Federation News: The Newsletter of the WSCF, April 2016

Federation News: The Newsletter of the WSCF, April 2016

God is not a wall here…

Brandi Friesen Thorpe, SCM Canada member shares her experience in Palestine as member of the Pilgrimage for Justice and Peace of the WCC.

“We sit, with stories and laughter and a plethora of different lived realities among us, eating our lunch on the sunny patio, at tables prepared lovingly for us by our new Palestinian friends. Our backdrop is the graffiti of Western Wall, separating the West Bank in Palestine from greater Israel, and we do not forget where we are.“

“Pop poppop. You can hear the backdrop of tear gas bombs being lobbed into the Palestinian refugee camps. The sounds are foreign to us foreigners, and I do not register it until the wind shifts and the air turns chemically sour, singeing the insides of our noses, making our eyes water.

A minute later the wind shifts again. We return to the patio, our lunches, our fellowship. We go on. We eat. We pray. We listen. God is not a wall here, God is in the perseverance that exists because of the oppression of the wall.”