Beginning to talk

December 10, 2008

Yesterday on a walk at the Berkeley Marina, I was excited to see a
black-shouldered kite hovering over the coastal scrub hunting. I've
seen fewer than ten of these in my life, and never one this close
up. The bird appeared to stand still in the sky, fluttering its
wings rapidly, and then after a time it would just open its wings and
effortlessly glide off, until it spotted something else and hovered
again. I couldn't help but think of the extreme effort and energy
the bird used just to keep in the same place.

This got me thinking about what hard work it is to maintain the
status quo. This is opposite from how we think things are, but I'm
beginning to recognize that this is how the universe works. Keeping
things the same is what takes effort, not going with change.
Instead of holding tightly to what is, we must open our hands and
trust that what will be there in a new form will be fine, perhaps
even a lot better. What would the world look like if we responded to
it differently?

After my trip to Palestine, I have been in tender dialogue with my
dear Israeli friend of more than 30 years. She came up to Jerusalem
to meet me for lunch while I was at the Sabeel Conference.
Conversation at lunch focused on our lives and our families, safe
topics. We both kept away from politics. She knew my trip was
focused primarily on the Palestinian perspective of the long on-going
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I saw with my own eyes egregious
violations of human rights. I saw refugee camps where the challenge
is keeping hope alive for the fifth generation growing up in horrible
ghettos in their own land but we didn't speak of these things. Not
then. I remember as she drove me back to my hotel that she pointed
out the building where her youngest son had taken cello lessons and
then mentioned that the café next door was bombed in 2002 killing
many innocent by-standers. "It could have been me,: she said. I
didn't tell her of the homes I had seen that had been destroyed by
soldiers just a few days before or of my shock at the huge number of
settlements illegally taking over Palestinian land.

And now we begin to speak to each other of the things we avoided
before. In a series of emails we are beginning to tell each other
what we really think. After I sent her my recent sermon on peace-
making, she commented that I had not pointed out all the human rights
abuses the US has committed. I could only agree. We listen to each
other and in each exchange I feel that something big is happening. I
don't know exactly what, but one by one, group by group, we must
listen to other points of view. We have to stop holding on to only
one point of view. There has to be another way.

Maybe this will be the Christmas a new spirit will be come alive.
There has to be another way. It is costing too much for everyone the
way it has been. What we have done is not working. There has to be
another way.