Shalom Salaam Peace

Good news: President Obama plans to host Abbas and Netanyahu in September. The talks should be well underway when our St. John's pilgrims arrive in East Jerusalem in January 2011. At the pilgrim guest house at St. George's Cathedral, where Palestinian activist Edward Said went to church, and around the corner in the garden lounge of the famed American Colony, where diplomats and journalists huddle and you half expect to see Graham Greene walk in, and down the street at the Christmas Hotel, where mentioning the name of my spiritual director, Joyce Cottage, will get you a free drink, we'll have plenty of opportunities to to get a variety of Israeli and Palestinian perspectives on the talks and issues even as we walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ and his family and followers. And we'll pray for the peace of Jerusalem!