Oh my dawn, my glorious dawn Wind Horse meditation, giving me the power to cope with my darkness and to love the morning.
Here we are.
Adam joins me this morning for his periodic visitation, not just a fly-over. 
He reminds us that our tools are crude, that we fail to embrace the Mystery, our knowledge is fluff.
We need to listen to the birds 

I tell you there is no justice
No this or that.
Can't you hear me?
I struggle to make sense,
But there is no meaning!
The storm has no meaning.
My disease and pain have no meaning.
Poverty has no meaning.
The racism in America, the violence of war and collateral revenge,  Netanyahu, Putin, Erdogan, Un, Meloni, Khomeini, Modi, Trump;
The sickness and rise of authoritarianism has no predetermined karma for its victims or its victors. 
There is no meaning.

Where are the souls of the 20,000 suffered-to-death Gazan children? 
What is the meaning of their lives?
There is no meaning.
I thought the world was kind.

Adam sits high in the hickory tree, laughing at my lamentations,
Directing me to listen to the chickadee.

Amy Little, 2023

My heart weeps a monsoon of tears for the massacred children of the Holy Land
Slaughtered Innocents who have no voice
At the mercy of elders who should protect them
Instead, betrayed, they lay lifeless
A testimony to hypocrisy of hearts deaf to compassion or reason
May we seek refuge in your perfect Light
By facing our Darkness and basest impulses
May we purge ourselves and embrace a higher octave
Dedicate our remaining days to ending this cycle of pain
To heal, restore and promote peace for generations to come

Vincenza Dante, 2023

My lament
as a woman
for women
for our life source
Mother Earth
she who is being blasted into
in Gaza
she who's olive trees destroyed
their soothing oil
annihilated
as children being buried
alive
whose fathers broken hearts
have forever been denied
enabling their gender's automic military mindset
to be embedded, in brains, over eons
still unchanged
and so the cycle goes on
our self-imposed destruction
fueling anger and rage
over tears
tears over too many years
left to the women
to weep
and so they mean nothing
dismissed as emotion
so who cares?
apparently
too few
of us
and so shame on us
as whomever our god might be
turning in his grave
leaving us
numb
on this hallowed day

Judith Asphar, 2023

It’s the children I can’t get out of my mind.
Children too young to identify as Jews or Muslims,
children who belong to the earth,
innocents slaughtered like some Old Testament horror story
(because, really, Abraham was totally down
with slitting Isaac’s throat).
Big, ugly men spewing death all over the planet.

 We on the other side of the world
who grew up in suburbs
clipped lawns, flowerboxes
Houses that looked safe—
No bombs tearing us away from life—
our monsters were subtle.
The crazy mother
the drunk and violent father
the bullies the rapists.
Everywhere, innocence gets the short stick.
Everywhere children are caught in webs
spun by a world insane.
What good is our lament?
What can helplessness do?
How do we call out monsters
Without becoming monsters ourselves?
Isn’t this the perpetual question?
Do our prayers, our tears, make any difference at all?
Isn’t holding on to hope an act of crazy courage?

Cait Johnson, 2023

The world is filled with grief and anxiety, beginning with the atrocities committed by the Russians to the Ukrainians. Being followed by the inhumane attack of Israel by Hamas. These are forces of the dark expressing itself to the world. At a time when the world is going through the chaos of climate, change and instability. Destruction of our humanity is underway. The very structure of our world is being challenged. May we all be Purified, Blessed and Healed by the Divine in all our activities, day and night in all places. May all sentient beings be free of suffering, and all causes of suffering, and be happy and healthy in every way, having more causes of health and happiness, free from disease and imbalance to the benefit of all things. May the world be filled with peace and love, good health, long, life, prosperity, wisdom, and truth. We must take back our humanity, and realize our love for one another.  The Divine light dispels all darkness. We must realize our commonality and act accordingly.

Normananda, 2023

Wind-howling around the house
and deep in the woods a moan
as the season loses its hold
on the land, the head,
and heart.

Such loss, such leaving
empties the soul of tears
for what is absent,
far off in a darkening land.

And only moonlight left
to fetch the way home,

to find another season
to take by the hand
and lead indoors

away from wind
and the markings of the moon.

Tom Cowan, November 2023

For me, Lament is very courageous, because it may be easier to turn to G*d when things are good.  Speaking with G*d truthfully, is perhaps, what is most important to G*d.  Our lament Truthfully, with love and trust ~ that is beautiful.  And yes, I agree about the power of saving a life to end a grief. I have overcome some of my concern/grief by doing a radio program, in which I was able to share material that I felt would contribute to insights of love for all the people of the Holy Land.

Jill Benzer, 2023

What a horror. The children who have died  in fear, the children who are living in fear. No one, especially the children deserve to endure this terror. Have mercy.

Hollie Marron

Help, I cannot see!
No clarity, only ferocity.
The Holy Land erupts into hells
of Jew against Muslim, Gazan against Israeli, IMF against Hamas.
All explodes into dust, dissolves into ghost, descends into darkness.
Oh, how I wish for vision--
to make sense of the lives and deaths, so far away, demanding my attention now.
And when I find that wishing wears me out,
I wail, Help! 
and hope that I am heard.

Jack Macquire

Find truce,
In truth.
Release pain,
without blame.
Share love,
as from above.

Anonymous

Living in wartimes
many deaths around the world --
sunlight on mountain

Do we value how
time, heartbreak built our cities --
war, bombs -- now rubble.

Tom Cowan

Madness abound, a sheer madness,
The cadence a widening wound.

 Through distress may we summon
Amidst it a silver- white spotlight,
Wide enough to make us all sleepless
Shall it creep through cloud cluster,
Slink through twining branches
Of ever- flowing column of trees.
Triumphantly a flying saucer
Begins its landing on the Great Lawn
Plainly it’s a Divine spectacle.

 All broadcasts are interrupted.

 No leather-bound book will be left
To decipher in failed attempts.
Telepathy, language of a pulse
Is the alphabet to study.
In the withered stale tic formed past
Worldly book writ to enlighten.
Was thumbed through self-righteously.
Where a faction of villagers
Were thought to join a gracious cult

 Scheme for shining concentration
To correct less than beloved steps
Will come brimming through a series.
Of cease fires in all directions. 

Cease firing on calm villagers in tents.
Cease firing hard workers for crazed owner.
Cease firing throng in candlelight vigil.
Cease firing automaton that bleeds now.

And cease fire at the metallic hatch.
Upon opening for divine mission.

Joshua Meander, Oct. 31, 2023

I grasp at your coat to steady myself in the grief
and you have helped me remain on my feet
as we walk together in communion
We have no words as the news of the horrors
moves us beyond the beyond where one may express heartbreak

Yet, in the place of words we somehow find hope in our hearts
simply by being together, and we walk for peace

This tragedy, ... a tragedy of tragedies, was born of greed, we know
It is of low vibration, short-sightedness, a forgetting of Love for all

What is a more profound expression of Love than a child who
shines it in all directions indiscriminately?

Then to hear of the laughter of children snuffed out?
Erased?
Families annihilated?! Homes destroyed!

How do we carry this?!

NO words, but a cry from the depths of our being
In communion
Together
We steady ourselves, and move from cries that ask
'How can this be?!'
and transform that cry, raising our vibrations to song
singing 
IT IS ...
IT IS ...
IT IS LOVE THAT CARRIES US THROUGH!

Let us walk this way
carrying the heartbreak ... and the Joy
as to suffer means to carry
and through all of the madness we Love

A-HO!

David Budd, 2023

One of my dearest friends is a conservative, observant rabbi who has a son studying at both Columbia U & a Jewish school in NYC whose name I forget. She was a chaplain to people both during 9/11 in NYC & in Pittsburgh after the Tree of Life synagogue gun massacre. She’s an expert in trauma & is now in trauma herself. I wonder how it feels for her to write tuition checks to Columbia when it’s not taking a stand that makes her son feel safe. There is so much grief too. Everybody knows somebody. Our family lawyer lost 2 cousins on Oct 7 & 2 more of his cousins are missing. Another friend of mine is worried about people she knows who are heading out to fight in the IDF.  And then, following the unspeakable horror in Israel, there is the unspeakable horror in Gaza.  Something like 3500 children have died there now, never mind the count of adults. So many “ands.”  Israel has the right to defend itself “and” these civilian deaths in Gaza are wrong. Israel has not treated Palestinians well “and” the Palestinians have turned down every attempt to make peace.  Hamas is evil “and” a substantial minority of Palestinians support it.  Hamas has committed war crimes “and” so has Israel.  Those who protest against the deaths Palestinians have a righteous point “and” there’s a hell of a lot of anti-Semitism in those protests.  And, and, and. In the end, everyone is suffering and no one is purely right.  And is this the long prophesied “end” unfolding?  I don’t think anyone has to even be in that theological camp to wonder. We sure have fucked up Eden in every way.  I don’t know whether I’ll write a psalm lament.  I feel like I e been living lament as I reach out to my Jewish friends & also a Muslim friend to check in & ask if they are ok & puzzle about what comfort food I could cook & bring to them that are also kosher & halal & vegetarian & god I food allergy pure & I can’t even because I also have my own life to deal with—elder care, adjusting to an empty nest, building a house to age in. A friend posted this prayer which I have folded into my morning prayers:  I pray for your peace in troubled lands, in places where people fear each day, in cities, or villages under threat of danger. I pray your peace into the hearts of those who hate, into the minds of those who live in anger, of those who long for revenge. The hot winds of war sweep over so many lives, dear God, terror and cruelty following in their wake. I do not know what else to do, but stand here making my appeal to heaven. Peace, I pray. Peace against all the odds, peace without compromise, peace strong and enduring, peace so children never worry as they go to sleep.  —Steven Charleston, episcopal, bishop, and citizen of the Choctaw Nation. 

Deb Jacoby-Twigg, 2023

I am sick over all of these things like this. It makes no sense .. 
However, going back to nature seems like the greatest defense .. 
Sharing Love with others seems to really help to..
and in moments like this is what  I am choosing to do... 

Erik Callender, 2023

I don't understand it, I can only lament it.
I don't know what an olive tree is like.
I can look it up, check Wikipedia
But it is just media.
False and True at the same time.
A poem, like this, that both does and doesn't rhyme.

I thought the olive tree a symbol of friendship,
An offering of peace to those who meant it. 
But all I read is of violence and vengeance.
I know there are those who toil
To grow olives in rocky soil,
But that soil, fertilized with tales too many to be known,
Are soaked with the blood and tears of young and grown.
And in every grain, stories are untold, as they silently abide,
Carrying whispers of worshipers who in this earth collide.

What is the fragrance of a native blossom's bloom?
It is not something I can learn on Zoom. 
What happens to a flower's scent when  
It is caught in an endless cycle of nurture and tomb?
Can I, a distant observer, ever truly comprehend 
In the silent echoes of a digital void, an abyss,
The captured essence of a promised bliss.
I read, I hear, yet I cannot truly see,
Why the tempests  brew in this land, ancient as the sea.

Does the sun weep, setting over divided ground,
Do Olive trees grow arms and fight
Where once, perhaps, harmonious life was found?
Is there a murmur amongst the weathered stones,
Telling of harmonies lost, in mournful tones?

Does a wall, stark and tall, without a temple,
In poignancy stand, or did a prophet
Divide more than just the tangible land?
Is there an invisible rift through hearts, a fissure,
Through dreams, through solemn midnight prayers?

Webs of dirges spun, in threads gold and grey,
With daggers and dancers in the melody,
Speak of unity and discord in a mystical, somber baladi.
Yet what is the dance of shadows on old walls?
To the spectator afar who into a rabbit hole falls?

Sculpting a narrative from the echoes of the virtual,
Informed by the facts that include the counterfactual,
Pales to the feeling of sand, real and actual.
Can words alone distill the truth from tales woven?
Or is it destined to remain perpetually cloven?

In this distant lament, there is no choosing sides,
This poem doesn't know the extremes or the middle,
And who in Rome plays the fiddle. 
And no secret wisdom herein these syllables abides,
Just a gentle, silent, inaudible plea,
For understanding on our mutual and boundless, blue sea.

May the impotent desires of poets like me, 
Nurture the whispered wishes of the olive trees,  
and blend in a chorus that speaks of amends.
And in the roots, entwined in the sacred earth,
May there be a way, a resilient rebirth.

In lands, where my feet have never tread,
And with the arrogance to try to comprehend,
I pen this, with a heavy, unacquainted dread.
In hope that one day, upon the gentle breeze,
Floats a melody of unity, a harmonious ease.

Joseph Franklyn McElroy, 2023 
Galileotechmedia.com

I didn’t write my own lament (yet) but thought of two pieces of work that are forever with me and helpful at these times. One is from the book “Women in the Castle” by Jessica Shattuck.

A line on page 149 about the German townspeople (Nazi supporters and resisters) who have been brought together after the war by a concert put together at a local church. The sermon didn’t affect them but the music did. The young boy who was there remembers it years later:

“The music stirred the hardened sediment of their memory, chafed against layers of horror and shame, and offered a rare solace in their shared anger, grief, and guilt.” 

My guilt is always that I’m not doing enough. Then I remember a quote by Emma Goldman that I actually put on a t-shirt (along with my DJ website address, LOL) “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”

And then I’m reminded of my favorite Holly Near song. Here are the lyrics:

I Am Willing

“I am open and I am willing
To be hopeless would seem so strange
It dishonors those who go before us
So lift me up to the light of change
There is hurting in my family
There is sorrow in my town
There is panic in the nation
There is wailing the whole world round
May the children see more clearly
May the elders be more wise
May the winds of change caress us
Even though it burns our eyes
Give me a mighty oak to hold my confusion
Give me a desert to hold my fears
Give me a sunset to hold my wonder
Give me an ocean to hold my tears”

Songwriter: Holly Near
I Am Willing lyrics © Hereford Music

Shelley Cullen, 2023

O, God, you overhear us as we speak to one another:

“Salam … Shalom … Peace”

But the words are
empty,
hollow.

They fall and shatter like brittle glass against ancient stone.
Maybe you do not hear us . . . or you would DO something.

How can our faith in you, a loving God

Be a source of violence and not healing?
Perhaps because it is a faith of the mind and not the heart;
Spoken from the lips and not the soul,
Its echo fading into nothingness.

If you do hear us, you must not be listening . . . 
To our words . . . 
To your children crying . . . 
To your children dying.
Maybe we are not your children after all . . . or you would DO something.

If you are truly the God of life and love,
Speak your word to us again
As a flame to enlighten our minds and warm our hearts.
Let your breath penetrate us to our very depths..
So that again we may utter:

“Salam … Shalom … Peace”

But now spoken with our entire being, and the will to embody their meaning through action.

Until that time, they are words of anguish.  

Al Dell'Angelo, 2023