It is a rainy Sunday afternoon in Berlin – luckily. This way I am not distracted by the beautiful past days that were beckoning to go out of the city to walk through the golden autumny lights of nature. I am busy packing, checking camera and equipment and figuring out how to be nice under any circumstances when I am being checked at customs. When I take a break I read various texts on ‘Sacredness’ and get inspired by Vimala Thakars book ‘Challenge to Youth’. The reason I am going to  Israel, is to film the March of Women Wage Peace that is taking place all over Israel between September 24 and October 10. I will be filming the tail end of all the events and interviewing women on all sides about their longing for peace in their country – and I will be researching and asking, if in all this longing for unity and peace there is something we can call ‘sacred’ that calls us to better our lives, relationships, our society and our relationship to nature. A friend of mine said to me the other day: Ah, you start your next film project in the Holy Country, where Holiness so to speak ‘was born’. I was suprised that I had not really connected the dots (pardon my ignorance), mainly because I do connect more the pain, historical fragmentation and decades of violence with Israel and Palestine than the holy sites. And – as we we all know, but sometimes find hard to apply, as religion has put so much ownership on this concept – sacredness is everywhere. A couple of years ago I sat – away from all the tourists – overlooking the city of Macchupicchu – overcome by a timeless awe about our human nature… how we found places that seemed to connect with a sacred geometry, a sacred law, an inner calling and how we created myth stories, cities, temples – all to honour the sacred… and…. but…. what do we do with all of this now… how do we discover and live a sacredness that is not corrupted, institutionalised, owned, fought for – but that excudes that what it should do since centuries: a respectful, loving, quiet and totally creative and free relationship to life….

Maybe – like all human beings do –  all the Women who march with Women Wage Peace know somewhere deeply, that there is something that needs to be loved, respected and lived for, something we can’t grasp and taste, and something that is worth giving your life for. And as they say: to never give up fighting for it.That gives them the stamina, the patience and the love required, to meet ‘the other’, to face people who think differently, to want to do something FOR life…  If you are interested to find out more about their work and passion, here is an article that is well written and was just published: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.814360

In the meantime I keep on packing!

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