MEMORIAL DAY 2023

Yesterday was Memorial Day, 2023. A day not to shop but to remember those who gave their lives in battle for country and fellow citizens.

Already our local towns are filled with flags waving over streets on a gorgeous spring day, lullabied by cardinals, finches, and wrens. Butterflies are winging it, hummingbirds hum, birds build nests all over readying for birth. Little sign of death in the animal, bird, or plant kingdoms on the American human species’ Memorial Day.

These flags will be flying through July 4 and are actually quite beautiful. I remember attending a retreat with a Tibetan lama. He recounted arriving here and handing his passport to the airport agent. The agent stamped the passport, gave it back to him, and said: “Welcome to the United States, land of the free.”

“Thank you very much,” the lama said, quite emotional.

The rest of us chortled and he looked up in surprise. “I was very moved,” he said. “Why aren’t you?”

Why aren’t we? Lots of reasons, you might say, most of which end which ism: racism, sexism, ageism, conservatism, liberalism, elitism, populism, capitalism. Most of all, cynicism.

Memorial Day celebrates people who gave up their lives. But there are also people who give their lives over to something without dying, ready to lose a great deal for a clear purpose.

Last Tuesday, rather than joining our weekly zendo get-together on Zoom, I drove over to the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley to listen to Raja Shehadeh read from and talk about his book, We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I:  Palestinian Memoir.

Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian attorney, co-founded Al-Haq many years ago, a Palestinian human rights organization, primarily focusing on legal rights of Palestinians. It documents violations of human rights by Israel as well as by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and by Hamas in Gaza, but its biggest work has been the use of international law to challenge the conduct of the Israeli occupation in Palestine.

Shehadeh’s father, also a lawyer, had done similar work after the family was expelled from its home in Jaffa in 1948.

There were about 20 of us at the reading; I’d wished for at least 100. I already knew about some of Shehadeh’s work and the work of Al-Haq. His father had been among the first Palestinians, after 1967, to advocate for two different states, Israeli and Palestinian, at a time when the PLO and other Palestinian organizations refused to recognize Israel altogether, and had been persecuted for that position.

After an indifferent introduction by the store’s staff person, an elderly, frail man got up to speak at the lectern. A couple of years younger than me, he seemed tired. He talked about how enthusiastic he’d been in his 30s at fighting Israeli policies on the judicial front. He’d been a young lawyer, idealistic, convinced of the probity and integrity of other lawyers and judges, be it in Israel’s Supreme Court or in international courts, to review and overturn army directives against the Palestinian population in the West Bank. (Notwithstanding many Israelis’ stance concerning the sanctity of their supreme court, the facts remain that the Israeli supreme court has very rarely overridden the army’s directives).

He believed in the law, believed in peace, and wondered why it was that his father hadn’t been more supportive of these efforts. He also saw how many of the neighboring Arab countries used the Palestinians to act out their rivalries with each other, how much they did to foment their own political agendas at the expense of the very people they ostensibly were trying to help.

Only years after his father’s death, when he began to go through many of his papers and files, did he realize that his father had essentially done the same work he was now doing, challenging various governments in courtrooms under international law, suffering exile for 18 months, only he did this since 1948 and failed. Now, here was the son, in South Hadley, Massachusetts, older than his father had been when he died, tired and discouraged, just like his father.

He kept up a good front, speaking of mutual justice and respect, but you could feel the gestalt in the room, a man who had worked hard all his life and had few results to show for it, and who knew that his father had lived his life in the same way till his death.

I drove home that evening very sad, couldn’t get Shehadeh’s thin, pale face out of my mind. I thought of the many people, Palestinians and Israelis, who have held the space for peace all these years. The news highlights terrorist actions, rockets and drone assassinations, but all these years people have spent a substantial part of their lives and energy holding the space for peace and nonviolent resistance in their hearts and in their actions.

I think of my friend Sami Awad of Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem, Iris and Tani Katz in Israel, and so many who’ve struggled against the militarization of the conflict, against relying on coercion and weapons, against legal machinations and manipulations, continuing to work day after day on behalf of justice and fairness for all.

On Memorial Day I thought of those who died to plant a flag of victory on a mountain peak in a Pacific island or on a Normandy beach. And I thought of those still living who continue to give their lives over for the sake of peace over generations, undeterred by “facts on the ground,” the cynicism of the media and government, and the indifference of their peers.

I lit incense for them as well, thanked them, wished them luck

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THE BOOK OF HOUSEHOLDER KOANS

The Book of Householder Koans - Eve Myonen Marko & Wendy Egyoku NakaoThe Book of Householder Koans is a collection of koans created by 21st century Zen practitioners living a lay life in the West. The koans deal with the challenges of relationships, raising children, work, money, love, loss, old age, and death, and come from practitioners across three continents, and with commentaries by two Western teachers.

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THE DOGS OF THE KISKADEE HILLS

Eve Marko - The Dogs of the Kiskadee Hills: Hunt for the LynxThe Dogs of the Kiskadee Hills: Hunt for the Lynx begins a trilogy about a society of dogs after humans have destroyed themselves and much of the world. Living with their families and clans in the Kiskadee Hills, they’ve developed over generations a rich tradition and way of life, and have prospered. But now, an unknown killer is butchering the Kisdees of the Hills.

Academy Award-winning actor Jeff Bridges says: “You will never look at dogs the same again. Eve Marko gives us a story that explores the path that life on our planet has taken, and asks what your role in that course might be.”

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BEARING WITNESS

To bear witness to anything is to be as close to it as possible.

It’s not to read books or see movies about it, it’s not to have an opinion or tell a story. It’s to let go of all ideas about it—be in the space of not-knowing—and simply be there, up close and deeply personal.

Eve has been involved with the Zen Peacemaker Order’s Bearing Witness Retreats—in places of suffering and conflict since her first visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

There have been 20 retreats at the site of those concentration camps since, along with retreats in Bosnia, Rwanda and the Black Hills of South Dakota, near the Pine Ridge Reservation.

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ABOUT EVE MARKO

Eve Marko is a Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order and head teacher at the Green River Zen Center in Massachusetts. She received dharma transmission and inka from Bernie Glassman. She is also a writer and editor of fiction and nonfiction.

Eve has trained spiritually-based social activists and peacemakers in the US, Europe and the Middle East, and has been a Spiritholder at retreats bearing witness to genocide at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Rwanda, and the Black Hills in South Dakota. Before that she worked at the Greyston Mandala, which provides housing, child care, jobs, and AIDS-related medical services in Yonkers, New York.

Eve’s articles on social activists have appeared in the magazines TricycleShambhala Sun, and Tikkun. Her collection of Zen koans for modern Zen practitioners in collaboration with Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao, The Book of Householder Koans: Waking Up In the Land of Attachments, came out in February 2020.

Hunt for the Lynx, the first in her fantasy trilogy, The Dogs of the Kiskadee Hills, was published in 2016.

“When I was a young girl my dream was to be a hermit, live alone, and write serious literature. That’s not how things turned out. I got involved with people. I got involved in the world. Two things matter to me right now: the creative spark and the aliveness of personal connection. In some way, they both come down to the same thing.”

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You can also send a check to: Eve Marko, POB 174, Montague, MA 01351. Please write on the memo line whether this is in support or immigrant families or of my blog. Thank you.