Glory Be

there is something so beautiful in it. in the way it sounds when it comes out across every corner of the city.

the sincerity in it. the humble ritual, yet avid insistence.

its funny that what I remember most about my time in Bethlehem was a 5 minute period.

i was in the hotel room. J. was gone. just me and Bethlehem. I was overlooking this valley, the valley that the book of Revelations claims is where the last battle will take place before the end of the world.

i heard it. softly at first and then as i recognized it, it became louder. more magnetic.

i went out onto the balcony and sat. still in my towel, i looked across the valley.

the beautiful sound kept going. a wind picked up, carrying the sound even closer to my corner of Bethlehem.

i couldn't help but start praying in tongues. it was too difficult to not be overcome by the spirit the wind and the sound carried.

i looked toward the moon and star, towering from every other street corner. loud speakers jutting out from their roof tops.

its as if the whole world stopped in that moment, to glorify God. to praise Allah. to give Him due worship.

the sound stopped. but its beauty hung in the air. lingering, squeezing, melting through the nothingness of my unbelief. the nothingness of my religiosity.

i looked out toward the valley. God was there. lingering, squeezing, melting through. He looked out toward the moon and star. the loud speakers that proclaim His name five times a day. He smiled. The wind carried Him away. Away toward His resting place. Perhaps toward the Church of Nativity. Toward the 10 mosques located throughout Bethlehem. Toward the gray wall separating nations.

i thought about devotion, about relentless faith. about worship. about reverence...a term so foreign in the West.

about the many forms God takes. the many ways He is praised. about the ways myself and perhaps a Muslim woman in the outskirts of Palestine have something in common...

our desperate need for God.

but let's not be fooled.

she has something, i don't. she has something i long for. she has something i am too self-focussed to grasp.







Submission.