*day 1.5*

This made me laugh as I slog through the density of info researching and prepping to tell stories, first in Ramallah then in Jerusalem, then for my cousin's bar mitzvah, then in the Negev :

"Jesus was a social justice, radical revolutionary Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who rose up and challenged the job security of the Temple authorities by teaching the people they did NOT need to pay the priests for ritual baths or sacrificing livestock to be OK with God; for God already LOVED them just as they were:

Sinners, poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under Roman Military Occupation."

This made me laugh less :

"I was astounded to learn that in Anata, Jerusalem's refugee camp The Wall is butted up to the boy’s high school. The ‘playground’ where 780 adolescents gather is in reality a slab of cement ground about the square footage of a basket ball court. There is no view as it is walled in on all four sides by the high school, The Concrete Wall and two smaller cement walls.
..
A few miles from the refugee camp, one enters into an Orwellian Disney Land of lush green grounds in the illegal colony of the Pizgatzeev settlement. I was sick at heart and in my gut when we drove less than a mile into the illegal colony for I counted three playgrounds and a swimming pool. I still wonder how many USA tax dollars helped to build them, and why the same was not done for the refugees."

from WAWA Blog March 2, 2008 (http://www.wearewideawake.org)

....

my determination waxes every moment
i will not make change
i am change

when neither despair nor hope are possible
we remain with simply this -
direct awake activated embodiement

the spirit she is strong
and the temple we have built for her
is a refuge
a sanctuary
beyond beyond
into and through and through
light just to be