the heart of a conflict zone
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video: spices, scents and the beautiful sounds of the call to prayer in Jerusalem's Old City where the Armenian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish Quarters are all contained within the same walls...
i followed my heart to jerusalem. was invited here for love. and i went for it.
i find myself in the holy land, the birthplace of judaism, christianitiy, islam, and living in what many believe to be the world's hottest "hotspot".i am a minority here. i did not do "aliyah", the journey jews from all over the world do to return to their homeland because, well, i am not jewish. nor am i muslim or all that christian. i speak 3 languages but here, i'm illiterate in both arabic and hebrew. i've worked in Canada and abroad in leadership positions, and witnessed people and communities finding their capacity and inspiration to make meaningful change in their own lives and those of others. but i've not come here with a job, or an organization, with funding, a political ideology, nor with a solution in mind for peace in the middle east. so why am i here?i came to break my heart open by loving in a way i've never loved before. by entering in a life partnership with a man on the other side of the world, and doing it with full presence and intimacy. for the first time, i'm experiencing the potential of my heart to expand beyond its current container..... and doing so in a place of conflict and where the dominant language seems to be to create and sustain tension, aggression, fragmentation. where building separation walls is the mainstream policy. and yet, everywhere i go, i meet people whose hearts are also breaking open so that they, too, can contain more tension and pain in order to strengthen their capacity to see the bigger whole. in Ramallah, Hebron, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv .... young, old, arab, jewish... they hold the possibility of being fully human in situations that de-humanize. working from their fullest hearts and humanity, holding and exemplifying that potential while in the face of extreme fear, opposition. and in the larger region, i'm closer to my friends in Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Afghanistan who are living in a dominant culture of dictatorship, war, corruption. and they, too, are inviting a new way of living and working that loves the fragments back into coherence. with my heart wide open i'm learning the art of protection ~ to be skillful in protecting the heart, the work, the seeds of life, until they are planted in places that can sustain them. and step by step, i am beginning to see the bigger picture of what coming here without an agenda offers to myselft and to those i am meeting and now living with. literacy in this language of the heart is NOT a solo practice
so here i am
yalla!
