Jesus was an original thinker, a revolutionary, with a tendency to turn the prevailing ideals upside down. But when Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” he was quoting the Old Testament, reminding his listeners of something they were supposed to know already. And you, my reader, know that […]
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In the last ten or more years of her life my mother was quite deaf. The results of her deafness were fascinating once I learned to step back and think about them. First, she tended to fill her silence by talking a lot, a thing she had never done before. Second, she interrupted other […]
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This morning, April 26, I opened the online Beirut Daily Star and looked for items of special interest to me. The one that caught my eye was an opinion piece headlined like this: “A manifesto to end our dysfunctional politics.” I jumped on this article quickly, eager to learn how Lebanon is going to […]
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On the same day that the disastrous flood waters snatched people away in Houston, I saw a picture of a rainbow. The two together caused me to open my Bible and read again the story of Noah and the great flood. Virtually every tribe on earth has a flood story, not exactly the same but […]
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On International Women’s Day it occurred to me that I should write a story about a Middle Eastern woman, a story that would be a tribute to the brave and noble women of our world. Then I become indecisive, knowing so many women— smart women, strong women, abused and used women, courageous, creative, happy […]
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An answer to the soldier (and 364 others who read my confession): Two weeks ago I posted a blog called: Bombs in Brussels, Drones in the Middle East, the Confessions of a Coward. For three days afterwards my website was visited frequently. A great many readers “liked” the article. Some thanked me on facebook, […]
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One of the advantages of living at Mafraq Sharooq in Musaitbeh, Beirut, was the presence of Mustapha’s grocery just around the corner. It was not a modern supermarket, not the brightest, cleanest, most organized store in West Beirut, which is exactly what was so nice about it. Mustapha Kais, the owner and manager and […]
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Grace Kusta writes a personal traumatic experience, enabling us to see both the stress of life in Lebanon during the civil war and how she coped with it. It was the summer of 1985, I had scheduled my annual vacation from work, planning to go spend a week in Cyprus, an island that is […]
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(Last night I finished this article, though I intended to post something else, a cheerful guest blog, on my website today. This morning I woke to the news of another savage terror attack in Brussels. Now both my reader and I are horrified by the descriptions of headless bodies, people who suddenly have no legs, […]
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There had been a furious battle in the area of Beirut called Ain ar-Rommaneh. As I recall, it lasted several weeks. The population of the area had been paralyzed and the death toll had mounted while two “Christian” militias shot at one another from building to building and up and down the streets. I no […]
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