The designation, "big-hearted," is not always applied to landlords. But here’s a big exception.
"He hides behind the fact that he’s a businessman. Really, he’s a dad to a whole bunch of people."
(Business man puts homeless before profits)
A bit of Dada
…thinking Tom Waits has taken up residence in my inner ear. Then I say to myself, just the lyrics, listen to the lyrics. But I can’t make them out. So to regroup before my feet hit floor I have this little fantasy about me and Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash just walking, strolling, at the North Country fair and summer is stretching out in front of us like a long pull on cotton candy.
Well, perhaps we all have our methods. We piece together our days as best we can. We keep together gas prices and a mother’s visit, a sibling’s sickness and tomorrow’s dental appointment. We like Jackson Browne, well not that much, but there’s that "World keeps turning around" song that stick’s a lit match of "maybe" into our afternoon. Enough so that we make it out of Zellers and manage to locate our car in the 40 acre outback. And maybe we sit for a while thinking we liked the curve of his voice and what sounded like slide violin, before the thick neck of time turns our heads back and all our flugelhorns start in.
Sometime’s I don’t like jazz. It can be so banal in it’s overachieving. So bloody world weary as to be dada. Instead, give me one clear note. Or give me hollow hardwood tubing and a light rhythmic rap that entrances–that calls me across a river. Give me wind and rain and monastery bells in the mist and an inner ear to hear the brittle pottery of bad memories breaking on rocks at the surf-edge of a new dawn.
Well, we move along into that mist, feeling our way, listening. But even one voice, when you’re lost, is like heaven calling. And two is…
Lent and the disarmed heart
Here’s the rest of the "Lenten Ride." The blog post that grew into an article. Published in today’s Edmonton Journal.
Technorati Tags: Lent,Disarmed heart,Edmonton Journal Religion,Benedictine spirituality,peace,active nonviolence
Lunch and more with Todd Babiak
Todd Babiak took a breath and held his ground. A young man, a protester, impassioned and mostly articulate, aimed a misquote at Babiak and waited for his response. He accused Todd Babiak of saying that the recent Israel Apartheid Week was creepy, when in fact T.B. said the absence of another point of view was creepy…
Many of these events sound fascinating. At the same time, in the absence of any curiosity about the Israeli point of view, they’re also profoundly creepy.
I felt for the protester, understood his point of view, and I respected Todd Babiak’s handling of the interjection. He was gracious and open to discussion.
We were there for the library (EPL) "writer’s brown bag lunch." Todd Babiak, a well known and truly gifted novelist and journalist, was there to do a reading and discuss writing. But the charge by the young man, who wasn’t there because he was curious about literature’s creative process, injected some adrenaline into the event.
Babiak’s article pivots on the the idea that the people at the Palestine Solidarity Network should have invited an Israeli point of view at the Apartheid week events.
But the Israeli view has not been ignored over the years. I grew up, as did most people around me, fully versed in the "Jewish plight" and the Israeli point of view. And it has only been in the last few years where some understanding and consideration for an occupied Palestine has surfaced. On balance, I believe there is still greater ignorance of Palestine’s situation than Israel’s.
This was Edmonton’s first Israeli Apartheid week and I believe the U of A’s hosting of it contributed toward greater understanding, without any hyperbolic hangover. But I also agree that room should be made for a forum where both sides can come together in open discussion.
There is of course a violent and intransigent streak that runs through both sides of this sad human epic. From what I could see Apartheid Week’s aim was a kind of persuasive education–naturally biased, but everyone knows that going in. It was not, as Shoshana Szlachter, director of the western region of B’nai Brith, in Edmonton, says, "… very close to that line of promoting hate."
So yes, here’s to open forums in the future. In the mean time for a reasonably rounded history of the conflict, written with an obvious desire for prevailing peace, consider Jimmy Carter’s new book (2009), We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work. While it’s an overly optimistic work that deals only with the political landscape, it still introduces the many moderate voices in Israel that want to end the occupation and find a two state solution. As well, the book sketches Hamas as not simply a one dimensional violent regime. Hamas, according to Carter, is ready to recognize Israel under the pre 1967 borders, and is,
willing to accept any peace agreement negotiated between Abu Mazen and the Israelis if the agreement was submitted to the Palestinians in a referendum and if the Palestinians approved it, or if there was a unity government that could approve.
With Carter, it might be time to consider Hamas as a necessary part of any negotiated peace.
Technorati Tags: Todd Babiuk,Israel Apartheid,Shoshana Szlachter,Palestine Solidarity Network,B’nai Brith,Abu Mazen,Hamas,Fatah,Jimmy Carter,We can have peace in the holy land