In Via
Lessons from Living in Jerusalem: Unveiling Beauty and Complexity
In this special edition episode, John Paul and Joan endeavor to discuss a complex and often volatile topic. This time last year, John Paul was living with his young family in Jerusalem. This first hand experience gave him some unique views of the complex paradox that is Jerusalem - a land entwined with beauty and tragedy, death and resurrection. We also discuss Christianity's potential influence on fostering peace. We hope this episode will not only provide you with a fresh perspective on Jerusalem but also the profound lessons it imparts on coexistence and empathy.
In this special edition episode, John Paul and Joan endeavor to discuss a complex and often volatile topic. This time last year, John Paul was living with his young family in Jerusalem. This first hand experience gave him some unique views of the complex paradox that is Jerusalem - a land entwined with beauty and tragedy, death and resurrection. We also discuss Christianity's potential influence on fostering peace. We hope this episode will not only provide you with a fresh perspective on Jerusalem but also the profound lessons it imparts on coexistence and empathy.
Welcome to In Via, the podcast where we're navigating the pilgrimage of life. We are all "in via on the way and we are learning a lot as we go. I'm your host, Joan Watson. Join me as we listen to stories, discover travel tips and learn more about our Catholic faith. Along the way, we'll see that if God seeks to meet us in Jerusalem, Rome or Santiago, he also wants to encounter you right there in your car, on your run or in the middle of your workday. Welcome back everybody to In Via the podcast where we are navigating the daily pilgrimage of life. We have kind of a special episode. We're veering away from talking about pilgrimage in general. I'm back with John Paul and we're going to talk a little bit about the Holy Land. Hi, John Paul.
John Paul Lichon:Hello, good morning.
Joan Watson:I think there's a lot of ways we could approach this episode, but you weren't living in South Bend this time last year. You were living somewhere else. Can you tell us a little bit about where you were and why?
John Paul Lichon:Yeah, and, by the way, I apologize for my voice. I sound like I just woke up.
Joan Watson:You know, actors go on without like, whether they have a cold or not, they do their job. So this is you pushing forward and everyone's going to be fine with it.
John Paul Lichon:Sounds great. Yeah, last year at this time, my whole family, we were living in Jerusalem, actually, and we were living on the what's called West Jerusalem, so it's the Jewish side of town. But our kids, we really wanted them to go to a Christian school. So while we lived on the west side of Jerusalem, the Jewish side of town, they went to school in what's considered East Jerusalem, to a Christian school that was primarily well, all, pretty much all Arab Muslims, about 90% Muslim and then 10% Christian, but mainly Arabs, mainly Palestinians that went to that school. So we were, we were kind of navigating both sides of the tracks, if you will, which was really interesting because we also had a Jewish nanny for our youngest and she kind of looked at us like we had five eyes when we were told her what school they were going to.
Joan Watson:Yeah, Can we speak a little bit about, because I think a lot of people that would be surprising that a Christian school would be mostly Muslim. Can you speak a little bit about that for people who might not? Be, aware of the kind of demographic breakdown.
John Paul Lichon:Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, the Christian presence in the Holy Land is shrinking. I mean it's like the people are leaving in droves. Over the last few decades, to be honest, and so what used to be a pretty small minority, maybe about 2% of the country, has gotten even smaller, and it's yeah, it's less than 1% now, and so, and when you, when you visit there, you see, I mean the communities are pretty tight knit, right, so it tends to be, you know, Jewish people living with Jewish people, Muslim people living with Muslim people, Christians living with Christians, people, right, they kind of find their homes. As we did in the States, right, we had the same thing when people immigrated here. You had the German neighborhoods, you had the Irish neighborhoods, right, and they didn't talk to each other, sometimes, that can be like that, certainly in the Holy Land as well.
John Paul Lichon:So, but most of the Christians who live in the Holy Land are Arabs, are Palestinians. We can get, we can probably have a whole other episode about, okay, what does it mean to be Arab? What does it mean to be Palestinian? What does it mean to be Jewish, Israeli? All these terms are very complicated terms. We can get into that later, but, like I said we, we, the school was 90% Muslim, 10% Christian. But yeah, we were some of the only foreigners who would send that were at the school, who are not again Arab or Palestinians.
Joan Watson:Yeah, I think it's so important for us who are detached from this.
Joan Watson:We tend to put everybody in their little boxes, right, and so we would put Christian in a box and Muslim in a separate box and Jews in a separate box and, like it or not, we would kind of separate this out. And so I think for the majority of Americans to know that there are Christians and Muslims living side by side, that might be surprising, as we're kind of just looking at the situation today and seeing that, and I think that's an important thing to bring out when we look at the situation today. Something else you said you said that you lived on the west side of Jerusalem and but it's in the East, the school is on the east side, but then we hear things like the West Bank. So can you kind of, for people who don't know, kind of put in perspective the geography as much as we can on an audio podcast what that means? What's the West Bank and then what's the west side of Jerusalem and why is that the Jewish side? And all that good stuff.
John Paul Lichon:Sure, sure. So when they created the state of Israel, they also gave a certain territory, land, to the Palestinians and what is called colloquially called colloquially, that's a mouthful called the West Bank, and it's named that because it's on the Western Bank of the Jordan River.
John Paul Lichon:Okay, and again I'm simplifying the history so incredibly much, because even when they created the state, the West Bank didn't exist. So but anyways, but what is there today now is that kind of carved into the state of Israel is what's called the West Bank. It's under the control and the leadership of the Palestinian authority, okay, that's kind of the ruling governmental body and it's kind of it's almost like the shape of a kidney bean if you look at it on a map, but it slices right through the heart of Jerusalem actually. So, but it's very complicated, because when you look at a map, a physical map, you'll see lines there, but then when you're actually in the country, sometimes you don't know you're crossing from one to the other, because Jerusalem as a city is all one city. But there's a kind of it right now.
John Paul Lichon:In the past it was an actual division, so at one point the West Bank was actually part of Jordan, and so there's one main road coming, kind of coming out from the northern gate of Jerusalem, called Damascus Gate, and that road used to be the dividing line between Israel on the west and Jordan on the east. Now it's Western Jerusalem, Eastern Jerusalem, and then the wall that we you probably heard of, the wall. There's a wall that the Israeli government has built between Israel and the West Bank and that wall does not line up with the actual map of where things should be. So it's really complicated.
Joan Watson:Very complicated, very complicated, yeah, I think the complexity of the Holy Land. That's almost an understatement to say that things are complex and complicated. Which brings me to the question why would you wanna move your young very, I mean John Paul has young kids. Why would you want to move your family into this place? That is, I mean, as we see now, it would be kind of dangerous to be living there at this moment. Maybe we at least think it would be when we watch the news. I'm sure a lot of people were like John Paul, what are you thinking? So what were you thinking?
John Paul Lichon:So we did it for three reasons. Number one, obviously, our work. So I was gonna be in the Holy Land anyways for our work here at Verso of greeting pilgrims and leading groups and whatnot in the Holy Land. So that was. That's probably the most understandable reason that people would just come. Oh yeah, that makes sense. The second reason was that my wife and I we've always wanted to take our kids abroad and live excuse me, live an extended period of time abroad with our children, because my wife and I both had international experiences in college and post college and just always wanted to share that type of experience with our kids as well. We never knew when or why or how that would happen. We just knew that we wanted to do it at some point. And then, honestly, it was like coming out of COVID we needed something different.
John Paul Lichon:We needed something to look forward to a little bit and so all of those things just kind of coalesced and we looked at each other and we said, well, why not? Why not now? Our kids are younger, they're not in high school yet, they didn't have all of these kind of commitments that would tie them down, and so they were kind of the right ages. My wife wasn't pregnant at the time, so it wasn't like hey, we got to worry about a new baby coming into the world or anything. So they just hit this perfect spot and we said, okay, well, we better do it now, before it's too late.
Joan Watson:Yeah, I love it. I love it. What was perhaps the most surprising thing? I mean, I think we can all see that living there would be amazing, and the encountering with these holy sites that you'd visited many times before. But now you were living there and you could just go to the Holy Sepulcher whenever you wanted. And what was perhaps the most surprising aspect that you weren't expecting about spending that time there?
John Paul Lichon:Yeah, I could think of a few things, but I think I think the most surprising part maybe this sounds like a little bit of a cop out, but just how complex that place is.
John Paul Lichon:So I mean, having visited there, you hear the stories, you know the history, you know the complexity of like, okay, the three major monotheistic religions lay claim to Jerusalem, right, and then you live, again, you visit there, you can see it, you can see the conflict, you can kind of feel it, almost you can, but at the same time it's a beautiful place and you meet all these beautiful people with all this rich history and culture and faith and all this stuff. And then when you live there, it only to me, it only heightened those feelings of like, wow, like you could spend and people do, right, you can spend an eternity, you know, living here and trying to figure things out and understand all the different kind of cultures and histories and stories and people that have lived there and laid claim to this spot. And you know, again, you could. You can spend as much time as you want trying to figure things out. Let's call it.
John Paul Lichon:And you still won't comprehend everything, right. So just so many layers, whether it's just you know, whatever kind of area that you dive into, whether it's history or faith, or sociology, or anthropology, or whatever, whatever discipline you want to dive into in the Holy Land you could take a deep dive and and just yeah, there's so much to learn and to experience and to know such a richness and a beauty, but complicated and difficult to understand at times. So just a very, very complex place.
Joan Watson:Yeah, it's just fascinating to think about this tiny little plot of land. I mean it's tiny, I mean thinking about the you know, even the United States, right, it's little and it's for so often it was like the backwoods, like the backwater, like why would God give this plot of land to the people? And now it's become the most complex and the most desired piece of land in the entire world and it's just it's, it's, it's, yeah, I don't even have anything to say about that. It's just fascinating and complex and it's where the word became flesh and it's where Christ walked and it's anointed and it's holy and it's blessed and it's just it's. But it's divided and it's just so.
Joan Watson:Yeah, how, how was living there? You know, as we look at the situation right now in the war, and how you know, as Americans, I think we're so limited because, first of all, we don't have any concept of history and ancient history and land and we move around at will. Right, we don't have any, most of us don't have ties to our home the way you know that culture does. So we live in a different culture, a different time, a different place. We're so limited, I think, in understanding what's happening over there. How did living there. What's your view now, looking at that place, because you can see it with different eyes than the average American, and what are your thoughts, I guess, other than it's really complicated?
John Paul Lichon:Yeah, yeah, well, I will. I will lead by saying I'm certainly not an expert, I'm not an academic, I'm not a reporter, I don't stay up with the news, and I mean I do, I follow the news right now, but I'm not an expert in this situation at all. So I do want to say that from the beginning, because, you know, I also don't want to speak from a place of not knowing what I'm speaking. Sure, with that being said, I think I do know more than probably the average American, as you asked, having lived there and having worked there and met people who live there and work there and all this, and so, again, I think you know.
John Paul Lichon:I come back to how complex the situation is and when you, when you watch the news, when you, you hear about I mean even when you hear about these protests that are going on currently, either, on both sides, right, you know, there are people who are pro- Israel, there are people who are pro- Palestinians, there are people who are sit on both sides and it's it. It is. It's difficult for me to watch, because I can understand both sides of the coin.
Joan Watson:Yeah.
John Paul Lichon:Right, and you know on the one hand, this, the simplistic argument, is OK. Right now, Israel is just defending itself from terrorists.
Joan Watson:Yeah.
John Paul Lichon:Which is 100 percent true, right, who? Who would ever want to experience what those poor people in the kibbutz' experience and those and those young people at the rave experience like that? Nobody should ever. You know, it's unfathomable.
John Paul Lichon:Yeah, the terrorists did in that situation? Right. On the other side of the coin, you see what's happening right now in Gaza and you go OK, who, who should be starved from food and water, basic supplies of daily living, how is that at all humane in any way, shape or form? Yeah, right, and when you, when you reduce this conflict to such simple realities, it's very easy to be on one side or the other. Yeah, and, but it's not that simple, right. I think one of the best ways that, well, you know a simple idea that people point to, which is true, which is, you know, Hamas does not equal Palestinian, right, right, and that's one, one part of the equation that sometimes gets lost a little bit, yeah, and so, anyways, that's all to say.
John Paul Lichon:It's such a complex issue. It's hard to be kind of on one side or the other, and it's kind of hard to be on both sides too, yeah, so it's so difficult when you know something happens and we start paying attention for the first time and we have no context, right, and so what happened is is an atrocity, right, like that's.
Joan Watson:But it also didn't come out of nowhere, and I think it's hard to even find words to say well, this isn't an isolated event on both sides, right, it's not the first time that Hamas has done something awful. It's also not the first time the Palestinians have been, have been persecuted in a sense, and you, like people jump all over you for even saying those words, right, and so it's really you'd be so careful in your, in your language. But I mean, you mentioned the wall earlier. I didn't know the wall existed before I went to Israel. Nobody mentioned the wall, much less the fact that it's not following the UN border, right, it's like what's the wall? What do you mean? That these people have checkpoints, right, and so I think it's hard, when something happens in America, begins the average America begins to pay attention and be like well, this didn't come out of nowhere, this isn't an isolated event, so let's talk about the greater history, and it's a complex history, and so most of us don't have the attention span to even begin to think about it, and so it can get really frustrating having a conversation about it. I also think it was interesting.
Joan Watson:One of my coworkers, Jenna, here at Verso, we went to a talk a few months ago where, um, I think it's a really interesting story, so where, um, the man spoke about the Vatican decree, saying that, you know, when we speak about the state of Israel, it's not synonymous with Judaism either, right? So just like Hamas isn't synonymous with Palestine, we can't say that State of Israel is not synonymous with Judaism. And so if we criticize the state of Israel for something that doesn't equal anti-Semitism, which is a sin and atrocity and has led to you know? So I think there's just like we've been saying, complex is probably going to be in the title of the podcast episode because it's just, it's a hard discussion to have when people have very passionate thoughts about things they don't really know everything about.
John Paul Lichon:Sure, yeah, yeah. Well, I think it. I think it just contributes so much to our current culture, which is, you know, short expense, short attention spans. You know our media outlets, our social media influences, just tries to reduce everything to a 30 second clip. Yeah, right, and what's going to get the most eyeballs, what's going to get the most attention? And you know complex, nuanced arguments about things.
Joan Watson:We're not very good at it.
John Paul Lichon:Yeah, we're just not good at it, people don't, you know it's. Yeah, I think. So what I'm trying to get at I think partly too is I think back to our faith, and what does our faith teach us? And I think one of the things is you know, in our Christian faith, in the Catholic worldview, we have the ability to hold two things which seemingly seem like logically opposite or contradictory. We can hold those two things together and understand that they're true. So, for instance, you know, we believe in the Incarnation, we believe that, you know, God became man and in some way, shape or form, he's both fully human and fully divine, right? So if you reduce that to a math problem, it'd be one plus one equals one, which doesn't make sense, right, logically. But our faith teaches us that both of those things can be held together and they can both be true at the same time.
John Paul Lichon:Yeah, and again, it's not a, it's not a great analogy, but it's my best way to understand that. You know, you can look at this, this, the current situation. You can look at the people and the land of the Holy Land, and you can understand that it is so beautiful. I think that's one of the things that I just look back at my time there and I think how beautiful of a place this was. Just such beauty and richness and inspiring. And you know again, just you know, beauty is the word that comes to mind because it was just so beautiful.
John Paul Lichon:At the same time, it's the place that where such violence and hatred and, yeah, just unthinkable tragedies have happened and are continuing to happen. And again, how do you hold these two things together? Right, how can a place be so beautiful but yet so tragic at the same time? And I just, I just trust that God is working through all of this, that somewhere the Holy Spirit is within this, and and that someday there could truly be peace in Jerusalem.
Joan Watson:It's the tension, that tension, and we don't like to live in tension, we don't like to live with paradox, and and that's and I think, only Christianity is OK with paradox and only Christianity is OK living in that tension, whether it's the problem of evil or the Incarnation or the, you know, we and I think that's the difficulty for peace in Jerusalem is it must involve Christians, because only we have this idea of how to love an enemy. Right this, this tension of loving the enemy, this tension of I mean, even when you spoke about the Incarnation, you think of the Trinity right, three persons in one God. How can three be one? You know that's not in Islam. There's no idea of the three being one in Islam. For them it's all unity and one one one. So if we're going to talk about a divided city living in peace, only Christianity can really wrap their minds around how this division can also result in peace. And I think the danger right now in the Holy Land is that Christianity is getting pushed out. Christians are getting pushed out and I think I mean the popes have said it for for decades Christianity is the key to peace in the Holy Land, because only we know how to love an enemy, so it'll be it.
Joan Watson:Yeah, it's, we have to pray, and I guess that's as we wrap up this episode. I guess I would ask you what would you say to the average American? You know, we can't, we can't go over there and solve the problem, and the problem, like you said, it's it's even living there. It was more complex than you thought and we're not experts. And what would you say to someone who's listening to this and thinking, well, what can I do and what, how can I help? Or what would be your advice?
John Paul Lichon:Yeah, I think my advice would be just to you know, seek out trusted sources of information, you know, don't jump to conclusions, right? So I point to you know all the drama that's happening currently on college campuses, which again have have. You know, people are so quick to judge everything that's happening, you know. So, was it Harvard or Yale? Which school was it? I forget, one of the Ivy Leagues. Okay, yeah, so they.
John Paul Lichon:You know, students wrote this pro-Palestinian paper and it was all about how stayed this, you know, the Israelis should be blamed for what Hamas did to them because of the history of the conflict there, which, again, was I don't think. Personally, I think that was the right, I get where they were going, but it was a flawed argument. Let's call it right. But also, then, the backlash from that was, you know, people, like people who signed the letter, people you know their names and images, and like you know, their names and images were posted on, like throughout the city of, like a white list of like you know, don't hire this student because they signed this letter. And you know people had job offices rescinded and all this stuff and all this drama and the backlash, and you know you can argue whether that's deserved or not deserved.
John Paul Lichon:But at the same time, like to again to take a college student who maybe knows what's going on but probably doesn't really know what's going on and it's probably just their friend, like, hey, sign this petition.
John Paul Lichon:And you're just like, okay, sure, whatever, I'm in college and I'm just gonna support my friend and really know what you're signing.
John Paul Lichon:To then have people you know to have you know my name, you know if I sign that letter and then have it you know on some list on the internet, somewhere of, like you know you know to be, to be again anyways, it's just it saddens me to see all of this in the world and yet people on both sides don't truly understand. You're just jumping in conclusions, you're just jumping on the bandwagon, you're blaming people and and shouting at one another and then truly not listening to one another, not understanding the whole picture. So this is a long way. I'll get off my soapbox a long way to, like you know, kind of take everything with a grain of salt a little bit and, like you know it's an emotional situation and you know it's a little bit like kind of take a step back, try to learn what's going on. You know, learn the other side, of both sides. You can, in a lot of ways, be on both sides of this conflict, yet still also criticize what's going on on both sides too, right?
Joan Watson:Yeah, definitely, definitely, and I would encourage people to kind of seek out, like the Christians that are living over there. You know, whether it's on social media there. There's a lot out there. There's a Catholic parish in Gaza, right, and you can see what's happening there. You can I mean, there's a video online of them praying the rosary when the airstrikes happened and like make sure that you know where your Christian brothers and sisters are and what they're they're going through. You know there's a maternity hospital in Bethlehem that's keeping people updated about what's happening. They're the only maternity hospital available to Palestinians and to Muslims at this time in Bethlehem, and so just to kind of seek out remember like seek out where are the Christians and what are they suffering through, and to pray for them during this time. Anything else you'd like to add or say as we kind of wrap up this very complex episode?
John Paul Lichon:Yeah, I would agree with that. I think prayer, prayer. You know all things can be done with God's help right, and so I think prayer is certainly something that I've I've been doing a lot of, to pray for peace and just praying for all the people there that are suffering, again on all sides of the issue. You know, I have Israeli friends, I have Palestinian friends and they're all suffering. Nobody's winning from this conflict right. So yeah, pray for peace.
Joan Watson:Yeah, one of my favorite churches in the Holy Land is Dominus Flevit, where Christ wept over Jerusalem, and I just love being in that church because the the skyline of Jerusalem. If you're kneeling at the altar, the skyline is like right on the altar of the church and it just always reminds me that that's the only thing that's going to change. Anything right is prayer, is taking it to the Lord, and so we pray for, for everyone over there. You know, we pray for the conversion of Hamas, right? I mean, that's it's as Christians. We pray for everyone, even our enemies, and so to pray for everyone who's suffering and, you know, undergoing something that is very foreign to us, I think, sitting here in, you know, in America. So well, thank you, John Paul.
John Paul Lichon:Thank you for having me.
Joan Watson:Thanks for the conversation and thank you listeners. If you know someone who needs to hear this episode or would would benefit from this episode, please share it with your friends and family. Continue to pray for those in the Holy Land and those trying to help those in the Holy Land, and tune in for our next episode. God bless.