Just back from Israel a couple days ago, an intense, difficult and beautiful experience. Still recovering from it.

Holy cow, tiny Israel, politically crazy and smack dab in the middle of one of the largest migratory bird flyways in the world, 500 million birds migrating south or north every autumn and spring thru the African/Syrian rift valley, a flow of energy that links earth and wind and water of Africa, Europe and Asia. One of my favorite moments was one morning just after dawn in the Hula wetlands in the north, headwaters of the Jordan River at the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel. We artists were in the midst of vast flocks of cranes, storks and pelicans when they began their morning flight, circling and singing as the sun rose over the spring flower hills of the Golan Heights. As the flocks in shifting formation sailed across the rising sun, their shadows raced along the ground and passed right thru us, thunk thunk thunk, a crazy feeling that heaven and earth were colliding in our bodies in some redemptive way that was wild and sweet.

"Considering that, all hatred driven hence,

The soul recovers radical innocence" -- W.B. Yeats