The Land Remembers

The most dangerous place to be a child in the world today is Gaza.

I recently read an article by Nicholas Kristof, referencing a UNICEF report that broke me open: more children have died in Gaza this year than in all global conflicts combined in 2022. That sentence alone rearranged something in me.

How strange to have babies turning to ancestors.

That feels so upside-down and dizzying. To have babies only live in this world within a short shimmer, and then lost under rubble and politics. We are our land, the origins of the word Human comes from the same word "humus" - to be of the soil. To be human is to be connected to place, to the soil that birthed you. The lands of Palestine and Lebanon hold old scars and fresh wounds of violence and displacement. The land remembers the families who were torn from their homes and the lives they built.

The earth will not forget the blood it had to absorb.

Absorb these stories and these crimes, wit(h)ness them, pour your pain into the land where you live, and hold solidarity under your feet.

My friend Amy Rusch reminded me how elephants listen to their distant family through the soft pads of their feet; they stay with them through the vibrations underfoot from immense distances.

If you can, find a barefoot moment, and listen to the tremors coming from our family there - feel the earth rumble from USA-funded drone strikes on whole towns.

May the soft soles of your soul receive this situation and let it vibrate through our bodies, our families, and our collective land. Strength to those Israelis standing up to their government, and those who do not accept this erasure of family. We are not citizens of countries, we are ecological citizens, we are citizens of the land. We are the humus.