3:12 pm. I just arrived home from breast cancer surgery. The doctor removed a “measly” mass from my right breast, discovered through several rounds of sophisticated imaging that started with a regularly-scheduled exam. She also removed some lymph nodes, to check to see whether the cancer had spread. Now I rest, ice, and wait for the test results.
In my prayers this morning, I felt the connection between what this day would bring and decades and billions of dollars of investment in research-based medical practice, paid for with my taxpayer’s dollars in the U.S. and by other people living in other affluent countries. I am grateful. It’s giving me more years to live.
Waking up in the recovery room, I looked around. I noted, as I have in the breast center procedure rooms in the several visits over the last few weeks, the shining floors, the well-maintained walls and ceilings, even the curtains on the recovery space, and of course the array of equipment, electronically monitoring my status, drawing on a steady supply of electricity. There were lights. I was recovering with graham crackers and coffee with creamer. My husband joined me, ready to drive me home and pick up my pain and nausea medicine later this afternoon.
Then in my heart, the space transformed into a hospital in Gaza that completely ran out of supplies a day or two ago. The walls crumbled. The electricity disappeared. The ceiling of the room was half gone. The nurses had no bandages, even to stop the bleeding from my arm that had been blown away by a bomb delivered by a missile. I did not know where my daughter or grandkids were. No one there had eaten for days. The corridors were full of others like me, moaning without pain medicines. We did not know when another missile would arrive — before or after the convoy of humanitarian assistance brought more medical supplies, which might or might not reach the hospital where I was.
Then the scene changed and I was in a hospital in Ukraine, eerily similar.
Why had my taxpayer dollars gone to all that medical knowledge, only to have the conditions for using it wiped out by more of my taxpayer’s dollars going into the weapons that are fueling these wars?
I felt myself being pulled down into the descending spiral of violence and Othering. Centuries of isolation and persecution of Jews in Europe. Decades of Palestinian exile and oppression. Families waiting for hostages taken by Hamas. Mothers, children fleeing their homes in northern Gaza. Down and down it spirals. Where will it end? Hell?
When we pray, when we experience being with our brothers and sisters in their lives, how can we be anywhere but on the side of Peace?
Finding My Place 