More of that ...

Been revisiting my journal of 1998 again, in the course of preparing a couple of presentations on journal writing, and, if I may say so, am still pleased with it as a piece of work. I collected a lot of pieces, snippets, quotations, in the course of compiling it. Here are two more which I think still work today. First a Jewish academic on the tragedy of relations between the Children of Abraham/Ibrahim, the so-called People of the Book:

“The image I have is of three traumatized individuals walking through darkness and holding flickering candles to illumine their way; candles lit by their forebears to get them through the dark nights of the soul … three wandering pilgrims yearning to get back home, afraid that out of the darkness some old or new enemy will attack them, afraid of perpetual victimization, afraid to trust each other, afraid to trust others who might help them overcome their fear and dread. And then, suddenly, the three of them converge, and their candles illumine each others faces, and each experiences the shock of mutual recognition; in the human faces is the reflection of something mysteriously Divine, so that all three can echo the exclamation of the wounded Jacob, renamed Israel: “I see the face of God in your face”.
(Yehetzkel Landau)

And this:

“Late, and it’s starting to rain. It’s time to go home.
We’ve wandered long enough in empty buildings.
I know it’s tempting to stay and meet these new people.
I know it’s even more\sensible
To spend the night here with them,
But I want to go home.

We’ve seen enough beautiful places with signs on them
Saying “This is God’s House”.
That’ seeing grain like ants do,
Without the work of harvesting.
Let’s leave the grazing to the cows, and go
Where we will know what everyone really intends,
Where we can walk around with no clothes on.”
(Jal aladin Rumi, 1207-1273)