Falling in love with Palestine

What do you do when you find yourself thinking and feeling constantly for people… for place...

What do you say when you think maybe, just maybe you are beginning to catch a glimpse of who they are and the pain and joy they experience?

Who are you today when you are with them? And who will you be tomorrow when you have to leave them?

Who do you become when you know you will never fully understand what it is like to be them, but also that they will always be part of who you now understand yourself to be?



I have loved before… but this kind of love is new. It is full of confusion… because it changes me. And it is full of exceeding joy… because it changes me.

It will not let me alone and it will not leave me where I am. Nor do I want it to.



Loving Palestine is like being in the ocean for the first time… you are scared, you are caught up. Sometimes you lose control. Other times you are floating and free. But no matter what you are, you become keenly aware that you are part of something much bigger than yourself.

You want to stay in this ocean of possibilities and frailty, beauty and despair… yet your eye always travels to the safety of the shore.

But when you leave the ocean it sticks and clings to you… you can taste the salt, you can feel the ocean coarse against your skin. And you know you will never be the same again…

Because you fell in love with Palestine.