At the Ecumenical Service marking Women’s World Day of Prayer at St Christopher’s Cathedral last Friday, there was a poem read that moved me greatly.
It was one of the last poems of the Palestinian female novelist, poet, and educator Hiba Abu Nada, “Not Just Passing”. She was killed at the age of 32 by an Israeli air strike in southern Gaza on October 20, 2023.
For all Gazans, life over the last five months has been a lottery of death, a trial of survival and sanity, so for someone to assert that which is “not just passing” is truly an act of faith:
Yesterday, a star said//to the little light in my heart,//We are not just transients//passing.//Do not die. Beneath this glow...//You were first created out of love,//so carry nothing but love//to those who are trembling.
In what Hiba writes, there is a belief in the fruitfulness of our lives, despite their transience: “One day, all gardens sprouted//from our names, from what remained//of hearts’ yearning.”
In the lifeless prison that Gaza has become, longing and creativity were all the poet could hold on to and yet we can “heal others//with our longing,//how to be a heavenly scent//to relax their tightening lungs: a welcome sigh,//a gasp of oxygen.”
Even in the prison of such circumstances, we can be the perfume of charity.
Tragically, the “little life” of Hiba Abu Nada was snuffed out, and yet the longing, the grandeur of spirit cannot be:
“O little light in me, don’t die,//even if all the galaxies of the world//close in.//O little light in me, say://Enter my heart in peace.//All of you, come in!”
It is as if the charity and spirit of a heart is cavernous, large enough to welcome all who come in peace, to offer unassailable protection and shelter, of the “little light in my heart” that is not just passing.
It reminds me of words from Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God”.
As we heard the Lord’s Prayer, sung in Aramaic, the original language of Issa/Jesus, still spoken by Palestinians today, and prayed alongside the Palestinian Ambassador’s wife Rihab Al Afifi and her daughter, we felt not only what it was “to bear with one another in love”, but that it is at the heart of a life that is not just passing.
Fr Richard Fermer
Dean of St Christopher’s Cathedral
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