SABBATICAL 10: "Fourteen Thousand"

Is it nothing to you, 

all you who pass by?
Look and see if there is any sorrow 

like my sorrow, which was brought upon me?

Lamentations 1:12

For these things I weep; 

my eyes flow with tears;
for a comforter is far from me, 

one to revive my courage;
my children are desolate, 

for the enemy has prevailed.

Lamentations 1:16

My eyes are spent with weeping;
my stomach churns;
my bile is poured out on the ground
because of the destruction 

of my people,
because infants and babes 

faint in the streets of the city.
They cry to their mothers,
"Where is bread and wine?"
as they faint like the wounded 

in the streets of the city,
as their life is poured out 

on their mothers' bosoms.

Lamentations 2:11-12

Who does this kind of math?  Who can stomach the details and come up with a number like 14,000?  292 an hour?  One child every 12 seconds?  If numbers could be curses, surely these are.

I can make no sense of any of it.  Not now.  Not here.  Not with the warm and loving Palestinian stew I shared with dear friends at their table tonight.  Not with the cool, sweet breeze of spring brushing against my skin tonight.  Not with the sweet smile of a generous tutor...patient with my clumsy Arabic.  All the while, the supersized armies of the world crush whole cities and every living thing in their way.  And kings and princes sleep soundly.

I fast tonight, and tomorrow, not because I know the slightest thing about solidarity.  I fast because I don't know what else to do, what else to say or write. 14,000.  292.  One child every 12 seconds.  And famine as a weapon of war?  Christ, have mercy on us all.

DGJ, 20 May 2025, Bethlehem