If I’ve been a penitent good enough to have made myself a soul, my soul is suffering (Sign 4/5). This sail, which will take and keep me away from the shores of pain as long as my pounded bones (17/4, 18/4) are awaiting resurrection (31/11), like a skin gets scratched by grief. Now I understand Jesus’ feeling process better, every time that he looked unwell in front of me in 1974. Even though he had been resurrected and transfigured, his soul kept suffering, but it was suffering from love and nobleness sickened by the grime and the stale smell given off by my poor heart of a then selfsatisfied “christian”.
That little soul of mine is much less gloriously suffering from remorse for having failed to harvest (Sign 6/2, 31/6) the number of penitents it would take to spare 34 children fear and death today in Qana, Lebanon. I too experienced fear during bombings in 1943 and 1944. I know the sort of horrible anxiety felt by everybody, even kids, under the roar of the unseen blind force just about to kill at random, kill no-one knows whom or when or where.
I wanted this blog to be often, say, every other entry, a joyful alternative to the sometimes too heavy seriousness of faith and worries given us by hard earthly realities, but what can I make it now? In the Middle East the compendium of pain and death in Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, the maelstrom of problems currently insolvable between mentalities still culturally incompatible, are tormenting my soul. When I created this blog I only sought to share my thoughts with my sisters and brothers, but not be a pain in the neck with cause for concern too much repeated, I just intended to stay ever present amid the assembly while leaving a window opened for chance strangers (Sign 25/3-4) to take a glance at me. I figured that, as the world has to change (28/7), I ought to let men take time to decide on that change, I should make sure that I never put them off by repeatedly reproaching them for their sins, I should feed their minds with moderation and gentleness (25/9) and should not forget to amuse them at times. Unfortunately, I can’t. Today, July 30, Israel has bombed Qana, Lebanon, and in minutes has killed 54 fellow humans, 37 children among them. I have cried once more…

Photo : Magne Hagesæter (Wikimedia)

But even if I am grieving, I am not in dispair. I mend my sail, my soul, it swells with the wind of faith and reason. My soul will not grow three legs and three wings like the crane that can no longer run or fly — religion and politics, in short, Néro — (Sign XXII/1-2). I’ve got a blog, a blog which defies distance, haven’t I? My blogger soul flies and joins the bloggers who over there, in Lebanon and Israel, send each other messages, but no bombs, no missiles. All of those messages are not polite, but many of them are not negative, I’m told. Yes, indeed, bloggers in their forums and chats exchange hopeful messages all the way over the poor plastic-coasted cocoons that the Qana children have been made into (see picture). Hundreds of bloggers tell each other their expectation that they all will be some day living together on the land that the religious and the politicians are fighting over. Then, although I feel somewhat frustrated, because I cannot talk in Arabic and Hebrew with my fellow bloggers in the Orient, I am relieved to hear that they see the situation intelligently unlike their leaders.