Ceasefire wishes at dusk

I’m back, though the genocide continues. I thought I had to stop blipping because nothing I am doing feels real to me while this horrible thing is happening in Palestine. But it goes on and on and on. 

Yesterday I saw Ingunn in Oslo’s blip, and I learned from her journal that I can keep on posting, even as unthinkable violence continues, as a million people (if that many are still alive) are being bombed, starved, and denied water to the point of death by dehydration. I am thankful every time I swallow a mouthful of water. I am thankful as I walk through this city that we aren’t being bombed, that we have the privilege of carrying on with our little safe lives. But I would be much more thankful if no one had to live in that madness. 

I can be here as the violence continues, though I may not respond to comments as much as I have in the past. 

I am here with a few resources if anybody wants them, if you haven’t already heard all you can bear to hear, if you are one of the people who joins me in concern for the Palestinian and Israeli people.

Today the US Congress “censured” the only Palestinian-American who has been elected to work in that congress. They censured her for calling for a ceasefire, and her five-minute speech moves me and may move you and includes, "The cries of Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me."

A group of “Rabbis for Ceasefire” is offering an online service via Zoom, starting tomorrow, as they write: “From the depths of our despair, Rabbis for Ceasefire is opening a daily online shloshim gathering space for each life lost in Israel and Palestine on and since October 7th.” Here’s the link, and whether you want to join the Zoom or not, you can read the words of their very eloquent statement about our “profound need to mourn.”

Some American Buddhists have created a petition to beg the President of the USA to demand an immediate ceasefire. If I had been on the committee that drafted that petition, I would have vetoed the closing quotation from the Beatles and the somewhat wheedling tone, but I wasn’t, so there it is. 

We go on while we can. We say CEASEFIRE now. We know that our voices don’t matter to the people who have the power to make a ceasefire happen. But we say Ceasefire because we can still speak, whether anyone listens or not.

I made the photo as I was walking home from my weekly visit with Margie. She remains as she has been for a while. I will say more another time.