Saturday, Oct 26 ~ Marcia Myhre

We came to the Holy Land as pilgrims from many different places and stations in life; some for the first time while others had been here before. Regardless of experiences, we all arrived filled with the Holy Spirit. Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, seemed like an appropriate place to start.

Jesus wandered these roads over two-thousand years ago; we followed his path just as the apostles had done in his later years.

We had many teachers along the way and no matter how sad the story might be, the answer was always the same; have hope.

We danced at a special Shabbat, huddled in a cave to hear a generational saga of a family clinging to their land, and wept with Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Christian fathers who had both lost daughters through violence. We never heard anger in any of these voices but rather the call for justice and peace.

We arrived as pilgrims twelve days ago and we leave being asked to tell the story of our Palestinians brothers’ and sisters’ plight and their ‘right of return’ to their homes and their land. Their cries will not go unheard.