nothing about felt boards

You know that kid that has an answer for everything?  

The one that knows anything you could possibly tell her before you could possibly have a chance to tell her?  

The one that knows a person with the same name as the person you just mentioned and then tells a story about that person and hints that it relates to the person you were talking about?  

The one immediately has her hand in the air to answer whatever question you ask and then doesn't answer the question, but talks about how what you just said relates to her life?

I know that kid.

I used to be that kid.

I was so annoying.

Somewhere during college I woke up to the fact that there was an entire world outside of my own.  I woke up to the fact that I knew nothing about said world.

This process began a shift in my consciousness where I stopped having to have the right answers and began to ask the right questions.

Asking questions disrupted my entire life.  It pushed me from the world that I had known to be true for so long and into a world that was unknown.

Asking questions forced me to observe my surroundings, study the history of the place where I stand, learn the systems that govern the given areas, and collect data to see patterns in all of theses areas.

This new mode of operation transfers to every aspect of my life.  

My community.

My education.

My environment.

My neighborhood.

My vocation.

My life.

Questions led me to this place.  To this land.  To this desert.

I've been asking questions about Israel and her place in the world, and her place in my world, for many years.  

I learned about Israel on a felt board where stories of genocide and war and adultery were made palatable to preschoolers with songs and dances.  

I learned "right" and I learned "wrong."

I learned "us" and I learned "them."

My college years (and several afterwards) were spent with my back to felt boards, questioning all of those "rights" and "wrongs."

Studying the history of this land, in context of the time periods, showed me that my journey, truth, and my questions are not mutually exclusive.

Perhaps that's why I wanted to come here in the first place.  Perhaps I wanted to journey to this land so that could see it with my own eyes and form my own opinions.

Then.......I got here.

And all of my study, my pursuit of knowledge, and my pure intentions were as ignorant as a man trying to understand what it means to give birth.  

He knows nothing.  

He can read books, empathize, watch documentaries, or deliver a baby.

He knows nothing.

That's me.  I'm that person.  I'm that "nothing-knower" in this place.

All of my study and my research and my understanding don't mean a thing.

I'm living in a village in the middle of a land where the conflict is complicated in a way that I could never have imagined.  It's complicated in a way that you would walk out of a movie about it because you would say it was too far from anything that would ever happen in real life.

But it is real life.  It's as real as the Mosquitos that feast on my ankles and swarm around my ears at three in the morning.

It's real.

All that I read and studied about this conflict helped me not be an ignoramus in a globalized world.

All that I read and studied about this conflict meant nothing the moment my feet hit the ground.

I was a man trying to understand childbirth in the first person.

This isn't a felt board.  This isn't a history lesson.  This isn't an article.  This isn't a news report.

And I know nothing.

When I think about this in the context of my daily life, or in any community I will ever find myself, I think the same lessons are applicable.

I want to be fully present, fully awake, admit that I know nothing but want to learn everything, inhabit every space with open hands that are willing to extend to any other human that has any type of need, and live without an ounce of judgment.

Dr. Boyd used to say that we should ask ourselves, in the midst of any circumstance, "where do I fit in all of this?"  

That's a good question.

Sometimes it's ok to say, "I don't have the slightest idea where I fit, but I do have two hands that I can use while I try to figure it out."

All the while, I'll keep asking questions...