Thinking Anew

Let us pray for peacemakers, resilient as olive trees deeply rooted in this contested land of Palestine

Thinking Anew: The olive tree and its rugged nature is a symbol of the Palestinian struggle for national identity

Olive trees will never be planted in times of war. Photograph: Surasak Suwanmake

Wendy May Jacobs
Sat Apr 6 2024 - 10:00

In Tagore’s luminous words: “Trees are earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven”. When I was ordained six years ago, my friend Matthew give me the beautiful gift of a little olive tree. I kept it in a pot because I knew we would be moving from place to place over the next few years. Today, we planted the small tree into the earth of the scruffy patch of grass in front of our vicarage. It is a statement of faith as we root ourselves into this community.

Olive trees are drought resistant and flourish in poor soil. They grow slowly and can live for thousands of years. It is suggested that some of the olive trees growing in the Garden of Gethsemane today may possibly have bourne witness to the agonising prayers of Jesus in that garden on the night before he was crucified, when he sweated drops of blood.

The olive tree, its fruit, its oil, is precious to Palestine, and its rugged nature a symbol of the Palestinian struggle for national identity. It is also a symbol of peace. Perhaps this is due to its longevity, and the need to wait years before an olive tree will be properly fruitful. Olive trees will never be planted in times of war. Their deep-rootedness in the soil is long-term, a commitment of faith and hope and love and family. Right now I am looking at a photograph of an elderly Palestinian woman with her head flung back in lament, her arms around the trunk of a hacked, uprooted olive tree. A soldier in an army bulldozer watches her from across the field.

All over the world during the last few months (including in Ireland) there have been Gaza ceasefire pilgrimages, prayer walks in solidarity with Palestinian Christians and all people – Muslims, Jews, people of all faiths and none – who continue to suffer grievously in the present conflict. Here in Portsmouth a group of us walked and prayed together the 32km-plus around the city, the distance from Gaza City to the Rafah crossing where so many Gazans have been corralled. Out of this initiative of solidarity with the horrors being unleashed on Gaza at this time a Canadian pilgrim called Isabella Mori wrote a series of haikus to accompany the pilgrimage in Ontario. I share a few here with permission.

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Fire in the sky

The olive grove

A grave

A bomb explodes

The pilot kills

Her own heart

Young mother

Her death ignores my head

And settles in my bones

Not starving

But being starved

The horror of grammar

And a haiku “found” at the beginning of a poem by Palestinian poet and academic Refat Alareer, killed in Gaza in an air strike back in December, along with his brother and brother’s son, his sister and her three children:

If I must die

You must live

To tell my story

Sometimes all that we can do is to bear witness.

On this holy piece of land so precious to the three Abrahamic faiths, container of such fathomless inherited traumas on both sides, there remain many kind, defiant, resilient individuals and communities who persist in their commitment to non-violence, who insist on honouring the humanity of the other. The Women in Black, Combatants for Peace, Breaking the Silence, Roots (Shorashim/Judur), B’Tselem, We Are Not Numbers, Standing Together, The Parents Circle; many, many others. Let us pray for and stand with these peacemakers, rugged and resilient as olive trees deeply rooted in this contested land. Two truths in one heart, two peoples in one land. Another heroic family of peacemakers – the Tent of Nations in the West Bank – proclaim valiantly at the entrance to their farm “We refuse to be enemies”.

One last haiku from that Canadian pilgrim bearing witness:

Hopeless night…

In the morning an olive tree

Sprouts from the ashes

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