bradley burston

 Every day is worse, Lord.
Every hour.

Make it stop.

Be our God this day.

Hear us.
We cannot heal

El Rach'man, Al Rahim, All Merciful
Who created us all as children in Your image,
and Who then needed to rest,
We no longer sleep.
We are not safe.

Lord who lives in Hostage Square
Lord who lives in a crater in Khan Younis
Lord who lives among families demolished
Make it stop
Because our leaders will not.

Redeemer Of Captives,
Keep our loved and lost alive.
Sustain them.
Bring them home to us.
Because our leaders will not

Our leaders have turned away from Your wise counsel.

Every day is worse.

The flowering of our redemption ended on a holiday in October, Lord.

We lifted up our eyes for help,
To the hills, where the State holds cabinet meetings.
We lifted up our eyes for the welfare of the needy and the desperate.
But there was no State, no civil servants, no salvation, no support, not a word.

We have since seen to each other, Lord. To get by.
We are on our own.
We are lost.

We are blinded by trauma and fury.
Our loved ones have been violated. Butchered.
And in return, under the direction of leaders who do not - can not - see beyond their own welfare,
we have starved and traumatized and orphaned and embittered and stricken and radicalized a generation of children.
We have slaughtered shivatayim.
Shivatayim.
We have done perversely.

We will never live this down.

God who grants us speech, reason, hope,
I will speak for myself:
There is blood on my hands.
It will not wash off.

Make it stop, Lord.
Every day is worse.

Hear us.
This is a prayer for the welfare of Your children.
All of them.

Hold them. Shield them. Free them.
Free them all.

Be our God this day.

Make it stop.

_______________

Graphic: Zeev Engelmeyer
"We Must Bring Them Back Now 

In the storm of storms in the year of darkness, it was my heart that spoke out on a screen and said, "I can't break anymore. I don't have it in me."

Too much has already gone. Too many.
This tiny crowded planet of a country shrinks by the day. The west of the south is evacuated, the north of the north as well. The hospital fills around me.

On the moon called Gaza, where all is storm, the hospitals are gone. The schools. The places of worship. The homes. The food. The water. The light.

In the year of darkness, where all still alive are held together by nothing more than storm, many of our loved ones are buried alive. Stolen at the order of a leader on the other side who has no heart. Buried alive because our own leader, having betrayed all of us day by day, has no heart.

A few weeks ago, when it was time to open my heart, they took me to a cold room, where I was to begin to be repaired. Over time, part of me had been hardened, in Gaza, in Lebanon, and by old dreams of this becoming a better place, only to become narrow and cut off by blockages.

Now, every day, a few more minutes than the day before, I practice with the person I love the most, practice hitting the streets again, when I'm strong again. To begin anew, to rejoin those working to bypass and repair the damage of this plaque of a leader of ours, this pathetic old man with only narrowness to offer, only blockages where a heart should have gone.

One day at a time. One day at a time.