{"id":2105,"date":"2024-01-22T16:35:13","date_gmt":"2024-01-22T20:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/?p=2105"},"modified":"2024-01-23T11:40:41","modified_gmt":"2024-01-23T15:40:41","slug":"risking-expanded-heart-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/risking-expanded-heart-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Risking Expanded Heart Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

“People came (to social media) with pre-made ideas and put them into their binary boxes of how they want to see the political world right now.”\u00a0 –Noam Shuster-Eliassi<\/em><\/p>\n

On October 7th of last year, forces of Hamas launched horrific attacks on communities in southern Israel.\u00a0 The savagery that has been revealed included the murder of more than 1300 people, rape, and the taking of hostages.\u00a0 In response the Israeli government and IDF have engaged a scorched-earth military campaign that is literally leveling Gaza, making it an uninhabitable killing zone, taking the lives of more than 25,000, many of them children, while cynically directing survivors to purported safe areas that are then subject to attack. In each of these lethal aggressions, the erasing of others is the clear goal.\u00a0 I join with all who demand a ceasefire in Gaza, the return of all those taken hostage to their homes in Israel, an end to the funding of the war, and the clear naming of the evil at work in the Hamas attack and then also in the widespread destruction and death-dealing to the citizens of Gaza.\u00a0 \u00a0At the same time, I pray that we all–inside Israel\/Palestine and beyond–will be beckoned to a ceasefire of the soul.<\/p>\n

Noam Shuster-Eliassi is an Israeli comedian with a fascinating history.\u00a0 Her parents raised her in the community of\u00a0 Wahat al-Salam\/Neve Shalom (Oasis of Peace), a village of Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel –located between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv–where people\u00a0 choose a life together dedicated to building justice, peace, and equality.\u00a0 Noam worked at the UN as co-director of Interpeace, an organization dedicated to nonviolent and sustainable forms of conflict resolution and peacebuilding.\u00a0 Frustrated with approaches that would not dialogue with more difficult actors, she left and immersed herself in her artistic vocation,\u00a0 comedy.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0As a comedian Noam engages diverse audiences and difficult subjects and truths.\u00a0 She crosses boundaries.\u00a0 She speaks in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. For years she has been a peace activist, among those seeking an end to the occupation of Palestinian communities, and advocating for Palestinian human rights and equality.\u00a0 She has also continued to imagine the possibility of a “one-state solution” where everyone belongs.<\/p>\n

In the midst of the relentlessly compounded trauma in her homeland,\u00a0 Noam published a powerful and emotional essay entitled “Picking Up the Pieces of Our Grief.”\u00a0 I would commend it to everyone.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.972mag.com\/picking-up-pieces-grief-israelis-palestinians\/<\/a><\/p>\n

She suggests near the outset that the article that what she is writing is for those who “have the capacity to mourn for two peoples.”\u00a0 These words impacted me immediately.\u00a0 The kind of space she is seeking to articulate and establish is for-giving space.<\/p>\n

Noam begins: “There is an awful silence, so loud that it is numbing.\u00a0 It is the silence of frightened people trying to mourn\u00a0 while the war maniacs blast their bombs so they don’t have to hear us, or provide any answers for their failures.\u00a0 Behind the horrible screens of social media, I see friends abroad being so loud while my friends sit in silent grief.\u00a0 My soul aches for us, for the silence imposed on us, for the fear of saying very basic human things–as basic as, “Have mercy on the children of Gaza.”\u00a0 Government ministers have lined up every day for the past two weeks to declare, even to the families of the kidnapped: now is not the time to place blame or investigate.\u00a0 Be quiet.\u00a0 We’re at war.”<\/p>\n

Trauma inhibits and fractures speech, even without intense outside pressures to remain silent.\u00a0 The horrors of human suffering do not fit well into “binary boxes.”\u00a0 The processing of pain is essential to individual and communal healing and the possibilities for futures not solely defined by wounds incurred.\u00a0 In her essay,\u00a0 Noam articulates deep personal and communal loss: she names the names and tells the stories of victims of the Hamas attack and their families, identifying some as longtime peace activists.\u00a0 “More and more names and faces we knew.\u00a0 So many that we stopped counting.\u00a0 It was overwhelming.”\u00a0 \u00a0And she gives voice to the betrayal she beholds in the subsequent atrocities in Gaza: “Our grief has been turned into a senseless revenge campaign in a split second.”\u00a0 It reminds me of 9\/11, the failure of our leaders to help the nation to begin to process our pain before seeking retaliation, and the multiple disasters and countless deaths that have resulted.\u00a0 Noam is not alone.\u00a0 “I am so proud of my friends who, despite losing family members in the Hamas attacks, did not lose their moral compass, immediately using their platform to say clearly: do not use this pain for revenge, or to inflict more pain–that is not a solution.”\u00a0 She quotes her friend Osnat, whose nephew was murdered at the music festival in Re’im: “It is like I have two rooms in my heart.\u00a0 One for my personal grief, and one for everyone’s grief.\u00a0 And I don’t want my pain to be used to cause more people grief.”<\/p>\n

Noam’s essay takes on a psalmic quality: “Can anyone hear us?”<\/strong>\u00a0 Listen.\u00a0 Stop posting on Facebook, and listen.\u00a0 “Can I ask you something?\u00a0 Can you check on friends who live in Israel-Palestine before posting on social media?\u00a0 Because we are not OK.\u00a0 We are broken.”\u00a0 “When people experience a great deal of grief, they usually also feel shame and anger that they need to channel somewhere.\u00a0 People’s capacity to see beyond their wounds and pain is limited.\u00a0 We need recognition, compassion, solidarity, a voice.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recognition. Compassion.\u00a0 Solidarity.\u00a0 A voice.\u00a0 Here is a curriculum for love and peacebuilding in devastating circumstances.\u00a0 It will be the most challenging of hard work.\u00a0 But it holds the kind of promise that no violent “solution” will.\u00a0 No one will be “erased.”\u00a0 (1) This is a call for recognition of two populations<\/strong>: their humanity; their histories; their loves and the substance of their lives; the injustices endured; their needs for tending and the righting of wrongs;\u00a0 their articulated hopes for the future and the honoring of their full humanity\u00a0 (2) The people need com-passion<\/strong>:\u00a0 “being-with” the suffering of both<\/em> peoples, and allowing the deep suffering that each has endured to touch us in ways that leave us vulnerable.\u00a0 Can we agree that the murder of anyone’s children is completely unacceptable?\u00a0 Can we open ourselves vulnerably to the legacies of Holocaust and Nakba?\u00a0 To experiences of fear and<\/em> oppression?\u00a0 (3) We must explore what it might mean to be in solidarity with both peoples in this violent wilderness, manifesting a willingness to find out\u00a0 what shapes and expressions that might take.\u00a0 When Noam left the UN job she (publicly assessed as left-wing) was frustrated that proposed solutions did not include dialogue with the settlers of the far right.\u00a0 (4)\u00a0 A key need is\u00a0acknowledgement<\/strong> that the lives of the people themselves, across boundaries of separation, is the ‘context’<\/em>.\u00a0 And it is their voices<\/strong>–not ours–that are most important.<\/p>\n

“Admitting how deep our pain is–the lonely people who have space to mourn and care for two peoples–is too heavy to bear,” Noam writes.\u00a0 Yet they do.\u00a0 And they intercede for us.\u00a0 Her words remind me of Dr. King:\u00a0 “Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.”\u00a0 It is much more than speaking against an injustice or for a position, important as they might be. We are talking about the agony of testimony, the commitment to love and the depths it can penetrate.<\/p>\n

I suspect that this, as with all for-giveness, is part of an emerging “way of being.”\u00a0\u00a0When Noam had to return from her fellowship in the United States (at Harvard Divinity School, in the Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative!)\u00a0 because of the onset of COVID, she also contracted COVID.\u00a0 Her own struggle with isolation prompted her to ask herself, “I wonder how Palestinians survive all these years of closures and restrictions of liberty.”\u00a0 Later, when she and others who were COVID-positive were housed together by the government in a Jerusalem hotel ,\u00a0 the mix of Jews, Palestinians, Muslims, and Christians led to remarkable experiences of fledgling community and discovery of one another.\u00a0 It is like a living, breathing parable.<\/p>\n

Noam’s piece, and this post,\u00a0 primarily address people in places like the United States. I want to suggest that we who live outside Israel and Palestine can seek to discover, and further establish, the kind of space within ourselves to which Noam and her friend Osnat witness.\u00a0 As a Christian, I would assert that we are equipped in faith for this kind of inner-work which will then infuse our witness.\u00a0 The life of Jesus shines bright light for us. In the Christian Scriptures there is a vivid scene in John Chapter 14, where Jesus is facing his arrest and crucifixion and the frightened disciples are struggling so mightily with what it all means, that Jesus comforts them:\u00a0 “In my Father’s house there are many rooms.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Like the rooms in Osnat’s heart.\u00a0 Jesus is talking about a life-filled future beyond the darkness they are living. He will breathe the creative Spirit into them.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Baratunde Thurston,\u00a0 Noam talks about the bewilderment she and others felt in the wake of the initial attacks when they read their social media: ”\u00a0 We’re trying to understand who’s kidnapped, who’s dead, who’s injured, who’s missing?\u00a0 And within minutes, hours, I’m starting to get influencers and political whatevers putting “context” into something when we don’t even know what’s happening yet.\u00a0 A lot of the people who were kidnapped and murdered are<\/em> the context.\u00a0 Israeli Jews have been working to end the occupation, working on Palestinian human rights, and all these Americans are pounding our heads with “context.”\u00a0 So imagine while you’re bleeding, people are offering you “context.”\u00a0 That was just very, very painful.”\u00a0 I recall that a colleague who engages important justice work here in the States posted on October 7th, “Free Palestine!” I winced, even more as some other colleagues concurred.\u00a0 While one could certainly\u00a0 argue that an armed response to the continued occupation of Palestinians and the stranglehold on Gaza was likely or inevitable at some point, this was not a development to celebrate, but rather to grieve deeply.\u00a0 In ensuing days and weeks, Jewish friends with whom we had united publicly in response to the Tree of Life synagogue massacre and rising antisemitism in the US were articulating their own horror, grief, and fear, asking for solidarity.\u00a0 Some began to lament what they perceived as the silence of friends.\u00a0 In the wake of the Israeli government’s murderous response, there was far more protest.\u00a0 I have known Palestinians Christians living in West Bank communities who continue to suffer occupation and who grieve for Gaza.\u00a0 In Bethlehem, a Christian church displayed a nativity of Jesus in the rubble.\u00a0 There must be ample room in my heart for everyone.<\/p>\n

I call this post “Risking Expanded Heart Space” because it is indeed risky.\u00a0 It means crossing boundaries for conversations and relationship building, it will mean humanizing those we have labeled and listening deeply to their stories.\u00a0 This need not mean surrendering passion for justice or our deep love for particular people . . . it will mean having room in our hearts for more than limited loves.\u00a0 It will mean that the filters with which we receive and interpret the world will be reconfigured.\u00a0 It will mean having our investments held to the light of the gospel.\u00a0 It is disarmament; yes, a ceasefire of the soul. It means harder work.\u00a0 In the immediate, people of different minds can join together to work for ceasefire and support efforts for trauma healing and justice building that do not exclude anyone.\u00a0 For having whatever we offer include agape\u00a0<\/em>toward all, love and response for all who are suffering, and a willingness for ourselves to be transformed along with the world and its injustice.\u00a0 Listening is essential, then listening some more.\u00a0Can we hear them?<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“People came (to social media) with pre-made ideas and put them into their binary boxes of how they want to see the political world right now.”\u00a0 –Noam Shuster-Eliassi On October 7th of last year, forces of Hamas launched horrific attacks on communities in southern Israel.\u00a0 The savagery that has been revealed included the murder of[…] <\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2105"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2129,"href":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions\/2129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forgivenesslab.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}