Jerusalem part 7 – Being Home

This blog is not about coming home. Coming home would be summarized with buying expensive coffee for my last shekels, sleeping on the shoulder of fellow group members and a short but quite heavy attack of homesickness when seeing that there were also direct flights to Amsterdam at Ben Gurion Airport. And fourteen hours later, we were home again.  

This blog is about being home - as Lund has clearly become so much as that – and forgive me if it’s sentimental. Emotions get stronger in the Holy Land.

The weather in Sweden has been good during our absence, but just before our return it has gone back to 13 degrees and rain. I have to look in my closet for tights again. The English congregation is having a potluck dinner and I need to think whether there is some Dutch food that I haven’t made for them yet. Laundry needs to be done, yoghurt and cheese need to be bought. Jerusalem seems immediately very far away. And fortunately so – imagine that I would have left something behind? I definitely plan to one day return to the Holy Land, but rather not to pick up my heart or soul.

Wednesday: in my course about the Swedish Church, we discuss whether the Church should take political standpoints in different cases. Recently, there has been a discussion about boycotting Israeli products coming from illegal settlements. A classmate comments that one can discuss whether these are ‘occupied territories’ at all. They were after all Jordanian territory that Jordan now no longer wants – can one then speak of an occupation?  

This contradicts too much of what I have experienced the past days. Does he realize (and would he care more?) if he'd realise that some of the people living in these territories are Christians, who, like the Muslims, definitely feel the Israeli presence since 1967 as a real occupation and just want it to stop? 

But who am I actually to have an opinion? Ten days in the Holy Land is way too short to understand this conflict. I have read some articles and followed some lectures, but I don’t really follow the international news, let alone that I speak Ivrit or Arabic. How can I pretend that I really have a balanced opinion?  So I don't say too much and excuse myself by thinking that it's just too hard to debate in Swedish.

I guess one just leaves the Holy Land more confused than one already was.