From you to me
Who wasn’t blind for this inner light?
Who wasn’t deaf for this inner sound?
Who wasn’t shackled for their false self?
Who wasn’t living in their own unrest?
Who?
Read MoreI’m asking you, please
Lift me high,
Lift me high,
’til my fingertips touch the sky
I’m asking you
please,
lift me high.
Begging for Peace
On my recent journey to Israel, one of the oddities of Tel Aviv was the sighting of the occasional beggar on the street. These seemed to take 3 forms: old women sitting beside lamp-posts, elderly hasidic pan-handlers with a bit of a crazy edge, and young penitents who situate themselves in a state of frozen prostration, on the leeward side of walkways.
This is an strange sight to see.
In North American cities, begging and pan-handling are synonymous – considered by the more cozy financially to be one of society’s major blights, sore spots.
The poor and the beggars have always been with us, in one form or another — at least in the so-called “civilized” societies of the post-tribal world. One imagines that in “tribal” times, all people had meaningful roles to play in societies where life wasn’t measured by accumulation and prestige.
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