"Absence in My Heart" is a place where you are invited to give expression to the absence- or the heaviness of your heart as I tried to do in my first post below.
This "absence" is like a hole, a vacuum or, perhaps more strongly put, like rift cutting through the heart, like a geographical (and ethical) fault.
The "fault" that one feels, the lack of completion and perfection, is a way out of complacency and an opening to understanding. It is an opening to feeling for the Other; thus the beginning of our fulfilling our responsibility to the him/her.
These posts may not be the words of "hope", "light and love" that we often want to-hear but words from the pained heart that yearns, not for its own Peace, but for Our Peace.
The comments added and empathy we feel towards each other are not only a consolation, but are actual steps in that direction.
In Peace,
Myron
-----An Absence in My Heart #1------------------------------
Twice daily I cross the Green Line ..
Morning morning i leave my Kibbutz/settlement for work in "Israel proper"
and in the afternoon..i make the climb back to the hilly occupied/disputed land of two Peoples.
Today on the way home i was giving a lift to three Jewish/Israeli high school girls-one was getting off soon, before we hit the Green Line, and two needed to get to the town/settlement of Efrat, on the Jerusalem-El Quds/Hebron-El Halil road.
At sunset we passed the T-Junction in Emek HaElah (Elah Valley). There stood two Palestinian day workers (with permits to work in Israel), who were in need of a "hitch" to their villages perched in the hilly land ahead of us. I only had room for one...so I passed them by to let off the first of the three girls. "I will turn back to pick them up afterwards" I told myself.
Having let off the first girl I "asked permission" of the other two to go back and pick up the two hitchhikers- figuring that not many Israeli cars would stop for them. I felt stuck, trapped...needing to "ask permission" to pick up the two strangers.
The first response was silence..a very uncomfortable silence for me. It was the silence of shock and maybe fear.
Finally one uttered "Are they Jews?".
"Off course not ! I answered..They are from Jabba or maybe from Nahalin. I think i know the one with the big smile. Maybe i gave him a lift before. The second one is totally unfamiliar to me."
Had these girls been adults..or perhaps had they been male..I may have ignored their fear- their recoiling from doing the good deed. But I was trapped..feeling i owed them a sense of "security" as they were my guests..and so, i left the two Palestinian day workers standing at the T-Junction..in the Valley of Elah where David met Goliath..
and i felt and Absence in my Heart.
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