We Could Have All Died in the Waters of Israel

    I spent a summer there, and I survived. Most of us do. My roommate came closer than me to drowning in the springs of that resort-like water park. They created an unadvertised or secret little death watery zone, somewhere near the middle of those few acres of fun and recreation in the hot summer, if memory serves.

    I knew I was trapped in a water spot: dark, and cool, and potentially deadly. I was not in too much trouble, but my roommate friend Schaefer had a harder time detecting this, and went further, and longer. And he might have died. But he didn't. His mind, his lungs, his muscles, his spirit would not give up the ghost.

    We all survived that summer in the Holy Land. Three suicide bombings, and the last came close, but we were all spared. Some of our young ladies were assaulted and groped, but we made it through. 

    So many others have. Perhaps disproportionately. 

    Going back to the times of Sodom and Gomorrah, many died then. Some speculate it was some type of nuclear explosion that laid waste to those ancient peoples. Canaanites died in droves, it seems violently, according to the Bible, because the Israelities were commanded to do so.

    The last few months since the first week of October have been rough. Many Jewish people initially, then lots more Arabs. In the strip near old Ashkelon and other parts near the Mediterranean, now called Gaza.

    Many are surviving, with wounds and injuries, but thousands are being burnt and crushed. Israeli soldiers and hostages are being killed too.

    We could all die in the Holy Land, as Jesus of Nazareth did. Christians do this symbolically, in baptism and other sacraments of death and rebirth.

PUBLISH NOW.

    But more deaths have occurred, and will happen, and will come to pass.