Trafford Publishing: Sarah's Promise

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Sarah's Promise

by Devra West

368 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-1234; ISBN 1-55395-519-6; US$29.00, C$34.00, EUR24.00, £17.00

Sarah's Promise weaves together the spiritual nuances from Christian, Muslim and Jewish traditions with the modern day dilemma of being a peacemaker in this conflict-ridden region. It offers insights about the Arab-Israeli conflict and the destiny of Israel to be a lesson for entire world.

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about the book about the author sample excerpts catalogue info

About the Book

* An absolute must read on the topic of the Middle East!
* A profound catalyst for the timely questions of the human heart!
* A critical call for the deepest of personal introspection and proactive response!
Sarah's Promise is an extraordinary odyssey of the inner and outer exploration of the questions of the ages and the immediate crucial decisions facing the human race through the conflict in the Middle East.
Dr. West shares a profoundly intimate, heart-rending and intensely frank view of life as a peaceworker in a region of timeless wisdom and ruthless conflict. She has journeyed extensively throughout the Middle East region, giving her a visceral, first-hand experience of the issues, influences and unique challenges that make this part of the world a global hot spot. The magnitude of Devra's inner exploration, in the midst of orchestrating an international peace effort, demands that a personal quest be engaged on the part of the reader and is sure to inspire many questions of far-reaching impact for all who enter her world of deep contemplation, and passionate desire to make a difference.
The first in a series, Sarah's Promise is a "must read" for anyone wanting to gain greater insight into the polarized nature of peace and conflict in Israel and Palestine and the critical planetary dilemma that must be addressed by all responsible world citizens.

About the Author

Devra West, D.D., Ph.D., is one of the foremost innovative thinkers of our time and a visionary leader in many areas of human endeavor. Her quest moves from a greatness of heart that contributes to a better life and a more viable and creative existence for all human beings. She is the founder and creative director of several non-profit international peace and humanitarian organizations which seek to inspire a new era of global guardianship, philanthropy, higher consciousness and the international stewardship of human values.
Her visionary capacity for futuristic thinking has put her consulting firm, Millennia Mind, Inc., in the forefront of leadership development, and made it one of the most sought-after agencies in the field. In addition to the Peace Promise Initiative, her work with the Global Guardianship Institute promises to offer a dynamic influence in the field of ethical corporate, economic and environmental international practices. One of her present endeavors is her work with global leaders to create new financial systems based on the ethics of sustainability and prosperity for all nations.
The Rocky Mountains of Montana is where Devra makes her home. She is a dedicated mother of three grown children and the proud grandmother of a still growing third generation. Through her vibrant roles as a dedicated humanitarian, a dynamic transformational teacher, and a corporate and leadership consultant, she demonstrates an inspiring example of living in the vitality of one's full creative potential. Dr. West is the author of a wide range of leading-edge books on higher consciousness and new paradigms for a more benevolent shared global environment, and continues to earn international recognition for her tireless efforts to improve planetary conditions.

Sample Excerpts

Chapter 1
The Apology
Common Fears, Common Understandings
After a long, long day of dealing with the hard questions and high emotions that are common to this place, I am glad to be heading back to my hotel room for the night. It seems that politics plays a role even among peacekeepers and humanitarians, and even among the members of my own staff.
It has been a full day, more than full, full of challenges, full of possibilities, full of people who can help and people who can hinder. Several people got up and walked out anyway, despite my efforts to appease and accommodate, and left the table of coexistence, fed up with what they felt was too much risk or idealism, depending upon which direction, toward which polarity, the pendulum was swinging.
It was easy to understand how they felt. But it was hard to see them turn their backs. It was even harder to be the target of their anger. The measurement of rightness, political, religious and otherwise, is starting to eat at me and devour my sense of self from all the bending and appeasing. I feel stretched in all directions like the roads heading out of Jerusalem.
Feeling sorry for myself is short-lived. The chill of whirling, flashing lights in front of my taxi is immediately followed by the whine of rushing sirens. My driver is grateful to take me wherever I want to go.
The only foreign passengers in taxis these days are activists, peace workers, journalists, government officials and a very, very few souls who are still willing to risk coming here for personal reasons, and even fewer who are sent here to conduct the few shreds of business that remain. The world of casual passengers has dried up and become barren.
But then the raw sound of the ambulances and quick response teams, that always grips my gut with the expectation of massive, larger-than-life and beyond comprehension tragedy, has taken a front seat to the trivia of the day. As I sit forward to see through the backed-up traffic, it's impossible to tell whether someone has had a simple fender bender or a heart attack or some such, or whether instead, entire families have been wiped out, with torn bodies and shattered lives strewn across the sidewalk in a mass bloodbath typical of another suicide bombing.
Like everyone here, as I crane my neck for a glimpse of the holdup that has brought traffic to a standstill, my first thought is the hope that no one I know or love or work with was caught in this crossfire of fate.
My cab driver, a young Arab man, shrugs his shoulders apologetically as if he knows what I am thinking. The pinched look on his face reveals his own share of worry. We sit lost in the private calling for the sparing of lives near and dear to us each. He sighs, I sigh. He runs a worried hand through his hair. I run both hands through mine, as if I can brush away the possibility of impending doom like raking leaves off a patio.
Neither of us can find comfort, as we both fidget in our seats, crossing and uncrossing legs or nervously drumming the steering wheel with prayers of anxiety and begging. I have already lost people that I have loved from both sides. I don't know anyone who lives here who hasn't.
Every day we live here in a strange tension of not knowing. Our prayers for safety volley with the heartbreaking news that a dear friend, or friend's child or mother or father didn't make it, was shot down or run over in the rush of insanity. The heartbreaking news comes often. It is the norm here.
Sitting captive together in the taxi, we wait, we listen, we watch, passing the troubled time like helpless lambs penned up for slaughter. Now we can see that this is no traffic accident. In this part of the world you have to be prepared for anything. More police and rescue vehicles join the shrilling of the ambulances.
The taxicab driver and humanitarian who, a short while ago, had exchanged the usual common courtesies between driver and passenger, now sit bolt upright for a better view, joined in the common experience of trying to make sense of what lies ahead, and whether or not danger, and possibly the worst of everything, is on the travel schedule.
As the noise gets louder, so does the thumping and pounding of our hearts as we sit suspended in an unmoving line of fire, a stone's throw from increasing mayhem. The fight-or-flight impulse has set in. Now we are visibly anxious and no longer care what the other thinks. Now we are turning our heads rapidly left and right to gain an advantage, twitching like animals, and getting into position to run for our lives.
More ambulances arrive on the scene, and we hold our breaths, bracing for the worst to come running down the street straight at us and crash into our midst. A warning siren louder than the rest pierces the intersection with an authoritative wail that warns all life to clear out and make way.
A police officer frantically waves the procession of cars around a blocked-off meridian. Now we are close enough to smell the fear. We are close enough to see the perspiration of terror taking hold of faces and bodies.
A rush of people has begun to pour out of the building up further on our right, like a torrent of madness seeking high ground. Running snapshot expressions of sheer horror bolt out into the street, wide-eyed with the burden of panic and terror, running for their lives with steps that may very well be their last. To witness this shudders the soul. To witness human beings running from the savagery of other human beings makes me grip myself with fingers of steel just to keep from screaming.
The scream is always there each time that I am a witness to the human atrocity that is running in the opposite direction of the promises of prophets. Screaming serves nothing, of course. I have learned to stay alert in these situations. You have to. Everyone has to.
But what if one day we didn't hold the screams at bay? What if the screams of humanity, of this place and its suffering, were broadcast all at once in a single tormented call that cries out in its truth of knowing?
What if the scream of all screams, that knows the violence must stop, was heard around the world? I know that this thought will stay with me as a companion of sanity. And I know that the voice for a better world must continue to be heard. It must precede the hands that will rebuild.
Up ahead, chaos is clearly taking over and echoing in all directions, reverberating off gathered groups of frantic people and limestone walls. I can see the Old City of Jerusalem in the distance, as domes and spires of holiness look down upon this moment of decision and the internal screams that will never end from those that endure the unbearable.
An elderly woman with a little boy in tow is literally dragging the child by his arm with such forcefulness that the child is grimacing, eyes squeezed shut and teeth bared, partly from fear and not wanting to see and partly from the hot sensation of his arm being yanked from its socket. An evacuation is in progress. Getting out of the building has become an emergency reality, and now panic and pushing has ensued.
A woman falls on the concrete and cracks her head wide open. She tries to get up but she stumbles, helpless. Someone else rushes past her, knocking her over again; someone else stops and helps her to her feet and gathers her, limping, to a safe distance on the other side of the avenue's meridian. The concrete slab is the barrier, the safety zone and the line of decision.
Now many people are staggering behind her, competing for the attention of emergency workers, some from pure panic and some from minor injuries that have come from being forced to evacuate a large building. It looks like one man is collapsing and clutching his chest, perhaps from a heart attack. Suspicion has given rise to the expectation of insanity and the bombs that insanity so ruthlessly wields.
The rescue workers and the bomb squad saviors will cross that line of decision, leaving the safety zone behind to stare, with stark determination, at the possibility of their own death. They are brave Israelis, trained to save lives. They must become ruthless in their courage.
They are called to go in, no matter what, to die to their own screams, and simply do what must be done. They don't know what they will find on the other side: machine guns, suicide bombs, toxic gas or a combination of the unthinkable.
The woman with the head injury sinks to the ground and collapses into the kind of stone-faced shock that precedes losing consciousness, saturated with the gushing bright red of her own vital fluids. People are being lined up and grouped and herded on the side of the intersection that has been assigned to safety.
Some are craning toward the building they have just escaped from, because someone they know and love hasn't made it out yet. Some are shaking and crying and are nursing their wounds of emotional trauma. Some are being treated and made ready for transport to a hospital. Some are limp with shock. The ones who just stare into a frozen vacuum are the ones that I reach for, as a witness, as a mother, as a passenger from a foreign country sitting in the backseat of a taxi.
More bomb squads have arrived and are assembling for the assault. They are decked in their battle gear of helmets, gas masks and chest plates like modern day gladiators. The air around them is tense with ominous and grave deliberation. As if a silent alarm has gone off in the midst of the already deafening clamor, the panic suddenly surges and accelerates.
The police are desperately trying to direct what has now become an onslaught of humanity running from the building's orifices, like cattle on the verge of an outright stampede. This does not look good, I think to myself, and I wonder who will get hurt, how many and why. What if the bomb is on a timer and blows everything in sight to smithereens? It could be a dirty bomb, or worse. Who picks the lottery number that determines who lives and who dies in this place of Russian roulette and volatile politics?
The taxicab driver reaches around and locks all the doors, front and back. I'm not sure why. His entire face has changed. Before, he was sweet and pleasant and humble, almost apologetic in an endearing sort of way. Now he is steely and visibly hardened and anything but humble. He is ready to do whatever it takes to survive.
This adds to my nervous alarm and I gather myself into my own hardness. Outside, beyond our presumed safe haven of the locked doors of a dilapidated old taxi, it seems the experts have a plan. They pass the word down the line to the assembled saviors and gladiators.
The group of men suddenly stand up tall, like trees in a forest, sure of their ability to weather a bad storm. A knowing look is exchanged among them, and in a single turn the bomb squad team bolts in a unified lurch straight toward the door, straight into the jaws of danger, straight into the off-limits building, single file, pushing past the fast-moving stream of screaming people who are still filing out.
My driver shifts into high alert and has broken out in a visible sweat. His eyes have become small, dark, beady and intent, like a cornered wildcat looking for a way out. He darts a glance in my direction and seems to steady himself.
And then without a word, he slams the engine into reverse, knocking over a fence railing, and lurches up onto the sidewalk. Thrown forward, I grip onto anything I can grab a hold of, stuck in the backseat without any say whatsoever, frantically wondering what he has in mind and where he is headed. Jerking and bumping and hitting the ceiling of the car with the top of my head, I manage to yell above the din and demand to know what he thinks he is doing.
Still straddling the sidewalk with the wheels of the taxi, he swerves missing a pedestrian by less than an inch, as I am forcibly flung to the other side of the car. He is clearly in a sweating panic himself now and is intent on escape, swerving sharply to the right again and slamming into the gray wall above the cement, swinging hard and full on into an alley full of crates and boxes and shipping gear.
Everything is flying every which way, and there is no way that my young driver can even see what's ahead of him. But he steps on the pedal and guns the engine, forcing every last drop of speed from the old excuse of a rundown rig.
Now I register that I had hesitated to get into such an old beat-up vehicle when he first pulled up to the curb, at the same time I was thinking to myself, "Why am I traveling alone in a place like this, anyway?" Now I am asking myself, *What was I thinking? How could I have been so out of focus and absent-minded, not to have taken more precautions? I know the unspoken rules here."
The crashing noise of ramming everything in sight on both sides of the alley adds to the fury of the moment, as the taxi leaps through the next thoroughfare and heads down another alley, and then another and then another. It seems the plodding worn-out mare has become a racing stallion. The taxi has found its reserves of strength and speed despite its age and condition, suggesting that the adrenaline of an emergency can affect even inanimate objects. Meanwhile, I'm plastered to my seat, head thrown back and horrified.
The ride is getting rough and abusive. I'm wondering now if I will be taken hostage or something wild like that, even though I have always trusted myself and divine providence to be here, even though as an American, I am highly unwelcome by the vast majority of the Palestinian population, and sometimes even by the Israelis. I grasp at the door handles and try to hold on, still shots racing through my head of all the people who had warned me not to be here.
Shouting in Arabic, and wildly gesturing to garbage cans to get out of the way, he makes his break from the immediate scene of flashing lights and emergency vehicles, zigzagging across town on winding, cluttered side streets. I have lost track of which part of Jerusalem we are in, and I search for something familiar to get my bearings. We are going too fast to see much of anything, and the white limestone buildings whizzing by all look the same. Darkness is coming on now, and I feel like I am sinking.

Catalogue Information