Stories and Commentaries from Iraq

http://globalministries.org/mee/from-war-to-peace/

Conference on Breaking Cycles of Trauma

This week I had the great opportunity to attend a three-day conference on Brumana, a nice town in the mountains with good fresh air.  The conference was about helping victims of trauma, whether personal or collective, to break the cycle of violence.  By collective trauma, I mean something like a genocide or living under a brutal regime.  It is something that traumatizes a group of people and the emotional and behavioral symptoms of that trauma are widespread throughout the community.  One of the reasons why I loved studying in Lebanon during my junior year of University is because even if we were studying a topic that I could have studied in the U.S., the discussion would be so different because of the collective experience of my classmates.  This week in the conference, I was very aware of the fact that studying and discussing trauma and cycles of violence with Lebanese and Syrian citizens would be very different from taking a class on the same subject in the U.S.  We discussed the war and oppressive regimes.  When we talked about the cycle of unhealed trauma leading to a continuous cycle of violence, we got into small groups and had to make dramas to show how this would look in real life.  My group created a drama which showed our fear that in these countries, those who get rid of the current regimes and are the next to sit in the palaces, will adopt the same behaviors as the previous regimes without realizing they have become just as bad.  The cycle continues because there is no reconciliation between the warring groups, they continue to fear and hate each other.  It was an interesting time to encounter such a workshop, right as I began my second week in Lebanon.  It was a good introduction back into Lebanon and my work to have the chance to connect with Lebanese and Syrians on these increasingly relevant issues.

Iraqi refugees in Lebanon

This article that I have attached to the bottom of my post gives a good description of some of the common problems and realities that I have encountered in the Our Lady of Faith Dispensary.  The center is open Monday through Friday, from 8-2.  On a daily basis, it is open for anyone to come in to see the nurse, take medications, make appointments with the doctors who volunteer in the center.  We have a pediatrician, gynecologist, orthopedist and regular doctors who come in as volunteers once per week.  We also have people coming in to talk, they are looking for help for many different issues which they encounter as their saving are running out.  Each person and family has a different story.  As the article will tell, most Iraqis coming to Lebanon, and also to other Arab coutnries like Syria and Jordan, feel that they are in a strange period of waiting to be granted approval from the United Nations to move to the United States or Austraila.  After entering Lebanon, Iraqis must usually wait about two years for this process to take place and at the end they may not be granted permission to travel.  In that situation, they face the choice between living illegally in Lebanon under very harsh conditons or returning to the danger of Iraq.  Many know about the very harsh laws about citizenship in Lebanon because of the situation for Palestinian refugees.  All Iraqi refugees are here illegally and are at risk of being imprisoned at any time and put into a cell with real criminals.  One of our partners, Heart for Lebanon, is doing prison ministry with these people.  I will try to find some more information about this particular issue but for now, the following article gives a good general description of the issues.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Local-News/2011/May-13/Conditions-for-Iraqi-refugees-in-Lebanon-less-than-ideal.ashx#axzz1kYcfGeBQ

Last Christians ponder leaving hometown Iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/world/middleeast/20christian.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Iraq: At least 170 people killed in terror attacks this month

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/01/24/iraq-bombings.html

Who are the Christians of Iraq?

Another excerpt from my thesis:

The modern state of Iraq corresponds to an area that was called Mesopotamia in ancient times, a Greek word meaning ‘the land between two rivers’, the Tigris and the Euphrates.  In its time, Mesopotamia included all of present-day Iraq, along with small pieces of modern-day Syria, Turkey and Iran.  At the time of Christ, a buffer-state called Osrhoene lay within Mesopotamia occupying an area of north-west Iraq near its border with Syria (Rassam, 9).  This small state would become very important to the spread and development of Christianity in the Middle East.  An ancient legend tells the story of the king of Osrhoene, who heard of Jesus while He was alive and wrote a letter to Him asking Him to come and live in Osrhoene because he had heard that Jesus was being persecuted by the Jews.  In the myth, Jesus replied, telling the king that He could not come but that He would send him the apostle Addai.  Addai arrived in Osrhoene soon after Jesus’ death and healed the king who suffered from an incurable illness.  At that point, the king converted to Christianity and his people followed him. 

Church tradition tells that the message of Jesus was brought to Mesopotamia by the Apostle Thomas, Addai and his students Aggai and Mari.  Thomas and Addai were of the Twelve Apostles and the students were of the Seventy who traveled with Jesus.  A book entitled “the Acts of Thomas” was written at the beginning of the third century in the city of Edessa and describes what he calls the transfer from darkness to light or from sin to a life with Christ.  The transfer begins with “repentence which is based upon fasting, prayer, keeping vigil, suppressing physical and personal pleasure and living the life of a stranger and total detachment from this visible world” (AbouZayd, 387).  The Apostle Thomas lived a celibate and austere life.  He ate only once per day, usually just a piece of bread and salt with some water.  He was one of the first in a long line of monks who built the strong tradition of Christian asceticism in the region.  It is most likely that Christianity reached Osrhoene and the lands of Mesopotamia largely through Jewish converts who lived in Mesopotamia and travelled to Palestine for pilgrimage or trade and learned the Christian message which they carried back to their families and used to build some of the earliest Christian communities (Rassam, 26).

Osrhoene became the first kingdom to adopt Christianity as its official religion (Rassam, 11).  The population of Osrhoene’s capital, Edessa, spoke Syriac, a dialect of the Aramaic language.  The term Aramaic is derived from Aram, the fifth son of Shem, the firstborn of Noah.  By the time of Jesus, Aramaic had become a very important language in the Middle East.  The Aramaic language is a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew.    Aramaic was the language of Semitic peoples throughout the Near East.  It was the language of the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Hebrews, and Syrians.  A large part of the Hebrew and Arabic languages is borrowed from Aramaic, including the alphabet.  Since the alphabet was simpler than the cuneiform script, it was used dominantly among the people who lived in the land of Mesopotamia, whether they were Persian, Assyrian or Hebrew.  The Aramaic culture and language became dominant in the Middle East and prevailed until the coming of Islam fifteen hundred years later when Arabic began to replace Aramaic.   

It was natural for Christianity to emerge in the Middle East through communication in the Aramaic language because it was the language that the apostles, the Jews and Jesus spoke in everyday life.   Christian learning had thrived in Osrhoene and thus, the Syriac dialect of Edessa had come to be used especially among Christian circles.  As the Syriac dialect became prevalent in Christian circles, the connection between Syriac language and Christianity became so strong that the word Syriac became tantamount to Christian (Rassam, 15).  In the second century, Christianity prospered in Mesopotamia among the descendants of two powerful empires, Chaldea and Assyria (Hanish, 35).  When Mesopotamians converted to Christianity, they rejected their ethnic names and identities because they did not want to bear any connection to their pagan pasts (Hanish, 2).  The name was also significant to Christians because it distinguished them from the non-Christian Aramaeans. The Church was called The Church of the East (Hanish, 35).   Syriac became the sacred religious language of Christians in the Middle East in the same way that Latin was the sacred language of the Roman Church (Rassam, 16). 

Eastern Christianity is still strongly rooted in its original apostolic tradition because of its thousand-year-old history, and therefore, modern worship services may closely resemble those of their first Christian ancestors.  The traditional services are rich with scripture and many works of the Fathers of the Church, often Biblical paraphrases.  The Christians of Mesopotamia also possessed a fervent passion to spread the Gospel message into the farthest reaches of the East.  They cultivated a strong ascetic and monastic tradition everywhere they went and also dedicated themselves to the promotion of culture and learning, to which the monks of medieval monasteries made a critical contribution (Pacini, 295).

Throughout history, what began simply as The Church of the East has split into many different churches and many of those first people who wanted to be known, above all, as Syriacs or Christians, have reverted back to holding tightly to the name of the original empire from which they descend.  In Iraq today, the majority of Christians are called Chaldeans, Assyrians or Syriacs.  The Chaldeans are the descendants of Christian converts from the ancient empire of Chaldea while the Assyrians and Syriacs descend from the Assyrian and Babylonian empires.  Strong Chaldean, Assyrian and Syrian nationalist movements emerged as Christians tried to claim the right to protect their ethnic origins in response to the Arab nationalist movements of the 1950s-60s (Pacini, 297). Other ancient churches within Iraq include the Syrian Catholics, Armenian Orthodox and Armenian Catholic Christians, who entered the region as refugees fleeing the massacres against Christians in Turkey in the early 2oth century.  There are also small Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic communities, as well as Anglicans and Evangelicals (BBC, 3).  These sects are separate and distinct in various ways but the vast majority of Iraqi Christians share two very strong cultural traits which set them apart from the rest of the Iraqi population; they believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and they still speak Syriac, the language of the earliest Christians.  At the start of the 7^th century, before the Islamic invasion and conquest of Mesopotamia, about half of the Mesopotamian population was Christian (Hanish, 2).  Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Christians made up around 3-5% of Iraq’s population and that number is believed to have plummeted since then.     

Iraqi Refugees

I did my senior thesis on the persecution of Christians in Iraq.  Of course, there are problems for all Iraqis, but because of my background, having a mother from an eastern church and being a Christian, this was a very interesting topic for me.  At the Iraqi refugee center where I am working this year, about 90 percent of the refugees are Christian so I would like to share some parts of my thesis paper with you.  For today, I will just post here the introduction and more will come later...

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the rare but shocking headlines about the plight of Iraq’s Christian community have brought to the attention of the west that Iraq and the Middle East is not a homogenous Muslim region.  To many Westerners, it comes as a surprise to learn that Iraq not only has a Christian population, but that this community is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world.Christianity in Iraq was not the result of European missionaries evangelizing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but, rather, has a presence which reaches back almost two thousand years.  The origins of Christianity in Iraq are ancient and its biblical history is even older.  After Israel, Iraq is the most mentioned land in the Bible, though it is called by its historic names such as Babylon, Assyria, Land of Shinar, and Mesopotamia.  Also, besides Israel, no other nation has more history and prophecy associated with it than Iraq.  The widely known story from the Old Testament about Jonah and the whale takes place in Iraq, with God commanding Jonah to go to Ninevah (in Northern Iraq) to tell the people to “turn away from their wickedness”.  In light of the current situation, it is also interesting to note that Abraham, the father of all three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, was born in Ur, a city in present-day southern Iraq.

Soon after the death of Jesus, the Apostle Thomas traveled to the land of Mesopotamia to share the Gospel and thus, by the end of the first century, Christianity had established its roots in Iraq.  Christian culture flourished in Mesopotamia until the Arab conquest in the early seventh century.  Though the prominence of Christian culture began to decline, Iraqi Christian scholars, doctors and scientists played a major role in the emergence of the Arab Abbasid civilization.  Christians played a major role especially in the field of medicine and in translations from Greek and Syriac to Arabic.  Christian scholars translated a great number of scientific and philosophical texts into Arabic and the content of such texts led to the Arab cultural awakening and the emergence of an Arab civilization.  The work of these Christian translators was also of great significance for Western civilization, since Greek works reached Europe via the Arabs in Spain (Samir, 512).

                Though the Iraqi Christian population has declined dramatically over the centuries, and especiallysince the U.S. invasion in 2003, the community still has the potential to play a significant role in the future of Iraq.  Iraqi Christians, and all Christians in the Middle East, are some of the best-educated and most politically-moderate people in the region.  They are the people who Iraq can least afford to lose in the process of building a free, democratic and peaceful society.  Christians in the Middle East have ended up in a very unique position on the world stage as they stand on a sort of middle ground between the Christian West and the Muslims of the East.  Christians in Iraq and the Middle East could potentially act as a vital link between the East and West preventing total polarization between the two regions.  Since the invasion in 2003, persecution and intimidation has led to the acceleration of the already-existing out-migration of Christians from Iraq.Over the past eight years, the number of Iraqi Christians has fallen from around 800,000 to 300-400,000.  After two millennia of unbroken existence, the indigenous Christian community of Iraq, alone in carrying the sacred language and traditions of one of the oldest churches in the world, risks extinction in the ancient land of Mesopotamia.

Introduction to the organizations I am working with

I am supported by two Christian denominations in the United States, the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ and their joint mission board which is called Global Ministries. Global Ministries has partners all over the world who can request missionaries, advocacy and funding.  I will be working with two of Global Ministries’ partners in Lebanon. 

The first is the Our Lady of Faith Dispensary for Iraqi refugees.  The Dispensary belongs to the Middle East Council of Churches.  It provides medications and medical services to poor Lebanese citizens and Iraqi refugees.  In addition to the clinic, the Dispensary works with a Christian NGO (Non-governmental organization) called Heart for Lebanon to distribute food portions to 550 families, 275 each month.  The Dispensary also hosts Bible studies and fellowship gatherings for the Iraqis. 

The second organization that I will work with is called the Forum for Culture, Development and Dialogue (FDCD).  My first week has been spent at the Dispensary so I do not yet have any experience at the FDCD which makes it difficult for me to really explain what it is all about but I will copy here a description of the FDCD’s mission from one of the organizations brochures:

FDCD represents a faith-based, integrated initiative rising from the community and aiming to restore dignity to marginalized, oppressed, and dehumanized individuals and communities.  We strive to empower religious groups, both Muslim and Christian, to work alongside civil society organizations to address the challenges that face their communities, individually and collectively.  This is done through a process of dialogue, interfaith solidarity and cooperation among communities in the Middle East.

So now I have explained a bit about the partners I will be working with over the next year.  However, I am still not able to explain exactly what my role will be in these organizations.  I have spent this first week at the Dispensary, just observing and learning, asking lots of questions.  Tomorrow morning I have a meeting at the Middle East Council of Churches where I will learn more.  Next week I will go to a three-day conference with the FDCD about helping victims of trauma.  It seems I will be in a different office every day, learning many new things and doing many different types of work.  There will be a lot of room for creativity, growth, challenge and of course, God’s will and guidance.

Isaiah 55

It was difficult for me to decide how to begin this blog.  I wanted a title that would inspire me throughout the year and keep me centered on my mission every time I sit down to write.  So I did what I always do when I need guidance, I opened up my Bible.  On the morning of January 13, the day of my departure, I closed my eyes and randomly opened to Isaiah 55.  These are the verses from which I have taken my title:

““For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways my ways,” says the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are my ways higher than your ways, And my thoughts than your thoughts.

For as the rain comes down and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud.

That it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish what I please, and shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out with joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees shall clap their hands.

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress tree and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

These verses assure me that just as God sends the rain and snow to earth to accomplish their purposes, He has also sent me for a specific purpose.  My greatest prayer is that I will live a life that accomplishes “the thing for which I was sent”.  My past has taught me that what is returned to me won’t be what I expected or desired, but I can be sure that it will be exactly what I need, because it is what God intended for me and with this knowledge, I know that in the end, I shall “be led back in peace”.