Lesson learned

I learned a lesson the first week I was in Palestine.  I'd gone with some friends of my friend there to play pool at the InterContinental Hotel in Bethlehem.

Afterward, we drove out to a dusty road on the edge of town, blasting music through the car's speakers while we pulled beer from bottles and I danced with my new American-in-Palestine friend.  At one point, Firas decided he would offer me a drink by pouring beer from his bottle onto my upturned face.  Missing my mouth completely, it flooded my nose and I came up gasping, spitting and coughing.  We all laughed and resumed our dancing.

Moments later I felt the familiar stream of warm blood oozing out of my left nostril.  In the darkness, I tried to wipe it away nonchalantly, turning from the group toward the stone and rebar wall marking the edge of the road and the steep descent down a mountain, silently wishing for miraculously thicker blood than I've ever been known to have.

"Emily, you okay?" Chelsea asked.
"Umm... do you have a tissue?"
"Oh my god! Your nose is bleeding!"
"It's --"
"Oh my god!"
Suddenly Chelsea was rummaging through her purse and Walid his trunk.

"Oh, no. It's okay.  I'll be fine."
"It's because of the beer!"

"No - it's okay." Shyly, I turned away.  Firas appeared by my side with a wad of tissues procured from some helpful friend, placed a hand on the small of my back and immediately began to assist in ebbing the flow of blood from my face the way I would help one of my students.

"I'm okay," I muttered, "It's not the beer, it's --"

"It's not about you!" insisted Firas, exasperated.  Duly I shut up.

I stopped talking so much, stopped trying to prove myself.  I opened my eyes wider, listened harder.  That night I learned the hubbub to find a tissue wasn't about me.  Rather, these new acquaintances saw a person who needed assistance and they gave their utmost.

Now my friend's husband is posting pictures like this:

because this is happening elsewhere in Palestine:

 Read more 

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I went to visit Bethany in Palestine and within just a couple days felt like I had real friendships there, people I could count on to have fun and who obviously cared deeply for one another and easily and quickly enveloped others into that culture of care.  I listened to stories, laughed aloud, and cried openly.

Now from this distance and in these circumstances I avidly devour every bit of news I can gather about the unfolding events in and around Bethlehem.  My heart and limbs ache to give as selflessly as was modeled unto me; my skin tingles and crawls at the intersection of hope and hopelessness; I weep at my own perceived helplessness.

Breaking Bread

As I scoop fluffy white flour from the 1950's-era canister on my countertop, the white powder dusting my sleeve cuff, my mind travels to the fields adjacent to the farmhouse where my grandparents lived for more than fifty years before they recently moved to town.  That tall, yellow house just off the highway and just north of town was the only consistent house in my semi-nomadic childhood.  Some of my earliest memories include sitting on the back stoop in my Osh Kosh overalls while my grandpa brought me a bucket lamb to feed with a baby bottle full of warm milk.  As he placed the little lamb in my lap and lowered his body to sit beside me, Grandpa would slip his arm around my shoulders to help guide the bottle and manage the squirrelly lamb until the soporific milk took affect.  Somehow even then, I think I knew I was the luckiest girl in the world.

Other times I would pile into the front seat of Grandpa's pick up truck with one or two of my sisters and ride up the hill to the pasture while Grandpa leaned out the window yelling things like, "Whoa, there!" and calling all the cows Bessie.

In the evenings, Grandma would invite us to help prepare the meal.  We would do dishes together while she told funny stories of our mom's youth and caught us up on the neighborhood gossip.  She would bathe us and read aloud any of the children's books we'd selected from the low shelf in the hallway.  And always, from the perimeter of my world there, corn grew up from the rich black soil to tuck me in, holding fast in its rootedness while swishing and swaying with the wind.

"Six," I mumble aloud, enumerating the cups of flour I've piled into the large mixing bowl.  I grasp the grainy wooden spoon in my fist and struggle to mix every bit of flour into the dough that slowly increases to more closely resemble the bread it is becoming.  I scatter one last scoop of flour on the countertop, patting it flat as the landscape of my Kansas childhood, a patchwork of bowing sunflowers and amber waves of wheat.  Glancing across the counter, I half expect to see a child's eyes peering across the surface as I once sat at eye-level across the kitchen table mesmerized by my mom's weathered hands kneading bread dough and making sense out of chaos.  When the eight minutes required to knead a batch of sourdough bread stretched long, I flipped over her giant white mixing bowl, imagining its great domed expanse as the unending sky over our prairie plains as miniscule models of ourselves wandered the surface.  More than any Sunday School lesson she taught or Bible verse I memorized, my mom's all-powerful guiding hands demonstrated the personality of her beloved God.


Two months ago I went to Palestine for three weeks.  The starter I inherited prefers to be used and fed every two weeks to maximize its effectiveness.  When I returned to Minneapolis after three weeks' vacation eating unleavened bread I thrust myself into the busyness of everyday life without making time to heap mountains of flour upon itself, knead it into something sensible, or allow dough to rest and rise eight hours before baking.  Finally, a couple weeks ago, I pulled my starter from the back of the fridge and attempted to make some bread without high hopes.  Indeed, my Italian Herb Bread made with herbs fresh from my school's community garden fell flat.  A week later I tried again with the now-recently-fed starter.  Again, dense doughy bread resulted. I lugged the starter to work with me, made a batch of pizza crust with a couple students, contemplated the pain of parting with this legacy then decided as much as it saddens me to throw out an integral part of my heritage, an overflowing jar of bubbling goo sitting at the back of my refrigerator serves no purpose but to irritate my roommates.  On the way into the house that afternoon, I put the starter in the garbage can by the alley.