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December 3, 2002

Beloveds, today the UN commission searched all of the square feet of Hussein’s office in a show of power.

When I speak of feet I speak of attacks conceived in Afghanistan, planned in Germany, funded through Dubai, executed in America, using Saudis.

I speak of the frozen assets of Osama bin Laden and the demand from Turkey for a second UN resolution before the U.S. moves in on Iraq.

I speak of Ahmed Zakayev being set free and Malaysia warning Australia that any pre-emptive strike against them even in the name of preventing terrorism would be an act of war.

Beloveds, I keep trying to speak of loving but all I speak about is acts of war and acts of war and acts of war.

I mean to speak of beds and bowers and all I speak of is Barghouti’s call for a change of leadership and the strike in Venezuela against Chavez and the 66 ships on the fleet of shame.

I speak of the morning possibility of peace for the 16 million people from Mali and Burkina Faso who are in the Ivory Coast that disappears by evening.

I speak of the 80 evacuated from Touba.

I speak of the 95-year-old Palestianian woman who was shot by Israeli troops while driving her car.

I speak of the 600-year-old Spanish Haggada now in Sarajevo.

I speak of Burundi and the Forces for Defense of Democracy.

I speak of the U.S. wanting to ban the antidote to nerve gas on the Oil-Food plan with Iraq.

I speak of the release of Saaduddin Ibrahim and his 27 employees.

I do not say more than movement when I speak.

Beloveds, we say we do not want to move any more. We want to see ourselves as located and bound even if not local, located and bound to someone else’s land and there by chance even as we do not see ourselves as part of the land. This is all we want today.

Yet the world swirls around us.

The ocean levels rise and the beach gets smaller.

We say our bed is part of everyone else’s bed even as our bed is denied to others by an elaborate system of fences and passport-checking booths.

We wake up in the night with just each other and admit that even while we believe that we want to believe that we all live in one bed of the earth’s atmosphere, our bed is just our bed and no one else’s and we can’t figure out how to stop that from being that way.