BY REV. DR. DEE EISENHAUER

I recently made a pilgrimage to Israel and the West Bank. I had long hoped to see some of the places I have read about so many times in the Bible, and it was a pleasure to visit this ground considered sacred by all the Abrahamic religions. I enjoyed the beauty of the churches, mosques and temples, the beautiful variety of people of faith, and the stunning beauty of the land itself.

We pilgrims caught sight of some ugliness as well. The gun-metal gray separation wall being built between Israel and the Occupied Territory of the West Bank rises sternly, twice as high as the Berlin Wall and considerably longer. It casts a grim shadow on the landscape.

I find myself thinking of lines from Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall”: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.” In the poem, the neighbor is quite sure that “Good fences make good neighbors.” I expect that the builders of the Separation Wall have something akin to that in mind since there is so much ill feeling and fearfulness between Israelis and Palestinians in that conflict-torn land. The poet expresses some doubt about the needfulness of walls, however, saying, “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out, and to whom I was like to give offense.”

The saddest aspect of what I observed was the evident lack of understanding between neighbors of different ethnicities and different faiths. There seemed to be little desire to know the neighbor, to know who was being walled in or walled out. The concrete physical wall was symbolic of what seemed to me a lack of curiosity about and compassion for the Other. (Maybe that’s why some people call it the Apartheid Wall.)

For instance: Two of the women I met while traveling were deeply faithful people who were each devoted to Mary, the mother of Jesus. One lived near Bethlehem and the other was utterly thrilled to be traveling to the place Mary had lived. Hearing each of them speak of their love for Mary on separate occasions was inspiring; it was surprising to me how much they had in common.

One of the women was a Greek Orthodox Christian and the other was Muslim. In the course of one conversation, the Christian woman expressed her ironclad opinion that Islam was a violent religion, citing one or two verses of the Quran about jihad that she had heard repeated. It was heartbreaking to hear this gracious woman speak so ungraciously in that moment about a people she did not really know. How I wished it would have been possible to get the two together to discover their sisterhood, their common interests and shared devotion!

I met a pair of men who live on either side of the Separation Wall, a Palestinian and an Israeli. Each of these fathers have suffered the pain of having a daughter killed in the conflict — one by Israeli soldiers and one by a suicide bomber. They came together in a parents circle that serves as a grief support group and a place to make peace. The Israeli said that before joining the circle, he did not know any Palestinians personally. Now that they have met on this common ground of grief, they call one another “brother” and work together for peace.

It seems to me that one thing any of us may do in this divided and polarized world is cultivate our curiosity and compassion about our neighbors near and far. Before we construct a wall, whether it is of concrete or hardened opinion, we can ask to know what is being walled in or walled out, and to whom we are likely to give offense.

Even gazing at the ugly spectacle of the Separation Wall, I was encouraged by some artist’s graffiti on it — three simple words,

“All walls fall.”

That is my hope: that all walls that keep us from knowing each other and growing in compassion for one another will fall. May all such barriers go the way of the Berlin Wall — a chunk of which I have in my possession, a deconstructed symbol of constructive change.

Rev. Dr. Dee Eisenhauer is pastor of Eagle Harbor Congregational Church.