The Grands

9/29/2024  Debbie Blane

 

Watching the children starve

Watching the grandparents whither

But the grandparents are supposed to be

Teaching the grandchildren

The customs

The songs

The ways of living

That have kept the people alive for

So many centuries

As a people.

It is hard to do when the only ones

Left

Are the generations in between.

 

Someday.

Once again.

The middle will have children again

And become the grands

The children will grow up and have

Children

Who will become the grands to the grands

And life will be renewed.

 

 

Hind Rajab 6 Years Old (In Memory Of)

 

Hind Rajab 6 years old

(In memory of)

8/19/2024

Debbie Blane

I was

An

Ordinary girl

With a wonderful

And ordinary life

Until I was left

In a car

With my dead aunt and uncle

And four cousins.

 

The Israeli defense force

Promised me safe passage

And the two

Brave ambulance drivers who were

Sent to retrieve me

To take me to my anxiously waiting mother.

 

They had been promised safe passage

2.

Until.

Until.

The snipers killed me in the backseat

Of the car

And the ambulance drivers

In the ambulance

When we were all supposed to be

 

Set free.

 

I have become a famous six year old martyr

In the world

Because my mother weeps

And I am gone

From my beloved gaza.

 

Now that you know who I am

I will tell you about the ordinary object.

It is an olive wood spoon.

I used to help my mother cook

By stirring things in a pot

With an olive wood spoon.

 

Guess where that spoon came from?

 

My family used to have olive wood groves

Our trees were old

Some of them could be

I don’t know….

Well,

Thousands of years old. 

 

Really.

 

Every year when the olives were picked

The loose olive wood was harvested

And kept to age

Then it was used to make oh so many

Beautiful

Things.

Like olive wood spoons

To stir my mother’s famous

Cooking

With.

 

Until.

Until.

Israel decided that the gaza strip

Could no longer breathe.

Trees have been

 

Destroyed

 

Pulled up by their roots

Chopped off at the bottom

Killed

Murdered

Like

Well,            like

                                            Me.

 

Have you ever held

An

Olive

Wood

Spoon?

?

?

 

They are beautiful.

Smooth.

The grain of the wood shows

And tells a story.

 

An ordinary object

That I held in my hand

That my father had carved

Just

For

Me

Out of the fallen

                                    Branch

                                                  Of

                                                          An

                                                                 Olive

                                                                               Wood

                                                                                              Tree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snakes, buttons or zippers

 

Snakes, buttons or zippers—1,2,

or all three

Or NONE.

Debbie Blane

8/8/2024

 

Who

 

Who

 

Who

       Will I be?

                ?????

When I finally leave my body

And cross the threshold to the

LAST FRONTIER?

 

What

 

What

 

What will I recognize of who I am now?

I know that existence is embodied

As well as Spirit,

So what will that embodiment look like

Feel like

When I leave this body

Behind?

 

When

 

When

 

When will I know that I am different?

That I have left

That I am in the new frontier?

Will there still be air that moves?

Will the stars be next to my hands and

   And my head?

 

Where

 

Where

 

Where will I find myself located?

Or will I have any sense of location

Will I just be a floating particle?

 

Why

 

Why

 

Why is it all such a mystery?

Snakes, buttons, zippers, and me

Are all made of the same building blocks

Is everything interchangeable in the end?

That is really the beginning?

 

I approach closer each day

To this mystery

Sometimes I think it will be a relief

To leave behind the pain of the world

The persecutions

The selfishness, the greed.

 

Of course it is also leaving behind the

   Beauty

The ocean

The sunset and sunrise

Human touch.

 

But is it?

Only God knows.

The God who created it all

From beginning to end

To …………….???????????

 

Coming back with a poem called Secret.

 

Secret

Debbie Blane

7/7/2024

 

Nowadays most people probably think of

Rome

 

As the home of the Church…..

(and yes, this is going to be one of my fam ám ous mini (I’m thinking of Mini Pearl here) sermons)

But it is not.  The home of the church that is.  (This is definitely a mini sermon.)

 

No, no, no, no.

 

The home of the church is in Jerusalem.

It is called the Church of the Sepulcher.

 

Let us start at the very beginning though….

To do that of course we would have to go back to creation

And that would take all day and all night,

So I will tolerate

A short cut.

We will begin in Bethlehem.

In Palestine.

I do marvel sometimes that the Church of the Nativity

Which is erected over the manger where the baby Jesus was

                                           Born,

Has survived 2,000 plus years.  It is not quite that old,

But close enough.

 

In the lower level of the church there is a beautiful gold star

It has been laid over the place where the trough that

Served as crib

In which he was laid

Was sure to have been.

In the manger.

In the barn below the family of the innkeeper.

 

I am a poetic theologian, not a theologian historian

So I am likely taking

Some small pieces of

Poetic              

               license……..

do not , I say, do not

begin giving me the fifth degree

or the fourth,

or whatever the heck it is.

 

Over details.

 

Now we go to Jerusalem, to the Old City.

2,000 years ago it would have been by foot.

It would have taken some time.

For different reasons

And yet,

Not unlike today

With the checkpoints of illegal occupation by Israel,

No longer Rome…..(which occupied Palestine 2,000 years ago)

Where roads are blocked,

Babies are sometimes born waiting to get through

People die from their heart attacks that cannot wait the hours

That are forced upon them

By arrogant young Israeli Defense Force soldiers.

 

So now in our mind’s eye we come to the last days of

Jesus’ earthly dwelling.

The Holy Sepulcher still has worship services

Of very many different kinds

I have been to several of them.

Amazed to worship in places that are so very,

Very,

Ancient. 

When Jesus was crucified it was in a garbage dump outside of the city known as Golgoltha,

The Rock of Calvary.  (Later the dump was brought within the city walls and became a part of this church in the fourth-century)

Jesus was buried in the Holy Sepulchre,

An unused tomb of a Jesus believer,

And when he rose from the dead on Sunday morning it was

Within the confines of the same

Holy space.

Thus.

The. Secret.  (Not really a secret because it is known.  But if one contemplates it in one’s heart it is like a secret that grows and blooms and speaks to the heart of the one in whom it is planted).

 

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the place

Where Jesus was crucified

Buried

And rose again.

 

Thus it is the home of Christianity.

Rome is Empire, which in many ways

Is entirely a different thing.

 

I have been to the church several times.

I remember one of the last times thinking,

How amazing that it has become familiar,

Like a church on my own block at home.

 

How blessed am I to have been in the place of the

Birth.

Been In the place of the

Crucifixion

Burial

And Resurrection.

Not once, but several times to both.

I have also been to Rome

And Vatican City

To the Sistene Chapel.

I was there in 2006 on one of the rare days when the

Museum

Is free , no admission charged

So I went, free, paying no admission

 

I remember thinking,

How can fundamentalists not understand

That God’s ways

Are not

Our ways?

????????????????

 

Looking back I am grateful

That I already understood

The Bible

Not

       To   

              Be

A science book

Or a history book (okay, sometimes I struggle a bit with this, I admit))

And I wonder,

Do they have many fundamentalists show up at the

Museum?

Do they have to call ambulances very often to take

Shock victims to hospital

Or break up fights when fundamentalists try to,

You know,

Destroy a display?

 

Anyhow.

It is time for me to end.

While the genocide in Gaza continues I am not able

To take my poetry away from the

Suffering people

So we shall continue to see

How God works through me in this.

End of mini sermon.  Ameeeeeeeeeeen.

      

https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/cultural-heritage-gaza-destruction/https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/cultural-heritage-gaza-destruction/

'Racism, Land and Food' seminar dissects how dispossession negates food sovereignty

'Racism, Land and Food' seminar dissects how dispossession negates food sovereignty: As many communities worldwide battle to get food to the table, a World Council of Churches (WCC) webinar titled ‘Racism, Land and Food' highlighted the intersections of food, land, and racial injustices on food sovereignty over generations of dispossessed groups.

Matriarchy

 I watched a show tonight on Facebook about the Orca Killer Whales of the West Coast.  I learned that the pods are led by grandmother's and knowledge is passed from the grandmothers and mothers to the pods.  I also learned that different pods have different languages.  Or different dialects.  Each pod can tell that the other pods are speaking but they cannot understand the language.

This is so like what I have learned about trees.  Trees have networks that communicate through their roots.  And it is the grandmother trees that pass their knowledge down from generation to generation.  

This seems to be true of indigenous people everywhere, as far as I can tell from my readings.  It seems to me a particular curse of white supremacy that the nuclear family is apparently worshiped, and age is not seen as a crowning achievement but as an affront to youth.  

More on these things as they develop in my mind.

Focus on a New Direction.

 

So cool! There was a webinar for old Gaelic names of Armagh, a county in Ireland....I got to listen to an older gentleman (who was definitely Irish) show his charts and talk about the history of a whole slew of names....some going back to 937AD!!!! It amazes me! I hope they remember to send me their line up of events....I will spend time on a webinar any time I can to get to listen to an Irish brogue for an hour!

4/21/2021

 

I just finished watching for the third or fourth time a documentary on indigenous people throughout the globe and the work to save nature from greed. So I realized at least two things as I watched The Condor and the Eagle.....it seems to be that it is only white settler colonial peoples who exalt independence and self sufficiency. When I look around, figuratively speaking, at the world....it seems like every people group that is not white European or white North American, which is everybody else....that all of the others that are left, which are the indigenous peoples of all nations, understand that we are better in community and in interdependence. So then the next thing that came to me is this: where in the world did white people come from? Are we (I must claim my white Northern European American identity) the only people that are not indigenous somewhere? And if so.....how did that happen? Perhaps white northern Europeans are indigenous to Scandinavia? I would say the colder the climate the whiter the skin except Alaska is cold, as are the northern stretches of Canada, and there are native populations living in both of those places....so that rather kills that argument/thought.

4/21/2021

 

5/21/2021

I am going to confess that I had no idea how long it had been since I had written on this blog.  I think that it tells me how much my pandemic life more or less fell apart.  Hope to become more consistent.  Blessings, Debbie