Yalla!

After over a year living in the Middle East I’ve heard it all.

Living across the river from the most controversial chunk of land on the planet paired with my love of transparency and hate of opaque relationships, I get the privilege of hearing opinions on why there is war, injustice, lack of peace and love across the river.

“Its the  Jews” says one

“The Muslims” says the other

“Bush” say many

“America”

“Christians”

“the oppression of the corporate West”

I’ve heard this and a whole lot more a zillion times over and at the end of the day I think they are all wrong, and to your eventual shock I believe I can disagree without taking a political side. 

The problems can be traced back to government, true. They can be traced at times back to religion, and even to America (…I know…shocker) but at the end of the day the main cause of the problems across the river is the an epidemic that has plagued the region here and abroad for millenium…

The problem is pride.

The belief that I am greater then my neighbor. That addiction to being important…demanding respect. The childish problem of hating to admitt being wrong. To get yours. The worship of humanity and all of our wisdom and potential…even though many of us claim to fear a god. 

I’ll even be the first one to point out that I’m guilty of all of the above at times…even though I claim to follow the teachings of Issa. At the end of the day, those of us within the worldwide community who take our religious teachings seriously, our faith seriously, see that we all fail. Pride, the existence of it within our lives is a sin in the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian faiths…among other faiths. We all fail and in the haunting words of the Bob Dylan song “Masters of War” which describes the worth of the lives of corrupt, prideful,greedy politicians and all others who make war:

“You ain’t worth the blood that runs in your veins”

Though the words are directed towards specific individuals…though we all give it our best shot we end our days as disgusting individuals…putting ourselves before our neighbors, lacking sufficient love,we are liars, desiring all the world’s riches for ourselves. Those words speak a reality of the state of humanity, the source of our problems, the end of our story.

The only way many get by is some belief or hope that God will have mercy on us. Personally, this writer believes in a certainty of forgiveness of his shortcomings…but one must ask… how is this possible when all of our texts at least at times demand utter and untainted perfection from us?

Imperfect though we are, what if we all tried to be less prideful, less selfish, acting out and living a selfless life. Would the problems across the river change for the good?

For the past two years there has been another set of lyrics from an old Bob Dylan song “Tombstone Blues”that just about knocked the wind out me the moment the words sank in:

       “Stop all this weeping. Swallow your pride, you will not die… its not poison”

I love almost the dry, snappiness if you will, of the lyric. As if the writer gets it, and yells at the whole in disgust as some of the prophets of old “Don’t you get it! If we cared more about each other then ourselves…we wouldn’t be here!!”

Is it possible? Could the world commit to such a task? Could we love each other enough to learn about each others cultures before we make such piercing accusations? Could we even sacrifice our own riches, honor, entitlement for someone we disagreed with? Could we love an enemy? Could we put our own reputation on the line for the sake of true justice?

Hopefully the world prays that the answer to all these questions is yes, otherwise, we and our hope for peace is damned…on both sides of the river and beyond.