The Rage of Flowers
Over ten years ago, my (then future) son-in-law, Tanner, spent a semester studying “in the Rabbi’s Middle Eastern dust.” Informed with some of Tanner’s insider tips, Bill and I traveled to Israel —to walk, run, bus, and eat our way through the rich and fascinating history and desert hillsides.
Everywhere we went, the beauty, culture, contradiction, stories of Jesus, and tales of the ancient culture surrounded us—metaphor colliding with truth. There, the Spirit is thick. Looking over UN Peace Keeping Troops from the Golan Heights, skirting the Gaza Strip, swallowing our hearts as we soberly took in a portion of Yad Vashem World Holocaust Museum, avoiding the “wrong” passport stamps —depending on which side of the border we stood, the tension was thick, too.
Today, the pain of Gaza and the country of Israel remain in the stronghold of Hamas and its allies. The world is not safe. And, for all the miles between us, neither are we.
Three years before Hamas attacked Israel, I was walloped by the power of a Banksy’s graffiti by, titled: “Rage: The Flower Thrower.” Prophetic? Maybe. We will see. Its poignancy took my breath away. By then, we westerners had been ignorantly lulled to the razor-sharp strain bordering that sliver of desert.
Plastering a car lot wall in Beit Sahour, Banksy’s mural captures the raw power of art to make us feel, relate, understand in ways words, war, policies, and politics cannot. Beauty and meaning move our souls.
But, like most things that matter, you and I must allow ourselves to receive it. This is the fodder of meaningful making. Purpose.
Sometimes, truth cuts beauty—releasing toxins.
I post this to assure anyone wrestling with the lament of war, Chapter One’s Visio Divina invites you to feel, to be curious, to create meaningful and compassionate change in effort to extend the empathy that Jesus would. Cry as you make. Let the raging, relentless tenderness of Jesus transform you.
And, out of a love for others, throw flowers.
Art above: Banksy – Love Is In The Air, Flower Thrower, 2005, Ash Salon Street, Bethlehem, West Bank, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 by jlevinger