*the action of remedying something, of stopping or reversing harm
All the blog topics I was considering writing about went on hold after October 7th when Hamas first attacked civilians in Israel, and Israel responded in kind, launching air strikes on civilians living in Gaza. I have felt both a responsibility and a reluctance to write about the war. The situation is so complex and such an unspeakable tragedy – acts of such terror and violence met with even greater violence and repressive measures; a people with such a deep history of being oppressed engaged in such long-term acts of oppression against their fellow human beings and neighbors; both traumatized peoples acting out of deep pain and woundedness. In the face of so much suffering, providing any kind of analysis feels distancing at a time when what we most need is to let the suffering move us to our depths.
Distancing, a failure to feel in our bodies our connection to all that exists, is precisely what allows us to commit such acts of brutality. It is the literal distancing made possible through the development of missiles and aerial bombardment that enables the perpetrator of such destruction not to come face-to-face with the resultant slaughter and suffering.[i] It is the distancing of what ecofeminist Susan Griffin calls the Western “habit of mind,”[ii] the mind-body dualism alienating us from nature and from our very beings, that enables such destruction without feeling, the destruction of our fellow human beings, of other creatures, of the very earth that occurs in war. She argues that this habit of mind has necessarily led to the creation of the category of “the Other” that “has acted as a receptacle for the experience of nature the European mind would wish to deny” (Eros, 42). And it is the distancing of seeing those suffering not as fellow human beings, but as “other” -- something less than, not worthy of our consideration or compassion – that enables one to inflict such pain.
In their joint Palestinian-Jewish statement on the current situation in Gaza and Israel, the editors of Tikkun acknowledge how easy it is to slip into this “othering,” and seek its antidote:
When we fall back into our separate and distinct identities we risk becoming part of the problem, not the solution. Both peoples suffer from ongoing trauma. We are all on high alert. The fear is palpable. And it is easy for us to objectify the 'other.' We seek a third path that neither perpetuates a xenophobic response nor sustains an unjust status quo. This moment calls us to slow down, sit with the pain and complexity, and grapple with our discomfort. It is a moment for digging deep, seeing across differences, and remembering our deep yearning for peace and justice. It is only through compassion and empathy that we will find a different way.[iii]
During this time, I happened to be listening to the chapter “Collateral Damage” in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, in which she draws the connections between the deaths and declining number of salamanders with the war in Iraq. Echoing Griffin, she writes: “It has been said that people of the modern world suffer a great loneliness, a ‘species loneliness’ – estrangement from the rest of Creation. We have built this isolation with our fear, with our arrogance. . . .” She goes on to talk about how salamanders are “so very much ‘the other,’ cold, slimy creatures verging on repulsive to the warm-blooded Homo sapiens.” She continues, “They bring us face to face with our innate xenophobia, sometimes directed at other species and sometimes directed at our own . . . .“ But helping salamanders safely to cross the road that cuts them off from the pond where they need to be, she says, “offers an antidote to the poison of xenophobia. Each time we rescue slippery, spotted beings we attest to their right to be, to live in the sovereign territory of their own lives“ (358). Compassion begins here. Overcoming our “innate xenophobia,” our fear of the other, requires going beyond the divides imposed by the Western habit of mind, beyond our species being to recognizing our connection to all that exists.
I feel this connection in my bones. It is immersion in this connection that offers both the antidote and the balm when that connection is ripped asunder. And so it was that in the midst of the turmoil of the world, my friend and I walked along the contours of the St. Louis Bay where in the calm waters and autumnal glories we found a peace and healing from the woundedness of the world.
It made me wonder where in the current conflict the people of Israel and Gaza could find moments of peace. As if in answer, the Chorus of the besieged in Albert Camus’s play, State of Siege, cry out: “The sea, the sea! The sea will save us. What cares the sea for wars and pestilences? . . . O vast sea spaces, shining solitude, baptism of brine. Ah, to be alone beside the sea, facing the blue expanse, fanned by the wind and free at last of this city sealed like a tomb, and these all-too-human faces clamped by fear!” (167). Indeed, this is what the sea has been for the people of Gaza. In his 2022 interview with an NPR reporter living in Gaza following what was then the latest battle between Israel and Gaza militants, NPR reporter Daniel Estrin said that, “the sea is the one escape people in Gaza have from a tough daily life in between the wars, living under blockade by Israel and Egypt with widespread poverty.” Fahid Rabah, an engineer at the sewage treatment plant, concurred, “We have more than 2 million people here in Gaza - and very crowded, very small area. And the only place that they can go breathe is the sea.” For years they were cut off from that one respite because the sea off Gaza was so polluted due to the lack of reliable electricity to run the sewage treatment plants. But prior to that most recent incursion Israeli officials had changed course and allowed for the equipment and reliable energy sources necessary to treat the sewage, and the waters had once again become swimmable. Now that power has again been cut off from the people living in Gaza, one must wonder what will become of the waters in the surrounding sea.
The polluted water doesn’t just stay in Gaza. It also travels to Israel, affecting the desalination plant that supplies a fifth of Israel’s drinking water, as well as its beaches. The waters of connection run everywhere. What affects one affects us all. Distance is an illusion, and a dangerous one.
Thealogian Rita Nakashima Brock urges us to feel the pain for the world, arguing that repression of that pain results in oppression, and that empathy with the suffering in the world is a precondition to the solidarity necessary for its healing. As she writes, it is “our capacity to suffer with the world [that] leads us to a sense of community with all of creation” (240).
The only thing interrupting the peacefulness my friend and I found by the waters of St. Louis Bay was the intrusive noise of the dredging equipment out in the bay. Like the seas off Gaza, St. Louis Bay has been so polluted as to be designated a Superfund site — polluted by the dumping of toxic waste by US Steel — steel used in the manufacture of weapons and war planes; polluted by the failure to see the connection between ourselves and the rest of creation. It will take years of remediation to restore it to wholeness. The plans for remediation of the St. Louis Bay include restrictions on dredging activities, for while dredging can be used to restore ecosystems by removing contaminants, the same dredging can cause contaminants in the sediment to leak into the water. It must be done with great care.
Dredging up the wounds of the past and present carries its dangers, but if done carefully, it can be restorative, if the wounds it uncovers are the wounds of connection that run through us all, revealing in Griffin’s words, that “every life bears in some way on every other” (Chorus, 144), if this “digging deep” is one that helps us to “see across differences, and remember our deep yearning for peace and justice.” Undoubtedly it will take years of remediation, but it is in our ability to see ourselves in others, in the waters, in the salamanders, in those we would label “enemy,” that we can find the sources of compassion that heal our lives.
Sources
A look at two sides of life in the Gaza Strip right now : NPR
Camus, Albert. 1958. Caligula & Three Other Plays. Trans. Stuart Gilbert. New York: Vintage Books.
Brock, Rita Nakashima. 1989. “On Mirrors, Mists, and Murmurs.” In Plaskow, Judith and Carol Christ, eds., Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. 235-243.
Griffin, Susan. 1992. A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War. New York: Doubleday.
Griffin, Susan. 1995. The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society. New York: Doubleday.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Press.
Remediation and Restoration Projects for the St. Louis River AOC | US EPA
[i] For a thorough exploration of the changes in the nature of warfare with the invention of airplanes, missiles, and rockets, see Susan Griffin’s brilliant A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War.
[ii] Susan Griffin explores this “Western habit of mind” in her The Eros of Everyday Life.
[iii] For the full statement, see Solidarity with Palestinians and Jews (google.com).