I am blessed

I don't get mad at them; they are me. I'm three kilometers from a checkpoint where one and the other, one armed and one with arms, navigate a dance of coexistence, a tension of fear and mutual resentment as common as the dust of which we all sprung from. 

I don't get mad at them; they are me. I'm three kilometers from a checkpoint where sons and daughters have sought heaven through dismemberment, taking life upon life in a moment, unleashing chaos and fear. 

I am slow to anger, so I don't get mad easily. Even when the headlines shade the truth on the sunniest day, misinform in a continual defense of power and subjugation. Even when families are separated by walls and hatred hurls children into hopeless futures.

I am slow to anger, so I don't get mad easily. Living under constant threat from within and without, nuclear arms missiles aimed continually at my heart, murderous minds indoctrinated and equipped for my destruction, declarations of annihilation, and a history to prove it. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile.

I am slow to speak, quick to listen. Brother James taught me, he learned from his brother, the true Iman-Rabbi-Teacher to us all. He blessed me with a blessing in my present-tense being and my in my doing:

I am poor; I am blessed.
 I am mourning; I am blessed.
  I am meek; I am blessed.
   I am hungry; I am blessed.
    I am thirsty; I am blessed.
     I am merciful; I am blessed. 
      I am pure in heart; I am blessed.
       I am forgiving; I am blessed.
        I am peacemaking; I am blessed.
         I am persecuted; I am blessed.
          I am reviled; I am blessed.
            I am slandered; I am blessed.

I am interiting, I am comforted, I am satisfied, I am receving mercy, I am seeing God, I am called a child of God, I am receiving the Kingdom, I am receiving great reward.

For though I am dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on me a light has dawned. 

Journal of decline

Father, I come to you with a Father's declining.

Fragility... his emaciated, atrophied body
Frailty... how long can he live independently?
Futility... is this decline inevitable?  

I have waded into the depths of fear of loss before;

Successively through prediabetes, diabetes, cancer, now loss of mobility, maybe dementia?

Will he rally? 

Will this be the end/if (when) he falls without his phone, how long will he lay unseen on the ground?  

Fears are so beguiling, so convincing, and following the thread to the end of panic, helplessness and guilt and blame for being a million miles away 

I am fragile, too, even as he wavers and shakes 

My faith feels so frail and brittle, are you calling me home? What am I even doing here.

Is this futile to hope for redemption? 

Is this journal healthy detachment, letting go of a man who has done what he's wanted all his life and is now reaping the consequences for decades of additions; tobacco and alcohol and sugar 

Never a non-canned vegetable, never a workout 

I still feel sad, his prognosis is grim, 

This man who did what he wanted all his life, his arms are being stretched out and strength diffusing, he's going to be taken to a VA where he doesn't want to go...

7/15; 7/25;

Roads, Boundaries, and Walls

I took Hebron road, south to north, vein of the land

Some travelers passed this way before; crusaders, armies, empires, traders, supplicants

It was a way, effective transportation of self beyond the

Lines on maps, boundaries of languages and culture and 'us and them'

And though I've transgressed beyond the boundary I haven't overtaken the 

Wall of noise, the separation of 'otherness'

The road is more than mobility, the past is more than archeology

Bound up in the boundaries

The wall is penetrable, intentionally

Some can take a road to a checkpoint and cross, some cannot 

The wall was built over the line, proactively,  provocatively

Some built, some broke

The wall is protection, exclusionary

Some find protection, some find hopeless isolation

The boundary is stronger than the wall, as resentment is stronger in the second generation

Some find deliverance in immigration, some in martyrdom, but a few in forgiveness

The boundary is fear, the wall is the manifestation

The butterfly is the resistance.

---

Inspired by Course Catalogs & Mahmoud Darwish. 

A dismantling

In these rambling words I hear my own lostness, 

a wondering, wandering confusion

What once was solid is disintegrating, plains are leveling

Mountains to valleys, fierce and unwavering

Right and wrong and black and white, dissolving. 

What is the narrow line of justice?

What road am I called to walk that will lift the burdens from my fellows

Carrying, lightening, lessing the hopeless void of despair

With the very light of God, that weighty substance which soothes like dew 

draping freshly as a garland upon a troubled mind

Without naming the territories under dispute 

The assumptions and promises held aloof 

Labeling the other, 

Building barriers against a brother, 

Language, culture, history, policy to politics, supremacy 

This is a prayer to gain wisdom. 

This is a plea to leave my comfortable privileged ignorance

And be clothed with a new perspective, a fresh empathy toward understanding. 

A remaking of sorts, so that the long-Promised One, the Rescuer, might be seen and known through me. 

(And knowing my own weakness, I take no credit for this desire, but give glory to His goodness that surpasses knowledge). 

Opening of a window

Prayer is an invitation to God to intervene in our lives, to let His will prevail in our affairs; it is the opening of a window to Him in our will, an effort to make Him the LORD of our soul. 

-Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel 

June

Names are arbitrary; conquering power's influence of calendars; Lunar, Gregorian, (from the 1582 when the Pope Gregory XIII instated 365 days a year plus an extra day every four years (except in years divisible by 100 but not by 400)). But the name of June, meaning 'young' after the Roman goddess Juno, is still carried by months and women, still infatuating students with graduation and warmth of school-less days, still calling bridegrooms and their betrothed into covenantal unions, farmers into planting, celebrations of liberation and flags.

When I think of you, June, I think of warming days, when it's not too hot yet and nights are still cool, I think of biking to the pool and stopping by Kmart for junk food, I think of all the fantastic plans and promises the summer holds, of re-reading messages in year books and recycling finished notebooks. 

Oh June, when I think of you I think of the land, and now in a far-off climate I don't know who you are anymore, you're just a name, just a memory, a flickering idea of hopeful youth holding great expectations that were never burdensome. Holding hope now is a tricker exercise, it's weight becomes heavier unexpectedly, the unrealized and not yet grow taunt with stinging doubt. 

Oh, June. Here you are watermelons and peaches, lemons and grapes ripening on the vine, fields turning brown, the beginning of waiting for the winter rains. I wanted to write a simple haiku, an ode to the beauty of June, and I found the ageless grief instead. Can you, will you, lift my head? 

You always remind me

Never far from my thoughts, a circuitous route with a dead end of false comfort; 

    Such strong hands, supple form, deep eyes and I am awash again with such longing. 

God, my end, Omega, this temple is temporary and انا نسى مرارا

Not always, but often, enough that I wonder whose mind I have, the one of promise or the one of flesh. To persist decades in a "not yet, yet to be" escalates precariously and only by divine intervention is there a relent from toppling. 

    Collapsing inwardly into a deeper surrender, the seed that died keeps dying. 

The hope born again to keep arising.