In these restless days,
I’ve been working with -
Oscillation. Engage, (rest), digest, integrate. Engage, (rest), digest, integrate. Existence in days like these must be circular, not linear. Calm doesn’t descend into rage but holds it close in a genderless ballroom dance, rapidly alternating between leader and clumsy-footed follower.
Pendulation. Where does it hurt? Where does it not? Or, where does it hurt less? Where is the beauty, the aching goodness, that allows me to turn back towards the horror? I swing through my days like the pendulum on an old grandfather clock. I cannot control the force of gravity that sweeps me sideways and makes me seasick, but I can gather what I need along the way. I can try to keep the weight evenly distributed to avoid swinging off course, into the debris of wood chips and broken glass.
Last night I attended the Christmas concert of a local choir. They were joined by several special guests: a children’s choir, a soprano, a writer.
Is love alive?
sing the children. Is it? I think to myself. Yes, oh yes, it is! It is so very alive. And then I am swinging again, back into scenes of bloodied children who cry a deeper-wrenched cry than any child ever should. Where is there to oscillate to? Alone in the audience, I wage a battle against the tears. How can we let our children celebrate when this is the reality of their world? How can we not?
Herod the king, in his raging,
charged he hath this day,
his men of might, in his own sight,
all young children to slay
sing the adults. The Coventry Carol represents a lullaby from mothers to their doomed children after Herod ordered the killing of every male infant under the age of two. Herod. Netanyahu. Biden. The killing of children. The taking of innocent lives. The only difference is that Herod didn’t mask his intent when choosing his words.
The writer takes the stage to tell the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914, when it was the soldiers themselves, the people on the frontlines, who initiated a temporary ceasefire on Christmas Eve. Where are the frontlines in Gaza? Hospitals, schools, makeshift refugee camps, people’s homes, these are the frontlines. It is said that the soldiers played football together on no man’s land. Where is no man’s land in Gaza? Where are the trenches? It is said that the soldiers joined their voices in song, and Silent Night rang out across the battlefields. Will the people of Gaza ever know another silent night?
The other day I was disappointed when the spiritual teacher Jack Kornfield responded to what we must by now agree is a genocide with the simple statement:
“Today, I am taking sides. I am taking the side of peace.”
How lovely that sounds. It calls to mind a contestant at a beauty pageant announcing to rapturous applause that all she truly desires is world peace. I think most people want peace. But try explaining to an unarmed population, who have no power whatsoever to bring a halt to the violence being inflicted on them by the same people who are preventing aid from reaching them, that you are taking the side of peace. What does that mean, exactly? What can they do with your abstract declarations of peace as the only answer?
I recall his words as I listen to the story of the Christmas Truce. I think of the soldiers playing football and singing Christmas carols together. It may not have been as romantic as the film Joyeaux Noël might have us believe (then again, it may have been) but it happened none-the-less. Then I think of what I’ve seen of Israeli soldiers in Palestine, and try to imagine a similar situation arising if a truce was called. Impossible. It simply would not happen. It has long been time to stop calling this a ‘war’ and speaking of ‘sides’.
Peace, yes. But justice and liberation first. There cannot be any genuine peace where there is no justice. There cannot be justice where oppression stamps out freedom.
In contrast, I am grateful for the teachers and the artists and all of the humans who are turning towards the difficulty to use their voices with compassion and generosity. My own yoga and somatics teacher Lisa Petersen recently wrote about sharing her sadness with her students, asking what kind of teacher you would be if you didn’t lead from what is in your heart and make space for it in the room? Shortly afterwards myself and my colleague were leading a creative workshop called Interlude at The ACRE Project, where we are artists in residence, and I did something I rarely do as a facilitator: I showed vulnerability. On purpose. When I was studying for my MA in Community Music a few years back, one of my lecturers told me I was “very even”. He said that no matter what kind of day I was having, I always brought the same temperament into the room. He meant it as a compliment and I think I’ve worn it with pride ever since. But at the outset of this workshop, I told the participants I was struggling with what’s going on in the world. I told them that the reason I wanted to voice this was to set the tone that it’s ok, it’s welcome here. I was met with a circle of nodding heads and loosening jaws and full-bodied sighs and what followed was a morning of beautiful shared vulnerability.
And so I oscillate. I pendulate. I dip and dive and swing and crash and break apart and put myself back together again. Because, in the words of Hala Alyan: “We owe Gaza endurance.” We owe each other endurance.
I heard it said that we should thank the people of Palestine, for awakening us, for shaking us up, for showing us the truths of the world that needed to be exposed. Something about this made me squirm. Am I, in my comfort and privilege, to use someone else’s unimaginable suffering as a vehicle for awakening? Actually, yes. I must. We must.
We must awaken.
O sisters too, how may we do
for to preserve, this day,
this poor youngling for whom we do sing:
"Bye bye, lully, lully"?
The word lullaby is thought to have originated from sounds used by mothers to sing their children to sleep. Mothers the world over sing to their children. Fathers the world over sing to their children. These past few weeks our screens have shown us mothers, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, singing to their children. And they have shown them to us as they say goodbye. Bye, bye, lully, lully.
And so I oscillate. I pendulate.
I look for the kindness in the eyes of nearby strangers so that I can continue to look at the pain in the eyes of faraway strangers.
I examine the transitory colours and shapes of the dying-and-rebirthing landscape around me to replenish my conviction that this world is beautiful.
I search for the parts of my body that don’t hurt so that I can draw on their softness to soothe the parts that burn. I am the ballroom dance of calm and rage.
I don’t deny the children around me the joy that inhabits them but instead attempt to absorb it into the corners of my heart where it can share a home with the rage I will no longer apologise for harbouring.
Because I cannot awaken if it is not with the fullness of myself.
Is love alive?
Yes, and it must be made stronger than its opposing forces.
Its tentacles farther-reaching,
its roots deeper-growing.
How can we not oscillate vastly right now? Though Palestinians have been suffering for so long under white supremacy...now sides are clearer.
The contrast you write about clearly here has never been more vivid - thanks for sharing.