CPTnet
November 27, 1998
Lectionary reflection for November 29, first Sunday of Advent.
by Dianne Roe

Psalm 122:6 - Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Isaiah 2:1-5

"In days to come the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the
highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations
shall
stream to it. . . He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for
many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears
into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither
shall they learn war anymore."

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 28: "Everyone is entitled to a
social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in
this declaration can be fully
realized."

"The Bench" by Anne Montgomery tells how Israelis and
Palestinians beat their coins into washers to create a bench which became "a
home on a hill where at least a few people of many nations gather as one."
This story opens the way to light the advent candle of hope.

CPTnet
October 20, 1998
HEBRON: THE BENCH
by Anne Montgomery

Two friends, Israeli and American, built a bench for the Jabber family whose
second house was demolished on September l6. They laid the bench parts on
the side of the hill between the ruins and next to a small tent flapping in
the cooling wind of October.

Atta Jabber remarked that his original house had been built
by Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals, its destruction
therefore doubly a blow to peace. But many hands also put the bench
together,
and, as conversation shifted from Arabic to Hebrew to English, spirits
lifted
and bonds tightened with the bolts.

The bench is a composite of gifts: the wood tossed up by the sea, the
washers created from foreign coins, the whole a harmony of comfort and
artistry.

But it is also full of ironies: a large, polished bench planted on a
hillside,
surrounded, not by walls and roof, but by broken cinder blocks and torn
wiring. Sitting on it one can see bulldozed land where a few weeks ago an
orchard grew. Is it an illegal structure? changing facts on the ground? a
threat to security?

After all, the bench-sitter can look down upon the bypass road which itself
plowed through the family's cauliflower fields. Will it be hacked to pieces
by the same chainsaws that killed the olive and fig trees? Should we by some
magic suspend this bench in the air so that it does not "improve" the land?

Whatever happens, the real fact on the ground of our collective lives is that
nothing can destroy what was built there: a "home" on a hill where at least a
few people of many nations can gather as one.