Letter from Palestine, 29. Easter preparations.
19th March 2005
Dear friends!
Easter is soon here. Ringerike Ten Sing is already on their Easter camp, my thoughts are with them now. The last nine years I have spent Easter on camp. This year I am in Jerusalem. It is not a bad alternative, though it is strange not to follow the tradition.
I think Lent has passed fast. I can admit that I have not fasted much when it comes to food. I have in a way wished to do more out of it, but find it a bit difficult when I don’t make the food myself. Talking with Orthodox Christians makes me impressed by their discipline and strength. Katy, the manager of the YWCA centre in Jalazone, is Orthodox, and has just started her Lent. They follow another calendar than the Western churches, and Orthodox Easter Day is 1st May this year. She told that she for 48 days does not eat meat, egg or milk products. I find them almost lucky to have such clear rules for Lent, something I miss a bit in our tradition.
But I start to understand that Lent is about more than food. I have got an understanding that abstinence from food is a sort of “emergency fast”, a replacement of the real Lent we are invited to. The real Lent is about renunciation more in relation to other people than to food and things. It is of course a connection there, and at least you can feel how poor people live. But as another foreigner said; it is so much of Lent just to be in Jerusalem, so I don’t feel it is necessary to observe it regarding food.
“The real fast”, how I read it in the Bible (Is 58:6-7), is clearly shown in Palestine:
“Is not this the fast that I choose:to loose the bonds of injustice,to undo the thongs of the yoke,to let the oppressed go free,and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,and bring the homeless poor into your house;when you see the naked, to cover them,and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”
When will we come to the point of focusing on this in Lent?
Lent is in many ways as Advent, or the other way round. As before Christmas, now before Easter I am reminded about how strong hope is. I have earlier said that the Palestinians are a people of Advent. I mean it still, but now they are also a people of Lent. Experiencing unjust suffering, they know that some innocent has suffered before them. Here in Jerusalem he died on the cross. Here in Jerusalem he rose from the dead. It gives a hope for a new and good life for many.
Though they don’t say it is Easter here before Easter Eve, I already start to come in the right mood. Knowing that the Easter camp is already going on at Blestølen is probably important. In addition the Easter preparations have started here. Today we have had a good, old, Norwegian “dugnad” (“voluntary communal work” says the dictionary) in the church. We have decorated the pulpit, lectern and altar with palm leaves from the garden. In addition we have tried to clean the side chapel used the most. I don’t know when, or if, anybody has done anything like that before, it was quite black over the lamps on the stone walls. But much of it could be removed with a dry cloth, also some plaster, and the density of dust particles in the air seemed more to be like a construction site than a chapel. To blow one’s nose afterwards gave a more dirty result than after two hours in babytaxi-queue in Dhaka in Bangladesh…
After the work we had lunch together with what each one had brought to share. It is no real “dugnad” without food. At last we practiced in the church for processions for the services the coming week. We got a demonstration on how it is not supposed to be done, loafing around, and how it is supposed to be done, with cross, torches, Gospel book and everything. The imaginary incense made some nervous, it is not easy to know how to handle something invisible, but it went well…
When I thought I had had a good day and planned to go home, I was invited together with a couple to two other girls. They live just across the Green Line, in West Jerusalem, and they talked about “the other side”, it means across the road, East Jerusalem, where I live. We had a really nice evening, and I had a bit of the feeling of Easter camp when we developed quite a lot domestic humour about the work of the day and blunders in the church. It was not quite a preparation for the heavy days of Holy week, but more for the joy we look forward to in the Easter days.
Tomorrow it is first a service in St George’s. In the afternoon it is a procession with different denominations from Bethfage over the Mount of Olives to the Old City. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are quite calm before the big arrangements start on Thursday. Then it is footwashing and procession to Gethsemane. Friday we will go the Way of the Cross early in the morning and have a service at noon. Saturday evening the Easter celebrations start. It is so much to experience in Easter in Jerusalem. I look forward to exciting days.
I wish everybody a good week!
Expectant greetings from Hanne.
Dear friends!
Easter is soon here. Ringerike Ten Sing is already on their Easter camp, my thoughts are with them now. The last nine years I have spent Easter on camp. This year I am in Jerusalem. It is not a bad alternative, though it is strange not to follow the tradition.
I think Lent has passed fast. I can admit that I have not fasted much when it comes to food. I have in a way wished to do more out of it, but find it a bit difficult when I don’t make the food myself. Talking with Orthodox Christians makes me impressed by their discipline and strength. Katy, the manager of the YWCA centre in Jalazone, is Orthodox, and has just started her Lent. They follow another calendar than the Western churches, and Orthodox Easter Day is 1st May this year. She told that she for 48 days does not eat meat, egg or milk products. I find them almost lucky to have such clear rules for Lent, something I miss a bit in our tradition.
But I start to understand that Lent is about more than food. I have got an understanding that abstinence from food is a sort of “emergency fast”, a replacement of the real Lent we are invited to. The real Lent is about renunciation more in relation to other people than to food and things. It is of course a connection there, and at least you can feel how poor people live. But as another foreigner said; it is so much of Lent just to be in Jerusalem, so I don’t feel it is necessary to observe it regarding food.
“The real fast”, how I read it in the Bible (Is 58:6-7), is clearly shown in Palestine:
“Is not this the fast that I choose:to loose the bonds of injustice,to undo the thongs of the yoke,to let the oppressed go free,and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,and bring the homeless poor into your house;when you see the naked, to cover them,and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”
When will we come to the point of focusing on this in Lent?
Lent is in many ways as Advent, or the other way round. As before Christmas, now before Easter I am reminded about how strong hope is. I have earlier said that the Palestinians are a people of Advent. I mean it still, but now they are also a people of Lent. Experiencing unjust suffering, they know that some innocent has suffered before them. Here in Jerusalem he died on the cross. Here in Jerusalem he rose from the dead. It gives a hope for a new and good life for many.
Though they don’t say it is Easter here before Easter Eve, I already start to come in the right mood. Knowing that the Easter camp is already going on at Blestølen is probably important. In addition the Easter preparations have started here. Today we have had a good, old, Norwegian “dugnad” (“voluntary communal work” says the dictionary) in the church. We have decorated the pulpit, lectern and altar with palm leaves from the garden. In addition we have tried to clean the side chapel used the most. I don’t know when, or if, anybody has done anything like that before, it was quite black over the lamps on the stone walls. But much of it could be removed with a dry cloth, also some plaster, and the density of dust particles in the air seemed more to be like a construction site than a chapel. To blow one’s nose afterwards gave a more dirty result than after two hours in babytaxi-queue in Dhaka in Bangladesh…
After the work we had lunch together with what each one had brought to share. It is no real “dugnad” without food. At last we practiced in the church for processions for the services the coming week. We got a demonstration on how it is not supposed to be done, loafing around, and how it is supposed to be done, with cross, torches, Gospel book and everything. The imaginary incense made some nervous, it is not easy to know how to handle something invisible, but it went well…
When I thought I had had a good day and planned to go home, I was invited together with a couple to two other girls. They live just across the Green Line, in West Jerusalem, and they talked about “the other side”, it means across the road, East Jerusalem, where I live. We had a really nice evening, and I had a bit of the feeling of Easter camp when we developed quite a lot domestic humour about the work of the day and blunders in the church. It was not quite a preparation for the heavy days of Holy week, but more for the joy we look forward to in the Easter days.
Tomorrow it is first a service in St George’s. In the afternoon it is a procession with different denominations from Bethfage over the Mount of Olives to the Old City. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are quite calm before the big arrangements start on Thursday. Then it is footwashing and procession to Gethsemane. Friday we will go the Way of the Cross early in the morning and have a service at noon. Saturday evening the Easter celebrations start. It is so much to experience in Easter in Jerusalem. I look forward to exciting days.
I wish everybody a good week!
Expectant greetings from Hanne.
posted by Hanne at 4:12 PM
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