Ein Karem

There is far too much going on to record a flavour of each – we had Jonah this morning and we will have Sennacherib this afternoon.   And on 9^th and 10^th September just some of what we had was a visit to the Aida Refugee Camp (home of some Palestinians displaced from their villages as long ago as 1948), the Chagall windows in the Synagogue at the Hadassah Hospital (showing by turns Jacob’s blessing on his mostly difficult children), and the traditional site of the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth at Ein Karem near by (one of those cleared villages, now a prosperous edge of Jerusalem community), all of which I did try to bring together for myself thus:

Ein Karem             

               

The clear characters

of Jacob’s blest sons

set, stain, colour and

illuminate  threats,

from the devouring

of one vicious wolf

to the deluge of

unstable water,

above a village,

gobbled up and cleansed,

replete and prayer full,

where once a school girl,

two periods missed,

fled to her cousins

where she startled their

own yet unborn son

with the first hint of

a beast at his throat

and of the endless

tides of innocents

to be swept away.