Thursday, May 15, 2008

Someone's celebration is someone else's catastrophe


Palestinian school girls in Gaza. Image from Electronic Intifada, taken by Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.


"She said, go play outside, but don’t..."

He said more stupid things that made you despair of being Canadian.

While the Israeli nation celebrates its 60th "birthday", on May 15th Palestinians commemorate the Nakba ~ the catastrophe.

There are some stories about the lasting impact of the Nakba on children here.

The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water,

and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
    ~     Wendell Berry 



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