From Nate

Anyway, your laments about the current destruction brought to mind
something I read a few years ago about the end of the crusades ...
you sort of have to shift the roles around but still I find it
resonant:

"Since that day all Christian women, whether gentle or simple,
who dwell along the eastern shore dress in black garments
of mourning and woe for the lost grandeur of Acre..."

--Ludolph of Suchem, The Fall of Acre, 1291.

Also, since I'm quoting, a couplet from the Sufi mystic Rumi, which
is -- says the translator -- supposedly engraved over the door of a
Christian church in Shiraz, Iran:

Where Jesus lives, the great-hearted gather.
We are a door that's never locked.

If you are suffering any kind of pain,
stay near this door. Open it.

--

Peace and blessings

-- Nate