The Table: January 2024
Welcome to The Table! I'm so glad you're here.
What is The Table? It's this community right here, one that we've been growing together over time and distance. Some of you have been here since before I got married or when I lived in Liberia. Some of you are newer; maybe we became friends on social media or you purchased a copy of my book. One thing is for certain, though: you belong here. There is space for you to bring your whole self to this table, space for you to dream and doubt and wonder. The welcome of God is wild and wide, and mine is, too. There's never not enough room. I'll keep pulling up another chair, setting more places, inviting one and all to this place where we can find glory in the midst of our everyday living.
Thank you for being here.
xo,
I visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem last year. I took a solemn place at the far corner of the women’s side of the wall, my Jewish sisters wailing and bowing in shoklen beside me. As I surveyed the countless prayers folded into the wall’s cracks, and placed my own hand upon the stones that seemed to pulse with a life all their own, I started to weep. It was as if I could feel all the layers of pain and displacement and grief that had built up over the millennia. Here is this land that has been violently challenged by empire after empire, bloodily ripped from the hands of people group after people group, and Jews have this one wall left from the ruins of the pinnacle of their faith, the Temple. A woman beside me, tears quietly running down her cheeks, leaned forward to kiss the stones.
After I prayed, I walked back up the little hill to wait for the rest of the group when loud clapping and drumming caught my attention. Off to my right was a crowd celebrating a young boy’s bar mitzvah, celebrating as they hoisted him up and slowly wound their way around the narrow streets of Jerusalem.
One of the blue balloons escaped the grasp of an older man in the crowd; he lifted his head to watch it float away. We both smiled as it rose higher and higher until no one could possibly tell where the balloon ended and sky began.
I cannot help but wonder what ruins the people of Gaza will pray at.
Will they return to the walls where their family homes once stood? Where there were hospitals? Schools? Will they pray in the scorched olive groves that had been in the family for centuries? Will they wail at the rubble marking where their sons and daughters died?
On social media, I saw a video of a Palestinian father, holding the lifeless body of his daughter, who couldn’t have been more than…four? five?, while he said his final goodbye. “This is the soul of my soul!” he rasped in heart wrenching Arabic. He opened her eyes, looked into them for a second, closed them. Kissed her eyelids. “Where did you fly off to?” he asks.
I don’t think there are any balloons floating to the sky in Gaza these days, only souls.
I cannot help but wonder how many Jewish mothers and fathers are folding prayers for the safe return of their loved ones into the Western Wall.
On both sides of a border, a people wailing their grief.
Like many of you, I have been sick with horror and grief every day since October 7, 2023. Innocent people are caught in the middle of this volatile and escalating situation in both Gaza and Israel, and it can be easy to remain frozen in shock, unsure of what to do.
Please allow me to introduce you to World Central Kitchen, an organization I’m passionate about because they believe, like I do, that food is a universal human right.
World Central Kitchen is partnering with a local organization in Gaza to provide aid to Palestinians, and anyone else in need. Their teams are also on the ground in Israel to support displaced families and in neighboring countries, should people fleeing need assistance.
If you are looking for a tangible way to help Israelis and Palestinians, please consider visiting their website and making a financial gift. Every donation is used to support current relief efforts, including Israel & Palestine.
In tragic times like these, I have noticed a tendency in myself to feel guilty any time I experience emotions like happiness, contentment, or joy. It’s kind of akin to survivors guilt, which happens when people find shame and guilt for surviving a traumatic event though others, often family members, did not.
The people in Israel and Palestine may not be related to us by blood, but they are brothers and sisters in our human family, and if you are feeling any sort of survivors guilt, I want to tell you that your emotions are valid and understandable.
At the same time, I recognize that tragedies like this war can all too easily strip us of our humanity. One of my favorite writers, Cole Arthur Riley, reminds us that, “You can bear witness to pain without being consumed by it.” Oppressed peoples have long claimed that their joy is their resistance, and we — as artists and activities and allies and poets and protestors — have something to learn from them. If our goal is truly for the liberation of all people, then we need to set our own hearts free as well. Freed people free people; I believe this with all my heart. When we experience moments of joy, even if fleeting, we stand in solidarity with our human family and bear witness to the human experience — the good along with the bad and the ugly.
Palestinian author Ibrahim Nasrallah, when asked about joy as resistance at his Palestine Writes talk, said: “The job of the writer, sometimes, is to remind people that they have feet still capable of dancing.”
So, dear friends, consider this reminder that you are still capable of dancing, and may we all join in the dance together until bloodshed is no more & all people are free.
With that, I present this month’s Happy List:
It has been far, far too long since we last gathered here around The Table, which means you may have missed out on some of my newer posts like:
a prayer I wrote for the Holy Land based off the olive branch tattoo I got on my last night in Jerusalem
a reflection on the Imago Dei, or divine image
a liturgy I wrote for the land, sometimes called the Fifth Gospel
a piece about my calling to be a spiritual midwife
a post about the power of proximity
an essay about the one word I’ve chosen for 2024
I also share a lot of writing over on my Instagram page, which I currently have set to private (which means you will need to request to follow me; you can do so here!)
As always, I’m so grateful for your support and love having this opportunity to share good stuff for the soul to your inbox. It’s such a gift to have you at The Table with me, and I adore this community we are building together!