcasting live coverage of the escalating crisis, we expressed our concerns and frustrations at what was happening.

em called again, increasingly freaking out that she wasn't going to be able to persuade me to leave. the news only seemed to be getting worse. jack straw had enraged people even more with his explanation of why the monitors withdrew and consequently the british were being accused of colaboration with the isrlis - the most severe accusation in this part of the world. She had spoken to her boyfriend who's a journalist at the Observer and he had said i should get the hell out of there. the owner of the cafe who was sitting at the ajacent table told my friend that he thought i should leave jenin and that i shouldn't walk outside on the street. part of me wanted to stay, but the promises i'd made to my family that i wouldn't do anything stupid and em getting ever more agitated effectively made up my mind for me. Em said that if i could get myself to the northern checkpoint out of the west bank just north of jenin she would drive from jerusalem and get me from there. she wouldn't be able to leave for a further half hour and it was an hour and a half drive for her. the best thing seemed to be to bunker down where i was and wait for her to let me know she was leaving. the scale of the situation was fianlly registering with me. i put in a request for a water-pipe and another glass of mint tea and kept flicking my eyes between the street outside, the tv and the door everytime someone came in.

the others in the cafe were all glued to the tv. there were flinches or mutterings everytime an isrli tank fired another shell into the prison. the twin brother of my friend who i was with had been killed by the isrlis during the invasions of jenin in 2002. the fundamental outrage was about the arrogance and impunity of isrl's actions in the occupied territories, but with the threat of kidnap bearning down on me, a lot of our exchanges were about the stupidity of this growing trend in gaza and now seemingly spreading to the west bank. the nations of the world, led along by America and its allies, have allowed human rights abuses and state-terrorism to be unquestioningly justified and ignored under the banner of 'national security' and a new ideology of militarism despite the overwhelming cycle of violence which is so clearly only breeding more and more violence. However, despite these injustices, it is even more frustrating that a tiny fraction of those people who suffer their consequences choose the most self-defeating means to protest them. Despite the idiocy and sometimes criminal nature of the US government, the largest number of ex-pats visiting and working out here for the benefit of the palestinian people are from the states. to stigmatise a whole nation of people because of the action of their goverments, corporations or prejudist tele-evangelists is closed-minded bigotory in itself.

Gaza would be crawling with educated caring and committed internationals ready to work alongside the down-trodden people of the Strip if it was not for the fear from the waves of kidnappings which have swamped most foreigners out of there now. if this trend spreads to become the norm also in the west bank then all the palestinian people will lose their most direct voice of witness to the outside world. the travesities of justice which are committed against all those who happen to be born here will not have those in the international community to advocate their case and the isrli propaganda machine will be able to further convice the world that it is using legitimate means of self-defence, just as the US government will continue to do in iraq and all its other mis-adventures. And all the while we will all togther slip against our will down this slippery slope of retributive violence.

the news coverage continued as i took heavy drags from the nargile whilst also keeping an eye on who was coming in the door. my friend would periodically turn around from facing the tv to translate the latest developments to me. al jazeera had been able to speak to the wanted men by phone from inside the prison. they were all vowing to hold-fast until the end and never surrender. in the course of the day the whole of the west bank and gaza had become a powder-keg of anger, frustration and despair. it seemed like there was an unspecified countdown to the news that this man had been killed, and when that news came it was going to be the spark which ignited an instant eruption of violence and counter-violence. My friend at times held his head in his hands saying 'we will never live in peace'. he shook his head and conceded that he had the uneasy sense that if this man was killed it was going to instantly spark another intifada. It would happen so quickly that we would see it erupt through the window we were looking out of. but the next intifada would be different from the last. When i asked in what ways, one thing he mentioned was that he felt internationals would be targeted more in the way that they were being today. it is enfuriating that a small number of ignorant thugs could drive away most of those internationals who had left their homes to come to assist them in their struggle. over 99% of the people here have shown me nothing but hospitality and trust. even as i was there, smoking in a room of palestinians who clearly knew where i was from, there was a sense of solidarity for me from them. the owner of the cafe put my phone into charge behind the counter and when the coals on my water-pipe ran down he would come over a put some fresh ones on.

Em called to let me know that she was leaving jerusalem. i picked up my small bag and my friend payed the bill. i hadn't spoken to anyone else in the room, but it was clear to all what was happening. until i got up to walk out i didn't realise that my whole body was slightly weak with trembling and put together with the heavy smoking, my legs suddenly didn't feel so firm. the people in the cafe raised their eyes in a gesture of farewell. we left through the back door which led to a steep narrow spiral staircase which led on to the street below. my friend told me again to please not worry, but i actually slipped down the first couple of steps and had to firmly hold on to the banister the rest of the way down. walking along the main street to get the taxi, a place which had just begun to feel like it could become my home had suddenly become a hostile environment. we got to the taxi and i suggested that we asked it to spin past the house for me to pick up my other bags. i suddenly had the feeling that i might not be back for a while. We ran up the stairs, i hastily shoved my things in the bags, and back outside i threw them in the boot of the car. i sat in the passenger seat and the driver commented that all the foreigners were leaving today. 'sorry', i said.

we sped off along the main road that used to connect the town to Haifa before the west bank became a closed-in zone. the sun was shining as it had been doing all day and the wind again was blowing in my face. i was being evacuated from the place i had wanted to begin calling home. At the huge checkpoint, where you normally need to have organised co-ordination a long time before to cross over into Israel, the soldiers let me through with very little problem. they clearly understood exactly what was going on.

So i got to the other side and i was out of danger just as i got news that an american proffesor had been kidnapped just outside of jenin. i had over an hour to wait for Em to arrive. there was no-one else around. it was a good oportunity to sit on the curb and gather my thoughts. what had begun as just another outrageous isrli attack on palestinians had gradually turned into a water-shed incident which could not only have huge ramifications for the people and the area, but perhaps even for me also. if there was a small element of people who felt it was appropirate to vent their frustration by targeting those people who have gone to them to try to assist them just because their government had done something to offend them, then i was not sure that i would be able to conduct my research and therefore was not sure there was reason for me to stay. yet at the same time, only a few days earlier i had been moved by the news of the killing of Tom Fox from Christian Peacemaker Teams in iraq. Below is part of the news letter CPT released the day his body was discovered.

-- In response to Tom's passing, we ask that everyone set aside inclinations to
vilify or demonize others, no matter what they have done. In Tom's own
words: "We reject violence to punish anyone. We ask that there be no
retaliation on relatives or property. We forgive those who consider us their
enemies. We hope that in loving both friends and enemies and by intervening
nonviolently to aid those who are systematically oppressed, we can
contribute in some small way to transforming this volatile situation."

Even as we grieve the loss of our beloved colleague, we stand in the light
of his strong witness to the power of love and the courage of nonviolence.
That light reveals the way out of fear and grief and war.

Despite the tragedy of this day, we remain committed to put into practice
these words of Jim Loney: "With the waging of war, we will not comply. With
the help of God's grace, we will struggle for justice. With God's abiding
kindness, we will love even our enemies." --

At a time when the world is worshiping money, security and militarism, the strongest image i have heard of somebody following the way of Jesus is this man who was held hostage in iraq for months before finally being beaten with wire cables and shot because he had gone to a place to love his enemies. Despite the endless miracles and words of wisdom during Jesus life, in Mark's gospel it is only when he is utterly rejected and being executed by the state at the age of 33 that a man truly recognises that 'surely this was the son of God'.

so there is a lot to consider in these days and at present absolutely everything is up in the air. But maybe if we are serious about following the prince of peace then what perhaps sounds non-sense to most of the world is perhaps one aspect of following the one who told us to love each other as he had loved us?

By the way i by no means am trying to suggest that i am attaining to this ideal. i barely am able to love my friends and family let alone anything else. But it all just gives me sometimes a clearer idea of who Jesus was and what he was trying to convey.

so i did make it to 24 after all

It turns out there was a copy of what i wrote saved on my friends computer! horay! so this is what i wrote a couple of weeks ago...

So i'm back due popular demand - well Bexy's and Chalky's anyway! Applogies for the long absence, i was on the move for a long time at the end of last year and then i've spent most of the last month in a remote village with no running water or electricty most of the day let alone iternet connection. so i reemerged from the depths of issolation yesterday only to discover that all internationals were adviced to leave the west bank due to some stupid cartoons. a nice suprise! i have about 24 hours to momentarily enjoy the benefits of westernisation at my friends flat in jerusalem before diving back into the west bank tomorrow to live in a village near bethlehem for the next month.
sorry if this post is completely disjointed from any current discussion in our wonderful blogging community but the miracles of hot showers and americanos in coffee shops have been competing for my time so i haven't been able to check other blogs yet.
so i was asked about the current situation out here... like i say, i've been out of the loop with all the national and international reaction to the political developments on both sides over the last month, which has been frustrating, but from my limited experience and personal views all i can offer you is a ramble and probably a rant about how i see the situation. i have not thought about what to say so i will just see where the keyboard takes me...
What to say. i don't really know. living out here is at times a serious test of my natural optimism, especially about the future that we are making for our world. part of the reason i wanted to come out here was to see the world for what it really was - or at least another part of it - and i have to say that what i have seen, and even more the stories i have heard from various people i have met out here, are nothing but deeply deeply disturbing. i find it so tradgic and depressingly ominus that within just over half a century since the world was torn apart by a war which had countless casualties and was climaxed by the dropping of two bombs which ushered in the age of an unprecedented danger and threat we are already witnessing the powers that be letting personal greed and prejudice lead the world into a freefall of violence and hate where the weapons are ever more dangerous and available.
i have recently been talking to people who have spent a lot of time in iraq over the last few years. what they have to say is frightening. bear in mind that 9/11 was the climax of a process which was in the making for decades. the back drop of its emergence was a history of imperialistic powers raping the natural wealth and human rights of non-western lands and peoples and in particular the Arab world. then eventualy the stage was set for a training ground of revenge and resistance agianst the imperialistic powers during the Soviet-Afghan war in the 80s. following the US's funding and training of this fundamentalist movement they provided its most effective recruiting propoganda - an arrogant, ignorant, greed driven placement of US forces in the most sensative lands of Islam [Saudi Arabia] as part of the ongoing exploitation of that country's oil wealth and as a launching pad to maintain and drive deeper its hegemony of self-interest through the gulf war. Fast forward ten years - the world is shocked by planes flying into buildings that represent the heart of ongoing imperialism. [That is not in any way to justify what happened.]
Bear that in mind with the following things that i have heard; an indepedant investigation suggests that coalition forces alone have killed over 100,000 people in iraq. about 3000 people died on 9/11, 52 died in london. the US moves around from town to town trying to chace elusive insurgency groups. behind them they leave a trail of destruction and death while the people they want move onto another place and gather more recruits. in Falluja about 60% of the buildings have been damaged beyond repair by repeated US invasions. Falluja is now falling out of control of coaltion forces for the third time. well over 80% of the insurgency is Iraqi people not foreign fighters. but at the same time, the chaos has allowed iraq to become a perfect training ground for extremists. there is a rapid learning curve of how a guerilla campaign can effectively fight a 21st Century super power. Since the first gulf war rates of leuchimia and other problems as a result of the use of depleted uranium by US forces for iraqi civilians have rocketed. in the current war around 100 times as much depleted uranium has been used as in the first gulf war. there is strong evidence of US masacres and using the war as a place to experiment its new leathal weapons. Despite all these disturbing omens the powers that be refuse to give up trying to maintain their hegemony and personal gain from the ressources of the country and region preventing any little chance of salvaging hope which may otherwise have existed. the US has spent $440 bn on this project. the press is begining to report fighters trained in iraq travelling to bolster the growing resistance in Afghanistan...
closer to my current home, there are equally disturbing omens even if in a less dramatic form. the western world claims shock at the democratic election of a fundamentalist islmic parilment. Are you really shocked? super powers which bang on endlessly about flying the flags of freedom, justice and peace around the world while they bank-role a state that uses violence to confine and strangle a people who have a legitimate right to the very freedom and justice which is denied them.
i should really elaborate on that to explain it better but unfortunately i'm getting pushed for time.
so having depressed you all i shall briefly tell you of where i find my ispiration for hope. but first of all, as a consequence of what i have explained and countless other cases around the world of terrible injustice done in the face of a watching world i sadly believe that the future years are going to be extremely violent on a scale that has not been seen before. [i don't personaly beleive this is tied in to any biblical prophecy - other than the consequences of injustice.] so what is the hope? Well, despite not doing the personal meditation on God-incarnate that i feel a real need to do, i increasingly see his life and message as the source of all optimism. this is consolidated by spending time with people here who are prepared to really follow him and walk the stoney path of peace. in particular i have been moved by the work of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), whose mandate is to be as committed to peace as an army is to war. currently in iraq four of their team are being held captive by kidnappers threatening them with decapitation. their team was working on collecting testimonies of the many iraqis who are being held in prisons, often enduring various forms of torture, and often there because they have been falsely accused or suspected of being involved in the insurgency. CPT went there, knowing the dangers, to love and serve a people who their country and religion told them was their enemy. CPT also has a permanent presence in Hebron and the village i have just been in, offering protection to the local people (muslims) from the violence and oppresion of the army and illegal isrli settlers. Away from the noise and endless 'spiritual' legalism of the church, CPT has quietly lived out the message of love and reconcilation here and in other parts of the world. As a result, when the four were kidnapped islamic leaders and militant groups here gave statements calling for their release and members of the community organised demonstrations with the same message, because they had witnessed the love of god being lived among them by these people.
And i know that its not just here where this example is needed and is being lived. i know many people who are giving up their comfortable lives to be God's love to those in the forgotten corners of our own country. its in the example of all these people and the One who inspires and sustains them where i find hope, no matter how dark times ahead may become.

secret agents!

i wrote a long blog about what a f**king mess the states in making in the middle east, i checked it a couple of days later and it was there but with out any comments. now i've just checked it again and its disapeared with no trace! bastards! did anyone else see it, or am i going mad???!

life

i'm still with you all despite the long silence of this blog. i don't normally have a whole lot of time with the internet to write more than a couple of comments on others bloggs but i've been dropped off early morning in Bethlehem where i have time to fill before a weekly meeting i've started going to, so at the request of jodes i shall take a moment to let you know that i am still alive...

its difficult to know how much i should write over the internet about what i'm actually doing which is quite frustrating as there is so much i would love to tell. i'm planning on making a short film of some of the things that i have seen and the people that i have met so that i can show it to you all instead of/ or as well as some of the holiday snaps. that'll be a treat for you all!

my life and thoughts are so interwoven with the situation out here now that its hard for me to comment on many things with out reference to it and specific incidents/people etc. for those of you who are interested in this place [jon, tim, trev...] let me just say that what is happening here is nothing less than a travesty of justice. there is a massive problem with the media. even the bbc, which i admire, interupts its news the second they hear that there has been an attack in Isrl. while i have been here since july there has been two or three such attacks. i think about 6 people were killed, which is awful and should rightly be condemned. however, at the same time, virtually unreported, Isrl has continued to imprison and kill people with absolute impunity. the number of killed must at least be in the 30s or 40s. and those imprisoned are often the ones who could be potential leaders. this isn't to mention the checkpoints which riddle the WB throughout and encirle towns making traveling small distances dificult. so many other problems which i won't mention except the one i find most enraging. when you next see an isrli spokesman on the bbc he will no doubt condemn the Plstns for their constant breaking of international agreements such as the road-map. Bush tows the same line whilst saying that Isrl must halt expanding the illegal settlments, which are destroying any chance for peace here. so imagine what it is like to live in any of the three areas where i have personally witnessed settlemnts being expanded as if it was the most normal thing in the world. all the while the states continues to give them as much money as they want...
all this makes me realise that we may fool ourselves to think that we live in a progressive world with unprecedented understanding, but actually the way the world works today seems to me just like the stories we hear from the dark-ages. really. its shocking. and i'm not blind enough to think that this is the only example. they are endless, Darfur, Irq, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Somalia and all the forgotten ones which are often the worst of all... the twisted politics and foreign policies of our governments which claim to hold the moral high ground but which infest violence, impoverishment and corruption in virtually every developing country, not to mention within our own.
will we ever wake up?
despite what i must sound like, i see myself as optimistic, but i also want to be realistic and pragmatic. i meet people out here, internationals, who are anarchists or who really believe that a socialist revolution is on the horizon and the world can become a rosey place. but we have to learn from history. every revolution has become an institution and a replica of the very thing it tried to destroy. there will always be greedy people who manage to become powerful, just as there will always be people who struggle to counter-weight them. in such a world i am still convinced that life is a positive thing. often it is in the sturggling, the forgiving, the restoring, the sacrificing that we truly find what life is. the moments of laughter and love in the midst of the struggle, the appreciation of the simple things of life, awe at the natural beauty of where we are and amazing kindness of friends and strangers.
i think somewhere in here must be were we find God, whoever he really is. i'm just down the road from the place where they say God came to earth. i went there this morning. God, a baby, like my latest nephew who's a few days old. Mary, not in her blue robes as in paintings but in worn and torn cloaks. God, a young child with a dirty face and snot running from his nose like the kids in the villages here. the one who left the security and beauty of the rolling hills and shores of Galilee to go up to the religious nightmare of biggotory and exclusivism and power struggle of Jerusalem, as it still is today. God, who chose to serve instead of be served and to forgive and love his friends, neighbours and enemies. God, who chose to let the state execute him to reveal who God really was.
in here i find hope in this world, in this life. i'm not entirely convinced that its 'Truth', but i'm not going to let the need for an accademic decision on what is truth to cause me to abandon the faith i have. i hope i am finding God in the walking and in the struggling and in the discovering. i hope that this is where the world finds him.

Intro

So... finally, thanks to Mr Tim Lovell, i am in the blogging town! So much i could say about all that i've read on people's bloggs but i think that will have to come at a later date. i liked what jus and joel did by bringing people up to speed on where they're at as way of a general intro. so i shall i do the same, and maybe try and frame it a little in the context of the current blog discussion on God and life - which i have enjoyed reading!

So... after being one of the instigators of constant theological discussions whilst at uni, soon afterwards i realised i was quite exhausted, or more bored, of the whole thing. so after about a year of being constantly moving from one place to another and rediscovering that there were a lot more things to talk about in life than just God and politics, i'm ready to return to the fold afresh. One of my closest friends has a very similar faith journey to me. we were both brought up in church families, then got introduced to the wonders of alcohol, and later took the same philosophy and theology A-level, which left both of us losing all faith in the Christian story. i went to tanzania were i began to rediscover my faith and she did the same when she was in kenya. by the middle of university we were both going to charismatic evangelical churches. however, by the time she finished her degree in theology and philosophy she had again lost all belief in Jesus or Christianity. some how, my faith, though going through many twists and turns, came out the other side relatively strong. it seemed that i had 'survived' and she hadn't. Well, at least i thought i had survived. But it was after spending three months living in the Old City of Jerusalem, the global epicentre of religious exlusivism, that resulted in me wandering if actually my faith could survive having seen the consequences of human beings arguing, fighting, killing just because they believe they have The Truth and the other doesn't.
in the past when my faith has been challenged in this way its come as a kind of earthquake and and a panic to asses whether i can maintain my belief despite the latest counter-revelation. sometimes this was hard and sometims not like when my class-mates did a pretty good job of trying to convrt me to Islm it just took a trip to tescos express and a lovely fat BACON sarnie with plenty of bbq sauce to stop me convrting! but over the last six months or even year there has been a deeper more steady eroding away of what i previously tried to believe to the point where i have questioned whether actually just like my friend my faith has infact not survived. But in contrast to the past this hasn't resulted in a panic, but just a steady period of reassessment. i never lost faith in a creater and active God, but was just completely unconvinced that the faith tradition i had been brought up in, namely Christianity, was a unique and ultimate revelation of him. for example any christians who new anything about Islm would site the same old lines about it being an indoctrinated oppressive and evil religion. but when i delved a little deeper and got to know Mslms who clearly were anything but indocrinated or oppressed it raised massive questions. and this has only been compounded while i've been living out here. i was always told that it was a religion based on fear and rules; fear because they can never be sure if they are saved or not. but then i look at the apathy and 'freedom to sin' that 'being once saved and always saved' leads to and actually know many evangelical christians who regularly question their salvation anyway, as i used to; And rules because they have to pry five tmes a day. but then i see here in a very close friend who suffers from pains caused by the stress of living under military occupation with a family to support, and five tmes every day he takes some time out to be silent, and to focus on the one who is greater than all this and who is merciful and just. i see and hear incredible faith in God from him and from many other people who i don't have time to mention.
Now i have been here another three months, living deeper inside the Wst Bnk, and i have bearly opened my bible and never got around to spending the time praying i always used to first and last thing of the day. mostly i think this came out of disillusionment with never seeming to hear God in the ways i was always promised i would or felt i should. but it hasn't been like those earthquakes of the past. its been a easy-going period of living an incredible life seeing the world from a completley different perspective and getting to know an amazing diversity of people and learning how they're expereinces and backgrounds have shaped the way they see the world and God.
Now, i have to finish, you'll be pleased to hear, but the thing is that most of this time i have felt that i have been looking away from God. i never got the point to openly rejecting faith in Christ, but just very close to becoming completely pluralistic. And i certainly still haven't come to any conclusion, but just recently through talking to various people etc i have become to see that maybe God has actually been there with me the whole time leading me through this period of growth. i am increasingly convinced that God is love and calls us to him by words of love and unconditional acceptance and forgiveness. the outworkings of this i am still to fully discover, and will no doubt still be doing so when i reach the end of this journey. and i wouldn't want it any other way.

still a lot to say but the sun is going down so everything is closing because the fasting is about to end so i can go and have the first food and drink of the day. nice!

Oh yeah, one thing i did really want to say was how much i have really appreciated everyones oneness and honesty on this blogging. long may it continue!!!