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August 2006 - Article 4
The Israeli army mobilized along the Lebanese border, and at any day, any hour, any moment, land troops would enter the country. A talk of full-scale war, maybe even the beginning of World War III. Some were saying that evangelical Christians were excited, because the amassing of military centered around Israel could harken the Second Coming, the end of the world. Maybe they were right. If so, it seemed as important as any time to appreciate the moment. There's a small hamlet in New York State called Lebanon. Not much there as far as city standards go: just a rundown community center that looked deserted and forgotten, and some churches that are probably communities onto themselves. Passing by there, I wondered what the sermon would be like there on Sunday. Would they talk about how in the Middle East crisis Jesus would show up on the fortieth day of the fighting? Would they talk of how, in war, it is important to remember the suffering on both sides, whether soldier and civilian? Maybe, to remember generosity at home, and vicariously, like a prayer, the energy might be carried to the far corners of the earth?  The drive took my husband and me past rolling hills, green with the prime of summer, past farms in various stages of labor pains, and pastures sleeping in the haze that draped over the valleys, as though unaware of the miscarriage of what its namesake experienced far overseas as dusk fell. I, too, felt sleepy with them, having spent the night awake with worry for a pet that went missing overnight. The pet showed up for breakfast the next morning. The missiles, though, they still were awake, bloodletting the shores of the port city Haifa, a city that had done nothing other than find itself inconveniently a convenient target for Hezbollah assault. I blinked my eyes and tried to stay awake. Though I write mostly about the comparison of this verdant landscape to the bloodshed in Lebanon, I am aware of the suffering on both sides. I have my political opinions, but they mean whatever they mean with politicos that play chess games with faceless enemies on the other side. The warplanes, the missiles, they hit their targets and move on. A previously placid meadow, a once productive fruit orchard become indistinguishable mortar, as though the earth ruptured beneath them. One thriving city along a shore and another city that had just begun to rise from the ashes of its own past become cities of the dead, the echoes of their empty streets are their own funeral procession. Only from what I see on the distance of a screen, the relative serenity of my faraway position can I make my own observations, far from the theater of war. But a quiet Middle Eastern valley becomes a shambles in the afternoon. The illusion of security is just that, an illusion. Watch the wind whisper through the grasses now, for tonight it may betray you and turn into a roar. 
The television tells me there is breaking news, that Israeli tanks have knocked over a border fence, have rolled into Lebanese territory. No one knew for sure when they would come. The missiles fly, the tanks roll on. The stillness of Lebanon, New York stays with me, makes me ponder. Maybe the place I passed was asleep. Or maybe, I am wrong, my interpretation of its soul incorrect. Maybe it holds a quiet vigil for the souls of the lost, knowing its own precariousness, how peace is shattered with one shout. So it preserves its own silence, as though in doing so, it preserves its own soul for just a little while longer. 
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