October 21, 2001

Marthame was supposed to preach this morning at St. Matthew's Anglican Church (can you see where this is going?). He even got the right lectionary this time - the epistle passage was Paul's letter to the Ephesians in which he says, "Be angry and do not sin." Somehow appropriate for today.

We got an early call from Fr. Hossam that he would not be coming to church today - Nablus was completely closed. Even the place where we normally would walk across was closed, and there are soldiers and tanks and shooting and tear gas. Be angry and do not sin...We headed off to the Orthodox Church instead to worship with them, since there would be no worship at the Anglican Church without a priest - Marthame's Arabic isn't that good.

Sharing a little bit about the US and its culture with University students.

In the afternoon, we were scheduled to go up to the Arab-American University of Jenin to lend a hand with a conversation class they were holding. Word filtered down to Zababdeh that the class had been cancelled - the university was on strike due to the sieges and recent rising death toll. We checked around to find out that it wasn't true - the university has a strict no-strike policy. Also, it turns out, so does the Palestinian Ministry of Education. When general strikes are called, businesses are supposed to be closed, but schools are supposed to remain open. The purpose, of course, is that education is vital. We headed up and, along with a couple other foreigners, talked about ourselves, our religion, and our culture. We had a lively discussion with the students about the role of women in society - there was as much variety in opinion among the all-male, mostly-Muslim students as you would expect to find in an American classroom.