A meditation
Today I read about an Israeli-Canadian woman and an American-Israeli woman who are each missing near the Gaza Strip. Each has dual citizenship, each has spent decades working for peace among the hostile factions.
I thought of two friends of mine who long have participated in peace vigils in a small town of some few thousands in upstate New York, seen by the same neighbors week after week.
Perhaps we are sympathetic. Perhaps we are grateful someone is taking this work on for us. Perhaps we laugh and point. Perhaps we disdain the futility of the effort.
It doesn’t matter when war comes whether you are a peace activist or a strategist for war. Maybe you are both.
You still can be captured. Maybe tortured. Maybe killed.
I am helpless before the largeness and senselessness. The persecuted are still the persecuted. We may all be the persecuted one day, but not yet today, until today arrives.
I do not know how to say I am sorry for your loss. I am sorry for our loss.
SingingFrogPress
Thank you for this Sharon. I feel as you do, so so bereaved by all the killing and death and the horrible torment the hostages must be exeriencing. And your perfect last sentence, “I do not know how to say I am sorry for your loss. I am sorry for our loss.” Perhaps until we can see all the losses caused by war and the hatreds of individuals and groups of people for one another anywhere in this suffering world as our own losses, then the harms will continue. I pray for Peace.