How is your heart?
A little check-in and some news
Hello everyone,
How is your heart?
I know that mine has been shattered over and over in these last six months, witnessing the most horrendous destruction and suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza being broadcast directly to my phone, whilst our governments continue to support, by various means, the annihilation of a land and its people (and yes, there are too many other atrocities taking place that we also should not ignore). At the same time I have seen so much beauty and hope too in the way that so many people have been showing up together in love and solidarity for liberation for all.
I have felt short on words - none have seemed adequate and there are so many already out there that deserve our attention. Here are some of those:
Ode to the Orange
By Jeanine Hourani for Chutney Magazine
This piece was sent to me by Suyin Haynes (
). It’s an essay on the Yaffa orange, by Jeanine Hourani, originally published in Chutney Magazine (Issue 03) and now available to read in full on this IG post.
A Situation: A Tree in Palestine
by Liat Berdugo for Places Journal
Impactful, informative and very well written. I have read this article a couple of times since it was first shared to me by someone who follows @decolonisethegarden and I’m sure I will be re-visiting it again.
Israel’s Campaign Against Palestinian Olive Trees
by Layla Hedroug for The Yale Review of International Studies
Short and incisive piece on the destruction of Palestinian olive trees and the attendant destruction of land, livelihoods, families and culture.
Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape
by Raja Shehadeh
I read this book at the end of last year after I saw it recommended by Sim Kern @sim_bookstagrams_badly. Heartbreaking, educational and also highly readable. I really recommend it. The book covers a period of almost three decades. Each chapter follows Shehadeh on a different walk in the countryside near his home in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, woven through with historical and autobiographical insight.
The Work of the Witness
By Sarah Aziza for JewishCurrents
“Perhaps the fundamental work of witness is the act of faith—an ethical and imaginative leap beyond what we can see. It is a sober reverence of, and a commitment to fight for, the always-unknowable other. This commitment does not require constant stoking by grisly, tragic reports. Rather than a feeling, witness is a position. It insists on embodiment, on sacrifice, mourning and resisting what is seen. The world after genocide must not, cannot, be the same. The witness is the one who holds the line of reality, identifying and refusing the lie of normalcy. Broken by what we see, we become rupture incarnate.”
Powerful article given these 200+ days now of witnessing, through the remove of a phone screen for many of us, some of the most horrific scenes.
Seeing is Not Enough: Citizen Videography in Israel-Palestine
Liat Berdugo talk from 2021 on YouTube
I found this recorded lecture after reading Berdugo’s article, A Situation: A Tree in Palestine (see above). Interesting and particularly relevant in the context of all the harrowing citizen footage we have seen over the past 6 months and how little that seemed to move the dial. Berdugo argues that seeing is not enough, visual evidence is not enough. Believing precedes seeing and seeing does not alter belief. A large part of what we can see in an image is already a matter of a set of power relations that structure our vision.
3 practices for wisdom and wholeness, Krista Tippett TED talk
“Becoming whole would mean we orient together, away from what is death-dealing and toward what is life-giving.” ~ Krista Tippett
Krista Tippett has spent decades interviewing and speaking to some of the wisest philosophers on what it means to be human and she herself is full of wisdom too. I really appreciated her TED Talk on her ideas for how we might live in order to remake this world for the better. Meaningful and hopeful guidance and advice for our times.
In other news…
I know it’s been a little bit quiet on here of late. There are some articles in the pipeline for Radicle but they are taking some time, and I’m leaning into that being OK. They will be ready when they are ready. This place was never going to be about feeding the machine, deadlines, extractive behaviour or being on a treadmill for its own sake. What does it mean to not be in a constant rush and to allow things to marinate, take time and for that to be OK? I am strongly of the opinion that if something matters it’s worth taking time over and it will still matter and be meaningful whenever it may appear (as evidenced by many of the articles shared above, most of which are not new - same for the still-relevant archive of Radicle articles). Thank you for your patience and understanding and for your continued support of this space.
On that note, I have also been working on something else in the background over these past few months that I am excited (and full of nervous anticipation!) about…
I have been training to be a circle facilitator.
It’s a path that has felt generative, nourishing, enlivening and in alignment for me and I am looking forward to sharing more fully with you in the very near future. I’m excited about this as a way to be of service to this community and beyond, to hold tender and loving space for meaningful connection. I hope to get another newsletter out with more information on this in the next week or two, so please keep an eye out.
Until then, I hope you are enjoying the spring - here, everywhere is cherry and apple blossom, bluebells, rhododendrons, the bright greens of wild garlic, nettle and garlic mustard, with the first hawthorn flowers just appearing. It’s all such a balm.
Photo credit: Sui Searle