By Anna Blaedel
My youngest nibling, who has not yet lost a tooth but whose older siblings have, is eagerly awaiting an encounter with the tooth fairy. In this precious kiddo’s mind, both a lost tooth and his own money are needed to entice the fairy’s visit. He was recently showing me his small stack of collected $1s, carefully tucked away, trying to figure out how much to leave for the tooth fairy. As he wrestled and discerned, he started trying to give me some, too. He wasn’t sure how to divide his money between me and the tooth fairy, but every equation he considered left him, content, with zero.
This is a kid who has started warning, with care, if a story he’s about to tell “is heartbreaking,” or “kinda heartbreaking, but not too heartbreaking,” or “just a little bit heartbreaking,” or “really, really, really, really heartbreaking.” The tender beauty and genuine generosity of this kid’s heart breaks my heart open on the regular. I would give every dollar I have if it would keep him from heartbreak. I know that’s not how life works, or love, and that both life and love will break this beloved kiddo’s heart. I know that trying to protect ourselves from heartbreak is not how we come alive, or come into love. And, I know some kids know heartbreak that makes any consideration of the tooth fairy impossible.
We are living stories that are really, really, really, really heartbreaking.
Northern Gaza is being exterminated, so terrorist settlements can be built on stolen, blood-drenched land. This story of genocide – this story of demonization, occupation, extermination – this story of brutal violence and mass death justified for profit, control – this story repeats, terribly. Through time, and across space, it is repeating, terribly…in Palestine, in Sudan, in the DRC… This story is not new, but the pace and scale of heartbreak may be unprecedented.
The Talmud teaches “every life is a universe.” Every life taken breaks the world. Every life saved, allowed to survive and thrive, is a world saved, made possible, made whole. More Palestinian children have been murdered in the last year of Israel’s genocidal war than in the last four years of all global conflict, combined. Each life, a universe.
Billions, and billions, and billions of dollars of bombs, made by and paid for by the US, by us, breaking, extinguishing, life. Israel has bombed every single hospital in Gaza. Schools, refugee camps, entire residential neighborhoods – devastation, destruction, death. Journalists, peacekeepers, aid workers, children, children, so many children – targeted, murdered.
Yet somehow, as Noura Erakat, Palestinian-American scholar, human rights lawyer, and activist recently wrote, “we still expect a semblance of normalcy, as if both things can be true: we can commit genocide and be fine.”
We are not, we cannot be, fine. We may be numb, distracted, tangled in justification or complacency, stuck in powerlessness or shame, flooded with grief, heartbroken, but nothing is fine.
Yesterday I was walking down the sidewalk when I crossed paths with an older white woman, carrying a yard sign. “Have you voted?” she asked. “No, but I will, on election day,” I responded. “Are you voting for democracy and women’s health?” she asked. I started to give “the right” answer, but it broke my heart. What is “women’s health,” to Palestinian women murdered en mass in a hospital parking lot, while seeking refuge for themselves, and their children? To Sudanese women being brutalized for others’ multibillionaire mining operations and insatiable appetites for weapons of war and tech toys? What is “democracy,” when a majority of people in this country support a permanent ceasefire, and ending arms transfers to Israel, but politicians evade, avoid, bypass? Each life, a universe destroyed.
I told this woman about this election breaking my heart. Noura Erakat cannot bring her broken heart to vote; she called on those of us who do vote to commit to self-accountability. “Don’t vote and disappear,” she implored, “vote, take the front line, and sacrifice – make good on your theory of change.” This stranger on the sidewalk teared up. Her heart was breaking, too. “Don’t lose faith,” she told me. “I don’t have faith in these systems,” I replied. “We need faith,” she responded. And indeed, we do. So I invited her to the closest thing I’ve found to weekly worship this last year, the weekly Friday afternoon gathering – witness, protest, beloved community – for Palestinian solidarity and liberation. When we parted ways, Linda, I learned, said she’d see me there.
As my colleague, Robert, shared yesterday, Howard Thurman invites us to “listen for the sound of the genuine.” This was Thurman’s antidote to heartbreak. This is how we come alive, he taught.
Listening for the sound of the genuine will break our hearts. Listening for the sound of the genuine is how we save our lives.
Systems of domination and destruction are desperate to pit us against each other. Turning on each other is a primary aim of empire. Pretending we are fine, pretending all is fine, is how deadly supremacy spreads, and thrives. “Fine,” writes poet Andrea Gibson, “is the suckiest word, it never tells the truth.”
We do not get free by placing our faith in the lie of “fine.” We do not get free by turning our backs on each other. We do not get free by covering over or pretending heartbreak away. We do not get free by hardening, by giving up, by accepting heartbreak as the only story we can live.
Last night, the beloved Rev. Shana Chivon bore witness on an enfleshed zoom call, its own holy convergence: “I dream in the language of togetherness.” Shana’s words broke my heart open, and made my heart whole. The language of genuine togetherness is a story of heartbreak, healing.
This week, I learned of a recent college grad, Jewish, who went to Jerusalem to help Palestinian with this year’s olive harvest.
This week, I learned, is Birdability week, in which birding meets disability justice, and I attended my first ever Birdability gathering, a gorgeous collection of us moving toward each other with crutch and cane and wheelchair, mid-flare and mobility assisted, to ooh and aaah and gasp and point and sigh and share in the breathtaking beauty of endangered aliveness, woven through it all.
A few weeks ago, I encountered over 100 percussionists, dispersed through a local park, responding in rhythm to and collaboratively crafting “the never-ending music of the world in which we live.”
In a few weeks, I will cast my vote, submit my ballot. The story of US imperialism means there is no vote I can cast that feels morally righteous. The options we have are heartbreaking. And, my life is entangled in these heartbreaking systems, and opting out feels like abdication of responsibility. My vote will not be an act of righteousness, but will be my best effort at listening to the sounds of the genuine. And then, I will open the doors of sacred collective: a place of belonging for spiritual misfits – another place I am finding ecclesia, beloved community – and turn piles of garlic and ginger and onions and herbs into bowls of soup for our monthly community meal, so we can be together, genuinely, in heartbreak, in aliveness.
Whatever the election results, we will still be living stories that are really, really, really, really heartbreaking. Deadly. Devastating. Whatever the election results, I will still be complicit in war crimes against my neighbor. And I will remain enraged and inconsolable and nothing resembling fine. And I will still ache and weep and show up in every way I know how to disrupt and repair and build otherwise. And none of it will be enough to protect the universe that is every life, that is every child, that is my, and our, beloved kin. And I will dream, still, in the language of togetherness, showing up, still and entirely, heartbroken. Because heartbreaking stories can, and should, and must move us, to move otherwise. Because sinking into despair is not a story we can survive.
Come, my heart whispers to yours, and meet me in the genuine. Come, and wrestle with me. Come, and weep with me. Come, and be brokenhearted with me. Come, and organize and mobilize and move, brokenheartedly, with me. Come, and dream in the language of togetherness with me.
As Mary Oliver wrote, “I don’t say it’s easy, but what else will do if the love one claims to have for the world be true?”
Anna Blaedel (they/them) is co-director and co-founder at enfleshed, where they tend to the theopoetic intersections of spiritual, academic, and activist engagement. Anna chaplains University of Iowa students through sacred collective: a place of belonging for spiritual misfits, and has a PhD in theological and philosophical studies from Drew University’s Graduate Division on Religion. Waking before dawn, lingering in poetry, being an aunt, retreating to the woods or their basement woodshop, tending the garden, sharing silence, and feeding people delicious food are some of Anna’s favorite things.