Taking time for peace …

We’re sure to be knitting, making, thinking, and working for peace over the coming months  … but from places of silence and repose near and far.   To be certain, there will be plenty to share after the summer holidays.
Here’s hoping your summer is as productive as I’m hoping mine will be.

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Hamsa Leaves: gaza on my mind

Resport on NPR’sMorning Edition this morning (Anne Garrels, Israeli Forces Pulling Out of Gaza, 2:28-4:07) — case that finally prompted public conversation about Israel’s use of excessive force
Dr. El Aish (Palestinian physician from Gaza) – fixture on Israeli TV, believed in co-existence, worked in Israel, spoke fluent Hebrew – nontheless believes in the integrity of [...]

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Gaza On My Mind: an aviary for peace

I don’t know about anyone else, but the violence in Gaza over the past three weeks has left me in something of a state of mental and emotional paralysis. Since the first Israeli strike in Gaza, I’ve been knitting birds … white doves, yellow birds, red birds, blue birds, birds, birds, birds,  … my personal [...]

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Dove at Work: needling peace

With the renewed violence in Israel and Gaza, it seemed even more important than ever to find a way to express the work of the TikkunTree:  bringing more of us together to contribute to eventual peace in Israel-Palestine.

While I don’t wear a kippah (yarmulke), I do believe that the skullcap – as a ritual garment [...]

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Post-Election: ready for new foliage

The TikkunTree and this site have been dormant, too long perhaps, but then there was an election campaign to wage and win.  And it was won! So now, with the news about President-Elect Obama’s cabinet and policy choices accumulating on a weekly basis, there’s even more reason to count on a reasoned American approach to [...]

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Craft Unbound: the ordinary art of peace

‘If you live the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion.’
Lin-Chi Buddhist proverb (from Craft Unbound)
What’s often most astonishing about the internet is the way in which paths cross virtually across the most incredible distances. Australia had always counted among the more exotic places in the imagination [...]

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Finding Community for Peace

Well, the TikkunTree project is now included among the rank of Mid-East Peace projects and links on Richard Silverstein’s blog, Tikun Olam. If you aren’t familiar with Silverstein’s intelligent journalism, his blog is worth more than a cursory look – his essays on the politics, culture and ideas about Israeli-Arab peace never fail to [...]

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Knitting Without Borders: a knitted olive branch

My branch of the TikkunTree has sprouted new fruit. Amidst the variety of leaves this tree has produced (simple single and double leaves, Safed leaves, Undone leaves, YingYang leaves, Cabled Co-existence Leaves), etc), this imaginary olive tree has finally yielded its first olive branch! How was it done? I knit a few olives [...]

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Jump into Peace: a tikkuntree painted frog

Preparation for the Jewish festival of Passover has kept my tikkunknitting needles flying, and although I was engrossed with the work of creating a ” knitted seder” for my family and the Pattern for Peacebuilders series, the TikkunTree and Israeli-Palestinian conflict were never far from my thoughts. Our Passover seder table includes a plate [...]

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Winter

Sometimes winter seems to go on and on, and on, and on …. and the cold and damp seeps into every corner of life. Even so there are moments of light, premonitions of spring thaw, faint scents of new growth. A few days ago I looked outside the window and noticed the [...]

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