A Birth in Gaza

As a general rule, I don’t talk about my faith – on my blog, in my 3D life, or really even to most of my friends, as their beliefs differ from mine.  I truly am the ‘co-exist’ person.  My faith does not call on me to proselytize; it does not have the burden that everyone else must believe as I do; I try to value people as they are, without adding the burden of expectations upon them.  As a result, the bedrock of my beliefs is often at great odds in the world that I inhabit. I am careful and considerate of other’s beliefs, or their choice to not believe. I don’t always receive the same in kind, but I try to look at where that person is coming from and use that to filter – their perspective, in other words.

Across every fence, every line that can be drawn, in thought and in action, there is another human being.

As a Torah keeper (best one can be outside of the land it was designed for), I am at odds with every other faith and non-faith on the planet, even Judaism, the closest cousin and most recognizable in similarities.  I’ve not stated my thoughts on Gaza and Israel because, well, I’d offend probably nearly everyone and stymie those that I didn’t offend. A good friend referred me to this blog post, and I will say more by posting their words than by burdening you with my own. It is their perspective I’d like to bring to you today:

countingducks

To those unknowing of my childhood my enigmatic and disconnected behaviour must have seemed odd and possibly uncivilised. In youth I could not see beyond getting by and surviving day by day; ‘learning’ was another country where less damaged people lived. I was busy trying to fly that alien craft I was to discover was myself. Sometime after youth I became aware I was a bruise, and every touch hurt me: intimacy, my most desired wish remained my deepest fear. In time, looking around me I saw that everyone has their bruises, and understood like me, that to a greater or lesser extent our limping and imperfect journey to a fog-bound destination was marked by the need for self-protection. Those marks, invisible to the naked eye, were our unspoken history, not recorded in those smiling photographs taken on the beach, sitting beside the man who abused you when the lights went out, or…

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