Today a friend and I were both feeling down, so I proposed we do yoga together over Zoom video. Can I be honest with you, Melanie? They said. I don’t want to do yoga right now. I am so angry, I want to hit something. I responded, kickboxing? Here is…

Saying yes to life — There’s a line in the Heart Sutra: When there are no more obstacles in the mind, you overcome all illbeing. Suffering is, because there is no clarity on the nature of interbeing. When I see my teacher in all things, I do not fear missing his physical body. He is…

The race to submit eight Palestinian visa applications in time for waking up at Plum Village In two weeks, I will journey with a group of Palestinian and Israeli friends to Plum Village, a Buddhist monastery near fields of clay and sunflowers in southern France. We’ll participate in the Wake Up Earth retreat, a gathering of 600 young people from all over the world, sharing aspirations…

Inclusivity, wise speech and communication, systems change, and taking good care A recent interaction with an NGO in Bethlehem motivated me to articulate and formalize the beliefs and vision underpinning my work in Palestine. This set of beliefs will provide a framework for decision-making and clarify my interactions with partner NGOs in Palestine and Israel moving forward. Inclusivity Systemic change towards a…

My encounters with three women teachers at the European Institute for Applied Buddhism in Germany (and other happy news) Shelley Anderson. Her shirt declared her belief in a better South. Her story, woven across cultures and conflicts, touched me deeply. Originally from the United States, Shelley moved to the Netherlands and committed her adult life to empowering women towards peace. In 1997, Shelley initiated the Women’s Peacemakers Program within…

Summoning the courage to open our hearts to each other — Ceramic tiles in a junkyard in Bethlehem Today, I went out into the world looking for twenty pieces of ceramic tile. I had no clue whether any Palestinian in Bethlehem would know what I was talking about, much less have any plain square pieces to sell me. I wandered from my house with one hypothesis, that I…

And other stories from Bethlehem, Jericho, and Jerusalem — I’ve brought you materials to make your own islands, I told the kids, pointing to the giant bag of dirt I had lugged through the shuk of Bethlehem. They lit up. Let’s do it now, they said. I marveled. They had flat-out refused to imagine islands in their minds, yet…

One week in Haifa and Bethlehem — A few days ago, a young Palestinian woman at the laundromat cafe mistakenly put a single walnut into our salad. I bit into the walnut and was immediately aware of the crunch of nut in my mouth. I spit out the mouthful and examined the contents. Anger and indignation arose…

Peace and conflict in bus rides and meditation — I was on an Arab bus in Jerusalem when they appeared like shadows from the darkness of night. Two young bodies in drab green carrying machine guns, they bypassed me without a second glance. I, cloaked in the body of an Asian tourist, did not have my American passport on…