Ngomakurira – Ghadir

for help; the silence of those who are afraid to speak; the silence of those who have seen too much violence and suffering; the silence of those who are simply too tired to speak.
Our region is being shattered by the world’s most powerful weapon: fear. Fear blinds and maims. It tortures and kills. It is the source of lies and destruction. It builds walls and prisons. It traumatizes children and sweeps adults into the pit of despair.
And here I sit, in the relative, eerie calm of Bethlehem, struggling to make sense of what is going on around us. The horrors of Gaza are gathering relentless momentum. The systematic destruction of Lebanon has just begun. The Wall around Bethlehem is almost complete.
And yet Ghadir, a young woman with severe physical and intellectual disabilities who lives in an institution in Bethany, still greets me with a belly laugh and sparkling eyes when I walk in the door. As she gracefully moves her hands up and down, I recognize her invitation to dance. And so we dance.
Ghadir has lived her whole life knowing her limitations. She has encountered frustration and pain. She knows what it means to be gripped by fear. She knows what it feels like to be the source of fear for people who look at her and see someone less than human.
Ghadir has somehow accepted the paralysis of her body. But she refuses to succumb to the paralysis of her heart. With the joy she wants to share and the thirst she has for friendship, she has discovered the weapons that destroy fear. She didn’t spend years and years and billions of dollars on research. She simply realized that each moment is a gift, an invitation to enter into relationship with others. Ghadir has created a little world of peace. A little world where each person is welcomed. A little world of healing. A little world where gratitude is possible.
Ghadir has invited me into this little world where hope becomes possible again. And because of Ghadir, I am able to invite others into this world of hope.
My prayer is that each of us can ask for the grace to be instruments of peace, of hope, and of healing in our little worlds, since it’s only in the “little worlds” that healing can begin for the big world. Peace from Bethlehem. Kathy.’