Ponderance In The Pondering

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

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My eyes flutter open this morning at 5:19 a.m., to birds singing.

Normally the sound of birds leads me to hop out of bed and open my curtains, letting the sun's song fill my room with its melody.  But this morning I continue lying in bed, because part of my leg is broken.  Despite the cheerful chirping, I lay on my side, motionless.  The beauty of the birdsong is drowned out by a momentary sadness, what is starting to be that daily moment when I wake up and realize that my day will be much like the last.  There will be no dancing around my living room, no running to the kitchen for a handful of cashews, no mid-afternoon stroll around the block.  Until this break heals, I am stuck here.  Is this what it's like to be stuck somewhere?

Then my mind wanders to Gaza.

I am not a political scientist or an expert in Middle Eastern relations.  I am not a religious scholar, or a historian, or an economist, or an anthropologist, or a geographer, or anything else that might make me believe I have any business commenting on this.  What I am is a female who has felt the sting of sexism, a black person who has felt the sting of racism, an activist who has felt the sting of criticism, a survivor who has felt the sting of helplessness.

I carry the residue of violence in my cells.

And when I feel a burn, fear of opposition isn't something that keeps me silent.

I have NO intention of cracking open the historical tome that has led to the situation in Gaza at this point.  I don't know everything, but I think we all know that to call it infinitely complex would be a gross understatement.  Although I have read much and familiarized myself to a degree with its political evolution, I have no inclination to discuss it.  The reason, quite simply, is because I don't care.  That may sound callous and people will disagree rabidly with my next statement, but I truly believe that that is the most considerate, compassionate position to hold now.  For if there is to be ANY hope of forward motion, a match must be lit to the scorecard of what has come before.  Is it extremely difficult to think of doing that if that scorecard is the identity of your people.  I understand that all too well.  Dwelling on unchangeable and ancient history, however, will do one thing and one thing only -- rob the present and the future.  Those who disagree with things I say in this piece and seek to debate will be debating alone.  As long as people remain interested in revisiting the tome, the focus will be on pages written instead of pages yet to write.  The losses and gains of yesterday must be set aside, or we will live in an eternal yesterday. 

Hamas, they of the vitriolic and genocidal Charter, have declared their intent to eliminate the Jewish people.  WHAT???  They launch inept rockets over the 'border' and, without the money, backing or artillery to be the military juggernaut that Israel is, resort to things like suicide bombs to inflict certain damage.  This reminds me disturbingly of the PLO, which terrified me during my youth.  Israel claims its right to defend itself, which it of course has, despite the fact that its Iron Dome missile defense system intercepts most of Hamas' rockets.  So one must ask oneself -- with two such mismatched forces (Israel has one of the most powerful militaries in the world and is supported politically and funded to the hilt by the U.S.), is the barrage of bombs that has fallen on Gaza in recent weeks warranted?  Is the very existence of Israel actually in imminent danger?  It isn't and Israel knows it isn't, which is what makes this offensive so difficult to watch.  The death toll on the Israeli side is a drop in the bucket compared to the other side.  Even with the existence of the tunnels (which along with weapons are also used to bring in necessities like food, since Gaza's goods are limited and trade forbidden), Hamas doesn't actually have the capability to do what it spews about in its charter.  Its threat is minimal compared to Israel's firepower, making it very hard to rationalize 1,600 dead Palestinians.  And with such advanced and precise bombing technology and a well-trained army, how does the IDF keep "accidentally" hitting targets full of civilians and refugees?  

It may be deemed 'considerate' to send texts or drop leaflets saying that you're about to bomb someone's house.  You know what is more considerate? Not bombing their house. It could be argued that the warnings cause even more terror, because they are sent with no actual time for people to get to safety. The Israeli government doesn't want to give Hamas time to escape, so the "warnings" are actually never given with sufficient time for people to flee.  You end up having 5 minutes notice that you and your children are likely to die in 5 minutes. I cannot imagine.  It is a sick mess, because of course, Hamas DOES use its own people as human shields and dissuades them from evacuating.  What kind of a government does that to its own???  But Hamas is smart. They know that dead Palestinians helps gain them the sympathy of the world.  You'd think that Netanyahu would be smart enough to see this and NOT keep handing them dead Palestinians on a platter, but apparently not. The whole thing makes my head spin.

6:05 a.m. If birds are still singing, the spinning drowns out them out. I am reminded of MLK's words:

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension. It is the presence of justice."

The ideology of the Palestinian leadership is deplorable.  But this quote, this quote... It is EVERYTHING.  Israel has mistaken a lack of outright tension for justice for too long.  You cannot put people in what is essentially an open air prison and think that when they are not shooting rockets at you, all is well.  Where there is no freedom there is no justice and where there is no justice, there is no peace.  As I stated recently in a Facebook thread:

When people have to carry I.D. identifying themselves as either Israeli or Palestinian at checkpoints (as if one cannot be both simultaneously), when only one of those groups' liberties are curtailed, when an Israeli living in Gaza is not permitted to enter Jerusalem, when there are separate roadways for Israelis and Palestinians, when certain areas are designated as Jewish only, when the ONLY marriage that is legal and recognized is Orthodox Jewish marriage, when Palestinians are prohibited from co-habitating with their Jewish spouses outside of Gaza -- that is textbook apartheid, pure and simple. People can argue it all they want but that makes it no less a fact. I have zero interest in debating it. That is absolutely a violation of human rights, and an issue independent of Hamas' vitriolic manifesto which is its own revolting form of sickness.

This is truth, and unless these people are granted their freedom, it will continue to be.  I am reminded of post 9/11, when people became incredibly defensive at the asking of the smartest question one could possibly ask:  WHY?  Why does Al Queda hate the U.S. this much?  Instead of treating that question like the obvious first step to ensuring that such a horror never occurred again, Americans instead viewed it as a lack of patriotism and their allies as a lapse in fraternity, a veiled condoning of the attack.  It wasn't.  It was probative.  It was analysis.  There is NO rationalization -- there could never be -- for Hamas' call for genocide.  That does NOT mean, however, than any group on the receiving end of such hatred shouldn't take a moment in the mirror and ask "What are we doing to these people to make them hate us?"  The answer may be nothing, but how do you NOT ask that question, if peace is truly your goal?  The only reason I can thing of to avoid it is that the answer is already known.  How can Israel, a nation whose people were ghettoized and segregated in the past, NOT know that the Palestinians are essentially prisoners?

It is time to stop the semantics.  Stop saying that Gaza isn't "occupied" just because there aren't troops within it, when all the while it is blockaded and its residents can't leave.  Stop pretending that there is no reason for hostility in Palestine, when its people have been denied a free homeland for 47 years.  And Hamas, stop acting as if it's perfectly justifiable to want to murder an entire nation of human beings when that is the most deplorable sentiment imaginable.  Your manifesto is horrifying and beyond barbarism.  Perhaps your people might receive their freedom if you didn't take every opportunity to inform the Jews that you're coming to kill them. 

The only hope is the renouncing of the mindsets, on both sides, that have led to the here and now. I will say it again -- if this becomes an assessment of who is owed what and a rehashing of the past, any prayer for peace is doomed.

6:21 a.m. A different song from another bird.  No less beautiful or worthy of its wings.  Just different.

I am saddened by the venom this has unearthed.  Anti-Semitism, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim ugliness abounds. Those who already hate will always look for an excuse to do it more openly.  People have become ultra-defensive and scared to speak.  Anti-Israeli government sentiment is misconstrued for anti-Jewish.  Anti-bombing of children is misinterpreted as pro-Hamas.  Insanity.  Thoughtfulness is replaced with rhetoric.  Friends thousands of miles away from Gaza don't broach the subject in conversation when it is the most obvious subject to broach.  People try to inhibit or place conditions on the speech of others.  It is wholly bizarre. 

Between Israel and Palestine, there is a litany of pain and plenty of guilt to go around.  One nation carries the constant ghost of its near extermination only seven decades ago.  The other cries the tears of a displaced people.  A formerly oppressed group is now oppressing another, driven by the fear of annihilation and the echoing cry of "Never again."  There is goodwill on both sides; there is propaganda on both sides.  But most shamefully, there is murder on both sides.  Where there is murder, moral high ground evaporates.  If each side truly loves its people, that Love should easily outweigh the hatred of the other. At the end of the day, what everyone wants is a safe land to call his or her own, to call home.

Any nation whose actions threaten people's ability to have that – whose actions are responsible for little children going to sleep afraid that they won't wake up because the bomb or the rocket will kill them – is doing wrong. That goes for ANY nation, ANYWHERE. That goes for both sides of every war. That is an affront to ALL of your gods. There is nothing righteous about it. The fact is that playing the "whose rage is more righteous" game is akin to trying to start to cars in quicksand.  The power of the engine, and the tires' determination to spin, mean nothing when the cars are sinking.  Religious etymology can not be allowed to trump compassion and common sense.

I don't care whose sons of Abraham you are, or who Yahweh or Allah supposedly bequeathed the land to. 

The reason I don't care about that is because there is NO way to come to an end to this nightmare if you DO care about that.  Religious fundamentalists will never, EVER, walk away from a battle they believe God has called on them to fight.  They will never cede what they believe their deity has bestowed upon them.  To continue to revert to the argument of Godly pre-ordination is to doom this conflict to interminability.

I wish I could ask them all to just imagine, for a moment, that there is no God.

I am not saying that that is the case.  What I AM asking is what would it mean -- hypothetically -- to uncover that many thousands of lives have been lost, and borders drawn and redrawn, in order to fulfill a prophecy that is no more than mythology?

I once asked myself this question.

In 2003, I suffered what could be called a crisis of faith.  For many years prior I had felt completely severed from the religion of my upbringing, Roman Catholicism, and felt like an impostor by continuing to identify myself as Catholic.  I rejected the church's view on divorce.  I rejected its view on contraception.  I rejected its view on premarital sex.  I rejection its view on interfaith marriage.  I rejected its view on abortion.  I rejected its view on homosexuality.  I rejected its view on the role of women in the church.  I rejected so many of its views that I realized that it had no place in my life anymore.  I also felt that it was wrong of me to continue to wear its badge while not supporting its tenets.  The aspects of it that I identified with were common to all religions.  I left the church and began a three-year internal pilgrimage in search of a different spiritual path.  I was eventually led home in 2006.  It was where my heart had always lived; I just needed to awaken in my own time.  My reliance on God became a reliance on Good, and the words became synonimous to me.  I am still trying to figure out how to best realize my spirit potential in a world that endeavours so hard to leave that realm shaken. It is a daily quest. I believe that we are all here trying to stumble our way through the darkness, picking up bruises along the way while simultaneously walking alongside the light. One by one we cross over, learning how to love. Learning how to lead. Learning how to learn.

I view God now not as an omnipotent spirit perched atop a throne of judgment, but as the good inside each of us that joins to form the greater force for good in the Universe. There is joint responsibility.  There is no attending church or synagogue or mosque, praising God, and then living separate from love until next week.  If God = Good, then the existence of a Higher Power is not a given.  I speak only for myself when I say that, to me, God is a decision.  Whether that energy manifests or not is our conscious collective choice.  We can invoke the notion of God through acts of love, or reject it through acts of active hate or passive indifference.  To anyone who thinks that indifference is less damaging:

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. - MLK 

If I could sit in a room with people on opposite sites of warring factions – or just those at loggerheads due to ideology – they would think me mad. I would speak to them first of burning the scorecard. Then, I would remind them of the power of hands. Not hands tossing grenades, not hands pulling triggers, not hands forming fists or throwing punches or striking skin. Gentle, tender, giving hands. Hands of healers, hands of mothers, hands of lovers. I would remind them that every people in every nation know those hands, and that their power is universal. I would have combattants feel the hands of the other. I would sit silently while they realized how hard it is to carry hatred for someone whose fingers are interwoven with yours, how hard it is to hurt someone whose eyes you are looking deeply into, how hard it is to wish ill will on the person whose face you are holding. I would have them be in stillness together.  Seeing each other.  I would ask adversaries to hug, to kiss. I would have them connect in ways that require not a shared language but a shared willingness, and that awaken affection instead of aggression. I would introduce them to tantric touch and tandem breath. I would have enemies feel each other's heartbeats, and ask them to consider what it would mean to stop the beating of another human heart.

I would show them all the ways in which they were not separate, and all the ways in which they could be Good and therefore God to each other. 

Perhaps that is a pipe dream. Perhaps they would refuse. Maybe they would sit in opposite corners solemnly stewing in their stasis.  I would like to think that at least one person on each opposing side would take the step, and that healing could begin. I may be woefully simple-minded and naive.  I don't know. I don't know much. But I know this.  The reason we are monsters to each other is because we are mysteries to each other.  One cannot demystify what one does not seek to understand.  Our capacity to feel is the common ground; emotion is our currency.  Parents weep for their children everywhere. Siblings weep for each other everywhere. The terrain of the heart has no flags hoisted in it. Fear does not have a nationality. Nor do tears of grief or joy. Nor does kindness.  These things are louder than any war. These are human things.

7:16 a.m.  And still, a bird sings.

Let it sing.  Let freedom ring.  Set it free.  Let it be.

Namaste,
TT