Pain on both sides

Today I went to Yad Vashem and then an extensive tour of the security wall. It was a day filled with pain layered with complexity. It is late and I have to be up very early. As I am going to the desert for the night tomorrow I will not be able to blog for a day or so. So please know that I am fine even though there won’t be a posting tomorrow.

This will also let an intense day reside within me. Though I need to emphasize how quickly and deep this group is able to go with each other. Perhaps it is because we are gay and lesbian folks that we developed some trust with each other more quickly. We are also quite sophisticated in our abilities to hold contrary, conflicting and competing narratives

Pat Baumgarten (sp?) is also here, the head minister at MCC NYC (a Gay Christian Community). She invited the Christians to a service she was leading. Only Joseph decided to go so I joined him, which was a good thing because it was only Pat, her congregant and student Gail, Joseph and me. They included me in such a wonderful and warm way. Since no one sang, I offered up the Shalom chant which we did in the service and they asked me to do communion in a way that I could participate –which I said was just blessing the bread and wine the way I would for Shabbat—and that was enough. We offered prayers for peace and justice. Also the Hebrew Bible reading she chose was from Esther. The piece where Mordechai challenges Esther to use her position for justice to advocate for the plight of the Jews.

I could not help but think of God’s seeming absence being brought down through human action, which is need here and how being privileged is not the issue. All of us as Americans here on this trip recognize how privileged we are—the issue is how we use that privilege. Do we advocate for others? Do we find ways to share that privilege?

Those are the questions I leave for you this evening.