Nature

 I am struggling with a heading.  The blessing of nature, the indifference of nature?  The contrariness of nature?

On Tuesday I went to Emek Beit Shean with the birding group.  It was a cold, windy, rainy day, the kind I love.  The valley, about an hour and a half drive from where I live, in the center. It is the eastern end of the beautiful Jezreel Valley where I lived on the kibbutz, and is bounded by the Gilboa mountains, and the Jordan river.  At this time of the year, in Israel, Tu b'Shvat (we went just one day before)  which is the holiday of the new trees.  Schoolchildren go out planting trees, as does everyone wherever they are.  The mountains and the valley are covered in fields of emerald green, the spring flowers are beginning their brief and glorious display.  Red and white anemones, pink, mauve, and white cyclamen.  The citrus trees are loaded, there are carpets of wild mustard dotted with deep mauve lupine.

The birds, to my amazement seem to love this weather as much as I do. The fish ponds are full and the skies are full of the wonder and beauty of nature. 

BUT, we had all heard the terrible news that morning, 21 soldiers killed by a blast in Khan Yunis.  And yet, nature, oblivious, moves on and does what it should, when it should.  Fields of red poppies grown around Kibbutz Beeri, the scene of the October 7 massacre.   Us humans do terrible things to each other, but nature continues, through it all. It is changing because of climate change, but it will adapt, and continue to cause wonder.  It continues throughout droughts, floods, avalanches, - it survives, and will survive, even if we as a species do not.

And, as we were leaving, a rainbow.

                                            

 

Both Inspiring and Sombre

 Last night I attended the protest outside the Habima in Tel Aviv.  We are still at war, and these demonstrations have only recently restarted.  Even so, there were about 20,000 people who attended.  Many many thousands more demonstrated outside Bibi's house in Caesarea.  20,000 people - Israelis, stood silent for at least a minute in honour of those who have been massacred, murdered, raped, taken hostage, killed and wounded in the line of duty.  20,000 sombre people calling for elections to be held now. We do not want the messianic, self serving, narcisssistic, egotistical people who do not have anyone's interests, but their own, for even a minute longer.  It is because of them and their divisive corrupt 'leadership' that we are in this tragedy. We want the country to return to the moral standards and ethical standards we worked for, and died for. The people who spoke were those from the Otef (the kibbutzim and settlements near Gaza) - people whose children, parents, grandparents, babies, were slaughtered. People whose loved ones were taken hostages. People who were hostages that were killed in error by the Israeli Defence Forces. Mothers of soldiers who are fighting now.

And then we walked to the Hostage Square to hear sisters, parents, friends, speak.  106 days; Today 107, tomorrow 108 - we can count.  Please let the counting stop.

 

A Cold and Rainy Day

Today I went up to Shoresh, a community nestled in the hills of Jerusalem.  It was blustery, rainy, and FOGGY - reminding me  of the Bay Area.  Amongst some of the things I miss are the fog enshrouded bay and the gothic redwood groves.  I left knowing I would miss these vistas, but they are forever a part of me,  within me here and now. The perspective of space and place and time in which we carry out our lives is so linear, and compartmentalized,  but it is really not all packed into separate containers. Inside we carry our young selves, our present selves, our future selves, all co existing in a pool of place and time.

I can close my eyes and be in the bush in South Africa.  I am on the beach in Ramsgate and feel the hot golden beach sand burn my feet as I jump from towel to towel to the Indian ocean. I feel the waves crash down on me and carry me, laughing, to the shore. I smell that indescribable scent of a night along the northern California coast - an intoxicating mix of pine, smoke from wood cabins, redwoods, the tang of the delicately salted air from the Pacific.

Everything is here within me as I look at the TV and hear the opening statements of the trial against Israel in Den Haag.  I for one, am deeply saddened by the war and the countless (no, there is a definite count of Palestinian dead - 22,000) in Gaza, but why have no countries spoken about Hamas, and the horrors they perpetrate? Of the fact that Israel was attacked, pillaged, raped?  And the hostages?  My very being, with all that it contains, all the memories, the past and the present, cries out, but noone seems to hear.