Letter to a War Zone

Correspondence by Peter Young with a friend during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war

Dear Peter Young
As the war in Israel takes it's toll on the lives of children, young soldiers, Arabs civilians and Israelites, as we feel frightened, confused, threatened, despaired and pessimistic about our future in Israel, I am looking in my heart to find some support, some console from the place where my heart belongs, where I found the light brighten the darkness of my deepest fears and to no avail. I want to be very honest with you and ask you for support and for your encouragement.
Israel August 2006 - Avital E.

 

Dear Avital
Thanks for your request. I do not have anything new to say. God knows best whether there is any need for something to be said. I am certainly not a teacher, nor do I want to be one.

We who sit daily in the Mead Hall and who talk about Reality and facing God and holding onto His rope perhaps have not been tested in the extreme way that you in Israel and the Lebanon and in so many places around the world are being tested. To talk is easy, but perhaps, if God wants, something clear can be said which is not simply from my limited experience.

What we study here and what we ardently stand for and affirm is the Truth, and It is with us wherever we are, both in the Mead Hall and where the bombs and rockets fall.

It is clear that the real issue before us is not so much who is doing what to whom, so much as how each of us is in the face of such tests. It matters very much how we are in the face of whatever happens to us, including extreme adversity. There is no time off from remembering the Truth. It is important to remember who you are, where you are from and where you are returning to. If we can remember this, that "He is me, I am from Him and am returning to Him" we will be standing in the dignity of man, free from the domination of fear, anxiety and uncertainty.

He is me. This means among other meanings that nothing can happen to me, because me is permanently established both in Being and in God's knowledge of Himself. Of course I may be blown to pieces today and I will certainly die at some point, I do not know when, but that is because all things are returning to their origin in Sheer Being. As for being from Him, this means that I have never left Him. I am from Him, which means that I am His own extension in this world of appearances. As such I can be constantly aware of this truth and encourage others. Every one of us has the responsibility to hold on to what each of us knows of the Truth. And perhaps we can hold on even to what we don't know of the Truth, knowing that the Truth knows everything.

Fear and anxiety are not reality. They are our own creations. That is why it matters how we are, in facing the Truth and giving existence to the Truth alone, not giving existence to our own creations. In war this is the real war, and this is where we are tested. The real purpose of the war then is as an opportunity for the truth to emerge in the form of self-knowledge. If so, this war will not be the disaster that it seems to be at the moment because its true potential, that you come to know your reality, will have been realized.