My Heart is in the East

My heart is in the East.

For the past three weeks, I, like so many of my friends, have been glued to some kind of screen, watching events in Israel and Gaza shift and grow, from conflict to conflagration. I scroll through the news feeds, click on the links, stare in horror and in hope - as if those pixelated words and images were water in the desert and I were dying of thirst.

I have a friend who flew back from Israel yesterday. Today he went to a rally in New York, and stood in front of the United Nations, to stand for Israel, to mourn for Gaza, to demand - to pray for - no more dead. No more innocent blood. His sign was in English, Hebrew. Oh yeah - and Arabic.

His sign was ripped and torn by another who'd come to stand with Israel. Apparently, there's standing, and then there's standing. Hatred and ignorance have no borders. War is infectious.

My heart is in the East. I breathed in its dust, and the spice of its air. I walked through its tangled, crowded roads. I prayed at the Kotel. I stood in the seas - three of them in all. I tasted olive oil from fields as old as God, and stood silently among the birdsong of the Golan. I walked that antique, sacred land, felt the weight of centuries and the echoes of people searching for God and home.

My heart is in the East. More and more, though, I cannot shake the feeling that "East" is everywhere - or it can be nowhere at all.

This morning, I drove my son to a school on the west side of Chicago. He's in Debate Camp. It's a prestigious program, a training ground that will help to prepare him for the rigors of High School debate competition. The school is less than ten miles from my little suburban home. Ten miles. Ten. From Skokie to the West Side of the city - and there is a war going on there.

I want to back away from that statement, soften it, make it undramatic. It's not the same - not even close - to the battlegrounds of Gaza, or Syria, or Nigeria, Or the Ukraine. Pick a conflict - as if death and destruction can be contained like that: a mere disagreement, with the combatants a couple of schoolboys with raised fists and raised voices, to be settled with a sternly worded letter.

Less than ten miles from my home, there is a world of violence and hatred, of bombed-out, boarded-up buildings and rubble-strewn streets. People stared as we drove by, eyes hard and flat. Worse, were the people whose eyes were as dead as their hope. There is poverty and hunger and despair, and it's killing neighborhoods and people in ones and twos and tens, every day. We do not have to go to Gaza to see people who walk through a war zone every day of their lives, trying just to live their lives, raise their kids, and they are met with blockades that we ourselves erect at almost every turn.

There have been almost two hundred fatalities due to gun violence in Chicago  this year alone, concentrated disproportionately on the west and south sides: almost one for every day of the year so far. Now multiply these numbers by Detroit, or the Ninth Ward, the South Bronx and Watts. Any city. Every city. War is infectious.

The death toll is rising so rapidly that we are almost numb to it. I call it the race to the new normal. How quickly we become inured to what weeks - days - only moments before would have be untenable. We are genuinely saddened by it. We talk about it over coffee, on Facebook, in the board room and the living room; we shrug at the inevitability of this new reality.

"What can we do?" we sigh. The problem is too big, too endemic and ingrained. It's the government. It's the people. It's the politicians. It's the Left. The Right. The ignorant, the elite. It's too big, been with us too long. It's just the way it is. But there's a sale on and there's little league and bills to pay and work to be done.

Don't get me wrong - there is poverty and violence and hatred in the suburbs. We do not live in a magic land, protected by a magic barrier. And there are spots of light and grace, even on the West Side, people and communities committed to making a difference, building bridges and working for peace. For justice.

Those aren't just tired old words that people used to use way back when. They are real and vibrant and within reach. They are not naive, nor are they passe, these ideals, and with them love, and hope, and truth. There is something bold about them, and magnificent. They are not simple or easy. They will not just come because we want them or wish for them. We have to sweat for them, work harder than we ever have. If we don't we will bleed for them. We will die for them. Because without them, we have nothing but bombed-out buildings and rubble-strewn streets.

There once was a man, who looked out his window one day, who saw despair and hopelessness and hunger and want and desperate need. He saw inhumanity and cruelty and hatred honored and raised up as virtues throughout the land. He wept then, and cried out to God: "Creator of all, of light and hope and mercy - how can You allow all of these horrible things to be, to flourish?" And he wept more. Suddenly, in the space between breaths, from one heartbeat to the next, he heard God say, "How can you?"

Today, I stand with humanity. I mourn for the senseless death of innocents. Blood is blood. No more dead.

My heart is in the East, and the East is all around me, echoing with centuries and God.

Six Thousand Miles

War is not quiet.
It's filled with the blare
Of rockets
And sirens
And inconsolable screams.

I can hear this,
Even six thousand miles away.

Sirens race past my window,
A trumpeting of danger,
To herald
incoming wounded
Bound for the hospital
Only blocks away.
They're nothing but
Pale echoes
Not the banshee wail of war,
With their warnings of
Incoming rockets -
Incoming destruction,
Measuring precision in
the radius of a widening
Circle.

I pause, even so,
Disquieted.
Now I hear them differently,
these sirens,
even six thousand miles away.

Every monitor
Is filled with the screeching,
screaming
Noise of war -
With talking heads,
And jagged rubble,
And incendiary,
Incandescent
Rage.
And all of it stops,
in unsettled
rattling stillness,
That is never quite
Quiet,
To honor the grieving
of soldiers
and civilians
For their Dead.

War is an after image
of fireworks
captured behind closed eyes.
I wait for the
coming boom,
The unrelenting sound
of war,
and the grainy
gritty
barrage of
pictures
and pain.

I watch it unfold,
This time-lapsed flower,
Blossoming violence
and bursting
bright
Red
on a plasma screen.

Six thousand miles feels
Like inches
on plasma.

Images course through
The wired veins of my
television,
Traveling six thousand miles
In ones and zeroes,
To flow through the plasma
That connects me
To the world
And the noise of
War.


c Stacey Zisook Robinson
July 2014

I Knew You Once

I remember your kindness
In the desert.
We wandered there
In the dry air
that carried the scent of almonds.

Oh! my Beloved,
You spread salvation before me,
Cast in iron
and tasting of copper,
pockmarked,
eroded with the weight of centuries
and rain.
My bridal veil is trampled
before those walls
And the bread of
Blessing
is dust in my mouth.

But I remember your kindness.

I knew you once,
Before ever the land was sown -
This land that lays heavy with dew
And sacred grains
and the blood of princes
and priests
and children,
Who fought for
the glory of your Name,
Or no Name at all,
But for Glory alone.
They prostrate themselves before altars
That once were Yours,
Now reeking of incense and
Want.

But I remember your kindness,
My Beloved;
I knew you once,
and I felt the salvation
You offered
Like a cooling balm.
And I will weep for the land;
I will weep for the dying;
I will weep for the lost.
And I will sing praises to your name.



Based upon Jeremiah 1:1 - 2:3


c Stacey Zisook Robinson
July 2014

Ani Tefillah

I climbed a ladder of light
Spanning a river
   of cool water
      and liquid fire.
There is no space between 
My soul.
No separation from 
My breath.

This river 
That flows through
Dust and heat,
That is light--
   That tastes of summer
      And salt,
         And smells of desire--
This light 
That plays with shadow
And is tangled with
Infinity.

There is no distance from
my heart
that beats in sacred rhythm--
   in pounding
      thrumming
        lightening rhythms--
Urging me to move,
And be still,
And flow with liquid 
Fire.

I am caught--
And I am carried--
And I climb
This ladder of light.
And there,
At the center--
At my beginning, 
At my end,
Which is all of me--
In that place,
I dance 
In the palm of God's hand
And I am whole.

Selah.