New Moon: satyagraha after all

Everyone knows someone who knows someone in Israel

Raven mural from Tel Aviv. Photo taken on our visit last April. I had a friend from grad school who was writing about a crow who was a reincarnation of a Rabbi who died in a Germain Concentration Camp during WWII. She is the child of Holocaust survivors. Also, this is my year of the Raven. What will come from this void?

I planned to write about Satyagraha today. These new moon posts are about motivation and intention and before the news came in about Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel, Satyagraha — Mahatma Gandhi’s term for nonviolent resistance — had come to me as a subject for this post.

For us, the news came personally. I heard Josh’s voice in the kitchen before I was out of bed, his voice quiet carrying a layer of dismay and concern. It was clear something had happened. A call from my sister-in-law, two in the afternoon and they had already lived with the foggy, fearsome news for 8 hours.

Our connection to our family in Israel had been even more tangible than usual as our nephew and his new wife were visiting all of us, their Minnesota family, over the past few weeks while getting ready for a road trip west. It’s common for Israelis to take the time to explore the world after completing their army service.

We heard from Josh’s sister that the infiltration from Gaza had happened near the Kibbutz of our niece’s new husband, the wedding we had attended last spring. Minnesota family had the privilege of hosting Josh’s niece 7 years ago as she also began her post army/pre post-secondary education spending time with us all as she worked here to earn money for her travels. We spoke to her Sunday morning, our time, as she and her husband made their way south to bring his parents and youngest sister out of the war zone, which was their kibbutz, the place they grew up, now at the heart of a betrayal. Or at least that is how I imagine they feel. It had been a harrowing 24 hours before his family could be transported to safety. Reports were coming in as we spoke of other people they knew who were missing.

Our nephew scrambled to find a way home, for although he could have avoided returning to service, they desperately wanted to help. All airlines had cancelled flights and only El Al had any remaining service. In the end they found their way to New York and managed to get a spot on an Israeli government chartered flight for returning soldiers.

Friday night, here in Minnesota, just 2 hours before the assault, I was talking to a writer/friend/cousin/reader about returning to my writing class right after 9/11, and how impactful it was when my instructor, Patricia Hampl, began the class in silence, giving us the time and space to feel our hearts and mourn for all the people who had lost their lives while going about their daily activities, for all of those who had lost their loved ones, and for our own losses of belief that this attack had engendered. She had us imagine what it might be like if our leaders had begun where she had, instead of declaring immediate retaliation.

The simplicity in which she began that class was a salve for me and has stayed with me as a model ever since. 9/11 marked a tearing that ever altered our American immunity. And I have heard that this Hamas attack will mark the same for Israelis.

At the time I didn’t know the future was empty. I don’t think I had put 2 and 2 together until this week of reading and listening and immersing myself in the loss of lives in Israel, the horrific details of Hamas’ attack, the history and the opinions and statements that have followed.

These innocent deaths have ripped the tapestry of known time. As they always do, anywhere, at anytime. Those who remain and have to pick up the pieces, their relationships with space and time have been severed and all that was expected and counted on, articulated or not, must be let go of and a new future somehow sewn anew.

The future is empty is a quote from author and poet Maggie Smith’s book Keep Moving and when I heard her say it, I immediately felt its counterpart in grief. The wound that remains after time has been cut short, blankness where once the future was known. Or at least believed to be known.

Because, in fact, our futures are unwritten and we only create them as we dream them up. Just with a loss, such as this is, the future as we thought it would play out, unravels and until we can reimagine a story of something new that we want to create together, we are left here holding the empty bag of what was.

Last post I shared a photo of an infographic about anger from Brené Brown’s book Atlas of the Heart with all the feelings that could be beneath anger. She says, “Anger is a catalyst. Holding on to it will make us exhausted and sick. Internalizing anger will take away our joy and spirit; externalizing anger will make us less effective in our attempts to create change and forge connection. It’s an emotion that we need to transform into something life-giving: courage, love, change, compassion, justice.” It makes sense there is a lot of anger right now and that photo speaks to all the things underneath that we could take the time to bring stillness too. To find salve for this wound that has been cut into our hearts.

Gandhi said he came up with the term Satyagraha to more aptly describe non-violent resistance. At the time people were saying that “passive resistance” was the weapon of the weak. And Gandhi sought to refute that, describing this action as a “truth force” (as that is how Satya and Graha translate from Sanskrit) because committing to non-violence despite your anger and your grief is never a passive response, it can only be used by the strong. It requires strong internal action to respond without ill will whatsoever. He related this essence of truth to dharma and “right action.” It came from the concept of ahimsa, the law of non harming, which has roots in Hinduism and Buddhism and is the first yogic principle of the 10 Yamas and Niyamas or the ethcal practices of yoga.

To Gandhi, the practice of ahimsa, was a blessing as it leaves no negative traces of karma in your wake. Gandhi saw that there was two kinds of violence, recognizing, “It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become nonviolent. There is no such hope for the impotent.”

I don’t know where that leaves us in this moment, except with what we do with our moment matters. To face such a horror as Hamas, an organization which exists for the express purpose of the destruction of Jews and Israel and wages attacks on civilians while using civilians as human shields, we can see that reacting without ill will is a feat beyond what most of us can do.

Gandhi went on to say the the means and the ends are inseparable. Unjust means cannot obtain justice.

Here are some things other leaders are saying right now: Biden said from the State Dining Room on Tuesday, “There’s no justification for terrorism. There’s no excuse. Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination. Its stated purpose is the annihilation of Israel and the murder of Jewish people.”

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar has condemned the attacks by Hamas and called for peace, referring back to our past mistakes. “Congress must learn from the mistakes of our own war on terror — that military action alone rarely addresses the root causes of violence, that peace and justice do not come from the barrel of a gun, and that targeting an entire civilian population will only sow more discord and perpetuate the cycle of violence,” she said. 

With the future empty before us, we must put forth effort to stay connected to our hearts, take the small actions we can take, towards stillness, towards mourning first, to build our inner strength, take our means into our own hands, let go of the ends for now.

I leave you with a New York Times opinion piece from Minnesota’s own, Thomas L. Friedman, Israel Has Never Needed to Be Smarter Than This Moment (sorry if it is behind a paywall for you). He begs Israel to use their smarts right now and Netanyahu to reconnect with the liberal side of parliament. He pulls no punches in saying how Israel has got to this place and time.

No more of this divide and conquer, it doesn’t work, here in the US, nor anywhere else. To make a more livable future for more people, we have to be willing to truly see the future as empty and do this work of rebuilding together.

As much as it hurts and it hurts a lot.

Much love, Tina.