Is This The Path of Love?
Reflections on what we're collectively living through and how we're handling it
Photo by Aline Viana Prado: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-wearing-black-sunglasses-3491678
Maybe you’ve noticed I haven’t written about anything but my own life recently.
Maybe you’ve also noticed in your own life that trying to write about anything else seems like somehow too much and not enough.
In these past few weeks, I have only wanted to ask everyone to please be quiet for a little while. To take a nap, get some food, self-regulate, and then return to the drawing board.
A Palestinian boy killed. A synagogue president murdered1. My own friends afraid to live their lives.
The past few weeks have looked like reaching out to people I care about who live in Israel and asking the question no one ever wants to ask, “Are you alive? Are you okay?”
The past few weeks have looked like not knowing where to begin or how to process the graphs that compare the Jewish lives lost to the Palestinian lives lost over the past 75ish years because how could we reduce something as infinitely precious as human life to a graph?
The past few weeks have looked like almost everyone I know saying that silence is violence, and my heart saying that perhaps, right now, silence is love. Silence is the love in which I pray for humanity, allow peace to start with me, and foster joy because there is no other option but to be joyful.
I will not live an angry life. Been there. Tried that. Wouldn’t recommend it.
The only action I can fathom now is love. The only side I can imagine being on is the side of humanity.
As I arise every day, my heart seems to carry too much. The weight of the children killed too young. The weight of the parents who have outlived their precious children. The weight of those who are scared to be themselves. The weight of those who are hostages, uncertain of what lies ahead. The weight of my own words. The weight of violence and the way it tears at the fabric of the soul.
And so I arise and ask, every moment, is this the path of love? 2
Is this the path of love? Not, is this right or this wrong, but is this the path of love?
I will not pretend to know the answers to any of it. I will not pretend to feel as if I have the authority to speak to what is occurring in Israel and Gaza as if listening to enough NPR finally makes me educated enough to make a cute Instagram post.
I do not know how to make this being human any easier, how to protect the world’s children from all of the horrible things humanity is capable of.
What I will not do is turn away from the suffering.
Everyone deserves to live and to die naturally. Everyone deserves access to food, water, housing, healthcare, safety, and freedom. May we all be happy, healthy, safe, and at ease.
May we walk the path of love.
The police are currently saying this was not an act of anti-semitism, but that doesn’t make it any less tragic, worthy of our grief, and it certainly doesn’t take away from the fact that it compounds collective trauma. May her memory be a blessing.
Inspired by The Question, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer