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From time to time, it helps to ask whether I’ve got something backwards. Doesn’t always work, but it can be profound when it does.. October 7 is intolerable. What came before and to which October 7 is a response is intolerable, unsustainable. The only thing I can think of to ask is whether in these situations our grief can be so profoundly shared that it might transform us, might travel with us to a moment where imagination and action are again possible, where that ordinary, momentary, 180-degree rearrangement of expectations can accommodate us to each other in just some tiny or fragile way that we did not have before.

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How beautifully expressed. Thank you,Katherine.

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Hi, Padraig,

As always, thank you for your thoughts, concerns, and chosen words. In 2016 I sat on a park bench in the center of a small village in Palestine, drinking Arabic coffee and playing, of all things, a Native American style flute. A Palestinian family arrived and sat at a picnic table right before me. The parents had just bought their two young daughters small wooden flutes. One-by-one the children took turns sitting by me and we played flutes together. In that moment I felt adopted by this family. Music gave us a freedom that transcended words. Once tasted, this freedom released us from feeling separated from each other.

I offer a poem by Wang Wei(a very new visitor into my life):

A Red Peony

Among captivating greens idle and serene,

it’s red robes are shallow, and then so deep.

A blossom’s heart is grief-torn? In all this

spring color, who could fathom the heart?

Your words today, Padraig, deepen my appreciation of this poem. Best, David🏮

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Thank you for sharing this. Sometimes I have a difficult time speaking to political issues because I don’t feel I understand what’s going on throughly enough to voice an opinion, but I do know know that we all deserve to be safe, to have food, shelter, water, community, and the right to be and be well. ❤️

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Angela, It seems to me that you have a profound understanding of what is going on in our world and your opinion captures for me the essence of what is fundamentally important. You wrote, “ I do know that WE ALL deserve to be safe, to have food, shelter, water, community, and the right to be and be well.”

THANK YOU

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Angela, thank you for your thoughts here, this is how I feel when reading about the ongoing conflict and speaking with others about it. I can never understand but I do know what all of us living in this world deserve. 🙏

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I have watched the world break itself over and over again, and in that breakage watched people that I know, people that I love, and people that I do not like attempt to respond. I on the other hand have not. Though I am a poet, I have reserved my words for that which I can grasp directly before me. With that said, I have absorbed this tumult and pain in the world and taken it deeply within my heart. I walk with those that suffer through every door, and carry them into every class I teach, and into the eyes of every person that I meet.

I have attempted to understand and be a part of the healing. A part of my life before this current stage was spent reading holy texts, learning Hebrew and Greek to know some of the texts intimately. I met with groups, and discussed what at times seemed the tragedy of existence with and without god. I worked at a Jewish community center, and helped produce a play by a Muslim scholar and activist to try and reach people. The work was incredible, and large, and good. But that work, like so much other work seems buried now beneath the dust of so many bones, cemented with the tears of lamentation. I know that we can love. I know that everyone in the midst of these tragedies has love in their hearts for someone. Would that that love could calm the hands of destruction.

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Your words touch me deeply, Sean, though living half a world away I scarcely know what I can do. All I know is to try my best to live by the law of love and strive to speak honestly about the pain in my heart. I send to you and to the world, heartfelt hopes for peace and reconciliation for all peoples.

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A responsibility to love. Beautiful. Amazing.

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Thank you Sean, for writing this. I can so relate to your lines, “I have reserved my words for that which I can grasp directly before me.” Yes, this is what I do, and the sense of helplessness and inadequacy that goes with that. And also the deep, wounded longing for the destruction and trauma of war to cease. I’ve turned again and again to the work of Claire Beynon, who paints towards peace in the world. And also just, say something here to respond to your words and Pádraig’s invitation to talk into the hopelessness and hope. And listen.

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Thank you for your words Kirstie. I’m going to check out Claire Beynon today. I find that this dialogue between us all is such a salve, to know that so many of us long for peace and connection creates that space where our hearts can sing out and calm the turmoil. And the more of us that gather, the greater the sound.

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Yes. Gosh. You so beautifully express what-it-is. Thank you. I interviewed Claire Beynon, some of the peace paintings are in this post https://open.substack.com/pub/kirstiemckinnon/p/drawing-lights-the-way-an-interview?r=270t67&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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Thankyou for these words Sean Felix, they carry tumult and pain and care that does not look away.

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At age 74, I’ve concluded that there is no strategic, political or diplomatic solution to the violence modern nation-states wreak on each other. The only solution is a spiritual conversion, not a religious conversion in the narrow sense, although the great world religions certainly have a significant role to play. Rather, we need a collective conversion of the human spirit, of the human heart. Toward that end, the vocabulary and language of poetry hold a preeminent place in that awakening, conversion and weaving of a renewed fabric of human solidarity.

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You have given concise, meaningful language to something I have felt, but not been able to express so well, for a very long time. Thank you. 🙏🏻

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Thank you for these words, Richard. I agree. And that need for spiritual conversion is needed by all––religious followers as well as non-believers.

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This reflection cuts right to it. Thank you, Richard.

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I only know that hate never resolved anything - only dialogue and empathy, only the willingness to step outside of a perspective and see through another person’s eyes (whatever he or she has done). And then to be open to compromise.

For the people suffering in Gaza, Palestine, Lebanon, Israel, Ukraine and Russia (my heart weeps for them), all the governments of the West should be seeking frameworks to facilitate communication. We cannot just get on with our lives and be relieved it isn’t our country, our war.

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We cannot just get on with our own lives and be relieved it’s not us — that just got to me.

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Same, love. Same. Tomorrow will be a heavy day.

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Yes, I've been feeling that as well. Two years into the war in Ukraine and one year into the war in Gaza (now spreading) we seem to have gotten over our shock and somehow accept it as "the way things are". Today's exchange wakes up my pain, for which I'm grateful.

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One is called foolish by many, to think that the lyricism of words can challenge the brutality of physical weapons. But I carry as a talisman from my grandmother, the visual of a tiny blade of grass pushing up through a crack in the cement. The seemingly soft, easily crushed things, in the end hold the power of new life.

This last week, I determined that I could not sit and do nothing in the face of the rising madness around me - and yes, in particular what transpires in the middle east conflict. So I initiated 'conversations over poetry and a warm-hearted lunch' in my neck of the woods. What do I know of poetry, but that I love it and read it and listen to it? But as you, Padraig, so beautiful illume for us, it is a way to open conversations of new possibility. Experimenting around the edges.......

And watching a substack video my daughter Madelaine released, I scribbled down this quote from Bayo Acomolafe that speaks into this conversation. "There are things we must do, things we must say, thoughts we must think that look nothing like the images that have so throughly possessed our visions of justice."

I love, Padraig, that you catalogue the many ways a person may contribute to evolving peace. Each makes their own gifting. Thank you for this reflection.

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I love the idea of 'conversations over poetry and a warm-hearted lunch.' This is so much what my mother would have done. You have brought her alive to me. Thank you.

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Your image of a single blade of grass pushing through a crack in the concrete was so powerful for me. Thank you for sharing and good luck with your lunch, such a wonderful opportunity for your community to come together.

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So beautiful Candace.

And many ways to contribute to evolving peace. I love that

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Thank you, Pádraig. As someone with a long and deeply committed history of social justice work, and a mixed ancestry half of which is Jewish, the struggle for Palestinian freedom and self determination has been central to my perspective for twenty years. But so, too, is the safety of my own people, half of which live in Israel. There has been rage, sorrow, shame, and utter heartbreak roiling within my being for a year now to a disruptive extent. I will not deny the hatred I feel for Likud or the religious fundamentalist militancy that underpins Hamas, but that doesn't mean I need allow it to guide me. Preventing it from doing so is hard work.

This is a poem I dreamed last year, among many terrible dreams of the Levant. I awoke and wrote it down. It has changed very little since. There is a kabbalistic teaching that says Jerusalem is not a physical place, but a point in the heart where resides our connection with all of creation, the creative force of the universe, and the knowledge that those two things are one and the same.

"Because Jerusalem is a Point in My Heart, I Have Fallen Asleep with Candles Burning"

I believe I am in Gaza

Or maybe Israel

I do not know what to call it

I do not believe

I’ll ever return

The streets are gray and hungry with flags

White flags and black flags

Triangles and stars

Made of triangles

A boy with a circle of rivets around his eye

Is crying

When we hug I say I’m sorry

When I say I’m sorry

Rain arrives

The rain is a soldier who aims at the ground

I cannot find my coat

Everything is lost

I want to say so much

I say nothing

The streets so full of feet they leave no prints

Our hands disappearing

The way voices do

When they are all speaking at once

Or all at once your own

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"streets so full of feet they leave no prints" "The way voices [disappear] / When they are all speaking at once" such strong images that resonate

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Thank you for this poem. It's tremendous. Left a lump in my throat as I read it.

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Thank you for saying that. Apologies for the lump 😬

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❤️😊

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Thank you for this beautiful image - There is a kabbalistic teaching that says Jerusalem is not a physical place, but a point in the heart where resides our connection with all of creation, the creative force of the universe, and the knowledge that those two things are one and the same.

I can also relate to your poem when you say "I want to say so much, I say nothing". Thank you.

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The act (or lack thereof) of saying nothing is strange. Both painful and contemplative. But, in hindsight — because this just poured out rather unthinkingly — I think I was trying to express the impossibility of capturing the depth and range of emotions here, or else the daunting enormity of the history that led to this situation, with all its complexity, and how that, in the moment, is irrelevant to the immediate suffering of its victims.

Anyway, thank you. I never really know if people relate to what I write, so it means a lot to hear that.

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You speak from the heart , a language we all know. It’s beautiful ❤️

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What a moving poem. Thank you for sharing this.

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I will take this with me, may I share it?

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Of course! I would be honored

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What a heartfelt stunning poem. Thank you for expressing something I cannot.🙏

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Thank you so much 🙏

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“To dare to exhibit the freedoms we know the future needs” Yes! I want to be part of making this world of care, conversation, and communion as well.

I’ve been reading Land Sickness by Nikolaj Schultz this week. It has me thinking a lot about how our ideals of freedom and communion must extend to the land we live on and from. Freedom which is predicated on Anthropocentrism and limitlessness destroys the world and therefore our ideals of freedom.

None of this is new knowledge. I’m agitated by how work like Land Sickness doesn’t engage with indigenous knowledges. I’m agitated by the lack of it in my own knowledge, while living on the colonised land of the Kaurna people. I went for a walk today where the Onkarparinga River meets the sea. I couldn’t believe how fast the water was flowing towards its future. I wonder what the river would say about freedom.

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I wonder what the river would say? Yes! And how do we open our ears to hear?

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Maybe the same way we learn to listen to our blood?

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Oct 6·edited Oct 6

It has taken me the better part of an hour to write this...mostly because I have been attempting to navigate regular, insistent interruptions & conflict between two small kiddos the entire time. They both have very different desires within the same space.

This has brought home to me again how much I long for peace as much for own comfort as anything (and this is nothing to be ashamed of, imo, just something to own), how little space I naturally feel willing to leave for airing grievances, how quickly I leap to endings (not resolutions), and that my response to this most microcosmic of events in my own home is the wiring with which I will also respond to the broader world. (My inner insufferable idealist is *squirming,* I assure you.)

This is admittedly becoming longwinded; but, like many, many of us, I have been reengineered in wildly painful ways throughout the last 12 months...structuring some language around the moment is cathartic, so thank you, Padraig & other readers/writers, for this space.

It's been said before, & I find it true: we are all fighting, wounded children, and to grow into a more just world will require extraordinary inner development, both individually & collectively. I find some sort of direction— a breathing space, a tether-point—in knowing that my responsibility in creating possibility, for a free Palestine & a safe, healthy world for everyone near & far, does not–cannot–end in the living room with little people who each want a different kind of castle...but it sure as hell begins here. This is the first territory of conflict resolution that builds a better future for an entire world: what is within me, what is right in front of me.

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You are so correct! We all can do better than what the world is doing. We HAVE to do better ! This is where it starts this is where making the world a better place to live in starts. One home, one neighborhood, one city, one country at a time.

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may the ripples of your home practice of peace making spread out far and wide through your and your children's hearts and lives. I also believe peace begins at home.

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Thank you for this honest and direct reaction. I relate in so many ways.

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I don’t pretend to have any words of wisdom for those bound to broken systems of division and unequal power. I’ve lived a relatively privileged life of relative ease, with the normal pains that attend to living.

To those like Padraig and many whose comments I read here—who are able to hold space and love for those traumatized by war and violence—I honor you. I wish I were more capable of holding the pain of those I don’t know.

What I’ve done is not advice for anyone, but it’s what I’ve had to do for my soul’s sake: I left social media some years ago and I stopped ingesting so much news. I remain aware of what’s going on in a more cursory way, but I’ve stopped bathing in trauma.

The result is that as I move through my seventh decade of life my world is smaller and deeper. Smaller in that I am able to be present with more love and intention to the small circle of family, friends and acquaintances I am privileged to know; deeper in that many of those moments have included healing of old wounds and restored intimacy.

If life is, as I believe, a tapestry where we are all interconnected, then small acts of love, forgiveness and healing in my small world is real healing for a small corner of the Universe. I can’t directly affect the heartbreaking tragedies of most of the world, but I can do something today, this very day, to love those around me.

Peace to all.

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Thank you for this lovely reminder Robert. I’m about to turn 60 and always trying to help heal and harmonize the world. Haven’t been the same since I escaped Israel last year after the attack on Oct. 7th. But I am reminded through your comment of what I used to tell my three kids when they were small: “Just do whatever you can, wherever you are with whatever you have. It will be enough.” 🙏

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That is beautiful, Kathleen. I’m sorry for your loss and pain. Peace and strength to you and those you love.

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I love that: smaller and deeper. I am also heading in that direction when I can.

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I've been reading "Peace Begins Here" by Thich Nhat Hanh about how Israelis and Palestinians came to Plum Village for many years to be together, to listen to each other, and to begin their own internal peace process. Thich Nhat Hanh says "We should look for peace within our heart. The real peace process has to come from ourselves." I do believe the healing, love, and peace that you are finding within yourself and sharing that with your family and community resonates beyond.

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I believe that as well, Teri. I think we will eventually be happy and surprised to find the interconnectedness of our acts of love with every animate and inanimate being. Love is at the center of it all. God is love and we share in that divinity. This is the true nature of us all, albeit hidden in layers of ego. I’ve let go of the useless regrets that it took me almost 60 years to arrive here. I am here and that is enough. Hallelujah.

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I love this Robert. Like the small blade of grass ( a wonderful image) we can contribute in our own small way. I once read - never underestimate the smallest act of kindness as it can change the world ! A smile can change someone’s day. Each drop makes the ocean.

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So beautifully stated. Thank you, Robert.

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If both sides would only look at the children. Jesus always held the children.

It is the children who will suffer from what they are seeing and living in now for their entire life.

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I think this is a significant part of the key. Our wrongs can only be forgiven by caring for the children.

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This is a touching insight. So true, and thank you for reminding me of it.

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Padraig...the words from your poem Childsplay come to mind "You knew who you hated before you were able to ask what it meant." And (I believe) Jimmy Carter's, "We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children." The terror and then hatred that naturally flow from the bombs will not help with the project of long-term peace.

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Ages ago, I had a poetry teacher who said her favorite poems had at least two things happening at the same time. I thought of her when I read your post - living with all of this along with living with the rest of what goes on in anyone’s days is demanding emotionally and spiritually especially when taking sides isn’t an option. Well, it isn’t an option for me. So two things go on at once, actually a lot more than two: I can hear bagpipes, cheering and cowbells (the great Scottish Run passes near us today) while I’m reading about kibbutzim a year later and thinking tomorrow is 3 months since my friend died. Poetry - the poetic - can be for me an account and a sorting of so much happening at once, it is company as I travel. Thank you for your company. Xx P

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Yes to it all. To stand in the midst of it and grieve and receive all the “sides” for there are so many. Speech acts of humanity.

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It is the looking away from the suffering of Palestinian children, pariahs in their own land, that I can’t fathom. In my country, children born here have rights of full citizenship upon birth. Yet it is our bombs that kill Palestinian children in the country of their birth, and that of their ancestors. This is genocide. So many bow before the immovable powers who decide who lives, who dies, who use our tax dollars to build bunker buster bombs that raze city blocks to rubble and decide who to sell them to for use against their own people or those they occupy. Do they ever ask themselves what is the underlying question? The security of one people (the powerful in this case) and the basic human and civil rights of another, living on their own land. Wouldn’t you think Diplomacy would be the way to resolve this, rather than 2000 lb bombs? Or is there one person, fearful of his own legal exposure, who stands in the way of ceasefire, constructive resolution, bringing the remaining hostages home, and an end to genocide and Apartheid? We can’t look away. Children are children, mine and yours. Silence is complicity. Use your voice.

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