Today, another attack on an identifiably Jewish place. More pleas for peace, more cries, more prayers, more of the same, same, same, old stuff.
I am Jewish. And yet I cannot shed specifically Jewish tears.
My tears are human. They cry for the children who lost their fathers, for the Palestinian kids who were handed candies to celebrate the attack, for the kids all over the world who must grow up in the shadow of NEVER-ENDING violence. This violence has gone on since long before I was born and will last long after I die. I won't stop praying for peace, or working for it in whatever small way I can where I live; but today, in this moment, it feels incredibly futile. My heart is broken, not for specific lives lost as much as for the futility of the whole enterprise. Because it's another symptom of a world which is broken. A world in which we are all broken in some way.
Broken people act out badly.
We see it all the time: in schools where kids bully each other and even attack their teachers; in homes where parents drink too much to dull their pain and take their rage out on their spouses and kids; on the streets where homeless people rob each other of their meager few possessions to stay alive in the jungle that exists under the bridge.
We are all broken in some way.
You, me, everyone.
Life in this complicated, angry, hotly contested world has broken us. The twisting of the human condition has broken us. Our ache for love and connection in a world where we hide inside and type on keyboards all day has broken us. The greed of the wealthy, powerful few, spiraling out of control and pushing thousands more out onto the streets every night, has broken us. Wars over little strips of land, over religious differences, over skin color, over control of resources, have broken us. Climate change that has turned our weather patterns against us and hammered home the damage we've done over two hundred years of "progress", a progress which I am just as guilty of enjoying as anyone else. This, too, has broken us.
We are breaking the world, all of us, together. We are all responsible for the damage, for the heartache, in some way. Because we ourselves are all broken in some way, and have not yet figured out how to heal ourselves or each other.
We are all broken in some way.
So forgive me if I don't cry louder, or with more anguish, at the wholesale murder of these synagogue worshippers today. I cry today, deeply but not specifically. I cry universally. I cry completely. I cry at the brokenness in the world, a brokenness as evident at my local bus stop as in Jerusalem, and just as seemingly irreparable. I cry for my broken, bleeding faith, which today no bandage is big enough to fully cover, and for my pain which today no medicine is strong enough to dull.
I am Jewish. And yet I cannot shed specifically Jewish tears.
My tears are human. They cry for the children who lost their fathers, for the Palestinian kids who were handed candies to celebrate the attack, for the kids all over the world who must grow up in the shadow of NEVER-ENDING violence. This violence has gone on since long before I was born and will last long after I die. I won't stop praying for peace, or working for it in whatever small way I can where I live; but today, in this moment, it feels incredibly futile. My heart is broken, not for specific lives lost as much as for the futility of the whole enterprise. Because it's another symptom of a world which is broken. A world in which we are all broken in some way.
Broken people act out badly.
We see it all the time: in schools where kids bully each other and even attack their teachers; in homes where parents drink too much to dull their pain and take their rage out on their spouses and kids; on the streets where homeless people rob each other of their meager few possessions to stay alive in the jungle that exists under the bridge.
We are all broken in some way.
You, me, everyone.
Life in this complicated, angry, hotly contested world has broken us. The twisting of the human condition has broken us. Our ache for love and connection in a world where we hide inside and type on keyboards all day has broken us. The greed of the wealthy, powerful few, spiraling out of control and pushing thousands more out onto the streets every night, has broken us. Wars over little strips of land, over religious differences, over skin color, over control of resources, have broken us. Climate change that has turned our weather patterns against us and hammered home the damage we've done over two hundred years of "progress", a progress which I am just as guilty of enjoying as anyone else. This, too, has broken us.
We are breaking the world, all of us, together. We are all responsible for the damage, for the heartache, in some way. Because we ourselves are all broken in some way, and have not yet figured out how to heal ourselves or each other.
We are all broken in some way.
So forgive me if I don't cry louder, or with more anguish, at the wholesale murder of these synagogue worshippers today. I cry today, deeply but not specifically. I cry universally. I cry completely. I cry at the brokenness in the world, a brokenness as evident at my local bus stop as in Jerusalem, and just as seemingly irreparable. I cry for my broken, bleeding faith, which today no bandage is big enough to fully cover, and for my pain which today no medicine is strong enough to dull.
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