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BY DORIS WARRELL

Painful and wonderful: This is what I say when friends and family ask me how was my recent VIM trip to Palestine.

Our trip in early March of 10 members and friends was a pilgrimage to Palestine, because we spent a majority of our time and interaction with people who identified themselves as Palestinians, whether they live in Jerusalem, Israel, Jordan or the West Bank.

For me it was also a coming home, as it had been almost 10 years since I left Palestine after serving as a Mission Intern with the General Board of Global Ministries.

During this trip I saw and heard again and again of the unrelenting struggles inflicted on the people of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the surrounding villages of Beit Sahour and Beit Jala and Nazareth. My pain was to hear their stories and to relearn the depth and anguish of their pain.

There was Ramsey, a Christian licensed tour gbwc_superusere, who at the dictate of the Israeli army cannot travel to Jerusalem and therefore work because the Israeli government routinely declares the city closed to Palestinians living in the West Bank.

And Linda, a devout Christian and widow, who longingly sees the lights of Jerusalem from the windows of her home and whose eyes well up as she speaks of being a prisoner and forbidden to enter and worship at her most sacred church.

There are hundreds of stories of the slow and steady suffering that is crushing the spirits, minds and bodies of Christians in the West Bank and Gaza.

As an American Christian, even as I drank the hot sweet tea provided by my gracious host, each story felt like self-flagellation. Their stories feel like my punishment for my failure to see, to feel, to stop the dehumanization of people both inside and outside of the Wall. Hearing and remembering sisters and brothers share with me their pain is my Lenten devotion.

I even have my own story. One evening as I walked to the elevator in my hotel I overheard three British men talking about how to get rid of the Wall surrounding Bethlehem. An answer given was to get rid of the Americans.

One of the men noticed my presence and called the other man to account for the assumption that all Americans support the marginalization and inhumane living conditions of Palestinians in the West Bank. On the elevator I said, 'Not all of us support the Wall.' He asked, 'But you understand why I said that?' And I responded, 'Yes I do.'

There is no question that U.S. government support of Israel allows its government to implement policies that deny 3.8 million Palestinians freedom of movement and thereby reduce or eliminate their ability to secure employment, worship where they choose and receive an education.

As a Christian, citizen and taxpayer, the role of the U.S. government in the living conditions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is a source of great shame to me, and a source of an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness.

What was wonderful about my trip is that I also learned that hope remains and in some hearts it is overflowing.

It is in the heart of every Palestinian, Israeli and American working for peace with justice, and there are many of us.

Our hope is not in the political systems or the military and militants? victories. Our hope is in people and that more people will realize that peace with justice is the only lasting security for all of us.

As a Christian, I know that this hope is God?s greatest gift to me; my hope is in the resurrection of Christ in each of us. This is why I will be sad, but never despair; exhausted, but never quit.

Many people in my group constantly asked, even pleaded, to learn what they thought we could do to help end the violence and promote peace and justice for the people of Israel and Palestine. The answer is incredibly simple and difficult: we must repent.

Repent as a nation and as individuals that we do not yet have the courage to truly follow Christ in his ways of love and peace. Repent that as a nation and as individuals our role in stoking the fires of hate in both Israelis and Palestinians of each other is not the work of God. Repent that we have become too comfortable and too distracted by the things that make for war, that we can barely recognize the things that make for peace.

We must claim the freedom and power we accept at the moment of our baptism 'to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever way they present themselves.' As for the Palestinians and Israelis we met with, they have a place for us to start doing good.

Come to Jerusalem. Sleep in Bethlehem. Visit the people of Nazareth. Hear their stories and come back changed; painfully and wonderfully changed.

Rev. Doris E. Warrell is a probationary Deacon serving at DC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and Dumbarton UMC.