Category Archives: Journal

Building Up the Land to Restore the Future

When I was growing up, my father used to spread the leaves gathered each fall from our trees into a small plot at the back of our yard, rather than burn them. He used the rich humus produced by the leaves over the years to enrich soil for our plants.

This kind of activity is practiced on a larger scale by an organization called “Plant with Purpose.” This group works with farmers in Mexico, Haiti, and other countries to merge economic and environmental renewal with spiritual renewal.

Much of the land in poorer countries has been depleted through years of deforestation and over-farming. Unable to produce a good living from the land, young men emigrate to cities, sometimes returning later addicted to alcohol or drugs and drawn to criminal gangs practicing violence.

“For those living in rural villages, the answer to emigration is often simple: Restore the land to restore the future.” (“Better Than a Wall,” Sojourners, August 2017)

Such groups promote sustainable agricultural practices, including “cover crops, organic compost, and natural soil erosion barriers to revive farmland.”

Better agricultural practices on one farm in Mexico included planting to maximize this particular plot of land. Food crops were planted on parts of the hilly land, then trees above the crops. Runoff water was used for irrigation. Grass during the dry season fed animals.

The soil gradually was replenished and produced better crops, leading to more food and a higher income. As neighbors were drawn to reproduce the process, immigration lessened. Fewer young men migrated northward.

The World’s Last Night

Even if the world does not end today, time will end for some of us today.

In an essay entitled “The World’s Last Night” (Fern-seed and Elephants), C.S. Lewis wrote about our tasks that stop, finished or not, when time ends—for us or the world.

“For what comes is judgment; happy are those whom it finds labouring in their vocations, whether they were merely going out to feed the pigs or laying good plans to deliver humanity a hundred years from now from some great evil. The curtain is indeed now fallen. Those pigs will never in fact be fed, the great campaign against white slavery or governmental tyranny will never in fact proceed to victory. No matter; you were in fact at your post when the inspection came.”

Few of us complete great deeds or find the success we intended when we began. It is enough, I think, that we are engaged in what we are called to do and follow it to the end.

Small Fires and Internet Slander

“How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.”

After this quote from Christian scriptures (James 3:5), Marilynne Robinson continues an essay on “Slander” in her book, What Are We Doing Here?

Both Christian and Hebrew scriptures emphasize the power of the tongue to harm. Robinson writes: “ . . malicious speech ranks among the gravest transgressions.” As an example of grievous harm by slanderers, she points out the slurs against Jews during the Middle Ages, paving the way for the Holocaust centuries later.

It’s not surprising that Robinson calls many of the stories circulating on the internet a modern version of slander.

Two final quotes from Robinson’s book:

“Many people now think in terms of a Manichaean struggle between secularism and all we hold dear. On these grounds they have launched an attack on American civil society, formally a famous strength, which they see as secular because it is nonsectarian. . .

“If we are to continue as a democracy, we must find a way to stabilize the language and temper of our debates and disputes.”

Working Forward

I keep a file I call “life purposes” and add to it from time to time. About once a month, I pull something out of it to reread. I’ve had the file for many years.

“Thoughts from a foreign correspondent” is the title of an article I saved from the March 14, 1987, issue of Editor & Publisher.

The author of this particular article is a lifelong journalist, Georgie Anne Geyer, born in 1935 and still writing, according to my current internet search.

In the 1987 article, Geyer said she loved and cared about other cultures, languages, and history. She wanted to be one of those “couriers between cultures.”

She persevered in an era when women journalists were mostly relegated to the society sections of newspapers. Nevertheless, she managed to become the Latin American correspondent for the Chicago Daily News in 1964 and never looked back.

Geyer’s column is part of what inspired me also to search for that kind of job. The search took many years, but the chance finally came, and I had to decide in the space of a weekend whether to make a momentous change in my life.

I decided to leap and accepted a position with the U.S. Foreign Service. Tours took me to those places in my own dreams of a courier between cultures.

Answers to dreams come in different ways. Holding a dream, even tenaciously, does not mean we will always realize it. Seeing a future beyond our present, however, blesses us with the ability to search and change.

Religion and Writing: Never the Twain Shall Meet?

“So it is conventional among contemporary writers to exclude religion from their work, however religious the writers might in fact be. This reticence seems to be regarded by many as a courtesy, an acknowledgment of the fact that the subject can be painful or private or can stir prejudices or hostilities. Such scruples are respectable, certainly, but they tacitly reinforce the assumption that religion is essentially and inevitably divisive.”
–Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here? “Considering the Theological Virtues: Faith”)

Yet, Robinson’s novel Gilead, as well as the two accompanying novels in the series, were critically acclaimed. Gilead, whose main character was a Christian minister, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005.

Humans can be capable of great cruelty, using whatever weapon is at hand, including religion.

A counterweight against cruelty, however, also is provided by religion—ministering to the excluded, for example: lepers, widows and orphans, prisoners, refugees.

Religion, at its best, searches for an inner journey leaving behind the quest for wealth and power fueling so many of our cruelties.

Why Do We Wave at Passing Trains?

Passengers trains—that is, trains for long distance travel, not commuting—remain part of our culture, despite the growth of travel by automobile and airplane. Songs like “Lonesome Whistle” and “John Henry” and “500 Miles’ feature the train as part of the country’s life story.

Anyone riding on a long distance passenger train will notice, as the train enters an urban area, especially a park, the people who stop and wave at the train. Sometimes passengers wave back.

I’m not sure of the reasons, one or many, for why we wave at trains. Perhaps it’s a moment of wishfulness to see new places, to experience a journey. Perhaps it’s also a form of community, drawing the stranger in, if only for a moment.

We wish good journey to the stranger who passes by. Just for a moment we touch.

Slow Food, Slow Travel

We’ve been treated recently to recipes and cookbooks promoting “slow” food. Slow food is a kind of protest against “fast” food. It captures the pleasure of cooking, especially as it promotes fellowship around a dinner table.

Last fall, I enjoyed slow travel. I rode the train between Portland and Seattle. Train travel, properly done, is a civilized way to travel.

As we traveled north, I contemplated river currents and fall colors and the beginnings of Puget Sound. We rode under the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and into the first area of industrial development, as well as suburbs and urban linear parks. Bikers, hikers, and parents pushing strollers looked up as we passed. Some waved.

I caught up on magazines and enjoyed a slow mystery.

Years ago my husband and I traveled by train along the Rhine River in Germany. The scenery looked like West Virginia with castles. Unhindered by constricted seating, we enjoyed conversation, reading, and watching the towns we passed.

Europe, smaller than North America, is ideal for trains. Some trains travel at speeds approaching 200 kilometers per hour or over 100 miles per hour.

One day perhaps the U.S. will develop an effective train system. Trains could connect with airlines—airlines for long distances, but frequent trains covering the areas between. Civilized slow travel.

Parents Teaching Children to Ride Bikes

Parents oversee their children’s first attempts to ride bikes as they oversaw their first attempts to walk. The journey on wheels may begin with tricycles, training wheels, or smaller bikes.

The children take short trips away, but eventually, they will take long trips to lives of their own.

Much of parenthood is teaching children the skills they need to leave home.

Those who become responsible, caring adults often are blessed with caring parents and stable households.

Thankfully, men and women can and do overcome incompetent, even cruel parents, but the resources required to undo the damage can be immense.

Not everyone is called to it, but to those who are, parenthood is literally the job everything else depends on.

I Took My Family for Granted

I became an orphan on January 17, 1997. I was working in the North African country of Tunisia at the U.S. embassy at the time.

My brother called to tell me that our mother had passed away suddenly in her sleep, in the house she and my father had built before my brother and I were born. She had been a widow, continuing to live in that house since I was thirteen and my brother twenty.

On the trip back “home” to Tennessee, the plane passed over the Mediterranean to Europe, than over the Atlantic to North America. I had time to reminisce over a fortunate upbringing.

As the world seems daily to fall into more chaos, I become aware of the favored circumstances a lower middle class family at that time could expect.

Despite modest incomes, we had adequate medical care. Even after our father died, my brother was able to finish college, and I followed.

Whatever advances this country has made are tarnished by knowledge that working families on modest incomes no longer live with such blessed possibilities.

We cannot, nor should we, want to return to earlier days. They were far from perfect, with racial and other injustices. My mother may have lived a blessed life, but many women did not.

Somehow, though, our present time, if more enlightened in some ways, has failed in others. The rightful entry of women into the work force has given them power to ease the needle toward more equality.

But we have neglected to take care of other needs like responsible child rearing, adequate education for all, and basic healthcare.

Perhaps in my children’s time we will find the right combination?

Fantastic Headlines

The Seattle Times holds a contest at the end of each year for readers to create headlines they would like to see in the coming year.

Here are some of the wished for headlines as we headed into 2019:

“All Homeless Housed.”

“UW engineering students invent noiseless leaf blower.”

“Zuckerberg shuts down Facebook, devotes fortune to exposing lies on the internet.”

“Newspaper industry rebounds as Americans rediscover value of real news, facts.”

And finally: “Trump builds wall . . . of solar panels; half of electricity goes to Mexico, half to U.S.”

What’s one I’d like to see?

How about: “Washington gridlock dissolves as senators and representatives cooperate to pass needed legislation in all fields.”

What’s your dream headline?

What Does Religious Coexistence Look Like?

You’ve seen the bumper stickers encouraging coexistence, the ones that fuse together markers from the world’s major religions. What sane individual could be against tolerance? But does that mean a bland, homogenized form of multiculturalism?

Two of the Abrahamic faiths are evangelistic. That is, both wish to spread their faith to others. I once read about a Christian pastor and an Islamic imam who attended a multi religious gathering. The two amicably shared afterwards. Both agreed that they wished to spread their faith and were uncomfortable with the mantra of accepting one religion as just as good as another.

Yet, wanting to spread faith can become an arrogant “I have all the answers” polemic. At its worst, zeal leads to murderous inhumanity, as we know all too well. (Of course, religion is not the only reason for acts of murderous inhumanity.)

But if you believe you have a message to benefit humankind, surely you are not evil for wishing to share it? The problem comes with the methods used.

Competition doesn’t have to be brutal. Religions can compete to provide both an inner and an outer journey. An inner journey aims for purpose and meaning. An outer journey seeks justice and mercy for all, regardless of religious affiliation.

We might call it “compassionate competition.”

If God is Evil . . . ?

We often hear: “If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world?”

But someone also asked,” If God is evil, why is there so much good in the world?”

Regardless, when one suffers great loss—the death of a loved one perhaps or witnesses the suffering of innocent children—normally the griever is not interested in philosophical answers.

Perhaps it’s a matter of simply getting through the loss as best one can.

When I wrote my book Thy Dross to Consume, I didn’t presume to answer the question of why evil exists. I simply wanted to tell the story of how one man stumbled through his grieving after a loss.

Often we sons and daughters of the western world assume the answer lies with our particular slant on religion or philosophy.

So, Tadros, an Egyptian Coptic Christian, entered my story to explore loss from a different perspective.

Tadros, suffering through his own earlier loss, came to tie his loss with God’s loss. If you do not subscribe to Christian beliefs, you no doubt will find other ways to deal with loss, perhaps even atheism.

For Tadros, though, as a Christian of a minority faith in Egypt, his journey finally ended with understanding a God who suffered his own loss.

It allowed Tadros to scream his hurt, as Jesus, dying on a Roman cross, screamed at God. It did not deny him lamentation by mouthing trite sayings.

My imperfect novel was not intended as deep theology or philosophy. It was only a story to illustrate how one person found the comfort he needed.

Power Outage Chic

High winds once again buffeted the Pacific Northwest. This time we lost power in the late morning. We had heat from our wood stove, as well as water, though no hot water for showers. We ate out of cans (after finding the manual can opener.) To save refrigerated food, we opened the refrigerator as little as possible. We had internet service for a while, then lost it.

We lighted the kerosene lamps, played scrabble, and read books. I was aware of our blessings, that what we had to eat would be a feast to some in the world.

We woke expectantly the next morning—but still no power.

Dressed in yesterday’s grubby clothes—the latest in power outage chic—I dashed a couple of blocks to the library. I entered with a dozen or so others as soon as it opened. The library shares a generator with City Hall. During power outages, the mayor invites the town to the library to charge devices and stay warm.

As soon as I got enough power, the news came online on my iPad. I realized then the blessing of that news free bubble I had been in for the past twenty-four hours.

I learned that the supposedly most powerful nation in the world couldn’t agree on a budget to pay its bills. Our government was shutting down while legislators recessed for Christmas and hurried home for the holidays.

Essential federal employees worked without pay as the president complained of not being able to make it to his Florida retreat.

James Mattis, secretary of defense, had announced his resignation over disagreement with the president on Syria. Ditto Brett McGurk, the special envoy in the fight against ISIS, the terrorist organization in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, it was practically old home week in the library as other residents arrived to join friends, embrace, and share stories. Somebody said a town up the road had just gained power.

Ah, the blessings of community in a world falling apart.

Laughing at Ourselves

Jokes and laughter are weapons we use against those who upset and even frighten us. Maybe it’s one way of survival. This kind of humor can be pitch black at times.

Gentle humor, however, can teach by poking fun at our own foibles, a sign of maturity.

I think it was the Cold War commentator Harry Reasoner who said he didn’t trust politicians who couldn’t laugh at themselves.

A couple of years ago (3 September, 2016), The Economist featured an obituary honoring Roly Bain, a clown-priest. Bain’s opening invocation for one of his clown sermons was “Let us play!”

Dressed ridiculously in clown attire, he would laboriously climb up a rope ladder only to find himself facing the wrong way. “I wish I could turn around,” he moaned, then added, “They call it repentance in the trade.”

He followed the tradition of the holy fool, a truth-teller in a different guise.

Sometimes we don’t delve as deeply into understanding the world’s problems as we ought, but we also miss more gentle teaching—a melding of the sublime with the ridiculous.

It lightens dull lives, but also brings us truth in a different costume.

November Reset

The scarlet flame of October gives way to the tawny tiger of November.

The huge harvest of frolicking leaves from our tulip tree is raked and banked in the back woods, enriching the soil. The lack of constant weeding releases time for other activities.

In our part of the world, November is traditionally our rainiest month. Storms sweep in from the Pacific. Writing and reading go well with drizzle and storms. So do small groups of friends, gathering close to drying umbrellas.

Sometimes more ferocious storms will down trees and power lines, leading to candles and generators. More seriously, they can damage homes and injure people. Yet, if not overly long or damaging, such stoppages bring a useful pause in our clock-ordered lives, a reminder of the fragility of our modern connections.

November basks in quietness, at least until Thanksgiving. Constant commercialism tempts us to see Thanksgiving as merely the beginning call from its Yuletide cousins.

I ignore those calls. I want my quiet November and an ending celebration of thanksgiving and community.

The Gift of Adolescence

Most of those boys in Thailand, the ones rescued from the cave, decided to enter a Buddhist monastery for a while. Apparently, they felt they needed a timeout to reflect and gain spiritual depth from their experiences before going on with their lives.

Various ceremonies acknowledge the end of childhood, like the Bat Mitzvah for my Jewish friend’s daughter.

In our modern societies, the preparation for adulthood, the middle time after childhood, is long. Adolescents may attend middle school, then high school. Some then seek to enter the job market. Others go on to higher education or an apprenticeship before final entry into adulthood.

This long adolescence is a troubling time for many. It could be an opportunity.

We could view it as a special time of learning and discipline and even withdrawal. Adolescents might accept celibacy and abstinence from drugs and alcohol while they worked through this period of learning. They could build up their bodies as well as their minds and spirits and social skills.

Emerging from adolescence would require meeting certain conditions. One would be a basic education. Another would be the ability to work and support oneself.

Their place as adults would include a continuance of lifelong development, but now within a framework of their own contributions to society.

Maybe the gift we can give adolescents is support as they prepare for responsible adulthood.

The Only Story Already Written

The summer I turned nineteen, between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I landed a temporary job as what used to be called a cub reporter. The job was on my hometown newspaper.

The news people who hired me, I now believe, did so out of the goodness of their cynical hearts. They wanted to help a young person stupid enough to plan a journalism career. They, in their crusty way, wanted to pass along what they knew, give me a chance.

I did manage to advance, in my second summer, from writing obituaries to actually covering a minor religious convention and writing other human interest stories.

I also learned, after a public upbraiding by the editor, to check and recheck my reporting for any mistakes in spelling, wrong word usage, or other errors before I turned it in. (We had no computer programs then for checking such things.)

One lesson, however, was especially valuable for a young person, who thinks, like most young people, that they are going to live forever.

In the basement of the newspaper building was the “morgue.” Filed away in endless cabinets were the stories already written. They waited for unearthing when the inevitable happened—the death of a famous person

Thus, when a politician or a business magnate passed on, all the reporter had to do was write a few lead paragraphs dealing with the cause of death and immediate circumstances.

Every time the person did something great or degrading, the happening would be added to their file, but eventually the file ended.

Every person has an ending. Each of us writes chapters, perhaps for a long time, but the story always has an ending.

Try writing your own obituary. Anything you would like to change in your life before somebody else takes on the responsibility?

Leadership: The Battle for Middle-earth

One section of Fleming Rutledge’s book The Battle for Middle-earth is called “The Treason of Isengard.”

The leader of the kingdom of Rohan, Théodan, has allowed a disreputable person to control his kingdom. “This clever but craven personage . . . is a classic example of the person who holds an entire human unit captive to unreality by calling black white, truth lies, and wisdom foolishness.”

Rutledge comments on what leadership is about: It has to do “with defining reality,” she says.

It is interesting to examine how some leaders in today’s world define reality. Rutledge’s book was published in 2004. Yet, eerily, she says, “If the person who is allowed to define reality falsely retains the premier position in the group, the potential for corporate evil is unbounded.”

We now are learning what happens when facts are defined as “fake” merely because they are unfavorable.

A Battle for Our Time

The Battle for Middle-earth, by Fleming Rutledge, was published in 2004. By that time, three years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States had entered two wars. It was evident that the world would never return to the more certain times of pre 9/11.

Rutledge’s book is a commentary on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. She writes: “I believe . . . that this is a tale for our time. Since the seemingly clear-cut triumphs of World War II, the Shadow has been growing, and it is not so easy to tell who is enemy; there are ‘twilights of doubt as to sides.’”

Tolkien lived and wrote with great wars all around him. He had fought in the Battle of the Somme in World War I. He wrote during World War II as his country, Britain, fought for its life. He lived to see its aftermath, the Cold War, and the possibilities for earth’s annihilation by nuclear war. No wonder his writings awe us with a sense of powerful evil, almost certain to win, unless a few lesser folks sacrifice all they have in a desperate attempt to overcome.

His novels spotlight a few small people who seek to do good even when they know the odds are against them.

Madeleine L’Engle: Christian Faith and Writing

As I read Sarah Arthur’s A Light So Lovely; The Spiritual Legacy of Madeleine L’Engle, I sympathized with L’Engle’s struggle to write as both a Christian and a winner of secular literary awards.

Some doubt whether A Wrinkle in Time, L’Engle’s 1963 Newberry Award winner, could win such an award today, with its Christian nudged themes.

According to Arthur’s book, L’Engle enjoyed speaking at the Christian evangelical college, Wheaton, because in that space, she was “able to be openly a Christian among Christians.”

In fiction writing today, it’s hard to straddle the line between writing by those who consider themselves Christians and the bifurcated world we live in. C.S. Lewis and L’Engle did. A few others, like Frederick Buechner and Marilynne Robinson, have managed it. So did Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy.

In writing conferences today for writers who consider themselves “Christian” writers, two designations are often used to denote the kinds of novels many writers at those conferences try to pitch. The two are “inspirational” and “Christian.” Would L’Engle be able to successfully pitch her work at one of these conferences today?

I think much of the blame for this unneeded separation between religious and secular writing may fall to Christians who think every “Christian” novel should be an evangelical tract.