To See or Not to See

What happens when sound does not enter your mind through your ears, but enters through your eyes and through your skin?
What happens when sound has no physical wave to perceive, and therefore does not exist, yet it fills the whole world around you?
What happens if sound is so soft that no one can hear it, yet your fists are not large enough to block the thunder from your ears?

We are entering through the Gate of Death at Auschwitz.

Sometimes we imagine, but thoughts remain dreams and then dissipate into the history of dreams.
But then there might be a time when what we imagine becomes real.
But the reality still remains imagination, yet it could never join the oblivion of the history of dreams. In fact, it may become so profound that it would change our being forever.
So we walk the corridors and climb the stairs. We enter the barracks and courtyards. We crawl through the dungeons, stop at the wall of execution and look at the gallows. And then the gas chambers and cremation furnaces. And all along, we follow the high-security fences. The barbed wire now slack and rusted, but the spikes remain.

And as the Soviets approached, the Nazis bulldozed the barracks and blew up the crematoria to try and hide the evidence.

But where are the ashes of the millions?
Where can those who survived go back to?
Where can they search their sorrows and cry their empty tears?

The ashes became mud at the bottom of the ponds and silt in the river beds. They are in the landfill and in the road base under our feet.
But they are also at the roots of the grass and the trees, thrusting back life out of the molten core of the earth.

Eighty years have passed, and three generations have come and gone.
Perhaps the world has lost its hate…
Perhaps dark is not so dark any more.

At dawn on 7 October 2023, thousands of young people danced beneath the open sky, celebrating music, friendship and life. Then the gunmen came. They hunted them down - tortured, raped and murdered. Two years later, families gathered at Bondi Beach to celebrate Hanukkah—light overcoming darkness. The gunmen took up positions on the footbridge and opened fire in a massacre of Jews once more.

And the tsunami of hate again becomes a furnace, but this time in the hearts of millions of our kind, consuming good souls, racing through the continents of earth, jubilating over atrocities, shaking the Harbour Bridge as they scream to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth.

Because the Nazi soul now lives in the hearts and eyes of millions, as raw hate. 

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The Bible describes Israel as “chosen by God out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his treasured possession”.
Yet, they cut their teeth as a nation in slavery under the Egyptians. And when they fled, they had to spend 40 years in the Sinai desert before they could enter the Promised Land of “Milk and Honey”. But this was a barren land where water was scarce and fertile soils were limited.
A thousand years of numerous battles followed. During this time, 40–50major prophecies announced the birth of the Messiah, the Son of God. Then Jesus was born into the tribe of Judah. But as it was prophesied, Jesus was tortured and crucified for the sins of all mankind.
Forty years later, the Romans destroyed the temple, killed hundreds of thousands of Jews and many more were enslaved and scattered. The sovereign Jewish state ceased to exist for almost two thousand years. Yet, remarkably, the Jews survived as a scattered nation around the globe, reaching around 16 million before the Nazis killed more than one-third of Jews on earth.

And then, the tiny state of Israel was re-established.
This time in a Muslim sea throughout the Middle East and beyond.
What were once tribal and regional fights have now, to a large extent, become hardcore religious wars fuelled by extremism and hate throughout the Middle East and further.

And the wars and the hatred rage on. 

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What is it that we see?
What does this tell us about the world we live in?
What do we read in the heart of man?
How does this end?

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There is a story about a woman who lived where, for many months of the year, snow was all that could be seen. She grew old and became convinced that her bones, her mind, and her soul were freezing under the snow. One day she looked out of her bedroom window at the ocean of glittering crystals mingling with the grey-white heaven from where it was sent, and she muttered, “Time has stopped in the middle of winter. And this is where it all ends.” 
She crossed her hands on her walking stick and leaned her face into the window. Her breath hazed the glass and the world lost its focus and its relevance.

“Grandma, did you see the soft, silver catkins in the willow tree in front of the kitchen window? It will be spring soon!” the girl announced with glee.

But when her soul froze, the woman seemed to become deaf. So, she could not hear the message and therefore could not see the eruption of the silver catkins on the willow trees.  

When spring came, the catkins swelled and burst into tiny yellow-green flowers alive with bees. Then fresh green leaves unfurled, and the bare winter willow was draped in a soft green veil.

But the woman’s room was empty.

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Sometimes we see, although it may only be a mirage, and we hear, although it may only be the heartbeat of our own soul.

Yet, we will give up our lives for the cause and sacrifice our children for the passion.

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From Gabriël:

Next time: “North of the Black Rock”
Pure African Adventure…

Thanks, guys, for all the support, private emails, and messages.
Sorry, but this heavy story was only meant to be in English and in writing…