The Lion and the Lamb Idea

 'We slept through,' FD mumbles. It is 515am. We're up. 

At first I think he means we slept through an alarm to shelter downstairs in our miklat (mick-laht) then realized that is impossible. There is no sleeping through an azakah (ah-zah-kah). We slept through only because there was no alarm last night. 

'And the Cubs won,' I mumble back. 

I checked the score after thanking the Old Mighty for returning me to life, the first thing a Jew does each day, Modeh ani (moe-deh-ah-ni). Other cultures might do this, too, but it has extra meaning for Jews, is my guess.  

Last night we watched some of the ballgame on television. What a feeling, mastering the technology of streaming from an iPad to a television. Two doctors figuring out what had previously evaded them. 

This is like getting the Wordle in two. You rise from feeling incompetent and a loser (Wordle in four to six) to brilliant. 

But I'm not feeling great, despite the Cub win, too much news about the war being far from over, too many soundbites about Iran's nuclear capability. 

Last November when patients in the US panicked after Donald Trump's election I prescribed a moratorium on the news. If it upsets you don't listen, don't engage. Don't read. I've followed my own advice for the greater part of this year and I live in Israel! News about fighting a war on multiple fronts has been highly disturbing, gut wrenching, sad. It is existential and surreal that our soldiers, children, are in danger. The Israel Defense Forces are us. They are our relatives, the children of nieces and nephews, grandchildren of cousins, children of friends. 

Now, as civilians we are in danger, too, and it is more and more clear the obscenity of war.  I think of October 11, how Hamas started it with their invasion from Gaza, decapitating, mutilating, raping women, stealing humans. This is so ugly, all of it.

So I take my own advice, only read the headlines. Reading headlines is like reading the title of a graphic comic book, the gravity doesn't sink in. 

זאב עם כלב ירבץ ונמר עם עגל ירבץ The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the calf

To an end to the war, may there be no lives lost today or tomorrow or evermore from war. . 

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