What a funny day.  What a strange year.  Random thoughts that hit me, as I sit here, after realizing that it has been over a year since I last wrote, let alone posted, anything here.  Thinking about how my ideas, comments, and considerations all seem to end up in short soundbites, shared on Twitter or Facebook.  That my lengthier thoughts are kept relatively private of late.  Out of concern.  Out of respect.  Out of uncertainty.

I am torn apart about what is happening in Israel and Gaza.  Daily reading both sides of the press, to try and garner a sense of what is actually happening.  What is really being talked about.  Because my personal opinion is rather ripped to shreds at this point.  Heart aching.  Anger at the right wing in Israel who show incredible racism and hatred, at Hamas and its supporters for blindly forcing a public to live in the 19th century, and at the Israeli government, for keeping Gazans and the Palestinians living in the West Bank  in a prison, leaving them reeling daily in injustices and just the right situation for fomenting ongoing hate and a commitment to terrorism.  And knowing too that I have to wrestle with my own Zionism, my deeply held belief that a country for Jews is a right.  But not at any cost and not without reconciling with the injustices done to make this happen.  I ache and I hold my tongue.  Knowing that whatever I might try and say just will fail to convey the sorrow and anger and frustration I feel.  Wanting both peoples to just stop and look at one another.  And see.

I am angry at my own country.  This US that is is rapidly descending into utter failure on so many fronts.  At the failure of our political structure to rise above the worst of its, and our, inclinations.  To see how small voices are ignored, how we allow children to die, how we continue to perpetuate a country that is more feudal than at likely any time since the 18th century.  And I vacillate between trying to engage my best impulses for change, and just ignoring the situation and trying to live as so many others like me, privileged and white and educated.  And I grow irritated at myself, reminding myself daily that I was raised a Jewish gay man, who first and foremost learned to care about others and what I can do for them, to practice tikkun olam - to help make this a better world now.  And yet, I feel as if I am often alone at caring and trying.

Turning 50 has been much more challenging than I'd once thought it might be.  It has certainly been a year of loss and change.  Of pain, both psychological and physical.  A year of confronting my changing body - how the inside is not keeping pace with the outside.  And of reconnecting, because of all the change and pain, with a me I've lost touch with over time.  It has been a year of watching some very positive change, including gay marriage and the pointed end of DOMA, evoke horrific responses of hate and rage.  And of wondering how, all these years since I first witnessed such anger and disrespect, I could still be seeing such awfulness.  I am wondering what is next - knowing that it is really a matter of choice now.  To engage.  To continue to see.  To speak loudly.  And of pushing myself to do so.