SABAWI: Where time stood still - December 31, 2009
Gaza one year after operation cast lead
Shadowsmodified
Don’t tell us a year has passed…
We don’t measure our lives by this calendar
Time has stood still for us so long ago
Punctuated only by loss and grief
And the in between moments of quiet reprieve
We don’t count on Christmas, nor Eid for cheer
We don’t fool ourselves with “happy new year”
No occasion is ever taken for granted,
When it comes to tomorrow, there are no certainties
Our yesterday is our today
Time is frozen here
And one calendar year
Will never contain our lives,
Our collective misery,
Our yearning for humanity
Don’t tell us a year has passed
Our clock stopped ticking when justice collapsed
Eclipsed by decades of repression
Hush… don’t speak of time
We have endured the absence of time
We don’t measure our lives by days like you
We measure our lives by the number of embraces
Our worth by a lover’s heartbeat
Our existence by our persistence
So, don’t tell us a year has passed….
Samah Sabawi is a writer playwright and poet. She was born in Gaza and is currently residing in Melbourne Australia.
Showing posts with label SILENCE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SILENCE. Show all posts
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Thursday, 16 July 2009
Time to pause awhile to reflect ... to pray.
In a London church ... details later."In memory of people with haemophilia who have died as a result of treatment with contaminated blood products."
Remember those who died, yes, but remember family members left mourning, and those in medical practice who carry the pain of a failed procedure to heal.
Lord, Hear our prayer.
Saturday, 10 January 2009
Their Voice Cries out into Noise and Silence
This is a powerful image of two Gazan sisters .. Palestinians found on the website www.palestinechronicle.com .... may be they are dead now. Condemned by the mighty as terrorists because they are Palestinians. This must not continue. I have included them as part of my family (on facebook ) to in some way embrace them. Will you?The noise is that of blitzkreig over Gaza. The Silence is the decision of the powerful.
I hasten to note that the photo was taken by Zoriah .... cf www.zoriah.com I have written to him to ask if he knows anything of these two girls since the blitzkreig. Zoriah has replied and indicated the girls live in Beach camp, Gaza and while he does not know what has happened to them he will seek to find out.
Tuesday, 30 December 2008
Recollections and some reflections.
In April 2001 Jocelyn and I visited the Queensland Art Gallery. The "Picasso to Renoir" Exhibition.
I purchased a blank book with Andre Derain's painting entitled 'Harlequin and Pierrot' ( 1924).
This painting by Derain was attractive, enjoyable then decidedly confronting. The soundless musicians in a barren landscape. The challenge is to reach beyond this for if the One who breathes life into dead people walking AND has done so to me then where I am, a sign of that life, at least, should be. AND do I have a song to sing? At times it seems no.
This is what I wrote on the first page of this wordless book.
(Maybe in this noiseful world the only Words available to speak are the words of silence. ... Jan. 2009 )
December 2002 and I take Chaim Potok's book "The Chosen" to read at Lennox Head - a beach side vacation. .... Danny, speaking to Reuven indicates that his father would wish that everyone would " talk in silence" ... the story addresses the delights and awful pain of friendship .... the importance of the word yet the destruction words also bring.
"A word is worth one coin. silence is worth two" a note from the Talmud.
"Silence was ugly, it was black. it leared. it was cancerous, it was death" .......
"Silence talks to me sometimes .... you have to want to listen to it and then you can hear it. ... sometimes it cries and you can hear the pain of the world in it" It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to. ..." (p 259)
"The Chosen" Chaim Potok a penguin book ISBN 0 14 003094 8
Friday, 26 December 2008
The Absent Father and the Word became Flesh
The Absent Father ( father ) in the lives of children ... of families ...... of societies ..... remains a tragedy to be addressed.
Yet ..... the announcement that the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us becomes the divine answer which sadly is often ignored even at Christmas when the affirmation is made so loudly.
Obviously this is a putting on notice that this is a theme I wish to explore this coming year. Gathering up material from research done in the past and the reminder in Rowan Williams' book "Dostoevsky Language. Faith and Fiction" will inform some of what is to follow.
Yet ..... the announcement that the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us becomes the divine answer which sadly is often ignored even at Christmas when the affirmation is made so loudly.
Obviously this is a putting on notice that this is a theme I wish to explore this coming year. Gathering up material from research done in the past and the reminder in Rowan Williams' book "Dostoevsky Language. Faith and Fiction" will inform some of what is to follow.
Saturday, 11 October 2008
Rowan Williams on Dostoevsky
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/08/religion.anglicanism
"Why was the moment when Jesus, perhaps out of compassion for the tormented Inquisitor, kisses the man and then is allowed to slip from his cell into the Seville night, possibly never to be seen again, so important for Williams? "Dostoevsky has no easy answers, but what struck me when I first read the Grand Inquisitor episode was there is absolutely no form of words that can give a solution to suffering. Absolutely none. That's why what ends the arraignment of the captive Jesus by the Grand Inquisitor is silence - and then Jesus kisses him. When I read it I had the dim sense that there was something very important in that what you look for in faith is not solutions but a certain relationship." And that's why Dostoevsky's appeal has endured for Williams: he offers no closure, no authorial master-voice, but an endless dialogue where no one wins the argument but everyone is connected."
This is a portion of the interview Archbishop Rowan Williams had about his book on Dostoevsky. I invite you to access the website noted above. The complete interview is important but this note on suffering has significant resonance for me now in relation to two very close friends. So easy to offer and speak words, so much medical assistance to relieve, to maintain but in the end the power of relationships becomes embracing. The offer of oil, and sharing of bread and wine in the setting of relationship provided a measure of healing that words and medicine could not.
A second note concerns the introduction to this interview with Rowan Williams. With all the crises afflicting the Church of England and leading up to Lambeth 2008 why did the Archbishop spend time writing a book about Dostoevsky? He had his reasons which he gives but in so many ways this was a most suitable way to prepare for Lambeth and the crises. Just to reread The Brothers Karamazov would have provided him with settings / situations / personalities to prepare for most events.
Even the paragraph provided gives a clue to what in the end is required of the archbishop, and one without constitutional powers to exercise authority. The archbishop also reminds us that the One Christians claim to follow declared His Power by his very powerlessness. After all the Cross was the Roman symbol of authority and power. Yet it is used in the purposes of God to deal with the fault lines in humanity and the created order. The Resurrection declares Rome's authority is not final. The Resurrection check mates whatever final act Rome / Babylon ... ?? might make to demonstrate its / their power.
"Why was the moment when Jesus, perhaps out of compassion for the tormented Inquisitor, kisses the man and then is allowed to slip from his cell into the Seville night, possibly never to be seen again, so important for Williams? "Dostoevsky has no easy answers, but what struck me when I first read the Grand Inquisitor episode was there is absolutely no form of words that can give a solution to suffering. Absolutely none. That's why what ends the arraignment of the captive Jesus by the Grand Inquisitor is silence - and then Jesus kisses him. When I read it I had the dim sense that there was something very important in that what you look for in faith is not solutions but a certain relationship." And that's why Dostoevsky's appeal has endured for Williams: he offers no closure, no authorial master-voice, but an endless dialogue where no one wins the argument but everyone is connected."
This is a portion of the interview Archbishop Rowan Williams had about his book on Dostoevsky. I invite you to access the website noted above. The complete interview is important but this note on suffering has significant resonance for me now in relation to two very close friends. So easy to offer and speak words, so much medical assistance to relieve, to maintain but in the end the power of relationships becomes embracing. The offer of oil, and sharing of bread and wine in the setting of relationship provided a measure of healing that words and medicine could not.
A second note concerns the introduction to this interview with Rowan Williams. With all the crises afflicting the Church of England and leading up to Lambeth 2008 why did the Archbishop spend time writing a book about Dostoevsky? He had his reasons which he gives but in so many ways this was a most suitable way to prepare for Lambeth and the crises. Just to reread The Brothers Karamazov would have provided him with settings / situations / personalities to prepare for most events.
Even the paragraph provided gives a clue to what in the end is required of the archbishop, and one without constitutional powers to exercise authority. The archbishop also reminds us that the One Christians claim to follow declared His Power by his very powerlessness. After all the Cross was the Roman symbol of authority and power. Yet it is used in the purposes of God to deal with the fault lines in humanity and the created order. The Resurrection declares Rome's authority is not final. The Resurrection check mates whatever final act Rome / Babylon ... ?? might make to demonstrate its / their power.
Monday, 19 February 2007
the humiliation of the Word
Mystery of SILENCE
Now we are coming to the last characteristic to keep in mind about the word : it is mystery. The most explicit and the best explained word still brings me inevitably back to mystery. This mystery has to do with the other person, whom I cannot fathom, and whose word provides me with an echo of his person, but only an echo. I perceive this echo, knowing that there is something more. This is the mystery I feel as I recognise spontaneously that I do not understand well or completely what the other person says. There is a mystery for me in my own lack of comprehension, as I become aware of it. How am I going to react ? How can I respond ? I sense a whole area of mystery in the fact that I am not very sure I understand correctly. I am not very sure about answering. I am not very sure of what I am answering.
There is always a margin around our conversation. More precisely, conversation is like this printed page, framed on all sides by white margins, without words, but which can be filled in with any word at all. The margins situate a conversation and give it the possibility of rebounding and beginning again. They allow the other person to participate with his marginal comments. I am aware of this possibility, but I do not know what marginal comments are going to appear beside what I say, changing it. Here again we are dealing with the unexpected. And we come up against the mystery of silence.
The mystery of silence as a break in discourse, not silence in the sense of something that discourse fills up! The enigmatic, disturbing, saddening silence of the other person is an inconvenience as I wait. I expect a response, an explanation, or a statement from him. He falls silent, and I no longer know where or how to take my place in relation to him. More precisely, I no longer know how to be as I face him. I find myself faced with a mystery which eludes me when there is a lull in the conversation. I expect words, but this silence constitutes a chasm in the word, which continues unspoken. It is unheard, but it cannot be eliminated. Thus in all sorts of ways the word is related to mystery. It expresses and engulfs us in mystery. There is a reason why mythos and logos go together.
- from “The Humiliation of the Word” Jacques Ellul pp 25 - 26 1985 ISBN 0-8028-0069-6
Now we are coming to the last characteristic to keep in mind about the word : it is mystery. The most explicit and the best explained word still brings me inevitably back to mystery. This mystery has to do with the other person, whom I cannot fathom, and whose word provides me with an echo of his person, but only an echo. I perceive this echo, knowing that there is something more. This is the mystery I feel as I recognise spontaneously that I do not understand well or completely what the other person says. There is a mystery for me in my own lack of comprehension, as I become aware of it. How am I going to react ? How can I respond ? I sense a whole area of mystery in the fact that I am not very sure I understand correctly. I am not very sure about answering. I am not very sure of what I am answering.
There is always a margin around our conversation. More precisely, conversation is like this printed page, framed on all sides by white margins, without words, but which can be filled in with any word at all. The margins situate a conversation and give it the possibility of rebounding and beginning again. They allow the other person to participate with his marginal comments. I am aware of this possibility, but I do not know what marginal comments are going to appear beside what I say, changing it. Here again we are dealing with the unexpected. And we come up against the mystery of silence.
The mystery of silence as a break in discourse, not silence in the sense of something that discourse fills up! The enigmatic, disturbing, saddening silence of the other person is an inconvenience as I wait. I expect a response, an explanation, or a statement from him. He falls silent, and I no longer know where or how to take my place in relation to him. More precisely, I no longer know how to be as I face him. I find myself faced with a mystery which eludes me when there is a lull in the conversation. I expect words, but this silence constitutes a chasm in the word, which continues unspoken. It is unheard, but it cannot be eliminated. Thus in all sorts of ways the word is related to mystery. It expresses and engulfs us in mystery. There is a reason why mythos and logos go together.
- from “The Humiliation of the Word” Jacques Ellul pp 25 - 26 1985 ISBN 0-8028-0069-6
Friday, 16 February 2007
A justified complaint
COMPLAINT
The proprietor of a bar in the Russian Compound received complaints from patrons about sounds that filtered into his bar at night and tainted their drinking pleasure. He sent numerous letters to the police, pointing out that these unsettling voices, as he called them, came from the gaol across the street, travelling from the interrogation rooms deep under the police station - four, some said six floors underground - all the way up to his bar on the street level. He even visited the police headquarters in person to make his case heard, but the voices persisted. Finally, the bar owner had no choice but to increase the volume of the music playing in his bar during quieter hours. His hearing deteriorated.
from “Picnic Grounds - a novel in fragments” by Oz Shelach ISBN 0-87286-419-7
The proprietor of a bar in the Russian Compound received complaints from patrons about sounds that filtered into his bar at night and tainted their drinking pleasure. He sent numerous letters to the police, pointing out that these unsettling voices, as he called them, came from the gaol across the street, travelling from the interrogation rooms deep under the police station - four, some said six floors underground - all the way up to his bar on the street level. He even visited the police headquarters in person to make his case heard, but the voices persisted. Finally, the bar owner had no choice but to increase the volume of the music playing in his bar during quieter hours. His hearing deteriorated.
from “Picnic Grounds - a novel in fragments” by Oz Shelach ISBN 0-87286-419-7
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