Hola Amigos. Here’s what’s been going on of late:

Last Wednesday/Thursday I was in Jaffa and Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean coast. When I got to my hostel on Wednesday night, they had overbooked, so they gave me a few extra sheks and sent me down the road to the next hostel, which turned out to be the nicest hostel I’ve ever stayed in. Right in the middle of the 5,000 year old port city of Jaffa, the hostel was frequented by businessmen on holiday from the UK, and you could see the ocean from the lounge on the roof. I spent all day Thursday cruising around Tel Aviv on my bike, stopping at a beach for a few hours to swim and read, and going through Yitzhak Rabin Square, the site where the famous Israeli leader was gunned down at a peace rally in ’95. Other than that, Tel Aviv is primarily shopping and beaches; very different from where I live in Jerusalem.



The next night, Friday night, I was invited to share Shabbat dinner with some Israeli friends of mine that live in West Jerusalem. They live in this mountaintop neighborhood called Har Adar, and from their front porch you have a pretty spectacular view of Jerusalem and the surrounding foothills. I was given the seat of honor at the dinner table, which faced the panoramic windows, so as I shared a traditional Shabbat meal with this family the lights of Jerusalem were sparkling in the distance. And here is what cracked me up: at the dinner table was a 19-year old Israeli girl named Anna. She is a hummer operator in the Israeli army, a job she will have for the next 2-3 years. And she is also a glamour model. When she drove me back to my place on Mount Zion, which took about 30 minutes, we swung by the main shopping mall in Jerusalem, because I wanted to see for myself the six 10-foot spreads of her recent photo shoot that were displayed at the main entrance.

Two days ago I took a bus to Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee. I wanted some time to get away, be quiet and alone, and thought the Galilee might be a good place for this. After arriving by bus at Tiberias, I biked north along the coast of the lake for a couple hours until I came to a nature preserve at Caesarea, the adulthood home of Jesus. At the preserve was a boat dock that pushed out into the water a good 150 feet, and this is where I parked my bike, threw down my sleeping bag, and settled in for the night. The sky was clear and full of stars, and on the hillside to the west the city of Tiberias looked like a golden waterfall gliding down the mountain into the sea. I lay awake for a long time, thinking and looking up. And in the morning:

I applaud the sunrise!
A skillful arrangement of bold subtlety
Harmonizing gull and fish, water mountain sky
And me, the audience, laughing and clapping for joy!
The sun, that experienced performer, knows
When to make her entrance, when to cast off the
Gown of night and thrill the world
With her nude luminous form
The others usher her in:
The air full of singing
The cathedral sky wafting fragrance
The turquoise heaven vaulting from the lower mist
O Sun! God of the ancients
O Sun! Husband of the earth
O Sun! Philosopher’s symbol and poet’s cry
O Sun! How you fill weary land and soul with mirth!



After a breakfast of pears and cold coffee on the dock, I loaded up my pack and bike and began. Over the next 6 hours, I completed a lap around the entire lake, making lengthy stops at the inlet of the Jordan River, where I took a plunge and threw rocks and sang for a good half hour, and at Ein Gev kibbutz on the eastern shore, where I ate lunch, read poetry, and napped on a bench overlooking the sea.

This morning the best thing yet happened to me. There is a place in Jerusalem called Shevet Achim – “Dwelling Brother” – a non-profit organization that helps Arab children with congenital heart disorder from Iraq, Gaza, West Bank, and Jordan get the medical treatment that they cannot afford and will die without. What Shevet Achim does is assist these children and their mothers in getting the proper travel documents to get from their home to Israel, where they undergo operation in Tel Aviv. They are also the driver behind finding the necessary funds for such expensive treatment. The Jerusalem facility, which I visited today, is a halfway house of sorts, where the children and typically their mothers come to stay for several weeks in preparation for or recovery from open heart surgery. The reason that I went this morning is that the staff is simply looking for people who are willing to show up and work, which might look like doing cleaning and maintenance, or might look like playing with the children. This morning it was the latter. For 2 hours I played ball and made music and colored with 5 year old Padua and 3 year old Achmed, both from Kurdistan in northern Iraq, and both with a literal hole in their heart. As soon as I heard about this place, I knew I wanted to be part of what they do, for a couple reasons. 1) As anyone who knows me knows, children make me happy. Ever since I was one, I have loved kids. 2) Due to my medical history (chronic croup as a child with multiple hospitalizations, three broken arms with two surgeries, a broken leg with two surgeries, and last summer a broken neck with neurosurgery), I feel I can relate in a small way to what these kids are going through. I’ve known the fear of the operating table, and have wrestled with personal questions of life and death. But the people who need ministering to at Shevet Achim are not so much the children, but the mothers, because unlike their sick child, they are fully aware of the gravity of the situation. The moment I entered the compound this morning (everything in Jerusalem is fenced in by high rock walls), I saw an Arab woman, the mother of one of the young patients, sitting on a seat with her face in her hands and weeping. As I spent time the next few hours in romp and play with two beautiful children, I was also very much cognizant of the fact that this place represents the terrifying frontier between life and death. But somehow, I feel very at home in a place that oscillates between laughter and tears, between joy and despair. Here life is sacred.