an eye for an eyelash

i'm reading "the lion of jordan", a biography about king hussein bin talal bin abdullah, the late king of jordan. the author used this phrase, "an eye for an eyelash" as a description of israel's foreign policy. i promptly wrote it on my hand and considered the implications of such a statement. i wrote a blog about this before, during a more close-to-home conflict between israel and palestine. but i didn't have the words for it.
an eye for an eyelash. over-reaction. i live in a world that espouses this philosophy. my school takes an eye for an eyelash every time they fire somebody. i take an eye for an eyelash every time i lose my temper towards someone because they don't act in a way that i understand. my country takes an eye for an eyelash whenever someone doesn't play by their "rules".
i don't want to take an eye for an eyelash. i don't want to take an eye for an eye. i don't want to respond with violence to violence towards me. i don't want to sarcastically respond to sarcasm. but i do. i do it all the time. the only way for another world to emerge is for us to love those who hate us; to learn the way of forgiveness.
at this point, it seems appropriate for me to quote one of my biggest heroes, dr. martin luther king, jr. :

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."

may we break the eye for an eye, and especially the eye for an eyelash, philosophies that are prevalent in our world and replace them with the light that drives out the darkness, if for any reason to avoid our own annihilation.

new life

when i came back to illinois in july, i found myself marveling every time i turned a corner in the car at how green everything was. living in a desert, where it gets green for about 2 weeks in the spring, the sight of green grass and green leafy trees was literally delightful to my eyes.
it rained here for 3 straight days, and for 24 hours straight at one point last week. as grateful as we were for the rain, we feared that we had skipped straight from summer into winter and lost out on the fall (which is usually only about 4 weeks long, but its a very pleasant 4 weeks). we started sleeping in sweatshirts and seeing our breath in our apartment, way too soon. on the one hand, we got 20% of the annual rainfall in 3 days, and on the other hand we were miserable.
but...
it warmed up. now, our confused earth is responding to the change in weather like it were spring. this is exciting. i saw green grass everywhere today (and by everywhere, i mean here and there in patches in vacant lots of dirt). the mountain across from our school, which is usually the color of a nice pair of dockers, was green. my eyes rejoiced. i sang about the green grass in an operatic voice all the way home from school (and i am not ashamed).
this green grass in emblematic of another change that has happened in our lives. jessey quit her job at the school. normally, you would think that the rain metaphor would fit in this situation. but in reality, the rain was a metaphor for her life while working and doing school full-time. she was suffering, dying really, on the inside. when she was asked to quit (a story that is better told in person), the grass began to grow again in her life. she's happy again, much like the desert ground after a good rain.
so now, surrounded by green grass outside and at home, we are looking ahead to the winter and wondering about what changes it will bring to us.