Why I Want to Go to the Holy Land
Dale Perkins, Victoria
Volume 26 Issue 1 & 2 | Posted: February 28, 2012
Every day, Middle Eastern social and political turbulence fills the TV screen and many columns in the daily newspapers.
Every day, Middle Eastern social and political turbulence fills the TV screen and many columns in the daily newspapers. Very few of us fully understands and appreciates the actual lived-experience of people there, and most of the time we throw up our hands and exclaim – “it’s hopeless … those people will be at one another’s throat and killing each other from now until eternity.”
Feeling that way myself I was astonished to hear me say – I want to go to the (so-called) Holy Land and experience some of that before I die here in ‘Supernatural BC’.
The particular opportunity I discovered was to join a group of about a dozen people, assembled through the Naramata Centre for continuing education (a United Church of Canada operation on the shore of Lake Okanagan, north of Penticton).
The leader of the group is Natalie Maxson, a young woman who once worked with me at the Cadboro Bay United Church, as our youth leader. Natalie left CBUC some years ago and among other things spent five years working out of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, where she formed strong links with Palestinian Christians and Israeli Jews. Natalie, who also spent time with the Catholic Worker, recently presented to a large crowd of people in Victoria, a portrait and description of the dynamics presently at work in that troubled region of the world.
I learned a great deal and my resolve to go there with this team on a ‘Pilgrimage of Solidarity’ was strengthened and I have a better appreciation of some of the turmoil experienced by both Palestinian and Jewish inhabitants. I now feel resolute in my determination to become an agent for peace and reconciliation there, and to make stronger my prophetic witness back here at home and throughout Canada. I wish to make a full report to the pages of ICN when I return.
However, the cost of making this pilgrimage is a challenge, and I am soliciting financial support from a number of organizations and individuals. If any reader would like to pledge me in making this trip I would be grateful – the way to do that directly is to send it to me – Dale Perkins at 1958 Granite Street, V8S 3G1, or by sending it into Island Catholic News (attention: Dale Perkins’ pilgrimage of solidarity). And thank you in advance.
Dale Perkins email address is: DPERKINS@ISLANDNET.COM. Pledges of support can go directly to Dale or via Island Catholic News: ICN@telus.net.
Dale Perkins, Victoria