Living in this temporal world

A wee bit of housekeeping: I've decided to export my posts here, back to Substack, which I'm still using until they choose or are compelled to sell out as well. I will continue to use Ghost though, at least until my subscription runs out. I believe the migration of posts will be better for my subscribers at Substack, who may not necessarily be benefitting from receiving my scribbles (that is, if my scribbles benefit anyone). We'll see how this works.

. . . . .

I have often reminded myself to "be in the world, not of the world," but I will confess that there are times when I wish I could withdraw from the world outside altogether (and no, I don't mean physically terminating my own life, lest you should wonder).

But can one withdraw from what is out there altogether? And what does that look like, exactly? Is it like the Greek Orthodox monastery I visited in Washington, years ago, while discerning whether I wanted to be a monastic or not? Is it like being where I live, in the environs of the heart of the city, but more or less in solitude and contemplation? And how much of the world can I allow in? Could I still watch Call the Midwife and Shrinking? Of course, I would still have to work, in order to live here. So, really, to answer my own question, I, personally, cannot withdraw from the world altogether. I realized that monasticism far from the madding crowd is beautifully sacred, but not for me. And I'm not so sure I can replicate that totally in the space I'm in. I still want to hold on to some worldly things. I want to watch Jeopardy more quietly than my bar buddies and acquaintances, but still be among them. I want to be around my friends, those who are believers, and those who follow another path.

This isn't something new for me. I have been attempting monasticism for much of my life, in the process of still working through what my purpose is here.

But have barely scratched the surface.

. . . . .

And while all that is happening in my already cluttered mind, and clogged heart (figuratively, and literally), the horror and intensity in which said horror materializes in various parts of the world, including where I live, is inescapable. Much as I decry social media (while still using it, right?), it is where independent or non-US media shows us, what our mainstream media chooses to withhold. And many of us continue to look away and/or deny it. I'm going to be honest: it is getting harder to look at images of babies who have been starved to death, and yet the plea from our Palestinian siblings is "do not look away!" And I have to look. This is one of the few ways the living can communicate now, to relay the despair, the hellscape of Genocide: to show us pictures of the malnutrition-affected dead. Those images live in my head. And while they live there, I have to ask myself, how do I show up for Gaza and the West Bank? And for Sudan? For the ethnic cleansing in the Democratic Republic of Congo? And how do I show up here, in the country we embraced upon arriving here 45 years ago, as residents, and later, citizens, and in the city in which I've lived the longest since our arrival in the US. Because for me, not speaking up, or ignoring the injustice at home, and not calling out what is clearly a Genocide before our eyes, is not living up to the life I profess I want to lead. It just isn't who I am, full stop. (And I do know who I am. I do not want to become someone I am not. I don't want to feign happiness and fun, when I don't feel like I'm happy. I am not devoid of joy, or fun. But I don't always want to do that in a group).

And the dissonance, the stresses of work, and the insecurity of knowing I am one paycheck away from homelessness, that with the rising prices of food, I spend a bit of each month lately, rationing how much I can eat, with the resources I have and the number of days left until the end of the month, this is something undeniable as well. We are dealing with stressors from all fronts, and some of us can compartmentalize better than others.

This morning I was thinking about the questions some of our primary care providers ask us about our mental health if we've indicated we're depressed. The way I've answered them sometimes results in me either being medicated, or recommended for therapy, or both. I thought, if I were to answer that today, especially the question about self-harm, or wishing I were dead, or however that is phrased, I would definitely say no. But I would also say something about how meaningless such questions could be in the situation we are living in here in the US and the world today, no disrespect to primary care and mental health care providers.

I am not here to tell anyone how to live in this temporal/material world. I am not trying to elicit sympathy or pity for something that I'm not the only one experiencing, and it is not more or less in degree than what someone else is going through. I'm not wanting to be told how to live my life, like some born-again Christians did, when I was younger, and how I should be saved. I don't need to be told that the Christianity I follow is a crutch, while those who are telling me have crutches of their own, and none of us get to judge which one is better.

I joke about being the center of the universe when something doesn't happen the way I think it should have. But here, in this world, in this place, I feel like being on the outside looking in isn't always all that different from being on the inside looking out. Looking out at that better world. We don't have to call it utopia. Community is good enough. Be it on the fringe, or closer in. Because no matter how much I feel that solitude is the better path for me to take, I need to remind myself that even the Desert Mothers and Fathers in the Church welcomed visitors and offered them hospitality in their caves and communities.

If you, dear readers, find this somewhat disjointed or disconnected, these words are a reflection, if you will, of what is racing through my mind on a daily basis, as I think about what the rest of my 60s are going to look like, insha'allah, and not just for me.

I was 10 years old when I saw Yasser Arafat in something other than an image in a newspaper, for the first time. He had come to Lahore for the Islamic Summit Conference, and representatives of each country that showed up applauded his presence in the assembly hall. We got to watch this, televised. I learned about the Palestinian struggle with my classmates, not too long afterwards from the Director of our school who had been to Palestine Lebanon. The irony of being somewhat politicized vis-a-vis the struggle at our school, but not being allowed to be political later on about the dangers of dictatorship after the 1977 coup and yet another martial law in our country, may have been lost on some of us between the ages of 13 and 16 or 17 (Class VIII to X), but what we did learn about the struggle was valuable. As did the little I learned about the Holocaust by reading Leon Uris' Mila-18. And after seeing and hearing all that I have since those impressionable years, and learning about what is happening now from both Jewish and Palestinian sources, I fear what the end result of the Genocide will be. I cannot imagine a Palestine where all her residents have all been ethnically cleansed, while Palestinians everywhere have lived with that, to a large extent, since 1948.

The previous Sunday, at church, Charlie, our visiting priest, made me stand up and show the t-shirt I was wearing. He wanted everyone to see the final question of our Baptismal Covenant in the Episcopal Church that was printed on it:

"Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?" The answer from us is:

"I will with God's help."

I had no idea I was going to be a participant in Charlie's sermon. I don't think he planned on it either, until he mentioned the word "dignity." I sometimes feel like some of his sermons are off the cuff to some extent. The lettering on my shirt has faded considerably, but one can still see the words "justice," "peace," and "dignity" clearly enough.

As the Palestinian Genocide continues, the words "peace," "justice," and "dignity" have been gradually losing their power, their significance in that particular context, as one group holds on to whatever dignity they have left as human beings, while the other believes they are holding on to theirs while murdering and starving them. But this striving to evacuate Gaza and the West Bank for the peace of Israeli settlers (and future Jewish ones) at the expense of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians may not restore the peace, justice, and dignity that we all want to see for ALL persons. And as I was on my way home, looking at the beauty of the shimmering river and its expanse in the sunlight, the previous evening, I thought of Gaza and the West Bank, their beauty once upon a time, and destruction now. Many of us will not be able to bear the evacuation of Palestinian Christians and Muslims from their homes, as we continue to deal with the aftermaths of ethnic cleansing throughout hundreds of years to the present. If that should come to pass, and may it not for all our sakes, how do we continue with our lives in a country whose leaders considered they favored Israel "with God's help?"

In the time that I've been writing my words of doom, Israel has allowed airdrops of aid into Gaza as well as "safe passage" of convoys carrying UN aid. According to Mosab Abu Toha, they "will reconnect" a power line to a Gaza desalination plant. The Israeli military also boarded the flotilla Handala, and were filmed for the first two and three quarters minutes before they realized they were being filmed and disabled the camera.

I don't know what "humanitarian pause" means, but apparently it does not apply to the crew aboard the Handala. And I don't know who applied the pressure on Israel, but we'll have to wait and see what this means vis-a-vis continuation, or cease-fire.

La lucha continua.

Postscript: I realize this post is getting too long, but I wanted to add that I am slowly working towards being more present, more contemplative, and giving much more to god (as far as my daily worries and anxieties are concerned) than I have been. Just so you know I'm not all about the gloom and doom, I am on a path. Peace, n.