Opinion | A death in Gaza and a spiritual explosion

I caress the unknown…

Bear with me as I finish my short walk. The other day I was strolling through my neighborhood with two walking sticks, “forcing” myself to enjoy the beautiful afternoon, but really just plodding along, in a hurry to get home and get this little exercise over with.

But then, oh, just for a moment, I stopped in my haste, took a deep breath, and continued on my way slowly and deliberately. Suddenly I was no longer in a senseless hurry, but, my God, surprisingly awake and present in this beautiful moment of sky, grass, and sidewalk concrete. I felt the air filling my lungs and cherished every step I took, knowing that one of them would – one day – be my last.

That moment, which I sometimes call the “blue pearl of awareness,” lasted—how long? Maybe a minute or so. I was almost home. I picked up a small plastic bag on a neighbor's lawn, savoring the chance to do some good in the world. Then I was home. And now? The moment was essentially over. I could hear the usual inner voices again—the scolding and worrying and giving up—but even so, I knew something wonderful had just happened. I accepted it as best I could: Life is good, right now, in this moment.

Then I went online and started scanning snippets of news, which is of course always emotionally difficult. I had just experienced a moment that seemed “normal” to me in a way that went beyond the usual way in which we (that is, me) dismiss normality as no big deal. In this embrace of this consciousness, the actual universe continues to happen, one nanosecond or whatever, at a time. In its absence, we have something much less: the news of the day, the limited world defined by collective agreement—a world of winners and losers, good guys and bad guys. A world, you might say, that we must constantly lock in an emotional cage just because it's so annoying.

As I was checking in on the state of affairs, I came across a snippet of data that suddenly brought me back to a larger consciousness – but not happily, not willingly. This was just a small piece of “normality” from around the world, a single moment in the much, much larger context of war. More specifically, the hellish war in – against – Gaza.

The story, as I said, hit me at a time when I still felt open and present and, if I may say so, connected to the evolving universe. So I couldn't immediately put the boy's death or the horror context surrounding it into the stat box.

What happened was just another Israeli bombing in Rafah. For some reason, a park was the target. Children were playing in the park. Among those killed were four members of a particular family: the mother, her daughter and two sons, the youngest of whom was 18 months old.

The surviving father is quoted in the story as saying: “I saw the bodies of my wife Faten and my daughter Huda, my son Arkan and my baby Ahmad. I was told that he was headless. I just took a look inside the body bag and saw his body without a head. I could not bear the sight anymore.”

The story later states: “Ahmad's head has not been found since his violent death, and Abdul Hafez was forced to bury his son without him. He was buried next to his mother and siblings amid the ruins of Gaza.”

I repeat: Ahmed’s head was not found…

And here are the words of one of the surviving siblings: “I hope to be killed so I can join him in heaven.”

The story hit me, as I said, at a time when I still felt open and present and, if I may say so, connected to the evolving universe. So I couldn't immediately put the boy's death or the horror context surrounding it into the statistics box: 40,000 (or more) Palestinians have been killed so far; this is one of them. Instead, I felt a deep spiritual explosion… the Big Bang had just happened again.

I don't know what else to say or what conclusion to come to, so instead I'll close with a poem I wrote recently called “The Gods Get in Touch with Their Feminine Side”:

I caress the unknown,
the dark silence that
Soul of a mother. I
pray if that is what
Prayer is: to awaken the certainties,
Pride and flag and brittle
God to stir
the cave has lost.
I pray openly
the large craters
and trenches of
Obedience and masculinity.
Now is the time
to appreciate the apple,
to touch and love the wound,
the turned cheeks and ball tips,
rewind
the helpless future
and know
and don't know
what happens next.