AN E-MAIL ON RELATIONSHIPS

Some Context:

Recently, I crashed a girl’s date that my wife was having with a friend of ours.  Being the narcissist that I am, I was able to quickly turn the conversation toward myself.  I started discussing how I feel that I am lacking solid relationships in my life with Christian men.  I was moved to see an e-mail a week later from our friend proposing an idea for how I might be able to begin to foster those relationships, which was to take a class at the C.S. Lewis Institute here in DC because they have a one-year program specifically geared toward building relationships and mentoring.  What is below is, in my opinion, a raw response.  That is, a stream-of-consciousness writing that has little revision from the original--a brief explosion of thoughts and gratitude for our friend’s listening ear and responding heart.  However, I thought what I shared might be helpful for others who may be in the same proverbial boat so I decided to share it here.

Regarding Common Change:  This is a group that my wife and I belong to with three other friends, where we pool money to meet needs outside of our group with the hopes of fostering relationships.  You can find more about it here.

 And the E-mail:

So...I had opened your e-mail about the C.S. Lewis Institute and then set it back to “unopened” with the intention of responding a bit at length about it...and...then I got the e-mail about the contributions regarding Common Change and sent you what I would call a placating e-mail regarding the C.S. Lewis center to be able to unoffensively inquire about Common Change : ))

With that out in the open, here is what I want to respond regarding the issue I have with guy friends that you heard and thought through after our conversation around our dining room table and then tried to pose a solution for.  First, thanks for listening!  Helene and I were talking about this issue last night when I had an epiphany regarding this.  The conclusion I came to is that I do not have the guys in my life that I believe I need because I am the one who wants control of who those guys are.  There are three guys that I am interested in--funny that sounds like I am single and gay doesn't it? : ))  Anyway, I have never asked God if these are the guys that he wants to have me invest in and to invest in me--I have completely left God out of the equation with this.  I try to spend time with these guys with invites on a regular basis and consistently get blown off, which fucking pisses me off!!  Helene, however, was kind enough to point out that I do exactly the same thing with some guys, or at least one, that seem to be really wanting to spend time with me.  One of them has a cabin about two hours away and he has invited me there, without exaggeration, probably a dozen times.  My response up until this past weekend has always been something along the lines of "Man, I would love to come out and join you but I just cannot make it."  This is mainly because I work Saturdays, but still, I feel like this turning down of invites certainly fits the mold of what I am so critical of with the guys that I would choose.  However, I decided to finally take him up on the invitation and spent Memorial Day weekend with him at his cabin and had a great time!

Also, I notice that when folks consistently complain about issues in their lives that center around other people and how those people are not meeting their needs, they need to step back and seriously consider the common denominator in that scenario, namely themselves--when you point a finger at someone you have four pointing back at yourself.  While I feel the love with your suggestion of the C.S. Lewis Institute, I know that it generally takes time for me to develop relationships, so I feel like that would be starting all over for me.  In the last year or so, I have taken a really positive step of finding guys in my life where we can mutually speak and spur one another on.  However, instead of seeking God and trying to hone in on who he is leading me to, I have tried to pursue this exclusively with my own senses.

           
I share all of this so that you can pray that I entrust this area of my life to God and seek him first.  Again, I feel like I have made the first step of putting myself in the correct context to develop those relationships, but I really need to focus on the next step of being open to allowing those that God would choose to enter my life, rather than focusing exclusively on those that I would choose.

An Open Letter To My Congressional Representatives

The quote "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" is attributed to Edmund Burke.  The following letter is only a small step out of nothing but at least it is something.  That said, if everyone in the West who is aware of the injustices that take place in the West Bank on a daily basis decided to write their congress man or woman perhaps we can shift the winds of injustice to winds of justice.  And for those of you who have asked about my recent experience in Israel/Palestine here is a window into that experience.  What follows is one copy of a letter of which there are three—one to my Representative and one each to my two Senators.  My hope is that if this is something that you are passionate about that you too will also pick up a pen or spend some time at a keyboard.  Isaiah 1:17: “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed…”

Chris Van Hollen

Congressional Representative

U.S. House of Representatives

1707 Longworth H.O.B.

Washington, DC 20515

Dear Representative Van Hollen:

In 2011 I had the privilege of taking a trip to Israel/Palestine as part of a dual narrative tour with my church.  During this trip we visited holy sites, but more paramount to my experience was getting to hear the diverse personal narratives of the people that live there.  For example, we heard stories from an Israeli settler, an Imam at the Al Aqsa Mosque, a Palestinian Christian pastor in Bethlehem, and a refugee from Dheisheh, one of the three refugee camps in Bethlehem, to name a few.

This experience created the biggest paradigm shift of my life! For my entire adult life I had seen Israel as this small oppressed country that needs the assistance of the United States to survive.  I was absolutely wrong in this thinking!  I was aghast at the oppression that Palestinians live with under the military occupation and at the ever-increasing expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank—settlements that are illegal under UN Resolution 446.  Moreover, I was also humbled at the generosity and hospitality that was shown by the Palestinians who so often get demonized in our media here in the West. 

This April I again had the privilege of returning to the West Bank with my wife and one other friend to participate in the Right to Movement Marathon that takes place in Bethlehem.  The experience was similar to my 2011 trip in how my heart was moved to sorrow and anger at the oppression that I witnessed there.  However, I noticed something on this trip that eluded me in 2011.  I noticed how hidden this occupation can be—particularly if one were to visit just Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.  To illustrate this, I would like to share a story.  On a Tuesday my wife, our friend and I were relaxing in Nativity Square in Bethlehem when we met a man named Jamal.  We would spend the rest of the afternoon with Jamal and two of his friends from work learning about their stories and experience in Palestine.  Jamal grew up in Aida Camp which is about a mile and a half from Nativity Square, and we were very excited when Jamal said that he would show us his parents’ home in the camp, which he did after a few hours of conversation in the peaceful and tranquil Nativity Square.

Our experience in Nativity Square that afternoon for lack of any other description was normal.  There was a band practicing for a concert to take place in the square later that week as part of the marathon celebration.  There were the sporadic buses that would show up with westerners wanting to visit the Church of the Nativity, the traditional site of the birth of Jesus.  It was peaceful! 

We left Nativity Square close to dusk to walk with Jamal to go visit Aida Camp.  As we approached the entrance to the camp our eyes, noses and throats began to burn.  This was from the remnants of tear gas that had been shot in Aida earlier that afternoon.  As we entered the camp we walked under an arch surmounted by a huge key, which symbolizes the right of return for the refugees who have called this place ‘home’ since 1948.  Just beyond this arch there is a steep hill.  In the opposite direction from the arch, about 200 yards away, is a blue door in the separation wall.  This door is used for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to enter the camp.  At the bottom of this hill were 4 IDF soldiers with machine guns as well as an armored vehicle with at least two more IDF soldiers inside.  At the top of the hill were kids throwing stones.  I was a bit nervous as we began walking toward the soldiers, but we had to walk this way to get to Jamal’s parents’ home.  As we walked, on our right was the separation wall with graffiti of the faces of about 15 Palestinian men.  Jamal told us that these were all men from Aida that were in Israeli jails.  Jamal also told us that about 80 percent of the men from Aida had at some point been arrested by the IDF, including himself on four different occasions.

We walked by the IDF soldiers with their guns pointed at us with their fingers on their triggers, but otherwise without incident.  Then we waited for Jamal to convince the teenagers throwing stones that we were friendly and not there to cause any harm.  Jamal as well as a shop owner that lives next to Rachel’s Tomb and whose shop is surrounded on three sides by the separation wall stated that the incidents of tear gas, shock grenades and the shooting of rubber-coated bullets is nearly a daily occurrence in Aida Camp.  In the course of a 35 minute walk I went from the peace and tranquility of Nativity Square to a war zone.  And…and if we had not met Jamal and had we not accepted his invitation to visit Aida Camp we would have completely missed the truth that is so easily hidden from non-perceptive eyes, ears and hearts.  We would have come home with a completely different narrative.

Our secretary of state, John Kerry, was close to the truth when he said that Israel is in danger of becoming an apartheid state.  It is not in danger of becoming an apartheid state; it already is an apartheid state.

Here is my request for you, my representative.  Please go and see for yourself.  I am delivering copies of this letter to our state Senators Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski as well.  Perhaps the three of you can take the trip together.  I have a friend that owns a dual narrative tour company.  My contact information is at the bottom of this letter, and I would be happy to organize a meeting with him to discuss traveling opportunities. 

Sincerely,

Steve Graybill

Constituent