Sanctity
The morning hike was beautiful and quiet in the North Carolina forest. The glittering light of sun rays were pouring through tree limbs and leaves like God was intentionally helping us to delight in the morning that had broken.
My husband and I heard a loud crack to our right and watched a tall pine tree slowly majestically fall until it reached the ground in a shudder. And then quiet. The quiet of a sacred moment. A life had ended.
Working in a hospital, I walked into an OR room where a 62-year-old woman who had undergone a heart transplant had just died. I expected quiet, the acknowledgement of a meaningful life that had pased, but instead the OR medical staff were either on their cell phones or laughing and joking. The woman on the table still and quiet; a life extinguished with her last breath, while her husband and grown children anxiously waiting to hear the happy news of a successful surgery.
A medical professional once told me he had done missionary work in a small poor hospital in Asia in which every time a patient died; bells were rung over the intercom to acknowledge the sacred moment a life passes. At that moment all movement in the hospital would stop in stillness as a life passing was acknowledged — a sacred moment.
Back to that pine tree that slowly fell in the dawn of a new day. When forests are thoughtlessly cut down, there is typically a response of resistance to preserve the planet’s forests with increasing action until laws are passed to save the forests.
There is a forest of humans that is being razed to the ground with thoughtless abandon, with laughter and joking, drinking, eating and partying on Superbowl Sunday, as IDF move into Rafah where they told the Palestinians they would be safe but to then joyfully kill shaking, starving men, women, and especially children. One American doctor recently reported that children were being brought to them for medical attention that all had sniper bullet holes in their brains.
Remember those images of the Holocaust- of children being dragged into gas chambers, and children even being shot just for fun. Remember the starving, gaunt faces, with eyes staring out at the camera with such a deep sorrow that it haunted your dreams? If we attempt to speak out about the atrocities being committed against the Palestinians, we are accused of being antisemitic, but when many Zionist Jews commit such atrocities or support the senseless killing of civilians including a significant number of children and babies without acknowledging the sanctity of life, they are killing the soul of their people that once were called the Chosen People of God.