David Burnett's Blog (9)

This is from the Facebook page "Palestine Loves Israel'

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.248082031958142.40647.209640082469004&type=1

 The following quotes were all posts I came across on Facebook. They were all posted as rockets and bombs were falling in Palestine and Israel. I put them all together so that all who want peace will know YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

"Dear friends, I dont know how to start to write what i want to say. maybe the first words should be: I am human, I am Israeli. In that order. When Rockets and bombs are in Gaza, and in Israel- arriving to tel aviv as well for the first time from Gaza,…

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Yesterday I went to New York to hang out with a friend of mine, but as soon as I got into town, I received a text saying she had to work overtime and would not be able to make it. So I did something I often do. I went to a bookstore. I left the bookstore with a massive book filled with the works of Kahlil Gibran. I walked across Lower Manhattan then over the Brooklyn Bridge with the book in my hand. When I got to the Brooklyn end of the bridge, I thought I should go to my favorite restaurant…

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There is a tiny park in Lower Manhattan, on Mulberry Street, in Chinatown, where a small sign hangs on a fence dedicated to the memory of a man named Jacob Riis. Who was Jacob Riis? For a time in the late 1800's, he was a homeless man who lived in New York, who had been chased away, by the cops, out of every place he could find to sleep, accept a certain grave in a forgotten corner of a local cemetery. And his only friend was a stray dog who used to sleep on the same grave at night. His only…

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A couple years ago, I ran into a terrible time in my life. I had been out of work for a while. My entire savings had run out. I had recently sold what little I had left of value at the pawn shop to buy food. My girlfriend had just broken up with me a few days before. And I had no idea where I was going to get my next rent payment. On the news I had seen that a hurricane had struck the Southeast, and was coming up the coast and was about to hit my part of the world. Well it turns out that by the… Continue

The Hindus bathe in the Ganges. The Jews go to the mikveh. The Catholics dip their hand in holy water and make the sign of the cross. The Christians, both Protestant and Catholic baptise. The Native Americans go to the sweat lodge. The Turks go to the hamam. The Russians go to their bath house. We all understand, on some level, the sacred power of water. We all find some connection to the devine in it. Even the surfer paddling out to the waves can understand. It is in all of us.

No…

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The other day I came across a beautiful love story unlike any I had ever heard of. It was in a book by Dr. Loren Eisely of the University of Pennsylvania, and it goes like this... "We had, in addition, instructions to lay hands on the present. The word had come through to get them alive --birds, reptiles, anything. A zoo somewhere abroad needed restocking. It was one of those reciprocal matters in which science involves itself. Maybe our museum needed a stray ostrich egg and this was the…

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Fifty-four years ago to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up, not far from Goethe's beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald. He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again. Liberated a day earlier by American soldiers, he remembers their rage at what they saw. And even if he lives to be a very old man, he will always be grateful to them for that rage, and also for their compassion.… Continue

I am a man who has wandered out of the wilderness and into a great city. I may be a nomad who has just left the desert, and entered one of the early cities of the ancient Sumarians in the Fertile Crescent. I may be a backwoods countryboy from Mississippi, who has just taken his first subway ride, and finds himself standing in the middle of Times Square. Whoever I am, I am stunned by what I see. I have a choice of reactions. I can be frightened by the unfamiliar chaos. I can be discusted by the… Continue