Christmas/Hannukah/Eid/Diwali/Yule/Dharma Tree

It was a quiet, peaceful, rainy day in Portland. Rain all day, a piano lesson, and the smallest holiday tree ever. That’s it, all 4 inches of it, on my window sill. I created a post for Threads, Instagram, and Facebook, using one of my photos of Margie and her kufiya (Extra): there is an all-day memorial tomorrow, to those who have died in Gaza since October 8. I’m helping to publicize it. It’s being organized by the Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian Students Center at Portland State University.

Despite continuing horrors in Gaza, I have something hopeful to report today. Thanissara sent us a link to Sami B. Awad, a Palestinian man living in Bethlehem who has a transformative vision for mutually-respectful relations among Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the Holy Land, a vision he describes in a video on his website. 

In an Instagram post (@sami.b.awad ) Awad says this: I chose. I chose to stand against your hate and not hate you, to resist your persecution and not demean you, to overcome your oppression and not suppress you, to respond to your violence with nonviolence. I chose to speak loud and clear for freedom and life and not insult you. I chose love to be my motivation. This love is not romanticised love that makes me submit to you and give you “my all.” This love is not the love that justifies and excuses your actions. This love is my strength because it conquers my fear. Only in this love can we come together to break all systems of oppression and create the new.

It’s bracing to learn that he’s still dreaming of that new. I question the strategy of nonviolence. So long as the police and the military remain armed, the power imbalance is perpetuated and violence can continue. But I do admire Awad's vision of mutual respect and peaceful neighborliness and the conviction with which he dreams it.