A poem by Abigail Levitt

Can we take the beauty, the love, the goodness, the warmth, the caring, the willingness to sacrifice, the love, and use them to build a world of love, a land of peace, a place of belonging for both peoples?   We have so much love to give, We really do We fight out of our love for our people: Our desire to give our people the best The best life The best safety The best freedom The best land The most spirituality and G-dliness   And it can be so simple to realize our similarities, inspite of different circumstances- without ignoring inequality, to realize that we fight from the same heart space. We derive our hopes from the same determination and pride We love our people We love our land We want to right historical injustices We want to give our children what are parents didn’t have We act out of so much love   And the hate that we feel towards the other? That’s because they hurt the people we love It’s pain and anger that they could do such a thing And when we’re able to see each other To open to see Ourselves in the other To see that they’re acting out of love Just like we’re acting out of love That they don’t hurt us because they don’t care: They hurt us because they care so much about the wellbeing of their people and feel we’re an obstacle to that So they need to get us out of the way Just like we feel they’re an obstacle to our wellbeing and we need to get them out of the way When we’re able to understand To feel To find awareness of whats going on inside of us and inside of them We’ll be able to flip it all around   To so simply discover that the other isn’t the obstacle, the patterns of thinking are The cycles of acting and reacting In the same ways Over and over And if we can release ourselves from habitual cycles that keep us closed and in pain, we’ll find that there is already: so much beauty so much life so much love so much space here for all of us to love