Tag Archives: Gaza

September Musings

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Four huge turkeys in the shade of some green grass, behind leaves of zucchini in the front corner of the photo

The summer garden had some successes and some fails. And it is sometimes hard to tell which is which. This turkey family visited the yard many days, and walked through the garden beds in the back. They mostly left the veggies alone, except they liked to eat the tops off the bean plants. We still got a few beans even so. And they left alone the zucchinis, which did well, the cucumbers which did fair, and the broccoli, also fair. We appreciated their visits–we want to support wildlife after all.

However, we tried to lessen our support for the chipmunks and squirrels that became such little rogues. Despite netting over the blueberries, once they figured out they could squeeze holes into it, they got the rest of the blueberries, though we did get a bunch before that. I am happy to say that the baffle on the bird feeder totally worked. They never got up to the feeder after the baffle was installed. So I am hoping that without all that extra food to stash, the population won’t explode like it did this year. The long game. And the birds keep coming back to the feeder.

In the front yard, we never had monarchs lay eggs on our milkweed plants, despite their visit. Maybe next year? The netting on our kale and carrot bed was a great success. It protected the kale from cabbage moths, and no one tried to get into it. We have a ton of kale harvested and still to harvest.

Rectangle garden bed filled with green kale of two kinds, covered over with a translucent net on white metal supports.

The robins never came back to their nest on our back porch after the babies had been attacked. Still so sad about that. We’ve had some lovely visits with human friends out by the pond. The pond water level went down with the drought, but this weekend’s rain helped, especially after adding water from the newly filled rain barrels. Still a few frogs, though I am not sure about the tadpoles. They hide under the lily pads, and it’s a lucky day to see them.

And… and… and… Gaza is still being attacked night and day, and starved by blockades. International resistance is growing but too slowly for the people killed each day. I keep bearing witness, and praying. It’s the same with the rising fascism of our country, and the attacks on immigrants both documented and undocumented, and citizens who are brown or black or speak Spanish. The only thing that gives me hope are the multiple levels of resistance from huge demonstrations to lawsuits to governors who slap back. Here we do the best we can to get by, day by day, accepting our situation as elders and those who are chronically ill. In the face of so much cruelty and hate, we add our little love to the mix, hoping to be part of the larger Love which is our only real hope.

Feeding Each Other

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female hummingbird flying near red feeder

This summer, we’ve been blessed to feed hummingbirds in our yard, both through flowers like bee balm, and also through our little red hummingbird feeder that we fill with a sugar solution. Earth creatures feed each other. Everyone needs to eat. This happens through the incredible natural chain of life, some animals eating plants, other animals eating animals. But the deepest natural order is that all animals must eat. The interconnected circle of life. We participate in this circle, by what we eat, and by how we feed others.

Perhaps this is why forced starvation is such a horrific crime. To cut off a people from food is a crime against humanity, and also a crime against the natural order of life. I have been daily bearing witness to the forced starvation of people in Gaza by the Israeli government. There is food aid literally waiting at the border being denied entry. My heart is breaking every day. As the starvation goes on, it becomes impossible for people to heal from the damage it does to their bodies, even if they survive. Every day more people are dying and more people are reaching a point of no return. One action that is being organized is to pressure mainstream media to cover the fact that Israel is starving Gazans, which should be headline news everywhere in the world. You can find a template to flood media inboxes at https://writersagainstthewarongaza.com/action.

I also want to bear witness to the starvation happening in Sudan. I am not seeing so much about it in the news. When the current regime in Washington closed the doors on USAID, the situation there became dire. According to an article today in Closer to the Edge:

“The U.S. was once Sudan’s largest humanitarian donor. USAID funded almost half the international aid reaching the country. Then, with the flick of a legislative pen and the grinning cruelty of budget hawks who will never see a famine up close, that support was ripped away. Community kitchens—lifelines for displaced families—shut down. Nutrition programs vanished… The numbers are so obscene they should scream off the page: 25 million people acutely food insecure, over 770,000 children under five on track to suffer severe acute malnutrition this year, and nearly 100,000 cholera cases since last summer. ” 

We are all connected. I am remembering that the very first moral imperative according to the parables of Jesus, was simply this: “I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me drink.”

Kindness or cruelty?

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White woman on left of phot with tan baseball cap and rust shirt, just visible at hands, holding a phone facing pebbled shoreline with horseshoe crabs in the water mating, and huge boulders on the other side.

The other day, Margy and I went to Maquoit Bay to see horseshoe crabs that had come to shore to mate. Margy especially loves horseshoe crabs and has learned a great deal about them. It was shortly after high tide, and we noticed that a few of the crabs had wandered behind and between big boulders placed on the site, in a way that they were trapped. (Much worse than what can be seen in the photo above.) As the tide continued to go out, it was likely that they would be stuck high and dry. So we very carefully lifted them out by the sides of their shells, (never lift them by their spikey tails!) and placed them in the water where they were free to move where they wanted.

To us, it felt like a simple act of kindness for a fellow creature on this planet. We see someone in a vulnerable position, and do our best to be a helper.

I have been astonished and horrified by the cruelty I’ve witnessed (as reported via social media) of people in positions of power in our government. Separating families as they come out from immigration courts. Detaining a young child with leukemia. Sending migrants to horrible prisons in countries to which they have no connection. Terrorizing people as they garden, or shop, or go to work, while wearing masks and refusing identification. Detaining a pregnant woman and offering no medical care. Such is the state of DHS and ICE activity in our country. Cruelty seems to be the point.

I am thinking also of the people in Gaza, who are still being starved and bombed, and shot by IDF soldiers even as they line up to try to get food. Some soldiers even admitted that they were ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid. I feel so helpless to stop the harm, to stop the genocide.

It seems there is no end to cruelty. It has been troubling me greatly. And I wonder why? Why be as cruel as a human can be to fellow human beings? Don’t all religious and ethical traditions lift up our common human bonds and encourage us to love our neighbor, and love the stranger in our midst? What does it do to the human beings behind the masks or the guns to act with violence and cruelty every day?

Are the people in charge in our country trying to instigate retaliatory violence to justify further oppression? Is it some oligarchic strategy of conquest? Is it a way to convince themselves that some human beings are not really human beings? Are they truly this cruel and this evil? And then, how can they convince ordinary people to follow along? Ordinary people who might value kindness over cruelty.

All I can do is to keep speaking out about it, to share the daily reports of the people who have been detained or killed, to see their names, to weep. I recently decided to do one more thing, to purchase a keffiyeh from Palestine. This traditional scarf was worn as a headdress or face covering, and in recent years has come to symbolize the Palestinian yearning for freedom. For those of us who are not Palestinian, it symbolizes solidarity. For me, I am moved by the fact that it was made by Palestinians in the West Bank, touched by their hands, their hopes. And now it is touched by my hands, my hopes for them. I feel that spiritual and physical connection. I wear it for the children being starved in Gaza, for the families being bombed in their tents or apartments. I wear it for all the helpers who do whatever they can to help, in the midst of so much cruelty. I wear it as a symbol of connection between human beings,

Myke, a white woman with reddish gray hair, wearing a black and white Palestinian keffiyeh wrapped over her shoulders.

On June 14, Margy and I couldn’t go to one of the thousands of No Kings rallies to protest the usurping of power that this regime is attempting. (This is life with chronic illness…) So we decided to sit in our own driveway with a sign, and bear witness in our neighborhood. During that hour and a half, we had about 20 positive responses from people driving by or walking by. A few people looked away but no one was angry or negative. Because we were out there, we also learned that a few neighbors had gone downtown to the rally as well. This photo was taken by Margy… it is her empty chair on the right. So we were two of the millions who protested that day!

Big cardboard sign saying "no Kings" held by Myke, seated, wearing keffiyeh, resting on second chair.

I hope that if I keep speaking up, it will inspire others to speak up as well. I think of the Ella Baker quote in the song by Sweet Honey in the Rock: “I want to be one in the number as we stand against tyranny.” Never let their cruelty cause us to lose our kindness. Never let their cruelty cause us to lose our sense of human connection.

Garden Blue

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My favorite color in the garden is this blue/purple of the Siberian iris. They’ve multiplied in the roadside garden bed, and blossomed all along the way. And now they are gone. So we had maybe a week to enjoy their beauty. I feel the time rushing by with all these spring and early summer flowers. Nothing goes on and on. With photos we try to capture the moment and make it last a little longer, but nothing really lasts in that way. If we don’t pay attention to the moment, we miss it.

It is easy for me to get caught up in what needs to be done, the projects, the planting and watering, the weeding, the holistic sprays for the orchard. But probably what is most important is to walk around the yard noticing the flowers and plants and critters, noticing the birds and frogs and tadpoles. When we came to this yard, our hope was to nurture our relationship with the land, with all of the wisdom it had to teach us, with all of the tending that it asked of us. It was the tangible finding our way home that my spirit was hungry for.

We’ve been tending this particular small place for about nine years, and we feel such a bond with it. In these times of wars and rumors of wars, walking through the yard restores my soul. What must it be like to live for generations in a place? I can only begin to imagine. One of the crimes of the destruction of Gaza, along with the horrific killing of human beings, is the destruction of the land, the olive trees, the plants, the gardens. All those homes. It makes me weep.

I walk around the garden in the mornings, and I pray. I give thanks for another day of living. Not just my life, but the life all around me, of which I am a part. I am happy to see that the spiderwort plants are blooming, another in that shade of blue/purple. This seems to be the very favorite flower of the bees, and it lasts for a long time, with multiple little buds on each stalk, taking their turn to shine. It is the very diversity and multiplicity of the plants that bring abundance to life in the garden.

Where is Mosab Abu Toha?

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Mosab Abu Toha
Photo By Ishmaeldaro – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=155046681

Update: It turned out to be Facebook that suspended his account for a few days. In other news, Mosab Abu Toha just won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, for a series of essays in the New Yorker. Original post follows:

Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet and writer living in the United States with his wife and three children. I have been following him on Facebook because every day he posts so eloquently about what is happening in Gaza, he shares the details of people killed and the horrors of the genocide there. Today, I discovered that his Facebook page did not exist any more, and all the posts I had shared before had that little FB memo: “This content isn’t available right now.” The latest such post was April 27th.

I can’t help but wonder and fear what has happened. Has he been Facebook banned? Has he gone into hiding? Has he been arrested? He was so bold about speaking up for his people and appealing to the larger world to stop the genocide. This post from me is a prayer for his safety, and a prayer for all that he was trying to accomplish.

I have been posting articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today I will highlight Article 19: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

I want to close with a poem by Mosab Abu Toha published a year ago in AGNI journal. Abu Toha has two books of poetry available: Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear: Poems from Gaza (2022 City Lights Publishers) and Forest of Noise (2024 Knopf).

This Is Me!

A city whose streets escaped it,
a house without windows,
a rain with no clouds,
a swimmer in the desert,
a shirt with ripped-off buttons,
a book with loose pages,
a lightless moon and colorless grass,
a toothless smile and suffocated laugh,
a dark painting on black canvas.
I’m a table with no legs,
a noisy restaurant with no guests.
I write with a pen that has no ink.
I write my name in the air
and shout it, but no voice comes out.
I look around and see many things,
but I see no one.

Your silence will not protect you

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Multiple bluish white flowers with green leaves in a bunch on the grass.

I am living in the strangest of paradoxes. A hateful dictator has taken over our country, but today my life looks about the same as yesterday. I wake up in the morning, the sun is shining through my windows, and the birds are singing. I see these bright spring flowers on my walk. And yet, US-made bombs are being targeted on children in Gaza, they are dying in flames or slowly starving because food aid has been locked out by the Israeli government. International students (here in the U.S. on legitimate visas) are being kidnapped and jailed by ICE and threatened with deportation for having spoken up against this genocide in Gaza.

And I can’t stop thinking about Kilmar Abrego Garcia being detained by “administrative error” and sent to the one country his immigration status said he could not be sent to (El Salvador), because of danger from gangs; and now he is trapped in a hellish prison there because the president will not bring him back. This regime is renditioning hundreds of people without trial to this “prison” in El Salvador–and really, without trial it is not a “prison” but an extra-judicial concentration camp. All the people the president sent there should be brought back to the U.S. If some of them are gangsters and criminals, they should face trials–everyone has human rights, or no one does. But the president jokes instead about sending “homegrowns” to El Salvador next.

So since I’ve spoken up publicly about genocide in Gaza, and about immigrants being deprived of human rights, does that mean that they will come for me one day? Maybe it does. But I can’t live my deepest ethics without bridging the gap between the bright sunshine of today’s ordinary morning and the nightmare that is going on all around us, just at a little distance from my house at the moment. Every day I read about more atrocities taking place, and I try to do the little that I can do: to bear witness, to speak up about them, to share my outrage, to protest the injustice. The temptation is to get quiet, to try to hide under the radar. But I do believe, as lesbian poet warrior Audre Lorde said, “Your silence will not protect you.”

The more of us who resist, the more chance we have to reverse this nightmare.

Despair

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Almost every day I walk down to Capisic Brook, and most days, all through the winter, I saw a pair of ducks who lived in the water there. I saw them today too. My whole body felt heavy as I walked this morning, and I almost turned back before I reached the brook. I feel such a crushing sense of sadness and despair. I feel for the people who are suffering and dying in a genocide in Gaza. I feel for the foreign students and others who have been detained without warning or due process. I feel for the thousands hurt by the dismantling of government programs that feed people, and in conjunct with that, support farmers. And so much more. So much more is being broken and destroyed by the regime in Washington.

To be an activist has been an empowering thread throughout my life. I followed the advice of Audre Lorde: “Use what power you have to work for what you believe in.” When I feel powerless, I still search around for some small work I might do for what I believe in. And yet, the destruction continues.

As I cast about for some hope to cling to, some antidote to this despair, I find myself remembering the life of Jesus. He lived in a time and place under oppression by an empire that cared little for his life and the lives of any of the people around him. He had no power to change that evil regime, (or if he did, he did not use it–that was one of the temptations he rejected, as described in the gospels). Somehow, he lived his entire prophetic life in the shadow of this evil empire, and taught and healed nonetheless, usually with the most marginalized and the outsiders.

I get especially angry by the people who promote “Christian nationalism.” Jesus preached the opposite of nationalism. He often contrasted the divine “kingdom” with earthly kingdoms. Perhaps there is no story with more clarity about this than the story of the final judgment at the end of the world. According to the book of Matthew, (chapter 25) the divine king said to those judged as righteous: 35 “for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘…when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? 38 And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? 39 And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ 40 And He will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’”

The divine is with the least of these. And what this means to me is that the divine is in the torture prison in El Salvador with the gay Venezuelan barber. The divine is under the rubble with the emergency medical workers in Gaza. The divine is with the HIV patients in Africa who longer have medicine. The divine is lined up at the food bank. The divine is waiting with the woman miscarrying in Texas unable to receive medical help. The divine is with the sick person feeling isolated at home.

And maybe sometimes that is me, too, feeling the isolation and powerlessness of chronic illness, maybe the divine is here with me in my despair for the world.

Tiny and partial

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On the last day of 2024, Margy and I went to Kettle Cove beach. I saw this tiny partial sunbow in the sky, bursts of color hanging on either side of a bright sun. Tiny and partial are the words for today. There is so much suffering in the world, so much violence and evil. I can’t stop the devastation of Gaza, or the cruelty of the Israeli army continuing to kill scores of people even after a ceasefire has just been signed, to take affect on Sunday. Why not stop the killing today? All I can do is bear witness, share posts on Facebook. Tiny and partial.

What can we do to bring good to the world? I think about my visit to my friend at the nursing home yesterday. He was happy to see me–I went to wish him happy birthday and we had a good visit. But immediately afterward I felt a sense of guilt that I can’t visit more often than every months or so. What I can offer him is tiny and partial. But perhaps it is important, especially in the face of large and unrelenting troubles, to honor the tiny and partial acts of goodness we do? And what can he offer now, my old friend, after years of activism and kindness? Perhaps merely to receive with cheerfulness the help he now needs. We each bring goodness in the tiny and partial ways that we are able.

Each morning I take a walk. I have been able to take a little walk most days, after a message a year ago that “walking will be needed.” I have been able, ever so slowly, to increase my walk to about 20 minutes, no longer going directly to the brook and back, but making a little circle around the neighborhood, on my way there. It feeds my spirit, and reminds me to be in love with the earth, the sun, the water, the place where I live. It is a tiny walk as walks go, but by tiny increments, a little more.

Before I walk, I empty and refill the water that we have in a heated tray for the birds. Perhaps that is my tiny gift to the creatures who live here with us on this land. It feels like a prayer each morning. It reminds me of the importance of giving what we are able to this wider community of life. The other day I saw the crows laughing and jostling each other as they perched on the edge and dipped their beaks in.

We are living in very troubled times. Some will be called to wise analysis, and great acts of heroism, and energetically building the systems that honor our deepest values. But all of us, no matter how tiny, must still cling to kindness, cling to our interconnected earth community, and give what we can, no matter how partial. And I hope I remember to celebrate the brightness of the colors revealed in those gifts.

Sustenance

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Today I saw this gray goldfinch on a gray seed-head of evening primrose! Both the bird and the flower have let go of their bright yellow plumage as we enter the dark season. But still so beautiful in their subdued and subtle way. We haven’t cut down the “dead” plants because they are still such a source of sustenance and life to our little friends.

It is these small beauties that are sustaining me during these anxious days in the United States election season. It is terrifying to me that there is a close race between a mentally-unstable fascist who spreads hate wherever he goes, and a very qualified woman with whom I disagree on certain policies, but who will be president of all the people, and uphold the basic principles of democracy. My partner and I dropped off our absentee ballots last Monday, and gave Kamala Harris our votes.

It breaks my heart that some people I love seem to have been taken in by the lies of the MAGA propaganda machine. I don’t know how to ease that pain, except to pray that the fascists don’t win.

I haven’t forgotten the genocide that is being perpetrated by the Israeli government in Gaza, and expanding to Lebanon. I will continue to protest that killing in whatever ways that I can, small though they may be, every day. I have heard that some folks say they can’t vote for Harris because of her association with the Biden administration’s participation in the genocide. I don’t know what might happen under a Harris administration. But I know that the other side will be much worse, and would accelerate the destruction.

For me, voting is strategic. I have protested in some way every administration of our country–but there are better and worse administrations. For all of my adult life, I have been part of the movements to expand equality and democracy–to women, to people of color, to queer folks, to disabled people. I have protested the wars of empire and supported the raising of our awareness of the interconnected web of life, and the challenges of climate destruction. We keep pushing toward the hopes, and resisting those who would take all of that away in favor of hierarchical despotism.

In this season when the veil between the worlds of the dead and the living is thin, I think of my uncle Jim, who fought fascists in World War Two, and then grew marvelous gardens when I knew him. I think of my uncle Richard, whom I never knew because he died in that fight. May their spirits help us now. May all the spirits who cherish peace and liberation help us now.

Inside the pain

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There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. Elie Wiesel

The last few weeks, I have been dealing with severe pain in my hip, such that it makes it difficult for me to walk or sleep. I am grateful that I now have physical therapy which is slowly helping. But as I was lying on the table getting treatment today, I kept thinking about people in Gaza, right now, who also were dealing with hip pain, or chronic illness, or who were giving birth–any of the myriad kinds of human conditions that render us deeply vulnerable, even in the best of situations.

And instead of finding help or treatment, those human beings are being forced out of their homes, bombed, shot, starved. How would I evacuate when I can barely walk? How would I sleep on the ground with no pillows to ease the pain? How would I manage my illness with no medicines? How would I give birth with no clean water? It is not as if those human frailties cease to exist because of war. Underneath the other horrors, the deaths, the woundings, the destruction of homes, schools, libraries, hospitals, there is each human story.

I find in my body a small metaphor for this hurting world. I find in my body a deep scream of pain for this hurting world. They say the hips are the foundation for the balance of the body. And the earth is out of balance in so many ways. We see it in the chaotic weather, we see it in wildfires, we see it in an ocean warming faster than expected, we see it in cruelty toward children who are “different,” we see it in pandemics, we see it in politics of fear and hate. Who knows what the future will bring, with such a painful present.

I found encouragement in these words of Elie Wiesel, who survived the holocaust and wrestled with its meanings and repercussions for the rest of his life:

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1986/wiesel/lecture/

I found this image and quote posted by a friend on Facebook–the image is the Ukraine sunflower, and Ukraine is another country full of people in pain that linger in my own heart. But the flower feels full of beauty and hope. Wiesel goes on to say:

“The Talmud tells us that by saving a single human being, man can save the world. We may be powerless to open all the jails and free all the prisoners, but by declaring our solidarity with one prisoner, we indict all jailers. None of us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and expose it in all its hideousness. War leaves no victors, only victims.”

1986 Nobel lecture