because we failed them by our disregard

Some lovely things that happened today:

1) Brittany found me sleeping in the study room this morning at 7.30 am (I was studying really late last night and realized I was locked out of my room). She brought me to her bed and I slept there-- it smelled like her and like Friday afternoons, post Econ quiz, when I often come and get on her bed and relax into the weekend. I got to sleep a half hour there, so warm.

2) When I returned from dinner this evening and from meeting my disciplees, I found a plate of hummous and pita bread on my bed, that my dear roomie brought me from the meeting she attended.

3) I cut the first pomegranate that I bought Monday. The firm little beads are waiting in my fridge for granola tomorrow morning.

4) I slept for an hour and a half this afternoon, and before I fell asleep I had a few minutes of clarity, in which I was able to speak to God rationally (this has not been the case for a couple of days.)

I must be a fairly primative being. Most of these good things in my day centered around food and sleep.

I was talking to rachel this afternoon, and we both agreed on a very relevant quote from Train, things are going to work somehow/if I just sleep another hour.

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Yesterday evening I went to a documentary about children in the Palestinian region Jenin. A large proportion of suicide bombers are from Jenin, and much violence is brought there by the Israeli army. The documentary followed several children, showing them when they were 12 or 13 in a theatre club in the area and then in their early twenties as part of the resistance against the occupation.

The main question that left me disturbed and puzzling was what should be done with the anger of the children. The theatre camp taught them to express anger through art and drama-- this is a nice idea but watching the footage it looked like the adults involved were almost encouraging the childrens' anger.

But as was brought up in the discussion of the documentary by students afterward, anger is there regardless. When your house is destroyed, when family members are killed, you become angry. If this all happens when you are very small, the anger is built into you. The anger must come out, so why not encourage it to come out in a setting where no one gets hurt?

I remember going to a "take back the night" rally on campus last spring. The speaker was addressing victims of sexual abuse and rape and she said, "don't let people tell you not to be angry. That jerk took something from you and you can't get it back. Let yourself be angry. The anger is good. It will drive you to succeed. Embrace your anger."

I agree that in such a situation anger is appropriate, but embrace it? Call it good? Seek success through it? Sounds like bondage.

The way the children in the film avoided the eyes of the interviewers, didn't look at the camera... the bondage was clearly there.

Yet let all things go free that have survived.

Let the smells of mint go heady and defenceless
Like inmates liberated in that yard.
Like the disregarded ones we turned against
Because we failed them by our disregard.

(Seamus Heaney, Mint)