Israel: Global Grace Day
The Global GRACE Day in Mitspe Ramon, Israel, is happening in the context of a three day seminar with Benjamin von Mendelssohn and Tamera co-founder Sabine Lichtenfels: „Healing of the Earth – Healing of Love“. We are about 80 people, 60 particpants joined the seminar alongside the group of the Global Campus Initiative that is also taking part and serving in the organization of the seminar. The headline of our day is „The Power of Vision“. We started with a lecture by Sabine Lichtenfels and Benjamin von Mendelssohn on this issue. Being in Israel/Palestine the question of a higher level of vision, on which conflicts dissolve, is especially urgent. Sabine speaks in a powerful way: „Stagnation starts with Identification. There is the purpotrator, there is the victim. And the solution always lies on the higher order. The vision needs to be something where we can reconnect! Connecting to real visions is not just an arbitrary thing. If we meet a real vision, we are meeting a latent reality that already exists. And the power of manifestation for this vision grows with the extent that it is in service for something bigger; a community, a group, all of humanity.“ This urgency of a way out of the identification is represented by the sharing of Tha‘er, a young Palestinian friend who is with us. When he was 17 he spent 2 years in prison, without ever knowing what he was charged for. This powerful reality of an outrcrying injustice suddenly enters into our circle. Tha‘er sais: „It is so difficult to have lost your freedom and you don‘t know why. You don‘t know what is the next step that is waiting for you, in this lack of justice. ( ...) The most terrible feeling is to remeber the faces of all my friends that are still in the prison, behind this walls. And I want to share with you that this is my biggest motivation to be in a course like this with you; that my friends who are still there can be with us. I want that this stupid war ends.“ His wish is that as a group we write letters to his friends in prison, words of connection that make them aware that he has not forgotten them. „If my friends will recieve such letters, they will gain hope and also they will be proud that I didn‘t leave them alone in their resistance.“ This will be a first part of our Global Grace Day Action today, writing this letters of compassion. After his story we are now faced with the question of how to take the pain and the compassion that comes from witnessing such injustice, and turn it into power or hope. With this question all the group is sent out to the desert for an hour, and we will reunite in smaller studygroups afterwards. In a meeting of the big seminargroup in the afternoon, Tha‘er reads out the letter that he wrote to his friends. The prison that he was in is very close to Mitspe Ramon.When we came here by bus, we passed it, so the memories in Tha‘ers heart are very present. (This is not a direct translation but recapturing memories:) „My friends, I am actually very close to you. I drove by the prison some days ago, and my heart was torn apart being so close to you. I remember your faces, your pain, I remember the torture. And I am here, I am alive. And even though I can‘t be together with you, I want to let you know that I am working for day when we can see a sunrise and a sunset together on the same day, being free. I am together with a group of international peaceworkers. It is a group that brings hope, these are people that have dedicated their lives to work for a peaceful future. And my friends, I want to tell you that besides all the struggle and the pain, our land is still green and beautiful. It is still growing pommergrannets, grapes, and dates. I studied in this last year a lot how to transform pain into hope, and this is what I am still working on.“ (We will still translate the full letter tomorrow.) It is special to have such a letter read in a seminar in Israel by a Palestinian, and to take it as a pure voice of the world, connecting us to our compassion and to our will for change. The reactions are very open, and many people of the group signed the letter. Our day ended with a concert and celebration by the band „Almaz“ (which means „diamond“ in ethopian language). It is beautiful music by three powerful women and one man, playing hebrew music, arabic beduin music, taking our hearts and bodies in one space of celebration and dance after a very intense day of witnessing the world. Inbetween the Global Campus is presented by Shamba Ayalon, speaking of all the stations that are working right now. In the slideshow that we see about the Global Campus, the singer of „Almaz“ surprises all of us by singing an acapalla version of John Lennon‘s „Imagine“: „Imagine all the people, living life in peace.“ Thanks for such a powerful day!
