"You Won't Read This In The News"
On Bethlehemite Women, Killings, and the Limits of Information
We’ve moved from wisdom to knowledge, and now we’re moving from knowledge to information, and that information is so partial that we’re creating incomplete human beings. -Vandana Shiva
Eighteen months ago, when my sister’s 23 year-old son Henry was shot and killed, I made the mistake of searching for how the incident was reported in the media. Missing in the news accounts were the complicated layers of addiction, mental health, systemic failure, and lax gun laws that contributed to his death. The entire event of my nephew’s killing was flattened into a nugget of information for the public to consume - kept at a digestible distance from the truth his grieving family, especially his mother, knew and experienced in our hearts and bodies.
I remember thinking, if someone read this they would know nearly nothing of the truth, then wondering, how often have I read quick little news stories and never thought of the pain and grief the event caused the actual people in the actual lives of those who were actually killed?”
The truth of his death is ours alone.
We may have endless access to public stories about nearly everything that happens all over the planet, but we seem to be FARTHER from the truth of what happens in the world than closer to it.
(click below for the piece I wrote about the limits of our ability to hold, respond to and have feeling about all the bad stuff happening everywhere every minute of the day)
I mention all of this because on Thursday I was in the West Bank on what ended up being the deadliest day in a year. My daughter Harper and I were being shown the paintings in the permanent collection of Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem by my friend Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, including the one above of Mary by the artist Eman Haram. “Those headdresses were particular to Bethlehemite Christian women” Mitri tells us. I remembered an image I saw recently of a Bible Study of Christian women in Bethlehem circa 1900, which I searched for on my phone before realizing I had no cell service there.
I love Haram’s painting. Mary as a young mother among the Christian women of Bethlehem, many of whom I am sure also gave birth here in this place, under conditions known only to them.
“Mary and Joseph welcomed a baby boy, their first, in Bethlehem on Tuesday at 2:45a”
Were this the birth announcement, we’d know nearly nothing of any importance. We’d know nothing of the fear or sorrow or joy or hope of this birth.
Information tells us so little, doesn’t it?
We have the Gospel accounts, but the truth of his birth was theirs alone.
The day I gave birth to Harper, my sister was in the room, and in a sling she held her son Henry, then 10 months old.
The joy of that and how it swirls into grief is only known to us.
I sometimes think of Mary as just a mother like me. Watching helplessly as her son makes decisions she wishes he wouldn’t. Her heart stopping when she realized she left her 12 year old in Jerusalem. I wonder, what did she feel at her son’s arrest, seeing rope dig into the wrists of both God made flesh and the flesh of her flesh? What did she experience, that only she could, when her firstborn was lifted up?
No one else was his mother. Just her. Her loss was her own.
Any news account of his death tells us nothing of importance.
Suddenly Mitri’s phone, which does have service, demands attention. Nine Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Jenin. General strike called for in the Palestinian territories.
Harper and I walk back to the guest house along streets now crowded with parents trying to get to the strike-closed schools to pick up their kids, and folks suddenly leaving work at midday. Traffic backed up and angry. Shops shuttered. Cafes closed. The trauma of the day crackling in the dry air.
Each of those killed that day have families and friends who are deep in the throes of grief right now. My own family’s grief is still so fresh, I can only imagine what the mothers of the slain are experiencing today.
The pain is their own.
Then the next day, seven Israelis are killed by a Palestinian gunman in a synagogue shooting. And each of THOSE killed have families and friends who are deep in the throes of grief right now. I can only imagine what the mothers of the slain are experiencing today.
The pain is their own.
Of this I am sure: none of the information reported in the media about these killings tells us much about the human hearts that are destroyed now as a result.
This will not make it on the news, but I wanted to tell you something else that happened Thursday in the West Bank; a mother threw a Spiderman birthday party for her 7 year old son and she invited a mother and daughter from America. So on that same day, in Beit Jala there was a room full of screaming energetic balls of magic in the form of 35 kids, and about 12 moms all chattering away while eating Doritos. There was an enormous Spiderman cake and there was hospitality and we sang Baby Shark and it didn’t matter that I did not know all the movements.
God was there in the midst of all of it.
Their joy was not theirs alone because they shared it with me, a stranger welcomed into their home.
I've been thinking about this for a while, since my brother died in a fire that destroyed our childhood home three years ago. So many memories of our early years together in that home came flooding back, and I remember thinking that the only one who shared them, and knew the me I was then, was now gone. Our younger siblings only knew the rocky relationship we had as adults because I had never shared those memories, my stories. Even just saying he died in a fire does not capture or convey the truth that he had been suffering physically and emotionally and it could easily have been a suicide. We will never know that for certain. What I am starting to know now, though, is that the divisions in our world will only ever be resolved by telling our stories and listening to others', by offering pieces of ourselves in order to build trust and understanding and finally, relationship.
This so beautifully written and says so very much about perosnal grief, shared grief, information (and lack thereof), modern news culture, cultures in other countries, trauma, hospitality, and shared joy. And art. And. . . I lost a son when was 14 and while I knew he probably would die before I did (he was severely disabled), I also dreaded and planned for him to outlive me (because who would care for him if I died?). I thank you for putting into words all that happened to you on that traumatic day in Bethlehem. In. Just. One. day. It's inexplainable, and yet you somehow were able to do just that, and beautifully. Thank you for thoughts put into words. May it change hearts.