Navigating Genocide Next to the Fire — Finding Peace & Beauty in the Darkness
A Journey with Mushrooms
I have been struggling, contemplating, wrestling, fighting to know how to navigate a genocide. A genocide of a community I love, lived amongst and witnessed. A community where my friends desperately cling to life in the onslaught and continue to love, resist, die. Friends who helped me find my voice. The answers came to me by the great grandfather fire, eating mushrooms, foul tasting, bitter as this time has been.
So how do we navigate genocide so we can keep walking, fighting and eventually win? It is when we find the light that exists in darkness, the time it can be seen at its brightest, in all its glory, with qualities of the divine. When we realise that we are the light keepers of the world, and this is our devout duty. We find the peace that can root and sustain us when we recognise the beauty that exists in the pain, the perfect pain that exists as shards of glass in our heart. The pain that exists as a tornado and a tsunami… rage, confusion, crushing grief, despair, rage, confusion, crushing grief, despair, and on, and on, and on; and in the burden of recognising that with the privilege we have, our pain is not even a shallow breath of what the Palestinians are experiencing, traversing, and that is also excruciating… the knowledge, not even a shallow breath! This is also the personal load we must carry, and carry with grace and humility, to bear witness to trauma, not fall into victimhood, and fight like hell to end this great evil.
So where is the beauty? In the dancing flames and with the wisdom of my funghi friends, it came to me. The beauty exists in the purest love that we also get to behold; the courage, the self-sacrifice, that cannot be witnessed at any other time. It is in the doctor, the nurse, who chooses to stay with the patient in their final moments, in the hospital about to be devastated; not just bombed, but obliterated, pounded to the ground. They stay, standing with full dignity and an almost godlike quality, comforting the patient they could not save. The paramedic who still drives to the wounded as bombs fly overhead. It’s the journalist who wears a vest, that now means target, as language and symbols evolve, and risks themselves to tell the story of their people being erased. It’s the poet who dies, throwing his pen, but not before writing final words, a message of comfort for the grieving child who nears their own final breath. It’s the adult, the mother, father, brother, sister, who finds the ability to still coax laughter out of the shaking child in a tent. A teacher who continues to impart knowledge and wisdom over the humming drones. It’s in the aid worker who chose to take the risk and their last breath delivering food to starving people, whose stomachs growl for relief and justice. And as I look deeper into the fire, it’s the young man, a military man, who refuses to be complicit in genocide and who, in setting fire to himself, is not consumed by the flames, but rather sets the world ablaze with holy fire, igniting others, showing us the way, pointing out where the shadows are and who hides in them.
My realisation is this, that it is only in the darkest times that humans get to bring to the light the true, pure beauty that exists within them. A beauty that costs them dearly, but inspires and activates others to bring to that same light, no, to the darkness, their own beauty and dares the world to look at itself in the mirror and see what is looking back. Masks are ripped off, monsters revealed, and now we all know what we are, what we have become, in this cold light of day. We are forced to ask ourselves, what do we want to be and how do we want to move forward? What kind of world do we wish to create? For we are ALL creators, each and every one of us!
This is how I now understand we must navigate genocide, to take the knowledge and wisdom of this beauty, to celebrate it, breathe, find peace in the breath, refuel, stand, shine, fight, resist, support, speak, comfort, stop…. Celebrate, breathe, refuel, stand, shine, fight, resist, support, speak, comfort, stop… and again, and again, and again, until we win!
The seeds planted by our brothers and sisters in the human family that have left us whilst standing in their perfect exquisiteness WILL take root, and saplings will push forth, I have seen it and the whirlwind of peace doves that move up and up to the heavens.
We acknowledge the families that have been erased, their names no longer appearing on earthly registries, but our children will become theirs, and they will become our children’s ancestors, and we will make sure their stories are told. We will carry them like sacred texts to pass to future generations, who will tend to their saplings, and they will be strong and abundant, because they were sown in the purest love.
So, through the journey of eating the bitterest mushrooms, I found the beauty in the pain and I now understand how I must move forward, honouring and carrying it with grace; and I hope this may help you also, my friend, to do similarly, for ours is the job to hold the light, follow the path they laid and to look to the sky and know they are watching.
Falasteen Horra, Free Palestine and may our whole human family be liberated from suffering, from dehumanisation, from false ideologies that destroy us all, and may we be knitted together through love, compassion, and the recognition of our connectedness. Aho.
