JSam: All Alone Together

One of the hard things about days like we had on Tuesday is that it can take longer to write about than to experience. The day was full of surprises, affirmations, yawns (from sleep deprivation) and forgetting that we've only known each other a couple of days.

As I read other people's blog entries here, I am struck by how many of us felt alone as we started this journey. I mentioned this to one of the others who wrote that, and they looked at me and laughed. I thought it was because I seemed so all-together that no one would imagine me feeling alone. When they settled down they admitted that when they were contemplating their all-aloneness, they took comfort in the fact that they were not 'that evangelical guy!' They made the point that nearly everyone here will be somewhere in Jordan or Israel where they are part of the majority of the population, but I will always be a minority within a minority. Seems like I heard that from Saleem in Nazareth a few times.

My first big takeaway from today was the class at the University of Jordan where we witnessed a packed room full of students listening to a lecture on Muslims in America. The Professor was Dr. Ed Curtis from IUPUI who is here on teaching for a year. I was particularly taken back by the clarity and passion of the students' questions who clearly wanted to know why America was scared of them and what they could do about it. I know there are some easy Talk-Radio answers to that question, but these kids seemed really sincere in pursuing their curiosity on the subject.

I'm embarrassed by my second takeaway. I knew there were Iraqi refugees somewhere out there, but I had no idea how many, how many are in Jordan, and how distressing their stories are of families being broken up by bureaucrats that aren't interested enough to give reasons why they send one family member to this country and another to another country and just don't give an answer to another. This story needs attention. I had dinner with refugees Khalid, his wife Janet, their daughter Raya, and a friend of theirs, Michael. However, they are no longer just names to me.

There was also a lot of talk today in nearly every setting about hopelessness and how individuals respond to that in different settings. Many people here have obviously learned how to simply exist in the midst of having nothing to hope for. I suspect we're not through with that conversation. After all, faith is the substance of things hoped for...