Dear friends of the Tamera and the PRV-ME,

We would like to update you concerning the new steps of the PRV-ME and to invite you to join us for the Global Grace day on Wednesday, 9.11 (more details below).

After some years of peace education in Tamera we are happy to be back to the holy land for half a year. During this time we will work on different projects: introducing and modeling the vision of water retentions landscapes in the Middle East, publishing books and study materials in Hebrew and Arabic, holding public events and being in service for the uprising of a new culture.

The peak of this time will be in April – A month of intensive community experience and education time about the connection of inner and outer peace work. It will include study times, common work and forums, seminars with Sabine Lichtenfels and Benjamin Von Mendelssohn, The Holyday of freedom with Rabbi Ohad Ezrachi, rituals and encounters in the The Holocaust memorial day and in the Nacba-Independence day, and a conference in the issue of water retention landscapes in the Middle East. It will be an opportunity to connect with the healed picture of the land and of life. More details will be distributed soon.

Since we arrived to Israel-Palestine we participated in the conference "Practical Models for Peace" in Neve Shalom Wahat al Salam in which we shared our vision and showed the movie "Water is Life". We already had some enthusiastic feedbacks and concrete offerings for cooperation. As promoting the vision of water landscapes for creating sustainable communities is one of our main goals we ask you to share this movie and to connect us with potential cooperation partners.

In the end of November we will participate in the Green Phoenix conference in Switzerland and later on we will hold 2 public events in Zurich and Basel. The invitation is attached and you are warmly welcome to invite your friends and interested people

Invitation_to_Swiss_events

You are invited to join us to the Global Grace Day 2011 – We will meet for ceremonies, meditations and prayers next to the biggest water retention places in Israel/Palestine: the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. You can join us for one of these events or for the whole journey.

6:00-8:00 Sunrise in the cave next to Tabha Church (Sea of Galilee)
Coming from Kfar Nachum junction you will pass the church on you right and just few meters after the cave will be on your left.
12:00-14:00 In Kumeran cave (next to the Dead Sea)
We will meet at 11:45 at Kalia junction and will go together to the cave
16:30-18:00 Sunset at Tel Baruch Beach, north of Tel-Aviv (Mediterranean Sea)
18:30-22:00 an open evening in "Neviah" – The Hebrew Academy for the Spirit (Machon Mofet ? 15 Shoshana Persiz st. Tel-Aviv)

You are warmly invited to bring with you samples of water from natural water sources.

More information:
http://www.global-grace-day.com/
http://www.prvme.org/
http://www.neviah.co.il/

Please confirm your arrival to the email address: aida.shibli@gmail.com
In the day of the event you can reach us through this phone: 0507263398

Thank you for your support and see you soon,
Tamir, Uri, Rico, Aida, Anja, Mustafa, Idit, Sharon and Sham-ba.

Dear Uri

Its a sunny beautiful day here, flowers on the trees and birds flying around celebrating the spring warm days. The sky is empty and silent since a couple of days, no jets crossing the airspace, all grounded by the cloud of ash from a volcano in Iceland. Some of the people here are very pleased about this, like nature is revenging on the unsustainable, climate-warming air travellers. And I do enjoy the quiet, it is much nicer without jets passing over. But I also think of hundreds of thousands of peoples whose travel plans, business and work is screwed up by this, who have to pay a lot of money to hotels while they wait stuck in some place far from home. They are just people, not monsters. For me love has come to mean not seeing myself as separate. mThats how I understand the sentence from Rabbi Akiva: Ve ahavta lereacha camocha. Means as long as you see the other as other, separate there is no peace or love.

So this experience of oneness happens with a woman or a flower, this falling into god as you can call it, and really its has nothing to do specially with that object. And if peace is the goal then whats interesting is those places where you feel separate; so for me its really easy to make peace with Palestinians and germans its much much harder to love Avigdor Liberman or the mindless, middle-class consumerist lifestyle of my brother in Israel or those crazy settlers cutting down olive trees and doing other horrible things. But they too are manifestations of god. Its a tricky , fine line . I see many activists ( and myself too) having a strong judgement on all things that do not fit in with whatever the values they follow point at as “good” (and it can be very subtle) and at the same time it doesn’t mean not to work towards these things, sustainability, transparancey, peace and so on – these are fine things. I find myself moving in this direction but the less I hold on to any idea that I know whats right and whats wrong (=values) the more love and peace comes into what I do and the more change happens around me : its a paradox because its almost like the less I do the bigger the result. Has something to do with what some people call ego I think!

In the community where I lived there where some people I just could not tolerate; they where manipulative, power hungry, lying and slowly, step by step, they took over the place. And I fought with them for a long time – and by doing that really  I nourished in myself anger and hate and resentment and finally ( long after I gave up fighting with them) I also let go of the idea that they where enemies and that was a truly amazing moment. It doesn’t mean they are not lying, manipulative bastards, or even that what they did was OK, it was just seeing the contraction in me and letting it go. Peace is made with enemies – or with the belief that someone or something is enemy.

In that letting go of a belief is an expansion so full of your butterflies, so orgasmic, so passionate – thats what I mean loving what is ; not some sort of compromise from a half dead failed life!

Its now afternoon – we had many visitors today – the opening day of the Community Supported Agriculture project we are starting in the neighbourhood to share the produce of our very fertile forest garden (and make a few shekels)- now they are gone and its quiet again in the castle, only the music of Gerd’s accordion from nearby and some kids running around. Its so still today, almost like the sound of the Desert .

Its so easy to be strict with our selves, to point out all the bad habits we have  our emotional dysfunctions, ecologicaly unsound lifestyles etc. And then work hard to change them. And usually the outcome is shaped by the hardness of this approach and                          we easily slip and fall back into the old habits anyway and feel bad about them and so on…. its so important to love ourselves, with all the flaws, bad habits and all.

When I read your mails I feel you and I can agree and disagree and think this and that, and we can play a sort of mental ping-pong with our words and ideas; when I shift a level deeper to where I am there is only love to you my brother on this mystical world , this beautiful day, as the red Indians are supposed to have said “ a good day to die” – means a good day to be alive

Love and peace

D

Morning attunment, 4/11/2008

Good Morning. Today is the 4th of November 2008.

Today a new president will be elected in the US. Maybe, hopefully, the first black president in the history of a nation which knew so much racism, discrimination and oppression. May this day will be a beginning of a new history for the US and for the whole world which is so effected by this nation.

* * *

13 years ago, on the 4th of November 1995, the Israeli prime minster Yitzchak Rabin was assassinated in Tel-Aviv, by a young Israeli who didn't agree with Rabin's willingness to give back the occupied territories to the Palestinians. I was still in high school and i went with my first girlfriend to the demonstration in which he was murdered. The demonstration was about: “Yes for peace! No for violence!”, and Rabin was a hero for me. After the murder I swore “Not to forget and not to forgive!”. This sentence was also used after the holocaust: “Never to forget! Never to forgive!”.

Today, 13 years after, I wish to break my vow and to search for the path of forgiveness. To forgive the murderer who acted out of fear and was a victim of a nationalistic brain washing, to forgive Rabin for his mistakes as part of the system, and to forgive also myself for the aggression and wish of revenge that i still carry with me.

Grace for me means: “Not to forget but yes to forgive”. To give witness but not to judge, to learn from the history but staying in service of the future. From the place of grace i wish not to suppress the anger that pushed me to change the world in which i'm living in, but to transform it. Not to forget the injustice but to forgive the perpetrator who is always also a victim.

That is why I recognize that when i put myself in a war situation with Israeli soldieries in a demonstration in the occupied territories, i actually fight my self. As I served as a soldier in the army, and as i still take part in the system which oppress other people. Taking responsibility for this aspect in my past and in my present brings me closer to express my truth in a compassionate way instead of judging. To remember this aspects (not to forget) but to do it with forgiveness.

* * *

I want to share with you a letter that i got this week from my friend Y' from Bet-echem. Y' is a Palestinian 17 years old guy who stayed in Tamera this summer. I adapted him as my son and these days i'm trying to help him to get a visa that will allow him to come back to Tamera in order to be a student here. Y' wrote:

hello father i love you and i miss you very much so much
Palestine its like before nothing change
its fucking boring
i start to speak with people. to love every body.
about the work i don't work yet but i'm looking for a work and i will find inshalla
about my family they were so happy because they saw me after 3 months
every body ask me how is tamera-portogal-girls-sex-war-peace-people-every thing
the most important thing you know uri, i don't have contact with my father even after tamera. some times problem some times no problem. my situation with my father its good but not really but i will change it.
inshalla i will come back to tamera
i will be some thing good for tamera-israel-palestine-the world
kiss kiss kiss for you one for tamera one for the peace one
anee ohave attach (i love you)
Y'

I'm touched by the relationship that i have with Y' because it combines together the simple friendship and the history that we bring with us. Not only i became a father but my son is a Palestinian. And this brings again this quality of not forget from where we are coming from and yes to forgive: forgive our history and our national identities.

Next week, Y' will join the meditation and prayer in the village Bilin in Palestine as part of the Global Grace day. Bilin suffered a lot from the building of the separation wall and became a center of struggle against the separation between Israelis to Palestinians.
I want to send Y' from here in the name of all of us the support he needs in order to survive the challenges of the life in Bet-Lechem:The challenges with the Israeli army, with the economic situation of Palestine and the challenges with his family.

* * *

On Sunday i participated in a special event in the Bodega, our temple of love, in which the pilgrims from Colombia were welcomed. I met there in an erotic way my friend, my lover, Stephanie. She came back from the Pilgrimage in Colombia with some wounds on her beautiful body and also some marks on her beautiful soul. Before making love we spoke up a prayer for healing. Healing for Colombia and healing for us.

The contact between me and Stephanie was a special moment of Grace. A moment that sends new information to the cells and to the world: information of trust. I felt we were embedded in the political wide perspective, and in the depth of the spiritual believe. I can say god was also there with us in the room, as well as the whole humanity. And also just to be contained-embraced in her arms and to give my power as a man – this was Grace.

The wounds on her body were a sign for me for letting ourself to be touched by the painful reality. The truthful, tender, passionate physical contact was a sign for letting ourself to be touched by the sacred matrix. By each other. This combination of not forgetting the world but to allow the healing power of forgiveness – this is grace for me. I give my thank for Stephanie, for the trust and for the healing forces of love.

* * *

I would like to end with a quote from the meditation text that Sabine Lichtenfels wrote for the global grace day:

“May the people who are willing to risk their lives for truth and justice receive the protection they need.
May the voice of justice, truth, compassion and solidarity with all beings be heard all over the world, and may it spread and become a powerful movement that stands for the protection for life and planet Earth.
May we set visible signs which show that the eternal life will win over all systems of wrong power, of destruction and exploitation.
May we become carriers of hope for all who come after us”.

Amen.

A speech by Uri Ayalon for the Summer University, Tamera, 2008