Before lunch today, a few friends and I decided to go for a walk through the Ben Yehuda Shopping district in West Jerusalem. It felt metropolitan and, except for the jewish theme, it seemed to be very similar to American shopping malls: clothing shops, craft coops, book stores, restaurants, even street musicians. I got startled however when some young "skate-boarder types" in graphic tees, shorts, and Teva sandals darted through the crowd carrying their military-issued machine guns. Nobody else seemed to care which made it extremely disconcerting and I wanted to get back to the east part of the city.
Last night I dreamt about the teenagers with semi-automatic weapons and nobody flinching. These days my heart aches all the time -- mainly because it is nearly impossible to do the "emptying out" (Dalai Lama term) here. I think everyone in the group has to watch out that we are not reflecting the lack of humanity we see back on each other. Sometimes we are rude to each other without even realizing it -- and if a "rude people" list existed, the people of my group would be the last to be placed on the list.
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