Writing a memoir creates a mind set for long term memory. Fine with me since my short term one is beginning to lag a bit.
Today I thought of a high school friend. Her face passed in front of me and I wondered how she had survived. She grew up with a severely alcoholic father who used to slap her behind and call her Bessie Broadbottom—then laugh with ghoulish gusto. She laughed too but I knew it wasn’t funny. I used to wonder about sexual abuse even back in the 50s in a suburban CT. shore town!
My friend’s mother was passive, sweet, and preachy religious. But she too had a steel magnolia edge. It was obviously how she controlled her internal chaos and ignored her husband. She told her daughter that she could have married Mr. Mack of Mack trucks and have lots of money and happiness. Cruel revelation I thought.
Growing up with cruelty made my friend unpopular in school because she was pushy trying to excel and be popular. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t like her much either but stayed friends because I felt sorry for her.
She idealized me and my family, wrongly really because I was in a similar cocktail situation but with far more love in it. My dad’s sarcasm was martini-induced and he never called me names or sexualized our relationship. My mom’s denial helped her kid herself and skim the surface of life. It irked me but helped me sharpen my awareness and thus my spirituality: dig deep for truth. But I never thought my parents were cruel and I knew I was loved.
When after college I got engaged my friend was excited to be invited to the party and later to be one of my bridesmaids.
I was far less excited about the idea of a big party than my mother who wanted a traditional event with lots of people; she wanted my father to announce with pride that his daughter Lynda was to be married, a little speech just for me. I felt shy and uncomfortable but my friend thought that would be the greatest thing in the world ever to happen to any girl.
She missed the big announcement arriving late to the party because her father had to have “just one more drink” at the restaurant.
I will never forget my friend’s face when she rushed in to find she’d missed what she had so wanted to be present for. It exploded, awash with pain, rage and helplessness, almost feral, when she turned on her parents like a trapped wild beast, and said “You made me miss it.”
Moments like that are ripe for despair. They are prayers.
The voice of despair came some 30 years later after I was ordained and through my phone answering machine. My friend located me because of a high school reunion list and dialed. I got the message and recognized her voice, drunk with alcohol and pain.
“I want to do what you do,” she said twice and hung up leaving no number to call back.
Oh, God.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
2012.08.01 Chick-fil-A??
Hey, hey it’s Chick fil A day. Not on liturgical calendars anywhere btw. All I can think of is the “dance” we do at weddings flapping our elbows wildly. This flap is about as funny.
Is it me or is anyone else thinking that Chick fil A is a sexist slur not very well disguised?
Chickens don’t immediately come to mind with the name, even though I know this is a, reportedly delicious, fast food operation, their top draw a buttered BUN with a pressed and breaded chicken BREAST. Think mammogram.
My associations go like this:
Chick=woman but maybe with unsophisticated tastes. Think chick lit or chick flix.
Fil= just short of a filly, also a female object of devotion or ogle—with great haunches.
A=a top academic grade, or, as I remember some of us teen chicks would say to flirt with the boy who drove a Model A Ford in high school, “Hows’ your A?” —and then roll over with laughter.
This all could be my own perverse sense of humor, my feminist ardor, northeast liberal prejudice, or displaced anger because the CEO of Chick-fil-A has openly “come out” against same-sex marriage. In a gutsy statement, Boston’s Mayor Menino blasted Chick-fil-A for its bias and said the Chick would not be welcome in Boston where plans to open a new restaurant are afoot.
Of course Menino has admitted he can’t prevent the permits issued for a new Boston business, but the chick, or the filly, is out of the barn. Who would eat there now? Kinda leaves a rotten chicken taste in your mouth—or mine at least.
Here’s a tweet from a buddy pilgrim (to Israel) and seminarian at the Virginia Theological School (in the south last time I looked): “I hope nobody asks the CEO of Chipotle his view on same-sex marriage, I’d be devastated to have to stop eating there.”
I should fit Godde in here somewhere. Some day I’m sure it takes all of God’s energy just to hold back divine laughter so the world won’t explode—prematurely.
Is it me or is anyone else thinking that Chick fil A is a sexist slur not very well disguised?
Chickens don’t immediately come to mind with the name, even though I know this is a, reportedly delicious, fast food operation, their top draw a buttered BUN with a pressed and breaded chicken BREAST. Think mammogram.
My associations go like this:
Chick=woman but maybe with unsophisticated tastes. Think chick lit or chick flix.
Fil= just short of a filly, also a female object of devotion or ogle—with great haunches.
A=a top academic grade, or, as I remember some of us teen chicks would say to flirt with the boy who drove a Model A Ford in high school, “Hows’ your A?” —and then roll over with laughter.
This all could be my own perverse sense of humor, my feminist ardor, northeast liberal prejudice, or displaced anger because the CEO of Chick-fil-A has openly “come out” against same-sex marriage. In a gutsy statement, Boston’s Mayor Menino blasted Chick-fil-A for its bias and said the Chick would not be welcome in Boston where plans to open a new restaurant are afoot.
Of course Menino has admitted he can’t prevent the permits issued for a new Boston business, but the chick, or the filly, is out of the barn. Who would eat there now? Kinda leaves a rotten chicken taste in your mouth—or mine at least.
Here’s a tweet from a buddy pilgrim (to Israel) and seminarian at the Virginia Theological School (in the south last time I looked): “I hope nobody asks the CEO of Chipotle his view on same-sex marriage, I’d be devastated to have to stop eating there.”
I should fit Godde in here somewhere. Some day I’m sure it takes all of God’s energy just to hold back divine laughter so the world won’t explode—prematurely.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
2012.07.29 Dream On?
I dreamed a lot as a kid, day and night, always about things I wanted to do or be or accomplish. I was lucky enough to have enough happiness, enough creativity and imagination, and enough intelligence to dream—and read many books.
After the fairy princess/ballerina/moviestar phase, I settled into the dream of having children and being a mother. The children made my dreams. Then I discovered no one paid for motherhood or gave it much recognition, so I thought it would be better to be a man. That one didn't last long, but I did invade the sanctuary of an all-male profession, priesthood, and discovered it wasn't that much fun to be a parish "Father"—too lonely.
Every dream I've had I've worked hard to help along, revise and tweak, and get help with.
We all dream dreams. It's what keeps us alive and vital. Even on my death bed I bet I'll be conjuring heaven and dream of meeting God and Jesus.
America was founded on a dream: liberty and justice and land, land, land. It was once bright and shiny and inviting— available to all citizens. Now it has turned to pablum spooned out by the unawares, the power-hungry, the ignorant, and the too-busy-scraping-basic-livelihood-together-to-notice.
Liberty has turned into license and arbitrary violence. Justice is an illusion because there is no peace on our streets. And land has morphed into private property that includes trophy homes and gated communities where we get isolated and insulated and mistake it for individual freedom.
The Occupy Movement of 2011 raised awareness about classism and increasing economic inequity, which means less mobility. Less is available to a greater number of citizens than ever before. 99% of us is falling fast out of the amenic middle class. It scares me to read about it but I am able to live comfortably enough not to really feel it.
Paul Krugman in his NY Times commentary on Jan 16, 2012, Martin Luther King day, wrote: “Mitt Romney says that we should discuss income inequality, if at all, only in “quiet rooms. There was a time when people said the same thing about racial inequality. [They said it about gender inequality, too, and still are.] Luckily, however, there were people like Martin Luther King who refused to stay quiet. And we should follow their example today. For the fact is that rising inequality threatens to make America a different and worse place — and we need to reverse that trend to preserve both our values and our dreams.”
Has our so-called dream become a lie?
Maybe we need to focus less on owning homes and more on being at home together.
Loneliness is a first sign of the waning of a dream. Are Americans lonely?
I'm lucky not to feel loneliness much, in part because I'm an introvert, and in part because I have a spouse I like. We convene the day and the evening together. And my dream of getting a memoir published, though dim, isn't extinguished.
Also I have a church community, a bunch of people who come together weekly to pray, sing, learn, and gather around a table to eat blessed food, after which they gratefully move to another no less sacred space to drink coffee or lemonade and eat "tapas."
The Christian church has a dream, of a God whose spaciousness knows no bounds. We learned it from Jesus. We try to practice the vision, yet sometimes we are too isolated in our own ways and community that, just like the nation, we forget to dream beyond ourselves. To complicate matters the church has gotten allergic to much if any mention of sin, awareness of the dreams of others.
Israel, like America, had, still has, a dream. Call it a home of your own. It's less about ownership than it is about identity, meaning, self-governance, and healing a long history of displacement, persecution, execution, and being scapegoats. I asked a young rabbi once why Jews kept getting blamed, almost no matter what happens. “It’s because we’re exclusive, think we’re special,” he said. Well, my God, listen to the braying of some Christians! And some Americans!
But once Jews got their homeland in 1948 their homeland security politics have run wildly beyond security. Palestinian land has been seized; refugee camps are established with curfews and locked gates; moving from place to place requires going through checkpoints, some of them now “flying” (you don’t know where they will pop up); mountaintop surveillance station feeling like”big daddy;” Palestinians who dream of a return to their land, elected a terrorist regime Hamas: and worst of all a Wall of Separation, the amen to mutual loneliness. I saw it and wept.
I asked a local politician, a liberal one, about U.S. Israel/Palestine policy. I received a firm reiteration of our alliance to Israel and a justification of military power tactics as "maintaining a qualitative military edge."
Are we as appallingly ignorant of the spaciousness of our own dreams as we are of Israel/Palestine's?
The feeling of threat, whether real or imagined, kills the soul and with it the land. Sin is as organic as love; it multiplies.
Israelis are, once again and understandably, afraid. So are Americans. So are Palestinians. So am I. I pray daily that God, who created land and leased it to humanity as blessing, will transform the hearts and minds of leaders and people ( it doesn’t matter which comes first) from fear to humility.
***
Either dreams are not a good idea at all, except in sleep, or we need help to listen to and respect the dreams of our neighbors, far and near.
Our Jewish next-door neighbor, the one who is a beautiful singer and who has never been to Israel, came over to sing a Christian liturgical chant she’d prepared for us as a send off on our Israel pilgrimage.
Yes! Dream on.
After the fairy princess/ballerina/moviestar phase, I settled into the dream of having children and being a mother. The children made my dreams. Then I discovered no one paid for motherhood or gave it much recognition, so I thought it would be better to be a man. That one didn't last long, but I did invade the sanctuary of an all-male profession, priesthood, and discovered it wasn't that much fun to be a parish "Father"—too lonely.
Every dream I've had I've worked hard to help along, revise and tweak, and get help with.
We all dream dreams. It's what keeps us alive and vital. Even on my death bed I bet I'll be conjuring heaven and dream of meeting God and Jesus.
America was founded on a dream: liberty and justice and land, land, land. It was once bright and shiny and inviting— available to all citizens. Now it has turned to pablum spooned out by the unawares, the power-hungry, the ignorant, and the too-busy-scraping-basic-livelihood-together-to-notice.
Liberty has turned into license and arbitrary violence. Justice is an illusion because there is no peace on our streets. And land has morphed into private property that includes trophy homes and gated communities where we get isolated and insulated and mistake it for individual freedom.
The Occupy Movement of 2011 raised awareness about classism and increasing economic inequity, which means less mobility. Less is available to a greater number of citizens than ever before. 99% of us is falling fast out of the amenic middle class. It scares me to read about it but I am able to live comfortably enough not to really feel it.
Paul Krugman in his NY Times commentary on Jan 16, 2012, Martin Luther King day, wrote: “Mitt Romney says that we should discuss income inequality, if at all, only in “quiet rooms. There was a time when people said the same thing about racial inequality. [They said it about gender inequality, too, and still are.] Luckily, however, there were people like Martin Luther King who refused to stay quiet. And we should follow their example today. For the fact is that rising inequality threatens to make America a different and worse place — and we need to reverse that trend to preserve both our values and our dreams.”
Has our so-called dream become a lie?
Maybe we need to focus less on owning homes and more on being at home together.
Loneliness is a first sign of the waning of a dream. Are Americans lonely?
I'm lucky not to feel loneliness much, in part because I'm an introvert, and in part because I have a spouse I like. We convene the day and the evening together. And my dream of getting a memoir published, though dim, isn't extinguished.
Also I have a church community, a bunch of people who come together weekly to pray, sing, learn, and gather around a table to eat blessed food, after which they gratefully move to another no less sacred space to drink coffee or lemonade and eat "tapas."
The Christian church has a dream, of a God whose spaciousness knows no bounds. We learned it from Jesus. We try to practice the vision, yet sometimes we are too isolated in our own ways and community that, just like the nation, we forget to dream beyond ourselves. To complicate matters the church has gotten allergic to much if any mention of sin, awareness of the dreams of others.
Israel, like America, had, still has, a dream. Call it a home of your own. It's less about ownership than it is about identity, meaning, self-governance, and healing a long history of displacement, persecution, execution, and being scapegoats. I asked a young rabbi once why Jews kept getting blamed, almost no matter what happens. “It’s because we’re exclusive, think we’re special,” he said. Well, my God, listen to the braying of some Christians! And some Americans!
But once Jews got their homeland in 1948 their homeland security politics have run wildly beyond security. Palestinian land has been seized; refugee camps are established with curfews and locked gates; moving from place to place requires going through checkpoints, some of them now “flying” (you don’t know where they will pop up); mountaintop surveillance station feeling like”big daddy;” Palestinians who dream of a return to their land, elected a terrorist regime Hamas: and worst of all a Wall of Separation, the amen to mutual loneliness. I saw it and wept.
I asked a local politician, a liberal one, about U.S. Israel/Palestine policy. I received a firm reiteration of our alliance to Israel and a justification of military power tactics as "maintaining a qualitative military edge."
Are we as appallingly ignorant of the spaciousness of our own dreams as we are of Israel/Palestine's?
The feeling of threat, whether real or imagined, kills the soul and with it the land. Sin is as organic as love; it multiplies.
Israelis are, once again and understandably, afraid. So are Americans. So are Palestinians. So am I. I pray daily that God, who created land and leased it to humanity as blessing, will transform the hearts and minds of leaders and people ( it doesn’t matter which comes first) from fear to humility.
***
Either dreams are not a good idea at all, except in sleep, or we need help to listen to and respect the dreams of our neighbors, far and near.
Our Jewish next-door neighbor, the one who is a beautiful singer and who has never been to Israel, came over to sing a Christian liturgical chant she’d prepared for us as a send off on our Israel pilgrimage.
Yes! Dream on.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
2012.07.25 HItler. Another Perspective?
When I traveled in Israel I thought I might get a glimpse of my maternal grandfather’s heritage. I got some flavor for the land and its contentions and troubles as well as its mystique. Jerusalem actually does gleam like scripture says. It sits on a hill 2500 feet above sea level and in the sun looks as if it has a halo.
If I thought the land belonged to me I too might try to take possession. The problem is that too many people think God meant it for them— and God meant it for everyone!
People I guess fight over what they hold most dear and desire most strongly. This land is doomed to be shared.
Janet Flanner who wrote for the New Yorker Magazine is best known for the Letters from Paris column, but she also provided commentary during World War II. She wrote about European politics and culture, published a piece about Hitler's rise to power in 1936, and covered the Nuremburg trials in 1945.
She once said that of all the work she did for the magazine, she was most proud of her 1936 piece on Hitler.
In her profile, titled "Führer," she wrote:
"Being self-taught, his mental processes are mysterious; he is missionary-minded; his thinking is emotional, his conclusions material. He has been studious with strange results: he says he regards liberalism as a form of tyranny, hatred and attack as part of man's civic virtues, and equality of men as immoral and against nature. Since he is a concentrated, introspective dogmatist, he is uninformed by exterior criticism. On the other hand, he is a natural and masterly advertiser, a phenomenal propagandist within his limits, the greatest mob orator in German annals, and one of the most inventive organizers in European history. He believes in intolerance as a pragmatic principle. He accepts violence as a detail of state, he says mercy is not his affair with men, yet he is kind to dumb animals. ... His moods change often, his opinions never. Since the age of twenty, they have been mainly anti-Semitic, anti-Communist, anti-suffrage, and Pan-German. He has a fine library of six thousand volumes, yet he never reads; books would do him no good — his mind is made up."
I can only say three things. In a book called “For Your Own Good” by psychologist Alice Miller I read that Hitler’s mother was a Jewish housemaid; and 2) As a spiritual practice I must name gross distortions of human goodness, even if I know that’s not all there is. Hitler was “kind to dumb animals” for god’s sake. Hitler was also a sociopath. 3) The power imbalance between Israelis and Palestinians is unjust and oppressive, and the U.S. is part of the problem.
I never knew my grandfather who died in 1924. Still, maybe some of his relatives, and mine, died at Hitler’s command. What I wonder would he have said or felt?
As a Christian priest I should forgive. I’ve not forgiven the old pervert who abused me when I was eight, unless you count forgetting and healing as forgiveness.
I doubt that Jesus forgave from the cross while gasping and dying, but those who knew him in life knew it would be like him to forgive—and also like him to ask God to do it for him. I don’t know if anyone forgave Hitler or other perpetrators of arbitrary genocide.
Some things only Godde can forgive.
And some forgiveness is a forever process.
If I thought the land belonged to me I too might try to take possession. The problem is that too many people think God meant it for them— and God meant it for everyone!
People I guess fight over what they hold most dear and desire most strongly. This land is doomed to be shared.
Janet Flanner who wrote for the New Yorker Magazine is best known for the Letters from Paris column, but she also provided commentary during World War II. She wrote about European politics and culture, published a piece about Hitler's rise to power in 1936, and covered the Nuremburg trials in 1945.
She once said that of all the work she did for the magazine, she was most proud of her 1936 piece on Hitler.
In her profile, titled "Führer," she wrote:
"Being self-taught, his mental processes are mysterious; he is missionary-minded; his thinking is emotional, his conclusions material. He has been studious with strange results: he says he regards liberalism as a form of tyranny, hatred and attack as part of man's civic virtues, and equality of men as immoral and against nature. Since he is a concentrated, introspective dogmatist, he is uninformed by exterior criticism. On the other hand, he is a natural and masterly advertiser, a phenomenal propagandist within his limits, the greatest mob orator in German annals, and one of the most inventive organizers in European history. He believes in intolerance as a pragmatic principle. He accepts violence as a detail of state, he says mercy is not his affair with men, yet he is kind to dumb animals. ... His moods change often, his opinions never. Since the age of twenty, they have been mainly anti-Semitic, anti-Communist, anti-suffrage, and Pan-German. He has a fine library of six thousand volumes, yet he never reads; books would do him no good — his mind is made up."
I can only say three things. In a book called “For Your Own Good” by psychologist Alice Miller I read that Hitler’s mother was a Jewish housemaid; and 2) As a spiritual practice I must name gross distortions of human goodness, even if I know that’s not all there is. Hitler was “kind to dumb animals” for god’s sake. Hitler was also a sociopath. 3) The power imbalance between Israelis and Palestinians is unjust and oppressive, and the U.S. is part of the problem.
I never knew my grandfather who died in 1924. Still, maybe some of his relatives, and mine, died at Hitler’s command. What I wonder would he have said or felt?
As a Christian priest I should forgive. I’ve not forgiven the old pervert who abused me when I was eight, unless you count forgetting and healing as forgiveness.
I doubt that Jesus forgave from the cross while gasping and dying, but those who knew him in life knew it would be like him to forgive—and also like him to ask God to do it for him. I don’t know if anyone forgave Hitler or other perpetrators of arbitrary genocide.
Some things only Godde can forgive.
And some forgiveness is a forever process.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
2012.07.22 Writing the Whole Arc/Staying the Course
I have trouble sticking to the direction when I write. I love to riff. I write as if I were a jazz musician going off on tangents that may be relevant but take a reader off the path of the narrative/melody. It’s a bad habit I’m trying to curb because not everyone likes or can follow all that jazz.
Mary Magdalene, a biblical hero of mine whose day it is on our liturgical calendar, stayed the course. Her life choice was to follow Jesus of Nazareth. She’d benefited from his healing gifts and, instead of running off to do her own life (something I know I would have done after I remembered my manners and said thank you) she hung out for more.
She soaked in his wisdom and, from what we can tell, Jesus held her in esteem and held her dear. She was present and named for all the big events of his life including his death, and the church honors her as a saint and the first messenger of the good news of resurrection— even though few parishes remember her day. Why? Oh, don’t ask.
Here is brief but wonderful advice about such undistracted purpose of life. I will tape it to my computer desk, my fridge, my forehead. It comes from one of my favorite actor’s Judi Dench in her 2012 memoir, “And furthermore.”
Dench, as a young aspirant learned to speak Shakespeare from the great British actor Sir John Gielgud. She writes: “I have always said to students that if you really want to know how to speak Shakespeare, Sir John and Frank Sinatra will teach you. Because one used to present the whole arc of a speech, and the other presented the whole arc of a song, without any intrusive extreme emphases.”
That wisdom hit me up side the head. Let me not forget. Let me be so in love with my story that I do not sacrifice its arc for my tantalizing distractions. Let me write in rainbows—the whole arc.
And let me not stray from the arc of divine goodness but write it with clarity and as much brevity as I can muster, so my ideas and stories won’t drown in the rushing pace of this culture—or that of my distracted mind.
Mary Magdalene, a biblical hero of mine whose day it is on our liturgical calendar, stayed the course. Her life choice was to follow Jesus of Nazareth. She’d benefited from his healing gifts and, instead of running off to do her own life (something I know I would have done after I remembered my manners and said thank you) she hung out for more.
She soaked in his wisdom and, from what we can tell, Jesus held her in esteem and held her dear. She was present and named for all the big events of his life including his death, and the church honors her as a saint and the first messenger of the good news of resurrection— even though few parishes remember her day. Why? Oh, don’t ask.
Here is brief but wonderful advice about such undistracted purpose of life. I will tape it to my computer desk, my fridge, my forehead. It comes from one of my favorite actor’s Judi Dench in her 2012 memoir, “And furthermore.”
Dench, as a young aspirant learned to speak Shakespeare from the great British actor Sir John Gielgud. She writes: “I have always said to students that if you really want to know how to speak Shakespeare, Sir John and Frank Sinatra will teach you. Because one used to present the whole arc of a speech, and the other presented the whole arc of a song, without any intrusive extreme emphases.”
That wisdom hit me up side the head. Let me not forget. Let me be so in love with my story that I do not sacrifice its arc for my tantalizing distractions. Let me write in rainbows—the whole arc.
And let me not stray from the arc of divine goodness but write it with clarity and as much brevity as I can muster, so my ideas and stories won’t drown in the rushing pace of this culture—or that of my distracted mind.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
2012.07.18 A Gift That Gave
I Shall Not Hate by Izzeldin Abuelaish, was a spontaneous gift from a stranger on an airplane flight from Tel Aviv to London. We struck up a conversation across the aisle when lunch or breakfast or whatever meal it was (on airplanes they blend together like time zones) arrived.
I asked her about the book she was reading so intently. She showed it to me and said she’d give it to me when she finished it. I was reading Jesus Freak (Sara Miles) and she was reading I Shall Not Hate. How do such connections happen!! Nimisha is Hindu, a clinical psychologist living in London who travels to Gaza five times a year for two weeks to help treat post-traumatic stress disorder among Palestinians. “I hear horror stories. That’s why I watch dumb movies on airplanes,” she said. “Well, after I finish this book.”
“This book is for everyone,” she said when she, in a short time, passed it across to me.
*******
I thanked her and began to read. The first thing I noticed was that the author was a Palestinian who had grown up in a refugee camp in Gaza and that there was a praise-filled Foreword by a Jewish Israeli physician, Dr. Marek Glezerman, chairman of the Hospital for Women and deputy director of Rabin Medical Center, Israel. Glezerman expressed surprise that Abuelaish, though chronically humiliated by Israeli military border procedures (harrasments really) while traveling for his work, was not “the very angry man I expected to greet.”
On our pilgrimage we visited a refugee camp in Efrata North, south of Jerusalem, established in 1949. We heard a young Arab Muslim, 24, speak of his life there and his dream of returning home to West Jerusalem. He wasn’t angry either but spoke with a kind of derailed depression freckled with hope and good humor. He had 30 hours to go in the university in the camp where, tellingly, he studied psychology and social work. “I’m afraid to graduate,” he told us. “What then? My friend applied for a job in Nablus with 11,000 applicants!” I asked him about his faith in Allah. His answer was simple: “When I choose the good way and pray first.”
As a feisty Christian feminist westerner I felt humbled. How come neither this man nor Abuelaish haven’t given up on God? I thought that until I remembered that I hadn’t either, although my trials have been minor.
Abuelaish is an ObGyn doctor who specializes in infertility medicine. He has a heart for families, mothers and newborns, loss. He was born in a refugee camp in Gaza where life was harsh. But his mother was a “lioness” mother who never let up on him about study, study study. He obeyed and eventually received a scholarship award and went to study medicine. Life in Gaza remained restrictive, and travel back and forth to work required him to cultivate teeth-gritting patience.
Through unimaginable suffering and tragic loss Abuelaish persisted. I Shall Not Hate is his memoir. It’s his testament to his religious faith and to the friendships of many Israeli colleagues who helped him and value his work and person. I’m reminded of the New Testament story of the friends who removed roof tiles to lower their paralyzed buddy on his stretcher down through a roof so he could bypass crowds to get to Jesus for healing. And Jesus told him faith had made him well—his own and that of his friends.
********
Chapter One, titled “Sand and Sky” begins: “It was as close to heaven and as far from hell as I could get that day, an isolated stretch of beach just two and a half miles from the misery of Gaza City, where waves roll up on the shore as if to wash away yesterday and leave a fresh start for tomorrow. We probably looked like any other family at the beach—...” I was hooked.
Abuelaish had brought his two sons and six daughters plus cousins, aunts and uncles to the beach to find peace in the midst of grief at the premature death of his wife Nadia from leukemia just two weeks after diagnosis. Little did Abuelaish know that in a short time his home would be the target, mistaken but never apologized for, of a fatal shelling during the 23-day siege of Gaza (Dec., 2009 into 2010) in which more family members would die. The sustained attack was designed to intimidate Hamas, retaliation for their suicide bombings. But instead it murdered innocent people. Under a photo of himself in a graveyard Abuelaish wrote: “No caption can express a father’s loss.”
Feelings of agony, rage, terror, love, patience, and hope course side by side through this book but never overwhelm the story, nor the author’s peace and friendship platform. The prose is clear and direct—accessible. No facts, no matter how painful, are sentimentalized, minimalized, or sensationalized. This is the work of an ordered mind that manages to stay sane in the midst of insanity. He never blames Israelis for their government’s actions.
Medicine is his practice, healing physical illness and souls as it creates a level playing field of need and compassionate care. Strong Muslim faith is his stronghold. “For the three weeks during the war, we lost our belief in humanity, so God and each other were all we had left.” AND....... friends on the other side. “The tank pointing its guns at my house ... looked like the angel of death. I called Shlomi Eldar.” Eldar, his friend on the putative other side, managed to engineer a military inquiry into the matter and also set up an interview on Israeli radio. The story went viral and that crisis was averted—until the next one.
At one point Abuelaish ran for public office in Gaza as an independent, thinking it might be a way to work for change. His campaign platform stressed the same issues (poverty, health, education) as the Hamas platform. But Abuelaish’s campaign included raising the status of women. Abuelaish lost.
In 2009 he won the Niarchos Prize for Survivorship. How ironic there is such a prize. It is given by the Survivor Corps an organization that works to break cycles of victimization and violence. Nomika Zion, an Israeli woman, shared the prize with Abuelaish. She and other neighboring Israelis, act and lobby in solidarity with Gazans.
Zion (I love the irony of the name!) accepted the award and spoke against the glorification of war. “I am frightened that we are losing the human ability to see the other side, to feel, to be horrified and to show empathy. It’s our obligation to make our leaders talk, to compel them to tell us, for a change, a different story.” Abuelaish in his acceptance speech encouraged action and to think forward together. “The dignity of Palestinians equals the dignity of Israelis . . .” Does that sound familiar?
*******
Having finally to make the hard decision to leave Gaza, Abuelaish got a job and moved his family to Toronto where his children could experience safety and hope for a future. But he plans to return to his native land and continue his healing mission to encourage an internal shift from hate to respect, on both sides at grassroots levels. He isn’t the first to have such a dream.
The very first activity his younger children performed at their new home in Toronto was to take down a section of the fence between their house and the neighbors so the kids could run back and forth. “How prophetic that I witnessed what I had been dreaming about for years for our two neighbors, Israel and Palestine,” Abuelaish wrote.
*******
DAUGHTERS FOR LIFE is the foundation Abuelaish has started. It is dedicated to change the status and role of women through the provision of scholarships for high school and university education. Ultimately he hopes his foundation will create a credible voice for female values throughout the Middle East. I just made a small gift online.
I asked her about the book she was reading so intently. She showed it to me and said she’d give it to me when she finished it. I was reading Jesus Freak (Sara Miles) and she was reading I Shall Not Hate. How do such connections happen!! Nimisha is Hindu, a clinical psychologist living in London who travels to Gaza five times a year for two weeks to help treat post-traumatic stress disorder among Palestinians. “I hear horror stories. That’s why I watch dumb movies on airplanes,” she said. “Well, after I finish this book.”
“This book is for everyone,” she said when she, in a short time, passed it across to me.
*******
I thanked her and began to read. The first thing I noticed was that the author was a Palestinian who had grown up in a refugee camp in Gaza and that there was a praise-filled Foreword by a Jewish Israeli physician, Dr. Marek Glezerman, chairman of the Hospital for Women and deputy director of Rabin Medical Center, Israel. Glezerman expressed surprise that Abuelaish, though chronically humiliated by Israeli military border procedures (harrasments really) while traveling for his work, was not “the very angry man I expected to greet.”
On our pilgrimage we visited a refugee camp in Efrata North, south of Jerusalem, established in 1949. We heard a young Arab Muslim, 24, speak of his life there and his dream of returning home to West Jerusalem. He wasn’t angry either but spoke with a kind of derailed depression freckled with hope and good humor. He had 30 hours to go in the university in the camp where, tellingly, he studied psychology and social work. “I’m afraid to graduate,” he told us. “What then? My friend applied for a job in Nablus with 11,000 applicants!” I asked him about his faith in Allah. His answer was simple: “When I choose the good way and pray first.”
As a feisty Christian feminist westerner I felt humbled. How come neither this man nor Abuelaish haven’t given up on God? I thought that until I remembered that I hadn’t either, although my trials have been minor.
Abuelaish is an ObGyn doctor who specializes in infertility medicine. He has a heart for families, mothers and newborns, loss. He was born in a refugee camp in Gaza where life was harsh. But his mother was a “lioness” mother who never let up on him about study, study study. He obeyed and eventually received a scholarship award and went to study medicine. Life in Gaza remained restrictive, and travel back and forth to work required him to cultivate teeth-gritting patience.
Through unimaginable suffering and tragic loss Abuelaish persisted. I Shall Not Hate is his memoir. It’s his testament to his religious faith and to the friendships of many Israeli colleagues who helped him and value his work and person. I’m reminded of the New Testament story of the friends who removed roof tiles to lower their paralyzed buddy on his stretcher down through a roof so he could bypass crowds to get to Jesus for healing. And Jesus told him faith had made him well—his own and that of his friends.
********
Chapter One, titled “Sand and Sky” begins: “It was as close to heaven and as far from hell as I could get that day, an isolated stretch of beach just two and a half miles from the misery of Gaza City, where waves roll up on the shore as if to wash away yesterday and leave a fresh start for tomorrow. We probably looked like any other family at the beach—...” I was hooked.
Abuelaish had brought his two sons and six daughters plus cousins, aunts and uncles to the beach to find peace in the midst of grief at the premature death of his wife Nadia from leukemia just two weeks after diagnosis. Little did Abuelaish know that in a short time his home would be the target, mistaken but never apologized for, of a fatal shelling during the 23-day siege of Gaza (Dec., 2009 into 2010) in which more family members would die. The sustained attack was designed to intimidate Hamas, retaliation for their suicide bombings. But instead it murdered innocent people. Under a photo of himself in a graveyard Abuelaish wrote: “No caption can express a father’s loss.”
Feelings of agony, rage, terror, love, patience, and hope course side by side through this book but never overwhelm the story, nor the author’s peace and friendship platform. The prose is clear and direct—accessible. No facts, no matter how painful, are sentimentalized, minimalized, or sensationalized. This is the work of an ordered mind that manages to stay sane in the midst of insanity. He never blames Israelis for their government’s actions.
Medicine is his practice, healing physical illness and souls as it creates a level playing field of need and compassionate care. Strong Muslim faith is his stronghold. “For the three weeks during the war, we lost our belief in humanity, so God and each other were all we had left.” AND....... friends on the other side. “The tank pointing its guns at my house ... looked like the angel of death. I called Shlomi Eldar.” Eldar, his friend on the putative other side, managed to engineer a military inquiry into the matter and also set up an interview on Israeli radio. The story went viral and that crisis was averted—until the next one.
At one point Abuelaish ran for public office in Gaza as an independent, thinking it might be a way to work for change. His campaign platform stressed the same issues (poverty, health, education) as the Hamas platform. But Abuelaish’s campaign included raising the status of women. Abuelaish lost.
In 2009 he won the Niarchos Prize for Survivorship. How ironic there is such a prize. It is given by the Survivor Corps an organization that works to break cycles of victimization and violence. Nomika Zion, an Israeli woman, shared the prize with Abuelaish. She and other neighboring Israelis, act and lobby in solidarity with Gazans.
Zion (I love the irony of the name!) accepted the award and spoke against the glorification of war. “I am frightened that we are losing the human ability to see the other side, to feel, to be horrified and to show empathy. It’s our obligation to make our leaders talk, to compel them to tell us, for a change, a different story.” Abuelaish in his acceptance speech encouraged action and to think forward together. “The dignity of Palestinians equals the dignity of Israelis . . .” Does that sound familiar?
*******
Having finally to make the hard decision to leave Gaza, Abuelaish got a job and moved his family to Toronto where his children could experience safety and hope for a future. But he plans to return to his native land and continue his healing mission to encourage an internal shift from hate to respect, on both sides at grassroots levels. He isn’t the first to have such a dream.
The very first activity his younger children performed at their new home in Toronto was to take down a section of the fence between their house and the neighbors so the kids could run back and forth. “How prophetic that I witnessed what I had been dreaming about for years for our two neighbors, Israel and Palestine,” Abuelaish wrote.
*******
DAUGHTERS FOR LIFE is the foundation Abuelaish has started. It is dedicated to change the status and role of women through the provision of scholarships for high school and university education. Ultimately he hopes his foundation will create a credible voice for female values throughout the Middle East. I just made a small gift online.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
2012.07.15 Planning End Times—Or Not
I’m taking a break from Israel because I need one for now. Too intense. Also, it’s Sunday—and in the simmering 90s, hotter than the hinges of hell they say. There is no hell and if there is it surely doesn’t have doors with hinges and knockers.
I don’t think much about hell or heaven or death much—at all. Too intense and I feel too vital. But if I do I start to cry because I love life too much to die.
Nevertheless, to be sensible, Dick & I made our first foray into planning ahead so our children won't have to make decisions for us when the time comes when we must live less independently.
We’d like to stay where we are as we age and we’ve picked out our hospital. City R us.
A colleague wrote, Bravo to you both! She and her siblings had tried unsuccessfully to argue her parents out of retiring on one coast when all four kids were on the other. But........ “They had community and history, something that would have been missing in any of our four regions, and they could still come visit. So choosing a place that has other folk you like, if possible, is a solution that really has worked for them. Now, of course, it means schlepping cross-country for each of us, repeatedly, but I suspect it's a fair price to pay for their contentedness.”
So that’s our one plan. So what if we don’t have lots of friends here yet. No offspring has complained. Did we tell them all? At least none of them has to schlepp cross-country. Unless they move—their problem.
So far I’m doing better than my mother, a must at all times. My sister and I had to make that nursing home decision for her. She acquiesced but...... I wished she’d planned or even said anything about it at all. Not a word, not her style.
“So how is it here, Mom?” I finally asked imagining the worst. “Oh, it’s not bad,” she said, then told me how she had a good woman friend. “Just my age. We sit in our wheelchairs and watch all the old men wobble by,” she laughed.
Mom didn’t seem fussed by the mushy tasteless food or the odors. She had no sense of smell, and doesn’t taste exit with that? She actually seemed content. Of course one of the staff let on that “Verbal abuse” was written all over her chart.
The good thing about Mom was that she never made us feel guilty because she made a mockery of everything. She even showed off with pride all the Bingo prizes she’d won—a champ despite advancing macular degeneration. I still have one of them, a little glass red heart. It’s so tacky I love it.
I urge planning ahead. It’s a control issue to laud. It’s also a loving thing to do. You’re also supposed to talk about all this with your children or someone. All you need is a listening mutual conversation.
So far we’ve not talked about anything and have visited only that one place.
I don’t think much about hell or heaven or death much—at all. Too intense and I feel too vital. But if I do I start to cry because I love life too much to die.
Nevertheless, to be sensible, Dick & I made our first foray into planning ahead so our children won't have to make decisions for us when the time comes when we must live less independently.
We’d like to stay where we are as we age and we’ve picked out our hospital. City R us.
A colleague wrote, Bravo to you both! She and her siblings had tried unsuccessfully to argue her parents out of retiring on one coast when all four kids were on the other. But........ “They had community and history, something that would have been missing in any of our four regions, and they could still come visit. So choosing a place that has other folk you like, if possible, is a solution that really has worked for them. Now, of course, it means schlepping cross-country for each of us, repeatedly, but I suspect it's a fair price to pay for their contentedness.”
So that’s our one plan. So what if we don’t have lots of friends here yet. No offspring has complained. Did we tell them all? At least none of them has to schlepp cross-country. Unless they move—their problem.
So far I’m doing better than my mother, a must at all times. My sister and I had to make that nursing home decision for her. She acquiesced but...... I wished she’d planned or even said anything about it at all. Not a word, not her style.
“So how is it here, Mom?” I finally asked imagining the worst. “Oh, it’s not bad,” she said, then told me how she had a good woman friend. “Just my age. We sit in our wheelchairs and watch all the old men wobble by,” she laughed.
Mom didn’t seem fussed by the mushy tasteless food or the odors. She had no sense of smell, and doesn’t taste exit with that? She actually seemed content. Of course one of the staff let on that “Verbal abuse” was written all over her chart.
The good thing about Mom was that she never made us feel guilty because she made a mockery of everything. She even showed off with pride all the Bingo prizes she’d won—a champ despite advancing macular degeneration. I still have one of them, a little glass red heart. It’s so tacky I love it.
I urge planning ahead. It’s a control issue to laud. It’s also a loving thing to do. You’re also supposed to talk about all this with your children or someone. All you need is a listening mutual conversation.
So far we’ve not talked about anything and have visited only that one place.
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