Parisian storm

Under brooding clouds one day in June 2007, a friend and I visited the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre in Paris, perched on a small hill overlooking numerous tourist shops, hawkers, musicians, hotdogs for homesick Americans, and couples kissing each other. It is a visually stunning church that is utterly different to the Notre Dame de Paris. Dignified and quiet, nuns and priests gather for wide-ranging reflection on God and the divine life. Such solemnity precludes practically everything one may want to do in a sacred space: talk, take a photograph, drink a drink, and eat a hamburger. This, at least, is what the signs at the entrance explicitly banned. There were two big African guys enforcing the regulations. They kicked out a couple of fat drunken pink-faced tourists in pastel shirts who made a mockery of the rules by taking a photo. Within moments of their small camera's flash lighting up the cavernous interior, the two enforcers descended on them and firmly escorted them to the exit.
While we were outside the Sacré-Coeur, it began to rain. Along with many others, we took cover under the entrance way at the top of the steps of the great Church. It began to rain harder, so we all moved inside the entrance way a little more. Then the wind picked up. We moved inside a little more. Then both the rain and the wind intensified. We soon realised we were in a storm. Hiding behind even one of the immense stone pillars was useless in the face of such a deluge, and as the water descended upon us, screams of laughter and fear emanated from young American and Spanish girls as the wind enthusiastically whipped the heavy drops of rain into practically every nook and cranny of the entrance way. We tried to go inside the Church but the doors were sealed shut. People cried out for the doors to open, and they opened. We all piled in, wet, cold, and with smiles of relief and joy on our faces.

The woman on the train

I saw her first at the underground railway station. She was about 30. Her face was red. It must have been a cold. She had a book with her. It was written in Turkish. I also had a book, by VS Naipaul. After arranging her clothes she settled into her seat to read. The train approached. She quickly got up, anticipating the train's arrival. We both needed a seat. We each found one. We smiled at each other. It is much easier to read while sitting. She opened her book and resumed her reading. I resumed mine. But she was too intriguing, so I ignored my book and watched her as she traced her finger over the words she was reading. Soon she was speaking the words to herself, immersed in the world the pages conveyed. The author's mind and her mind were meeting as the stations came and went. The author did not know. But I did, watching this woman on the train.

God's villages

Once there was a man walking in a field with God. As they passed near a village, God asked the man if he knew the people living there. The man said he did. God asked him if he knew their religion. The man said “they are Jews.” The pair continued to walk and eventually they passed beside another village. God asked the man if he also knew the people in this village. The man said he did. God asked him he knew their religion. The man said “they are Muslims”. They continued walking and saw more villages. One was Christian. Another was Hindu. One was even Buddhist. God asked the man why the villages had different religions. The man thought about it for a long time. The only answer he could give was that the village children learned their religion from their elders, who were taught by their elders, going back generations, all the way to their prophets. God asked the man if he could explain why a certain child was born in one village and not another. The man said “only you know that”.

El tornado - the story of the little vacuum cleaner that could

"With some people coming tomorrow night," I thought, "I had better cleanup."

I got the apartment building's shared vacuum cleaner, and innocently turned it on, not anticipating the maelstrom that was about to immediately ensue. In a violent outburst of noise, dust and bits and bobs exploded out of the top left corner of the vacuum cleaner's plump bag, forming a brown mushroom cloud. A veritable torrent of dust was unleashed. The hazy dust cloud covered the entire room with every other apartment's dirt. I stumbled through the gloom to the door, only to be greeted with the piercing screams of the smoke alarm.

"Thank God I started with Paulus's room," I thought.

After powering off the dangerous machine -- not yet having actually vacuumed anything up -- I removed the still full bag and took it out to the dumpster to empty it. Out came a mountain of dust, lots of long black hair, and a couple of used contraceptives. I was glad they had not blown out of the bag.

I reflected on the bag's crude design. You practically needed to be a mechanic to open it. That may have explained why it had apparently not been emptied for some years. Only a clever genius must understand why its design was patented.

As I stomped flat the bag's metal flap to close it up, I pondered the vacuum cleaner's incredible sucking power. It sucked like there was a tornado in town. That was it then, its name had to be "el tornado".

* I am kidding about starting in Paulus's room. And the contraceptives also. But everything else is true!

The boy who learned to cook

I recently made a new friend from Kenya. He knows how to cook, being taught by his mother from a young age how to not only cook, but also wash dishes and generally make himself helpful around the house. When he was a small boy, he thought nothing of this, because for him this was normal. When he became older, however, and played with other boys, he realised this was far from normal. He realised the other boys had to do none of these things. Instead, the women and girls of the house did everything. He questioned the wisdom of his mother's approach, and began to rebel. One day his mother sat him, his three brothers and two sisters down and had a talk with them. She pointed out that as there were only two girls, and four boys, it was unfair to expect the girls to do all the work for the boys. She had a valid point there, my friend had to admit. But we all know that inequity is often insufficient motivation to change people's personal behaviours, especially if it involves them doing extra work. She then asked the children if one day they might like to be married.

"Of course!", replied all the children.

She said to the boys, "What do you think of a situation where one day you come home and you are hungry. There is a lot of food in the house, but you do not know how to prepare it. Imagine some reason why your wife cannot prepare the food for you. Maybe she is not there, or maybe she is not feeling well. How would you feel that all that food was sitting there, and you could do nothing?"

The boys admitted avoiding such a situation would be a good thing.

Then came the clincher. She asked the boys if they wanted to grow up to be real men.

"Of course!", replied the boys.

"Imagine if you cannot cook," she continued. "You can see that your wife can make all kinds of demands from you. She could say 'I want this and I want that, and if you want dinner, you have to do it for me'. If you are totally dependent on her for your food, she can do that. Do you want to be controlled by her? Do you think you would be a real man if she controlled your life like that?"

My friend learned to cook and clean. His mother is a clever woman.

Separation

Jerusalem is a city I am familiar with, having lived here for half a year. Returning to Jerusalem has surprised me. I have experienced a sadness I did not anticipate, a sadness caused by the overwhelming sense of separation the city engenders. Palestinians are separated from Jews by the separation barrier. Jews are separated from their most holy site, the Temple Mount. Muslims call this same holy site the al Haram al Sharif. Today Muslims control this site, and yet many Palestinian Muslims living in the West Bank and Gaza are seperated from this site because Israel denies them permission to enter its territory.


Dome of the Rock on the al Haram al Sharif

With a classmate I discussed the sense of sadness I feel at the sense of separation here. I was not able to articulate at all well what I was feeling. My time here now is different to my time here last year. Then it struck me. Life has not changed here so much since I left, but I have. I am separated from my mother, who died earlier this year. I am separated from those I love most dearly. I have become more sensitive to the pain of separation.

I am reminded of a story from India my meditation teacher Eknath Easwaran taught me. It has been years since I read it, but if anything its profundity has only increased since I first saw it. Once there was a man walking through a field with God. They were talking. God was thirsty and asked the man to get him a cup of water. The man walked to a village and in the first house he came across, he was greeted by a magnificently beautiful woman. The man fell in love. He forgot about the cup of water. He had a family with the woman. Life was good. The family prospered in the happy life of the village. One day there was a flood. Everyone in the village died except the man, who was devastated at the loss of his wife and his family. God appeared before the man and asked him if he had his cup of water.

This religious tale resonates deeply with me because it reminds me of one the central dilemmas of humanity, separation. One is tempted to think the ultimate form of separation is death. Yet according to the mystics what we are really separated from is the divine Self within us all. Until we are in union with God within, we will always be searching for ways to overcome that separation.


Learning to pray at the Western Wall

In life we seek connection with others, through community, family, our work and of course most especially through those we love. This story tells us in dramatic terms that no matter how deep and beautiful a connection with we have with others, we should always strive for the divine Self within.

You might be asking yourself, this is all very well and good, but what does this have to do with something like the separation barrier? Is not this barrier an expression of Israeli power imposing its will upon the Palestinian people? Is not one of the goals of the barrier--in some places an 8m high wall, in other places a fence--to reduce violence? Here you are talking of divine love, while in Jerusalem, this holy city, it is power that carries the day.

I ask you in return, is the separation of Palestinian and Israeli peoples the best way to reduce hatred and fear between them? Or will it merely increase hatred among those it affects most negatively? But most of all, is the vision it is based on all that humanity is capable of? Is it the best we can expect from the Holy Land for now?


Intimacy and power side-by-side

Naturally different people will have different answers to these questions, as well as questions of their own. I am left wondering, however, how to connect love with power, and human bonds with human separation. I am wondering how intimacy is confronted by the ordinary facets of everyday life. And I want to write about them in this blog.