Joel Carillet

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And Who Is My Neighbor? { 29 images } Created 21 Oct 2016

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  • 00 About "And Who Is My Neighbo..uot;
  • I no longer remember the name of the gentleman in this photo. I do, however, remember that we met on the street my first day in Mompos, a sleepy town on the Magdalena River. He said hello, and when he asked how long I would be visiting, I conveyed as best I could in my few words of Spanish that I would be here for three days.<br />
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On the third day our paths crossed again. Recalling that my departure was near, he looked me in the eye, placed his right hand on my shoulder, and then prayed a blessing for my onward journey. <br />
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I spent maybe three minutes of my life with this kind man. But it was long enough to feel seen and cared for. It was long enough to be blessed. It was long enough that even now, seven years later, I feel his touch.
    01 Mompos, Colombia (May 13, 2009)
  • Rudolf Hren was killed in 1995, though it wasn’t until 2010 that his body was found and exhumed from a mass grave in the Bosnian countryside. Hren was one of about 8,000 people, almost all of them men and boys, slaughtered over several days that July by Bosnian Serbs around Srebrenica, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II. Except for four Catholics, all those killed were Muslim, and most of the dead are now buried at the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery, which is nestled in hills that remind me of east Tennessee.<br />
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Hren’s is the only Christian (Catholic) grave in the cemetery. He grew up and lived in Srebrenica with his Muslim neighbors. After his body was identified and the decision needed to be made about where to bury him, his mother Barbara said, “He was with them, he died with them. He should rest with them, too.” Hren’s wife Hatidža and daughter Dijana agreed.<br />
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I spent several hours in this cemetery over two days. I watched women visit the graves of their husbands. I saw one man wander throughout the cemetery, visiting headstone after headstone and praying at each, hurt still in his eyes. Watching him was heartbreaking, and I assumed that each stop was someone important to him — a friend, a neighbor, a loved one — and that he had spent the last 18 years without them because people, some with crosses tattooed on their arms or chest, had slaughtered them.<br />
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And so I was thankful for Rudolf Hren and his family, that by being one of the slaughtered, and by choosing to be buried here, a cross would not just be associated with those who did the killing. It would also be identified with someone who shared in the suffering.<br />
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http://www.rferl.org/a/27114531.html
    02 Srebrenica, Bosnia (October 11, 2013)
  • In the rugged mountains of southern Sinai, at the base of Mount Sinai, is one of the oldest functioning monasteries in the world, called Saint Catherine’s. Much of the construction, including its tremendous walls, was done in the sixth century under the rule of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. Within the walls are historic manuscripts and icons, resident monks, and for the last thousand years even a small mosque.<br />
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If I were to make a top ten list of favorite places to spend a couple nights, it would include the guesthouse adjacent to the monastery. Primarily it is the rugged, silent landscape, and the ease with which one can go for a walk and be alone in this terrain, that I love. But I am drawn also to the interactions between the monks and the local Bedouin community, and the symbiotic relationship they have shared for so many centuries while living side-by-side in this harsh environment.<br />
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It is believed that many of the local Bedouin trace part of their ancestry to the construction of the monastery, when Justinian sent laborers from various parts of the Byzantine Empire to do the work. The workers then stayed, in time intermarrying and converting to Islam.<br />
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One night about 2:00 a.m., the Milky Way ablaze as I stumbled blindly over rocks on a mountainside trying to find the trail, a Bedouin appeared in the darkness and asked if I had a flashlight. The answer should have been yes, and I no longer recall why the answer was no. But I do remember the man giving me his flashlight and saying, “When you come back to the monastery after sunrise, try to find me and return it if you can.”
    03 Saint Catherine, Egypt (May 25, 2010)
  • I like to think of the past as a neighbor, whom we do well to visit every now and then. A visit to this neighbor helps us put things in perspective, like where we come from, and how short a time we’re going to be on this earth. We can find this neighbor in a classic novel, an ancient ruin, a museum, or any number of other places. One of my favorite places to look is a cemetery.<br />
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Locally, I enjoy the hike to Lost Cove, an abandoned mountain community just across the Tennessee line in Yancey County, North Carolina.<br />
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I like the journey there as my body, with its capacity of maybe 100 years, meanders through mountains already millions of years old and with maybe millions more to go. Though I enjoy the culture and vibrancy of the centers of the world, I’m also drawn to its margins, not least to quiet hilltops in the woods where, in solitude and silence, I can let my mind ponder a people and a place that preceded my own entrance into the world.<br />
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In Lost Cove's small cemetery, the grave of Bonnie Miller, age 16, is marked by a hand-carved headstone. Kneeling to read the inscription, one learns that Bonnie was the daughter of John Miller, and at the bottom of the headstone, written in a different script, is a line from the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”<br />
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When I come here I know that travel is more than cruises and holidays, and that our days are finite. I know that Bonnie’s headstone bears the marks of a father’s love, as imperfect as it may have been. And I know that holding too tightly to most things is a fool’s errand, for we are all just passing through.<br />
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http://www.reflectionsontheroad.com/the-path-to-bonnie-millers-grave/
    04 Lost Cove, North Carolina (May 24..012)
  • In his book, Jesus The Son Of Man, the Lebanese-American poet and writer Kahlil Gibran includes the following passage in which he imagines Jesus speaking to Peter in Capernaum:<br />
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“Your neighbour is your other self dwelling behind a wall. In understanding, all walls shall fall down.<br />
“Who knows but that your neighbour is your better self wearing another body? See that you love him as you would love yourself.<br />
“He too is a manifestation of the Most High, whom you do not know.<br />
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Gibran, best known for his book The Prophet, was born in the town of Bcharre, dramatically perched above the Qadisha Valley. See the outline of the church in the right of the picture? That’s Bcharre. Gibran died in New York City in 1931, and his body was brought back to Bcharre the following year.<br />
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When I think of Bcharre, which I visited for several days in 2010, I usually think of two people. Gibran is one. The other is a young man named Charlie, whom I met while attempting to hitchhike to my next destination, Baalbek. I say attempt because the driver of the first car to pick me up — Charlie — asked how my time in Bcharre had been, and if I had done everything I wanted to do.<br />
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“Everything but climb Qurnat as Sawda’,” I replied.<br />
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Charlie asked if I wanted to climb it now. He hadn’t hiked it since he was a child, and we could do it together. It would mean I wouldn’t have time to go on to the Baalbek this day — the hike would be several hours — but I could sleep in his family’s home in Bcharre and in the morning he would drop me off at the highway where I could resume my journey…but now having done everything I had hoped to do.<br />
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Charlie taught me several things about Lebanon. He also taught me that being a good neighbor might be, in part, to ask others if they have done all they hope to do. And, if they haven’t, to ask if you can help them achieve it.
    05 Bcharre, Lebanon (September 9, 2010)
  • Deir Mar Musa is an old monastery with frescoes dating from the 11th and 12th centuries; it was abandoned in the 19th century. Beginning in the 1980s, an Italian Jesuit priest named Paolo Dall’Oglio worked to revitalize it. The monastery became a place where Muslims and Christians, backpackers and academics, might come to spend a few days, or even just a few hours. There was no charge to stay. Father Paolo was passionate about inter-religious dialogue. <br />
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It is with regret that I did not take a picture of Father Paolo during the two days I spent at Deir Mar Musa. What you see in this picture is bread, delivered at sunrise to the monastery from the road below.<br />
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In 2012, as the conflict in Syria escalated, Father Paolo was exiled by the Syrian government for his criticism of it. In an interview later that year, he said:<br />
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"I left the country of my birth, where I have a father and mother, which I grew up in and love, following my longings, my obligations, following a positive role in this world, and came to Syria where I set my roots, learned the language, and committed to its culture. If the first country is called the motherland, then this one would be called the brideland. We Christians say, “No man shall separate what God has united,” and I would rather be silent in Syria than to speak in exile."<br />
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In July 2013, Father Paolo entered rebel-held territory in Syria and was kidnapped. Today it is unclear if he is alive or dead. If alive, it’s not hard to imagine the possibility of his booming voice now in its 39th month of dialogue, in fluent Arabic, with his captors about theology and politics.<br />
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Father Paolo illustrates how, sometimes, being a neighbor means learning another language and culture, creating a space where all feel welcomed, and, if the situation demands it, putting your life on the line.<br />
<br />
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/29/the-mysterious-fate-of-the-dissident-italian-priest-snatched-by-isis.html<br />
<br />
https://youtu.be/1rO3wqe-twM
    06 Deir Mar Musa, Syria (June 8, 2010)
  • From left to right these four girls are Miriam Boustan (age 10), Rahaf el Saleh (age 10), Sajeda el Khalaf (age 6), and Hala el Khalaf (age 10). They are sitting in a makeshift school at a camp for internally displaced persons, which at the time of my visit held around 11,000 people. The blue hue is cast by the blue tarp that serves as a roof.<br />
<br />
The week preceding this picture was not one of the easier ones in my life. I was across the border in southern Turkey, seeking out information on how a freelance photographer on a limited budget could cross into rebel-held Syria as wisely as possible. I was put in touch with two Syrians who would escort me, and I talked with other journalists and humanitarian workers who had spent considerable time across the border and offered helpful instruction. But in the end, the fact was that once across that border, anything was possible, some of it extremely unpleasant and permanent. It made for restless nights and dark dreams, and frequently imagining what facial expression and thoughts I’d have in the event of having to look into a video camera before having my head cut off by a fellow human being.<br />
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But back to this picture. In looking at these faces, do you see the beauty? The fragility? The trauma? The dignity? Do you see part of your extended family? Do you see people whose lives are priceless?<br />
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Death is real, and the emotions around its prospect can be cripplingly dark. But in kneeling on a gravel floor in front of a wooden school desk, behind which are four amazing and vulnerable lives, in hearing their voices as they tell you their names, in watching their smiles as you smile, and in looking into their eyes as they look into yours...you feel that love, and the emotions around it, has knocked the fear of death down to a rather tiny size, a size so small you might even accidentally step on it as you stand up, walking over to say hello to more of these precious kids.
    07 Atmeh, Syria (January 14, 2013)
  • This is Ragheb Ramadan, age 27 and from the Syrian town of Talhiyeh, standing with his three children in a camp for internally displaced persons. During our conversation about the situation in Syria, Ragheb told me that he fights for Jabhat al Nusra and comes to the camp only occasionally to see his family.<br />
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At the time, Jabhat al Nusra was an affiliate of al-Qaeda (it has since split), and so Ragheb was not the sort of person I normally had the opportunity to meet. Our 15 minutes together were cordial, even warm, but what if it hadn’t been? What if I knew he had taken part in one of the atrocities the group had committed, or what if he and I had met in different circumstances and he chose to do something bad to me? How does one relate to such a neighbor?<br />
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In thinking about this question, the 1950s and 60s black civil rights movement in my own country offers food for thought. One of the songs that demonstrators sometimes sang before going out, or in the thick of being abused, included the refrain “I love everybody, I love everybody, I love everybody in my heart.” Subsequent lines might replace “everybody” with the name of a specific person. Listen to the words of Dorothy Cotton, a leader in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference: <br />
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“Then somebody would always stop, because it was hard to sing ‘I love Hoss Manucy’ when he’d just beat us up, to say a little bit about what love really was. He’s still a person with some degree of dignity in the sight of God, and we don’t have to like him, but we have to love him. He’s been damaged too. So we sing it, and the more we sing it, the more we grow in ability to love people who mistreat us so bad.”
    08 Atmeh, Syria (January 14, 2013)
  • One million asylum seekers, many of them refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, crossed to Europe by sea in 2015. Half of these came via the Greek island of Lesbos, which is located in the Aegean Sea and has a resident population of about 86,000 people.<br />
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__________<br />
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Wanting to keep to a tight budget, I did not rent a car like many journalists covering the migrant crisis on Lesbos. I had only one day to work on the island’s north coast and gambled that I would be able to hitch a ride from the town where I stayed to the beaches where boats would likely land. It turned out to be not as easy I had hoped, but in time a van of three Norwegians gave me a lift, and many of the pictures I took this day are thanks to their vehicular hospitality.<br />
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They had arrived the night before from Norway, and I asked why they had come. The man who drove the van and is seen carrying the girl in this picture — I no longer remember his name — answered something like this: “I watch the news like everyone else. You watch it and you see that there is a crisis and then you ask yourself if you can do anything to help. The answer is yes, you can help. Next I called my friends and said we need to respond to this tragedy. Each one agreed. We booked a ticket, took time off work, and here we are.”
    09 Lesbos, Greece (October 25, 2015)
  • In this photo a refugee family walks up from the beach. The coastline in the distance, around six miles away and from which they had just come, is Turkey. This photo was taken on Sunday morning. In the week ahead, scores would lose their lives attempting this same journey.<br />
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http://www.reflectionsontheroad.com/europes-migrant-crisis-on-lesbos-greece/
    10 Lesbos, Greece (October 25, 2015)
  • A group of Iraqi refugees from Mosul, including Sara (age 4) and Omar (age 9), rests on the north coast of Lesbos after having completed the dangerous boat journey from Turkey.
    11 Lesbos, Greece (October 25, 2015)
  • Near the town of Skala Sikamineas on Lesbos, a husband, wife, and their child kneel on the beach overcome with emotion moments after arriving in a crowded inflatable boat from Turkey. On the right, another asylum seeker lights a cigarette.
    12 Lesbos, Greece (October 25, 2015)
  • A young girl frozen in mid-air, lighthearted and running past a steel sculpture. Life. Future. Hope. Happiness.<br />
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And yet in a different moment, in this same space, metal flew at speed into flesh. Here soldiers lay frozen in death, utterly still, surrounded by great mangledness and noise, and blood in sand.<br />
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Looking at this girl frozen in her happiness, I wonder if, on June 6, 1944, any of the 34,250 soldiers motoring toward Omaha Beach on a landing craft imagined, even for a moment, a young girl one day running happily on the sand before them. Did any find strength through a vision of a future beyond themselves? A vision of something good and beautiful beyond this hellish day?<br />
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Looking at this girl, I imagine sacrifices made in the past. I also imagine my neighbors who are yet to be born, and who I will never know. How far into the future does our love, our sense of responsibility, extend?<br />
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__________<br />
<br />
<br />
The sculpture, entitled Les Braves, was created by Anilore Banon for the 60th anniversary of D-Day in 2004.
    13 Omaha Beach, Normandy, France (Ma..014)
  • Steven Spielberg made Oskar Schindler a household name in the 1990s with his movie Schindler’s List. Since then, when I’m in Jerusalem, I’ll sometimes visit his grave, which is located in the Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion, just outside the Old City walls.<br />
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A German industrialist and Nazi party member, Schindler operated an enamelware factory in Krakow, Poland, and then an armaments factory in Czechoslovakia, using Jewish labor. As Germany began to lose ground in World War II and deport Jewish factory laborers to death camps, Schindler, at risk to himself and at great expense, sought to protect his workers. About 1,200 Jews were saved through Schindler’s actions, and today their descendants in Israel, Europe, and the United States number around 8,500. Years later, when Schindler fell on hard times, Jewish relief organizations helped support him.<br />
<br />
__________<br />
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On a recent visit to Krakow, a tour guide argued that Schindler wasn’t quite as good a man as the film made him out to be. She listed some of the movie’s inaccuracies, and said that for a hero with purer motives — but without a Hollywood film to make him famous — one might look at Tadeusz Pankiewicz, who operated a pharmacy in the Krakow Ghetto.
    14 Jerusalem Schindler grave (Octobe..010)
  • Construction on the Cathedral church of Christ the Saviour began in 1995, when Kosovo was still ruled by Serbia. The work was halted by the Kosovo War (1998-99) and today the church remains unfinished. The future of this Serbian Orthodox structure is a source of controversy.<br />
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To many of Kosovo’s majority Muslim and ethnic Albanian population, the building, located on the University of Pristina campus, is a symbol of oppression, its intended purpose not primarily to be a home for a worshipping community but to be a form of “physical and institutional aggression” (the words of Shemsi Krasniqi, a local lecturer in sociology). Many see its construction as a power-play by political and religious authorities in Belgrade, a good example of how not to use religion and religious structures. Some would like to see it torn down.<br />
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Serbian Orthodox leaders, however, argue that the church should be completed. Serbian Christianity has deep roots in Kosovo, and the idea of tearing down the building is offensive.<br />
<br />
And so the building sits there, a shell, a thorn, and a reminder of a general principle: that neighbors can have a painfully intertwined history, and that working through that history is not easy.
    15 Pristina, Kosovo (August 29, 2013)
  • Every Friday afternoon since 2005, residents of the Palestinian village of Bil’in, joined by Israeli and international activists, have protested the Israeli-built separation barrier that separates the village from approximately 60 percent of its agricultural land. A documentary about the protest, 5 Broken Cameras, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2013.<br />
<br />
It was at this protest in 2006 that I met Olga Ginzbourg, a 22-year-old student majoring in economics and sociology at Tel Aviv University. During the two hours in which demonstrators would attempt to pull back razor wire at the barrier and soldiers would respond with stun grenades and batons, she stood out. In part it was her light brown hair in a sea of dark hair and helmets. But what most drew me in was her sincerity, both as she interacted with the villagers and as she engaged the soldiers.<br />
<br />
In the spring of 2006, Olga studied in Spain and met people who challenged her views of the conflict. They talked about what happened in 1948 and what was happening even now in the Occupied Territories. While not convinced of their perspective, she returned to Israel mulling over the narrative they had presented her. When later in the year she saw a poster in Tel Aviv announcing a large demonstration to be held in a troubled Palestinian village called Bil’in, she decided it was time to go see things for herself. And so on October 27, 2006, for the first time in her life, she visited the occupied West Bank. The experience transformed her.<br />
<br />
When asked about her own parents, particularly what they thought of their only daughter’s new interest in the lives of Palestinians, Olga said they were terrified. “You could lose your life for nothing,” her dad insisted. But Olga countered, “How can I not do something when I am privileged, when Palestine is only a few kilometers from my house?”<br />
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__________<br />
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Now in their 11th year, the protests in Bil’in continue.
    16 Bil'in, West Bank (November 24, 2006)
  • I met Noa in 2010 through Couchsurfing, a social networking site where people offer to host people in their homes; Noa and her two flatmates in Jerusalem hosted me for several days. In 2015, we met again. She had moved to Tel Aviv by this point and hosted me for a night. It was during this second visit that she asked if I knew who Kayla Mueller was.<br />
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Kayla Mueller had been in the news. She was a young woman from Arizona who had gone to southern Turkey to do humanitarian work. During a trip across the border to Syria in August 2013, she was kidnapped by ISIS and reportedly forced into a marriage with the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. She was killed in unclear circumstances in early 2015. She was 26 years old.<br />
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Before going to Turkey and Syria, Kayla had volunteered elsewhere, including in Israel and the West Bank, and she was active on Couchsurfing. Noa asked if I knew who Kayla was because, in the months before Noa had hosted me, she had hosted Kayla. And now Kayla was gone forever. <br />
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Kayla had asked to stay with Noa because she saw on Noa’s profile that they had something in common: they both had worked with women in shelters. As Noa talked about her brief experience hosting Kayla, her description painted a picture of one who, as Noa put it, “was really going in” and “not afraid to get dirty”. I would later read about two Yazidi girls who were held captive with Kayla (the two girls escaped). One of the girls said, “When she came back [from seeing Baghdadi], sometimes she just lay down without saying a word. Sometimes she would cry under a blanket. She tried to hide that from us. She didn't want to upset us. She wanted to seem strong.”<br />
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__________<br />
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Noa’s offering of hospitality to strangers through Couchsurfing is part of what being a neighbor looks like. So was Kayla’s venturing far from home to be with the marginalized and suffering.
    17 Tel Aviv, Israel (November 1, 2015)
  • After a month in Israel and the West Bank, I planned to cross the border to Jordan this day, but when I reached the Allenby Bridge crossing I was told it had closed five minutes ago. I could try another one 60 miles to the north; it was still open.<br />
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And so I stood on the side of a highway near Jericho, hoping to hitch a ride toward the other crossing. I had been standing only two minutes when a car stopped.<br />
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The driver was a 20-year-old woman named Tehila, and in the passenger seat was her friend Richi, a young man studying at a yeshiva. They were religious Jews on their way from Jerusalem to a kibbutz in the northern Jordan Valley called Tirat Zvi to celebrate Shabbat. I thanked them for picking me up.<br />
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Surprisingly, Tehila said they should thank me, too, because I was an answer to their prayer. Minutes earlier they had asked God to present them with an opportunity to love their neighbor. So when they saw this guy standing on the edge of the desert highway, they stopped.<br />
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Instead of going to Jordan, I accepted Tehila and Richi’s invitation to join them for the Shabbat meal at the kibbutz. Since nobody on the kibbutz would be driving until the end of Shabbat, I would spend the next 36 hours here, embraced by people who would take in a wandering stranger, feed and house him, listen to him and teach him.<br />
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http://www.reflectionsontheroad.com/how-a-hitchhiker-answered-a-prayer-in-the-jordan-valley/
    18 Jordan Valley (November 5, 2010)
  • For several weeks in 2014 I traveled through southern Mexico, including to Oaxaca, where this picture was taken as people geared up for Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). <br />
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Each day in Mexico I would ask myself the perplexing question, Why did I not come here sooner? Years earlier I had made day-trips into Mexico’s Caribbean tourist destinations and into Tijuana, but this makes for a fairly superficial experience of the country.<br />
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I asked this question because Mexico is so close; it is my own country’s neighbor, geographically speaking. It features prominently in our political debates. And for all the controversy over immigration, migrants from Mexico are part of the fabric of the United States. So why did I travel to scores of other countries before making time for an immediate neighbor?<br />
<br />
One of my joys in Mexico was meeting Mexicans who for part of their lives had lived and worked in the United States. We’d encounter one another in restaurants, on beaches, on sidewalks, and even in cemeteries, and I never tired of hearing stories about their experiences in the United States and their hopes in life.<br />
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There’s much to love about Mexico, and much to learn. If you’re an American and making a list of countries you’d like to visit, consider putting Mexico near the top.<br />
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___<br />
http://www.reflectionsontheroad.com/12-photos-day-of-the-dead-in-oaxaca-mexico/
    19 Oaxaca, Mexico (October 31, 2014)
  • Lizzette Argüello Rocha and her 10-month-old daughter Indra enjoy a day at the Pacific Ocean.<br />
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Lizzette was involved in the making of a five-minute film called La Patrona, about Mexican women who provide food and water to Central American migrants passing through their community on freight trains. If interested in a glimpse of these wonderful ladies: https://vimeo.com/20020648.
    20 Zipolite, Mexico (November 9, 2014)
  • This picture on the Appalachian Trail was taken inside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Smokies host the greatest diversity of plant and animal life of any region in a temperate climate zone, and they are the tallest mountains in the Appalachian chain. I learned these things while watching the Ken Burns PBS series The National Parks: America's Best Idea.<br />
<br />
I also learned that one of the people we have to thank for the park is a Japanese migrant named George Masa. Born in Osaka in 1881, he came to the United States to study mining and eventually found himself in Asheville, where he took up photography. Drawn to the region’s beauty, he photographed in the Smokies, using his images to advocate for their preservation (much to the consternation and opposition of logging companies who were clearcutting the area). His photos were seen by people in positions of influence, like Roosevelt and Rockefeller, and they had an impact.<br />
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A friend and fellow advocate of Masa said the following about him:<br />
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"George Masa and I put in a lot of work on the park area. George especially. For while I only interviewed old residents throughout the territory, he labored long and earnestly on his maps. It is astonishing that a Jap, not even naturalized so far as I know, should have done all this exploring, and photographing, and mapping without compensation but at much expense to himself, out of sheer loyalty to the park idea. He deserves a monument."<br />
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Masa died on June 21, 1933, without money and without family, and 7,000 miles from the place of his birth. He is buried at Riverside Cemetery in Asheville.<br />
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A year after his death, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was officially established.<br />
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Masa reminds us that sometimes our neighbor comes to us from afar, and through his life’s work bestows on his new home a priceless gift. His work also leaves us to consider how the wounded man on the side of the road may sometimes be not a person but our environment.
    21 Smoky Mountains, USA (June 13, 2016)
  • There’s a sentence in Wendell Berry’s book Hannah Coulter that includes the phrase “part of a story begun long ago and going on”. He’s talking about marriage and the larger story that a couple’s marriage fits into.<br />
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But one could also use it to describe a place like Milligan College, my alma mater. Each student develops a story here, but it’s part of the college’s larger story which predates the person’s time at Milligan and which will continue after the person leaves.<br />
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My favorite view of the college is from across the street at Emmanuel. Sometimes I’ll stand on the hill a while and look back into the past, at different conversations and events around the campus. Lots of friendship, learning, and fun — and even a few tears — reside down there. <br />
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I remember how at the end of my first semester we all took off for Christmas break, except that my car was problematic and only got as far as Erwin before it started acting up pretty bad. I turned around and brought it limping back to campus. Sitting that night in an empty dorm, when I so wanted to be home, didn’t feel good.<br />
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The next morning I took the car down the road to Mr. B’s, the nearest mechanic. Some of the events that day are now fuzzy, but I remember that Basil had a lot of work already scheduled as well as a Christmas party that night to attend, but that, after the party, he returned to the shop to work on the car so that I could get on the road for home. Sometime well after midnight Basil finished his work and gave me a call, driving the car to an empty campus where a young student waited in the night with much thankfulness. That student had his car back. But even more, perhaps, he had a lesson in what it means to be a neighbor, a lesson that would last well beyond the holidays, and the car.
    22 Milligan College, TN, USA (Octobe..012)
  • From a conversation with Maria, age 25, outside the central railway station:<br />
<br />
"Where are you from?”<br />
"I don't know."<br />
"Where were you born?"<br />
"I don't know."<br />
"You don't know where you were born?"<br />
"No, it was in the backseat of a moving taxi. My mom had one contraction and then I was out. It was in Spain."<br />
….<br />
<br />
"You were stabbed 40 times?"<br />
"Yeah, I knew these two girls and we were drinking at their apartment. I went to the bathroom to throw up and when I came out they stabbed me 40 times."<br />
"Why?"<br />
"Because I'm not Finnish.”<br />
<br />
__________<br />
<br />
Our neighbors have scars.
    23 Helsinki, Finland (July 8, 2015)
  • I had no way to know it at the time, but something big was to happen a few minutes after I took this photo:  The announcement by Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro that they would move to normalize relations between their two countries.<br />
<br />
President Obama said, ”Today, America chooses to cut loose the shackles of the past, so as to reach for a better future for the Cuban people, for the American people, for our entire hemisphere and for the world.” The announcement would be met with a mix of controversy and rejoicing in both the United States and Cuba — and by a collective “What took so long?” by most of the rest of the world.<br />
<br />
What I remember most about the hours that followed were the many Cuban faces animated by the hope that now, or one day soon, they at last would be able to visit the United States, their neighbor to the north where so many of their friends and family live. Nearly two million people living in the United States have emigrated from, or trace their ancestry to, Cuba.
    24 Havana, Cuba (December 17, 2014)
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