A Prayer
When I wrote these words, it was day 700. 700 days have passed.
It all feels so unearthed and unsteady.
How so much of our – my – days are spent behind screens.
How horrors happen all around – how long a war has been happening in Israel- and yet cars lumber past my house in Vermont and the green trees are beginning to turn orange and the college students fill my neighborhood.
And on the other side of the world, how long, long it has been for the poor humans who are toiling away in captivity.
How unfair it is.
How unfair it is that some of us are safe, and some are running to bomb shelters.
How lonely it can be.
How sad is it that sometimes I feel too vulnerable wearing a Magen David and working at a synagogue is both beautiful and fraught.
Security dictates that the names of synagogue staffers are hidden online.
Security dictates that police are present, frequently.
Antisemitism dictates that Jews aren’t welcome in certain progressive circles.
And in a small, liberal college town in VT, some elected officials wear keffiyehs (even on Oct. 7), and claim that they don’t hate Jews, just those who are Zionist.
That’s me.
And it all feels so shaky.
It all feels so precarious.
How slippery, how one quick fall could send everything astray.
How suddenly one wrong turn could be disastrous. How a lift of a hostage could just be taken away in one cruel breath.
My therapist says this is anxiety. That my present is safe.
My dad used to say that it would all be ok and I would always reply, “You don’t know that.” My anxiety was high, even as a little girl,
Sometimes it’s hard to know that we’re ok.
Sometimes it’s hard to get off social media.
I ask myself, what I am I looking for?
Another substack I won’t read?
Another post about the banalities of parenting?
I have seen communities suffer so much and I keep waiting for the repair.
I keep waiting for the wars to end.
I keep waiting for peace.
I keep waiting for that shelter, that balm. That quiet breath.
But perhaps it isn’t out there.
Perhaps the storms never pass. Perhaps the wars don’t actually end.
They somehow fade? Or somehow quiet?
And, still, no one can tell me it will be OK- only I can whisper that, quietly, in a hush, covered by tears, waiting at the corners of my mouth.
