“The desert speaks, It calls for you to be happy,
Reminding you that everything blooms,
Within you, in your heart.”
I spent this past weekend in the desert on a small Kibbutz called Kramim (Vineyards). The recent rain in the area has allowed for the potential life to sprout from the tough arid earth and cover the amber soil in greenery. The landscape was not a dry as I was expecting but the nourishing silence of the desert was there in all its wonder!
I heart the Negev because of its ability change overnight. It expresses its willingness to grow if only it had the resources.
Sitting on a bus for two hours on the way there I find I always have these two options; either think about how everything around me is somehow connected to my life’s journey, or sleep and wake up on the shoulder of the person sitting next to me in a puddle of my own drool.
This time I chose the former.
I really feel that here there is so much opportunity to grown and bloom. The kibbutz I was on hosts a year long program which gives ‘post-high school, pre-army’ teenagers the chance to explore themselves and learn about their cultural, national and religious identity. So of course there was a lot of ideological discussions on everything from ‘education methods’, to ‘the need to settle the Negev’, to ‘how much alcohol teenagers should be drinking on their gap year’ (in hebrew, ulpan must be working, who knew!?).
It was really fantastic! A wonderful bunch of kids who helped me reaffirm my being here, and made me fear Israeli youth a little less.
Bless!
