Our daily bread

World Water Day was celebrated yesterday. Don't know if you knew that. I did the CNN WWD quiz and failed miserably : 0/10. A little water education is required on my part.

The death of the Toulouse killer leaves more questions than answers. One thing for sure, the fear of individual terrorists is now greater than institutional terrorism. The war on terrorism must change tactics and  strategies if it wants to stay one step ahead.

Boy carrying bread for sale

And while tragedies ebb and flow through our Middle Eastern streets, everyone tries to live as normal a life as possible. Life must go on ... despite the setbacks. I took this pic of a bread-seller carrying his bread out of Herod's Gate to sell for breakfast. Its a daily scene here, but probably a rare sight in your part of the world. I wondered what story that guy had to tell: if his siblings are too poor to continue studies, if a member of his family is addicted to drugs, if he lives in a windowless cistern called a house, if his mother was sick and has no money to pay the medicine bills, if his selling bread is the only means of income to support his family. He is strong, he is young... on his head is not a board full of bread; it is a load of worries, responsibilities and the solution to escape from it all - if only someone would buy the bread first.

A sad piece of analysis on the future of Christians in the Middle East. Ever increasing violence and persecution will eliminate the roots of Christianity, its cradle and hearth. http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-future-looks-bleak-for-middle-east-christians-1.420140  But as if any one else in the rest of the world cares. I think we who live in the Middle East have resigned ourselves to the fact that the Christians in the rest of the world live in their local insulated spheres of belief .... they may be christian but they have lost being "catholic". The sense of universality, collectivity, unity has long been eroded. I wonder what a christian in a wealthy country thinks when he/she says "Give us this day our daily bread"; and what a persecuted christian in the Middle East thinks when he/she prays the same verse. I wonder if "daily bread" means the same thing to both christians.