A lifelong commitment
...to a people and the soul of a country
by Patti Browning, with Sandra J. Bright

Patti Browning and I met in 1978 when my husband John was called to be the Dean of the Cathedral in Honolulu. Her husband, former Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning, at that time was serving as Bishop of Hawaii. Through the years our lives took different roads, but we remained friends. In February 2001 Patti and I attended the Sabeel Conference in Jerusalem. It was my first visit to Israel/Palestine and was for me an almost Damascus-like conversion to the Palestinians’ cause for peace. My experience was grounded in Patti’s experience: What I saw, what I heard, what I learned and what I felt was through the love, faith and hope that Patti embodies for the people of Palestine. The following story is the combination of excerpts from my conversations with Patti and excerpts from her journals. The words are hers.
– Sandra J. Bright

I was 29 years old when I first saw Jerusalem. It was in 1962. Ed and I were serving as missionaries in Okinawa and were en route to Canterbury, England, where he was enrolled in a summer program at St. Augustine’s College. We had decided to break up the trip since we had four children under the age of 6 at that time. The first leg of the trip was to Bangkok. From Bangkok we flew to Beirut and from there into Jerusalem’s tiny airport.

It was early June and the air was clear and cool, quite a contrast to the climate in Okinawa, and upon our arrival we instantly felt invigorated. We were staying at the YMCA, which was a small building that could sleep about 25 people, and arranged to have a guide show us around Jerusalem. He arrived and as we visited the holy places, I was drawn to his kind face and remarkable knowledge of the Bible. He began to talk about his life as a Palestinian Christian and refugee in his own country. He told how the Zionists had demanded that his family leave their home in one hour and take only what they could carry. I was stunned by his story and by my ignorance.

As the day continued, Palestinian adults and children gathered around us, no doubt attracted by my four very red-haired children, and began to tell similar stories of being dragged from their homes and scattered throughout their homeland. Later that evening at the YMCA, we listened intently to a Lutheran missionary couple talk about the occupation of Palestine after the proclamation of the new State of Israel in 1948. They pointed out the barbwire that rimmed No-Man’s land only a few feet from our lodging and told of a nun that had been shot in the area a week earlier. I found myself identifying with the Palestinian story, perhaps because of my experiences in Okinawa. Even as an American missionary, I had felt the confinement, and often harassment, of living under U.S. military rule.

Before we left Jerusalem, I gathered all the material I could find about Palestine’s story and carried it with me for years to share with others. These first questions and feelings of connection would grow into a lifelong passion and commitment to these people and to the soul of the State of Israel.

Israel/Palestine – and Intifada – 25 years later

It was 25 years before I returned to Israel/Palestine. They had been busy, exciting and productive years: Ed served as Bishop in Okinawa, Europe and Hawaii before his election as Presiding Bishop in 1985. During that same time we nurtured our one daughter and four sons to their independence. I never forgot my earlier experience and would frequently share the story of my oppressed sisters and brothers in Palestine, but often to unsympathetic ears.

I am not a one-issue person, but I am a staunch advocate for human rights and the Palestinians’ suffering seemed so endless. At some point I took to heart a quote made by The Christophers, a Roman Catholic community, that said, "It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness." Their belief that a single person’s actions can make a difference helped me to continue.

In 1987, Ed and I flew into the international airport at Tel Aviv for his first pastoral visit to the Diocese of Jerusalem as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, USA. We were greeted by Jerusalem’s bishop, Samir Kafity, and John Peterson, who was then serving as the Dean of St. George’s College. They had planned a full agenda, and I was eager to see Jerusalem once again and talk with the Palestinian community. The stories of the past 25 years were sobering: the crushing 1967 war, living in sewers, death of children, resignation to rootlessness. When our trip was over, I left once again with questions, deep concerns and a feeling that the Palestinians’ identity was disappearing and no one cared.

It was just a few months later that the Intifada of December 1987 began. I begged Ed to include me in a small group of Anglicans being sent on a fact-finding trip to Israel/Palestine to show our solidarity with our sister church suffering through the conflict.

Since then I have returned to Israel/Palestine 15 times and I carry in my heart a litany of images, people and their stories. I especially recall many visits to the Ahli Arab Anglican Hospital in Gaza with my friend Suhaila Shawqi Tarazi, director of the hospital. There were stories of young men and teenagers being pulled off operating tables by Israeli soldiers; young girls injured by plastic bullets targeted at their lower abdomens; a small injured child raising her tiny fingers in the "V" shape for peace; entering the courtyard of the hospital to a scene of frantic activity of bed after bed with young people bandaged and bleeding, and carload after carload of injured continuing to arrive. I saw the fear on their faces and could feel their fear in my heart. On my last visit this past February, amidst this recent Intifada, the situation was even worse; the Israelis had barricaded Gaza into three sections and many of the injured were not even allowed access to the hospital for care.

I remembered Najat Kafity saying to me, "We can no longer take life for granted. It grieves me to see Israeli children growing up to hate and fear Palestinian children and Palestinian children growing up to hate and fear Israeli children." And this reminded me of South African Allan Boesak’s chilling statement that it pained him to see that a child’s only role model for leadership in his country was violence.

What can I do to help?

One day in April 1991, I drove with Ed in the early morning to Nablus, a city in the West Bank. We had celebrated Easter in Jerusalem. The hills were green and bright, red poppies were in bloom everywhere. That afternoon, listening to a group of Palestinian children singing during worship, I was awakened to the incredible bond of family and community, theirs and mine, both of us drawing strength from common ancestors dating back thousands of years before Abraham, and from our Semitic bond with their Jewish cousins.

I also remember attending church in Ramallah, a small town north of Jerusalem. That day I had entered the sanctuary seeking solitude and found a seat in the back of the church. Sitting there it somehow felt familiar. It called up once again my missionary years in Okinawa, where I sat in a church of a different country, a different culture, a different language, but where we held the same prayer in our hearts for justice and peace. I felt comforted. I felt a part of the context. I belonged there.

In March 1992, Riah Abu El-Assal, then an Anglican canon in Nazareth, spoke to a group I was with. "We have never had our land as our land," he said. "The British took us over and then left us to the mercy of the Jordanians, the Syrians, and the Israelis. The Anglican Church could be very powerful, but they need the truth. Get the information out to your country at the grassroots level. I don’t want pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel. That is bad. We need a bridge between us. When will the U.S. help us who are helpless?"

We left without answers.

Before returning to Jerusalem, we drove to the Galilee Sea, and I eased down to a pool at the edge of the water. I left with a filled bottle for my next grandchild’s baptism. I also pledged to myself and prayed that our church could be a bridge of reconciliation of the children of Abraham.

Truth + Justice = Peace

Through the years I have felt lonely periods of hopelessness. I remember in 1992 visiting the Jabala Refugee Camp, one of the worst in the whole country. The odors of the open sewers were overwhelming even in the cold weather. At one time there had been a huge pool of sewage where people were punished by making them stand in the pool up to their necks for hours. During that trip to Israel/Palestine, Ed and I met with Yasser Arafat. He told us about the deplorable conditions in Gaza: starvation as devastating as Somalia; the deliberate silence of the media and Israel’s blatant defiance of the United Nation’s resolutions, especially the 4th Geneva Convention.

After the meeting, Ed and I went to have dinner. I tried not to get teary-eyed about the conditions of the Palestinians during the meal, but it was difficult to control my emotions. So we walked back to our hotel and that helped, temporarily, to get my mind off their concerns. But the Palestinian plight, with all their abuse, misery and discouragement, kept going through my mind and heart. Those of us who care and fight for them must remain strong, but what gives me hope is the hope I see on the faces of these people.

I wanted and needed to help the Palestinians and, as the wife of the Presiding Bishop, I knew I had an opportunity to share their story in a way I wasn’t able to before. I was terrified of standing in front of people, let alone speaking. But one day during an airplane flight, I opened randomly to an article in one of those airliner magazines about the fear of speaking in public. It said that if you don’t speak of your experiences you may deprive someone of the information they need to know. Then I remembered Palestinian human rights lawyer Jonathan Kuttab’s "Equation for Peace: Truth + Justice = Peace." I understood the equation and believed it to be true. I began to understand how I could help. I could begin by sharing the truth as I witnessed it. It was time to bite the bullet!

When the Intifada began in September 2000, Ed, now in retirement, called Riah Abu El-Assal, now serving as Bishop of the Diocese of Jerusalem, to ask what we could do to help. Ed also called Brian Grieves, the Officer for Peace and Justice at the Episcopal Church Center. We were asked to join an ecumenical group to visit Israel/Palestine and assess the situation. We arrived in early December and found the conditions very discouraging. The construction of Jewish settlements was literally eating up the countryside. The airstrip of the tiny Jerusalem airport, that had welcomed Ed, me and our children on our first visit to Jerusalem in 1962, had been confiscated for use as a highway between settlements, while all Palestinian movement in Gaza and the West Bank was controlled by barricades and curfews. Palestinians were finding themselves separated from their jobs, their hospitals and their families. This kind of "apartheid" was strangling the family unit and when we destroy the family we destroy the soul of a society. It is this kind of terrible oppression that breeds terrorism!

We returned from our trip bone-tired. But a few weeks later I turned to Ed and said, "I have to go back! I want to attend the Sabeel Conference in February. I want to talk and be with our dear friend Naim Ateek (Founder and President of Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem), and support our friends there in any way I can." So Ed, when it was time, drove me to the airport.

When I arrived in Jerusalem the breeze was so invigorating that I was ready to step into its life with both feet. I felt like I was home again. I really could live there. I think I can truthfully say I feel at-one there, rooted in years of getting to know and love the people: laughing with them, weeping with them; learning and sharing their story, and valuing its truth at the core of my soul. I don’t believe I will ever rest until there is peace in the City of Peace, Jerusalem, our Jerusalem: the Christian Jerusalem, the Jewish Jerusalem, the Muslim Jerusalem. l

Patti Browning’s "Jubilee Reflections on Mordechai Vanunu and Samuel Day" can be found at <www.thewitness.org/agw/>.