Swirling Thoughts

Blogger and I are having some relationship troubles. Well, actually, it’s not blogger at all. It’s my five year old computer that feels like it should short circuit occasionally, and in the process, eat the occasional blog post. (I’m getting a new computer this week – weeee!)

Hence, my blog post that I wrote Thursday morning never got posted. So, I’m going to write three this week (sorry to inundate you; please bear with me!). Rather than redoing my post on the chapters we’ve already discussed in class, I’m going to go somewhere else with this blog entry (I hope that’s okay!). I have A LOT swirling around in my head right now, so I apologize if this seems disjointed or rambly. I’ll try to make it make as much sense as possible!

Part of what inspired this mental tangle (or, at least, part of what made it more complicated that it already was) is the fact that I watched “Promises” this weekend. Dr. Horowitz mentioned this move in class a few weeks ago, so I netflixed it to check it out. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s a trailor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySJaH7OXzOA (Also, the whole move is on youtube if you don’t mind it being choppy.

In short – without giving anything away – the movie traces the experiences of a number of Jewish and Palestinian children who live in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. Some of these children (two secular Israelis and a number of Palestinian children) decide that they want to meet each other. They spend a day together and then, two years later, the filmmaker asks them to reflect on their experiences. I’m not going to mention what they say, because I don’t want to spoil anything.

Watching this, for me, really resulted in a feeling of dislocation. And perhaps this is not surprising, given all of the instances of exile, destruction, rebirth, colonization, etc. that we have been reading and talking about in class. I feel like the more I learn, the less I can separate myself from world events. And the less “at home” I feel in the U.S. – yet I have no other home. I found myself feeling sad that I’m not able to go on this year’s trip to Jerusalem because I started having this feeling of . . . there must be something there. In that space. I had this feeling that Jerusalem must have something to offer, something to give in the way of explanation. And then I think, this is just me. U.S. born and raised. I have no explicit ties to Jerusalem. And I still have moments of feeling pulled to it. I can’t imagine how strong Kasa’s feelings must have been! And then to get there and . . . there is no explanation. It’s all so perplexing.

“Promises” also made me think of a couple of other projects. One – mentioned by Dr. Horowitz on Thursday – is the Compassionate Listening project. (Started, in part, by a Quaker. Yay!) Here’s a video about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZM69RV6OjI And their website: http://www.compassionatelistening.org/ It also made me think of the Seeds of Peace Camp, which I’m somewhat familiar with because I’m from Maine, which is where the camp is located: http://www.seedsofpeace.org/

So, all of these things bring me back to questions about dialogue. Does dialogue work? Does “humanizing,” listening too, empathizing with “the enemy” work? Is this simply idealistic?