Awakening, awareness

Slow at first until:

Apartheid!!

Like an electric shock

A startled response

“Surely, this cannot be,” we say…

Surely, yes, this is what you ARE seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, touching:

Pain.

InPalestineandIsrael.

Our pain, as people of this place,

weighed down by structural violence…systemic injustice…

Like you inCanada, only your collective pain is so deep and long that

You’ve forgotten.

Cannot see the pain that systematically is tearing you apart…

 

Do you remember? Try…

You taught us about reserved areas, permits, and passes…about a century or more ago.

Well, maybe not directly. But through visitors fromSouth Africa. You hosted them.

Then, we, from this land bridge between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean visited those inSouth Africa…

And then set up the reserved areas, permits, and pass system here.

Apartheid – it’s Afrikaans for “apart-ness”.

 

The friendship between us, now?Canada and ‘Israel’ – BFF: Best Friends Forever!!

Oh, the connection is long…the pain runs deep…

As you listen to the truth

-ARE you trying? To heal, and reconcile as a society…?

“The mandate for The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is found in Schedule N of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.” (See here.) 

Help! Help…we don’t want to bury our pain and forget like you.

BFF – Let’s walk together, listen, and listen some more.

 

Awakening, awareness

Slow at first, and then

An electric shock!!

-Sherry Ann (15 March 2012)