This post was contributed by Louise Brink Géczy, Senior Project Coordinator at The John Carroll School Bel Air, MD
The Bearing Witness Program is an all-expenses-paid, intensive professional development experience provided to Catholic School Educators. You can apply to the program here: www.adl.org/national-bearing-witness Application deadline is April 22, 2016.
It is a steamy summer day in Washington D.C. I am sitting in an oversized chair in a room where Catholic bishops meet. I am listening to a Catholic priest and a rabbi debate historical and current issues relating to anti-Semitism, Jewish-Catholic relations, and current global concerns. It is clear that some of what is being discussed between the two men and the questions they pose to our small group are making several of the participants uncomfortable or at least pause and think about these issues in an alternative way. I have seldom attended an educational program that is so stimulating.
We have been living and studying at St. Mary’s Seminary. It is a place full of quiet, passionate belief. Men make the choice to come to this place to dedicate their lives to God. How incredible is that? Then, there is me, who is just trying to wrap my head around all of the concepts, all of the information that we are learning. We also spend some of our time at Georgetown University. Talk about a place that exudes a contemplative, grounded-in-history, yet forward thinking as can be atmosphere! I am certainly not the most vocal in the group. Nor am I the one who understands everything first, but this experience while taking me outside of my comfort zone has given me a fresh perspective on issues that I thought I already grasped. It has shown me alternative ways of processing information, and been a really good experience.
Fast forward to the following summer. It is between 10:00 and 11:00 p.m. and I am in a throng of mostly silent people from all walks of life and many different countries. We are all waiting our turn to stand directly in front of The Wall in Jerusalem. Once I can actually reach out and touch the pock marked surface of this extraordinary piece of history, I am momentarily unable to move. It strikes me that every experience I have had since our plane set down at the airport in Tel Aviv several days ago has been leading to this moment. As I finally reach forward and insert my prayer, my request into one of the hundreds of crevices that dot The Wall, I am humbled beyond words.
I have spent the past week absorbing so many new experiences that I am about ready to need a quiet, alone spot to just think. We had dinner the other night in a small Jewish town with families who live in a location that often has had mortar shells explode in the surrounding hills or near their homes. We have crossed the Sea of Galilee in a boat resembling the one in which Jesus traveled. We have visited Yad Vashem, the National Holocaust Museum in Israel. That by the way is my only negative about this entire experience. We did not have enough time there to absorb and examine and explore. I could have returned several more times and not seen enough. We have walked the inclines where the Sermon on the Mount occurred, followed the Stations of the Cross, and tonight we traveled deep underground to an excavation where I just walked on the same stone pathway that Jesus used. How mind-blowingly blessed am I?
You too can have your own version of the experiences that I have described. Go to the ADL Bearing Witness website and explore their summer programs. You must complete the stateside program before you can apply for the Israeli one, but do yourself a favor. Fill out the application, get your references, write your essay question responses, and then cross your fingers. With luck, you may receive a ‘you’ve-been-accepted’ email or letter and your life can be changed in a multitude of positive ways the way mine has been.
