Imagine you are sitting in your home. Imagine that when you look out the window, you can see a wall growing close and closer, day by day, straight toward the walls of your home. You know that the larger wall will not correct its course. You know that soon, very soon, your walls will be gone, leaving only the larger wall standing. I sit on a terrace that was probably built centuries before Columbus set sail...and am spitting distance from the wall, grey and shocking, monstrous, prison-like, stark and hard-edged. I am so close, in fact, that I can hear the machinery working tirelessly beneath in the large shadow - you have to be able to imagine this wall to understand. It's built like a prison wall - about twenty feet straight up, and then another 20 at a slant, built to keep the prisoners...uh, I mean terrorists...in. >From what is to be known as the Israeli side of this "fence," (on illegally occupied land), you could perhaps scale the fence, with the right high-tech climbing gear. If you were to stand beneath it on the occupied, aka Palestinian, side of the fence, it would tower over you, insurmountable and oppressive. I sit on the edge of Beit Jala, just east of Walaja, outside Bethehem. The wall is heading straight into the heart of Walaja. There is no clear path. Houses have fallen before the blade of the dozer, and will continue to fall. Right now I can hear the "screeeee" of earth and stone being torn by machines. If I were to stand, I would see, beyond the wall, on the occupied side, carcasses of olive trees, still drying in the late-summer sun. The leaves are not yet brown, death is so fresh. According to the Quran, to kill a tree is a crime. And according to Islamic law, land that is cultivated is land that is owned. Yet the trees come down, the houses come down. Lives fall to the way-side. I cannot even hold the reality of it. I sit and there is nothing but "us" and "them". It is impossible for me not to take on the grief, the anger, the frustration. Being a "landed" person, I tell myself that I would die to protect my family home if it came down to it. And even at that, i know I would not. Life is more precious, freedom more precious. What freedom there is. To my immediate left is the settlement of Gilo. It stands, stately and rigid, on the highest peak between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. You can see it from everywhere. It, like all the settlements, stands as a brick and stone taunt to the (lack of a) Palestinian nation. Where is the justice? Where the justification? How can anyone look at this wall, these settlements, and think these are okay, much less a good idea. Fighting a "war" against "terror" is inhumane. Who are the terrorists? Walling a nation is ghettoization. The wall is breeding terror, and those who live in terror may choose to die by it. This wall is terrorism. These settlements are terror impersonated. Imagine you are a young woman or man who has no citizenship, no country, no right to travel, no right to own land, no work prospects within the land of your birth, no easy way to leave. Imagine you are an old woman or man who has lived for the past sixty years in a camp run by the UN. Imagine the complex emotions that pull you between wanting your children to find a way out, and knowing that if they do get out you may never see them again. Imagine you are a young person with nothing to lose but life itself. Imagine you are a young person with nothing to gain but paradise. What is terror? What is terrorism? In Bethlehem, the third night I was here, Israeli soldiers came into the center of town. Young boys picked plastic bottles from the trash cans, and began throwing them at the cavalcade of army vehicles. Empty, plastic soda bottles. Not even rocks. The jeeps stopped, and the boys ran. A simple game of cat and mouse. What else is there to do? How should these boys react? Even in "Area A," which is supposed to be solidly in Palestinian control, the Israeli soldiers make their presence known at will. What is terror? Who is the terrorist? Palestinian people are arrested by the Israeli government everyday for nothing. People are afraid to walk the streets after dark, not because of crime (which seems to be virtually non-existant here), but because they are afraid of being harassed, picked up, arrested, beaten, killed...by Israeli soldiers. I see the walls, internal and external, and I find myself asking, where is the third intifada? How else will the strangle-hold be overcome? Really, the question is, where is the hope for peace? I have yet to find it. Without justice, no peace. Just walls. More, and more, and more walls. ***Want to donate to my trip fund? You can do so here. . Shukran!!! (Thank you!!!)***

Bismillah, ar-rahman, ar-rahim... "My heart has become capable of every form; it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks, and a temple for idols and the pilgrim's Ka'ba, and the tablets of the Torah and the book of the Koran. I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love's camels take, that is my religion and my faith." - Ibn al-Arabi Ramadan kareem, my beloved friends. So, here I am, back in the states, but not fully back in the states. In the past few days I have written a lot about the sense of tearing I feel, of being divided into multiple parts. Someday you will read some of this, if you like. But today I focus on the gifts I have received. I arrived back in the states just in time for Ramadan to begin. I had told my Muslim friends in Bethlehem that I would be observing the fast with them, from this side of the world. So, I researched the rules of the fast, and gave myself to it. I am a week into the fast, and have learned why it is considered a time of celebration. In the land where half my heart dwells, the morning call to prayer echoes from mosque to mosque, reminding us that "Prayer is better than sleep." And so it is. So it is. I have been waking daily at 5:30 so that I can be in readiness for the first prayer, at around 6, and then begin my daily studies before the kids get up to get ready for school. As the sky turns from black, to pearly grey, to white, to blue, my eyes have consumed the feast of knowledge, and my heart has been brought deep into an alignment I never could have anticipated in a million years. "Why the Holy Land, oh Sexy Witch?" And the answers slowly reveal themselves. The story is of grand proportion, and remains half hidden, half concealed. My mysteries open into The Mysteries. Mysteries of love and madness, of feasts and fasts, of devotion and desire. The same mysteries, revealing themselves to those with eyes to see. Within, behind, and beyond the study, though, lies the true heart of the fast. The Qur'an states that the reward of the fast is Allah Itself.* And it is true. Anyone that has used fasting as a spiritual tool will recognize the truth of these words. In my fasting, and my studies associated with fasting, doors have opened leading me deep into the mysteries of Islam. Most recently, it has been Ali, the fourth Caliph, and some of the Mystics of Islam; Ibn-Arabi, Attar, Baha'u'llah, and delving deep, finding the edges of the Mysteries of Fatima. All based in the Holy Qur'an, and in the cases of Fatima and Ali, in the close relationships both had with the Prophet Muhammad, these writings speak to me in a way that tears my heart open, creating room for more love of The One. The One God, who is everywhere and always present, cannot be seen by the eye, or described with words. Even those who have known Him (It), cannot find the way to know all of Him. The vast and eternal "how ness" of The One is beyond our ability to comprehend, just as one drop cannot know the whole of the Seven Seas. I have cried with joy, with recognition, with longing, with relief, with pain, and with awe this morning. I am so grateful for the feast of Ramadan. Bit by bit Islam is revealing its treasures to me in a language I fully understand. My gratitude is so huge I am fully enveloped in it, held within the profound love of God. Love is a veil betwixt the lover and the loved one; More than this I am not permitted to tell. - Jalal-ud-Din Rumi I continue seeking the teachings. Ma salaam, -LaSara P.S. Please see below for some amazing and inspiring quote. And write me back if anything touches a cord in you. I want to hear of your openings. *(Yes, I still say "It" for the most part, not He. I believe that if Arabic had a non-gender specific option linguistically, that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) would also have said "It"...in Islam, the greatest misdeed is called "shirk," and that is to make anything comperable to Allah, to compare It to anything, to personify It, or to try to define it in anyway. There are many reason that this is so, and they are good reasons. And, what more powerful way to humanize or define God, than to give It a gender? It is beyond gender, so It cannot be a He...)* "In this journey the seeker reacheth a stage wherein he seeth all created things wandering distracted in search of the Friend. How many a Jacob will he see, hunting after his Joseph; he will behold many a lover, hasting to seek the Beloved, he will witness a world of desiring ones searching after the One Desired. At every moment he findeth a weighty matter, in every hour he becometh aware of a mystery; for he hath taken his heart away from both worlds, and set out for the Ka'bih of the Beloved. At every step, aid from the Invisible Realm will attend him and the heat of his search will grow. One must judge of search by the standard of the Majnun of Love.* It is related that one day they came upon Majnun sifting the dust, and his tears flowing down. They said, "What doest thou?" He said, "I seek for Layli." They cried, "Alas for thee! Layli is of pure spirit, and thou seekest her in the dust!" He said, "I seek her everywhere; haply somewhere I shall find her." Yea, although to the wise it be shameful to seek the Lord of Lords in the dust, yet this betokeneth intense ardor in searching. "Whoso seeketh out a thing with zeal shall find it." * Literally, &Majnun means "insane." This is the title of the celebrated lover of ancient Persian and Arabian lore, whose beloved was Layli, daughter of an Arabian prince. Symbolizing true human love bordering on the divine, the story has been made the theme of many a Persian romantic poem, particularly that of &Nizami, written in 1188-1189 A.D. *** "O My Brother! A pure heart is as a mirror; cleanse it with the burnish of love and severance from all save God, that the true sun may shine within it and the eternal morning dawn. Then wilt thou clearly see the meaning of "Neither doth My earth nor My heaven contain Me, but the heart of My faithful servant containeth Me." And thou wilt take up thy life in thine hand, and with infinite longing cast it before the new Beloved One." both excerpts from The Seven Valleys, by Baha'u'llah “ The foremost in religion is the acknowledgement of Him, the perfection of acknowledging Him is to testify Him, the perfection of testifying Him is to believe in His Oneness, the perfection of believing in His Oneness is to regard Him Pure, and the perfection of His purity is to deny Him attributes, because every attribute is a proof that it is different from that to which it is attributed and everything to which something is attributed is different from the attribute. Thus whoever attaches attributes to Allah recognises His like, and who recognises His like regards Him two; and who regards Him two recognises parts for Him; and who recognises parts for Him mistook Him; and who mistook Him pointed at Him; and who pointed at Him admitted limitations for Him; and who admitted limitations for Him numbered Him. Whoever said in what is He, held that He is contained; and whoever said on what is He held He is not on something else. He is a Being but not through phenomenon of coming into being. He exists but not from non-existence. He is with everything but not in physical nearness. He is different from everything but not in physical separation. He acts but without connotation of movements and instruments. He sees even when there is none to be looked at from among His creation. He is only One, such that there is none with whom He may keep company or whom He may miss in his absence.[8] ” -The oneness of god, according to Ali ibn Abi Talib "I testify that there is no Deity (Lord) except the sole and matchless Allah. And the testification of the singleness of Allah is a word that Allah has declared sincerity (as) its reality, and made the hearts the centre of its contact and union. And has made the specifications and research of the oneness of Allah's station obvious and evident in the light of meditation. The Allah Who can not be seen by the eyes and tongues are unable and baffled to describe His virtues and attributes. And the intelligence and apprehension of man is helpless and destitute from the imagination of his how ness." -Fatima

Stories from a Holy Land Is it just that the poor speak the same language world wide, and that I have found a country where life is precious? There is no waste of the precious things...but what is precious is different. The occupation occupies every exposed corner, and most of the hidden ones. The terrain is littered with broken dreams, as well as broken glass, empty bottles, abandoned bags are blown by an indifferent wind. The precious things are friendships forged in the heat of an unrelenting sun, family ties that bind and bond, generations traced with one word...family names a statement of history unto themselves.The precious things are a language spoken, "Where are the new prophets for our new days?" asks Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. The questions echoes across the lines of religion, of politics, of country...where are the new leaders? The new faces? The new voices? The new ideas? The new solutions? Are you curious about the Israel/Palestine conflict? Confused by this powerful, yet tiny piece of the most hotly contested “real estate” in the world? Do you desire a deeper understanding of the conflict, and want to know how YOU can help shift the balance towards peace? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, please join LaSara FireFox for a potluck dinner (Middle Eastern theme) and a slide show/presentation about her recent journies in Israel and Palestine, and become an active part of the solution. This tiny country is an epicenter of conflict, yet has just as profound a potential for spreading peace. May peace come to Jerusalem. May it come to the world. September 27th, 7 PM, Potter Valley Location with RSVP: 707-391-7023, or events@lasara.us DONATIONS GLADLY ACCEPTED The Ecstatic Presence Project firefox@lasara.us * 707-391-7023 * www.lasara.us 705 N. State St. #205, Ukiah, CA, 95482