Living Free for How Long?

We tend to think in terms of our personal experiences, our personal lifetimes. But the short span of the current generation is hardly typical of the world as it has been throughout human history.

“Homo Sapiens has been around for about 8,000 generations, and for most of that time, life has been rather unpleasant,” Stephen D. Krasner, a professor at Stanford University, reminds us. (“Learning to Live with Despots,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020)

Only in the last few centuries have a few nations attempted participatory democracy, rule of law, and other practices we in developed nations tend to think of as normal.

“The experience of people living in wealthy industrialized democracies since the end of World War II, with lives relatively free of violence, is the exception,” writes Krasner.

For that reason, we who still live in such places should not take for granted that they will continue. Quite likely, the only reason for their continuance might be our realizing how precious they are.

We came close to losing our recently-found democracies during the last century. During a time of terrible economic troubles, some nations followed leaders who spoke to prejudice and fear and were allowed too much power.

Especially in a time of fear and confusion, as with Covid-19, we also may be tempted to give in to rumors and plays for power by a selfish few.

Read carefully and wisely. Vote at every opportunity. Support traditional institutions: family, small businesses, local newspapers. Care for your neighbors. Ignore those who would use these times to fan flames of racism or hatred.

Covid-19 and Americans Overseas

In a recent press conference, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said U.S. missions in foreign countries had overseen the evacuations of more than 45,000 American citizens back to the U.S. due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

A thousand things have to be considered in evacuations. In this case, what airports are still open in the different countries? If commercial flights have been halted, special flights must be set up.

Is the country in lock down? Where are U.S. citizens located—in urban cities or in remote areas?

How many Americans want to leave? Some citizens keep changing their minds. American officials must deal with filling empty seats when some suddenly decide to stay.

I watched a video of the U.S. ambassador to Algeria thanking the Algerian government for their help in evacuating American from that country. One of the benefits of American missions to foreign countries is that lines of communication are already set up between American and foreign officials.

Each U.S. embassy and mission in the world draws up emergency evacuation plans. They can vary in how up-to-date they are. Obviously, evacuations from Japan would differ from evacuations from Tibet.

I was in Saudi Arabia during both Gulf wars and participated in constant meetings to review and revise emergency plans as situations changed. The eastern part of the country was targeted by Iraqi missiles during the first war, and wartime restrictions created an added barrier.

U.S. officials often must deal with the stress of caring for their own families. They also must deal with reduced staff as missions are drawn down to essential personnel.

Covid-19 and Fear

I was overseas with the U.S. State Department when the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks took place. My post was in Saudi Arabia.

We suffered confusion, fear, a changed game plan in the time after it happened. After a while, though, those of us at the U.S. mission began to draw closer and pull together. We developed a purpose, a reason for living, tasks to carry out.

I don’t think the fear ever left us, especially after the war with Iraq began, and our posts closer to Iraq began suffering scud attacks. We learned to respect that fear, but our purpose and our friendships helped us deal with it.

The sudden realization accompanying the growth of the Covid-19 virus reminds me of those times. At first, perhaps, a denial, or telling ourselves that it’s all going to be over with soon, no problem.

But, of course, regardless of how long this particular sickness lasts in its current form, our world is changed forever. We will have choices to make, hardships to deal with. We will have to deal with them and with losses, not only of friends but of old ways. We face the fact that we could die—any of us.

Of course, that’s true any day of our lives, but the current pandemic outlines that truth for us.

I think the degree of health of our communities will determine whether we win or lose this challenge. How well we are able to come together with our families, religious gatherings, small governmental bodies, and the like will, I believe, be the key.

Viral Awakening

We might consider Covid-19 as a wake up call. Or as a another kind of New Years Day. An opportunity for change.

The virus suggests a different set of values than we’re used to living by. What’s important now?

Family and friends, of course.

A safe place to shelter, not housing as investment.

Food and grocery stores.

Care givers for the sick and the elderly and the young. Those who rescue and protect.

The workers who perform tasks that must go on if civilized society is to continue: sanitation workers, farmers, grocery store clerks, janitors.

A reshuffling of our values might prod us toward a society which better rewards care givers and child care workers. Perhaps we might revisit our penchant for seeing housing as investment and instead see it as a universal need.

We could, in addition, build places of refuge and growth for the mentally ill and for those crushed by addiction.

We could revisit the ways we use our country’s wealth. Higher wages for the ordinary worker? Housing they can afford to live in? Affordable medical care? Education and job training?

Happy New Year!

The World Slows

We take more walks now, my husband and I. The local beach or a local trail is probably about as safe as anywhere else in this time of pandemic.

Even outdoor on the sidewalks, where we greet neighbors from time to time, seems reasonably safe.

My husband and I share more conversation, too, and read more books. We find time now to think and write. We lack the pressure of a certain hour to attend a meeting, much as we miss our various gatherings.

I increase my emailing with family and friends, including those living without family members close by. It’s a sharing which, despite its electronic distance, may bring back a bit of the old neighborliness, the checking in.

I find more time now to pray for those who have no time, the health professionals, other emergency personnel. People who cannot work from home. The laid off workers with too much time who wonder how they’ll buy food and pay rent. The homeless, the mentally ill.

More time to pray for many things without hurry.

Even from something as horrible as mass illness and death, we snatch good things we had not known for a while.

When this time passes as God willing it will, may we keep the good things we are learning.

Political Righteousness

When I lived in Saudi Arabia in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, some American citizens living and working in that country enjoyed raising their children there. Drugs and crime were much less than in the States. Of course, religious gatherings of Christians and any religion other than Islam were forbidden and had to be carried out discretely.

X-rated movies weren’t allowed, but neither were films like depictions of the Narnia tales or The Lion King or Charlotte’s Web.

Pornography might be punished by flogging, but one who dared criticize the country’s rulers risked the same punishment.

Richer citizens could escape the publicly strict moral code by paying smugglers to bring in whatever they wanted—liquor, x-rated movies, even maids to abuse. The religious/political alliance that ruled the country often led to outward piety, pleasing the religious, but encouraging corruption among the elites.

In this country, the recent marriage between the Trump presidency and the anti-abortion cause illustrates the danger of a religion hitching its wagon to a particular political movement for the sake of one cause. In this case, it risks supporting a political establishment that might commit killing small or unborn children in other ways.

The political powers might suggest, for example, beginning a war against Iran with the potential to kill thousands, including pregnant mothers and small children.

Or decreasing funds for healthcare for American children.

Or supporting a war in Yemen leading to starvation and disease that kills still other children.

A close alliance with any political power risks being coopted by that power for its own selfish goals.

Water to a Stranger

Is it wrong to give a thirsty stranger a drink of water?

An American teacher was charged with a crime for feeding and sheltering two needy people. The teacher’s actions were similar to ones mentioned by Jesus as a sign of those who follow him (Matthew 25, New Testament). Apparently, however, these kinds of deeds are crimes if the people so helped are undocumented immigrants.

The right to secure borders should not preclude actions like dropping off water bottles to human beings dying of thirst or taking sick ones to a hospital.

Jim Wallis, of Sojourners, has said of the charged teacher (later acquitted): “He is being prosecuted for following the command of Jesus, which is to feed the hungry, refresh the thirsty and invite in the stranger.” (Quoted in “I can do no other,” Economist, June 15, 2019.)

It’s the Institutions, Stupid

That’s the title of an article by Julia Azari in Foreign Affairs (July/August 2019). The American political system, she says, has disappointed us because of a growing mismatch. The country’s political institutions no longer match political realities.

We operate under a system devised in the late eighteenth century, something of a dysfunctional dinosaur today.

Our system developed in a time when, for all practical purposes, “country” to the average American meant local or state governance. Few Americans traveled beyond the next town or read (if they were literate) anything other than the local paper.

Paulette Jiles’ novel News of the World paints a picture, even after the Civil War, of small town citizens willing to pay a fee to hear world news read to them. They knew little of the outside world, much less enjoyed our instant communication.

Today we move from San Francisco to Houston or Indianapolis to Nashville or across the country to other urban areas all the time. Some small towns and rural areas have been depopulated while cities are weighted down with massive growth. Yet we still tie our elections to the states through our constitutionally mandated electoral college.

Until we have the courage to change our system to represent the actual reality of our national concerns, Azari indicates, our government will continue to flounder.

Community in Small Acts of Grace

“ . . . confronted with the possibility of genuine community, people become fascinated, captivated, entranced. That’s because we humans know that living as isolated individuals or families is not how it’s meant to be.’”
(Brandon McGinley, “Small Acts of Grace: Building Urban Community in Pittsburgh,” Plough Quarterly, Winter 2020)

A few individuals may feel called to the path of the desert mystic. Most of us, however, are community creatures, compelled to gather in groups of one sort or another.

Some groups are decidedly unhealthy: criminal gangs, ethnic groups bent on destruction of other groups, drug cartels, and the like. If we lack the nurture of healthy groups, we may search for it in unhealthy ones.

Community in developed countries needs repair. We have substituted politics for care, group drunkenness for sharing over a meal, rants of hatred instead of listening to each other.

What’s the antidote? Probably no one answer suits the need for community among disparate individuals: introverts and extroverts, doers and thinkers, political and apolitical.

But each of us can seek out healthy group interaction. The article writer wrote of several families in Pittsburgh who moved into the same community, voluntarily, to be close to each other. It’s not a communal type of living, but rather for them “a rebirth of community-based Christian witness for decades and generations to come.”

They comfort when a an expectant mother suffers a miscarriage. They care for each others’ children. They share smaller gifts: walking to each other’s house for cookouts or birthday celebrations, or a game of cards. In the author’s words, they are “simply living as genuine friends.”

Welfare Versus Opportunity

My son benefitted from the educational benefits given to veterans. He served a few years in the U.S. army, then received help with his tuition after he entered college. The vocation he now follows is possible because of that aid.

After World War II, millions of veterans took advantage of the “G.I. Bill of Rights” to receive aid for education and vocational training. That generation spurred the economic growth and unprecedented prosperity of the United States in the years following.

Welfare programs to meet basic needs are a part of any humane society. However, we would do well to give special attention to programs that enable ordinary people to find meaningful, rewarding work.

The Black Stallion

A series of books about a boy and a horse enlivened my childhood. The horse was a black stallion out of Arabia, featured in a series by Walter Farley. I was not particularly drawn to horses themselves, as some children are, but the stories intrigued me, especially the second in the series, The Black Stallion Returns.

In the first book, The Black Stallion, Alec Ramsey, a boy on his way home to the United States from visiting his uncle in India, is shipwrecked. He is saved by a black stallion, also being shipped on the boat. Alec is able to hold onto a rope around the horse and is pulled to dry land.

By the time they are rescued, Alec and the stallion have become friends. Alec begins training him and enters a race.

However, The Black Stallion Returns was my favorite of the series. The supposed owner of the horse (an Arabian chieftain) appears, claims the animal as his own and takes him away to Saudi Arabia. Eventually, Alec follows them to that country to reclaim his horse.

This strange country intrigued me. Who knows—it may have contributed to my choice of Saudi Arabia for two of my assignments in the U.S. Foreign Service.

Books can be powerful influences, especially on children.

I would have missed much in my fortunate life if I had lacked public schools and public libraries and parents and teachers who cared.

Ukraine: Flash Point

The end of the Cold War in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s now seems like ancient history. Almost forgotten is the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl and the place of Ukraine as a major center of nuclear weapons.

In those days, the United States was anxious to remove nuclear weapons from Ukraine, not wishing it to become another nuclear power when it became independent of the Soviet Union.

“In exchange for parting with all its weapons, Ukraine would get assurances of territorial integrity—not guarantees, a meaningful difference, but one that seemed not to matter so much in the heady, hopeful post-Cold War world.” (Serhii Plokhy and M.E. Sarotte, “The Shoals of Ukraine,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2020)

Of course, as it turns out, the lack of iron clad guarantees that Ukraine would remain independent has mattered a great deal.

The authors continue: “Decades after they supposedly disappeared, Moscow’s imperial ambitions—which Putin pursues through the network that runs from the Kremlin through Ukraine to the White House—have now unsettled American democracy itself.”

Despite Ukraine’s efforts to decouple from Russia, Putin wants Ukraine back. Russian troops invaded the country to force it back into the Russian orbit.

In addition, Putin wants the Trump administration to abandon any American help for Ukraine. Donald Trump has always been stung by revelations that Russian interference in the 2016 election may have helped him win the election.

He was more than ready to believe, instead, Putin’s assertions that Russia never interfered. Against all evidence, Putin persuaded Trump to believe that Ukraine was the one who interfered.

Trump was willing to delay military help to Ukraine in its fight for survival against Russian forces. He was willing to block money funded by Congress for the Ukrainians. He was even willing to use it as a bribe . The bribe would be paid only if the Ukrainians searched for something unfavorable against a possible Democratic nominee against him in the 2020 election.

Rather than use our own processes set up for investigating corruption (FBI, congressional committee, etc.) Trump chose to bribe a foreign government with taxpayer money in a hidden deal.

Learning About The Green Book

The Green Book was a travel guide for black Americans who wanted to travel–or had to travel for personal or family reasons. It was a guide to lodging places where they could stay—“were allowed”—to stay.

I didn’t learn about The Green Book until a few years ago, but one day as a child, I learned why it was necessary. It was perhaps the beginning of my education about racism.

My family was white. We liked to take trips. At that time, a family could afford modest trips—for us a day’s journey into the Smoky Mountains, for example—at a cost that didn’t break the bank. We stayed in inexpensive cabins and ate picnic lunches to avoid a lot of eating out.

One day we stopped at a gas station. A black family had experienced car trouble. They stood to one side, out of the way, while their car was worked on. No nearby motels or restaurants for them if the car took a while to fix.

I began to notice signs. No Coloreds and Whites Only.

I realized people without white skin couldn’t stay where we stayed. They couldn’t eat where we ate.

Black cooks worked in kitchens of restaurants where only whites were allowed to eat. It seemed so unfair. And it was.

That was only a modest dent in my understanding of white privilege. It didn’t speak to larger issues of voting and jobs and schools. But that day was when I first realized the restrictions on a simple family outing if you weren’t the right color.

Guarding Democracy

The newer democracies—the Philippines, Turkey, Tunisia, Argentina, Russia, for example—find it hard to maintain their democracy against strong men like Putin.

The United States is one of the oldest democracies, but even this country struggles against undemocratic trends.

From an article by H. David Baer:

“ . . . ancient tyrants used their rule to pursue private gain with complete disregard for the common good. In Aristotle’s view, tyrannical regimes, dedicated as they were to personal self-aggrandizement, combined the worst features of democracy and oligarchy (Politics, Book V 1311a10).

“Like democratic leaders, the tyrant appeals to the people, but he does so through self-serving demagoguery. The tyrant’s true aim is that of an oligarch, namely, the accumulation of wealth. So, too, in our time, modern autocrats employ populist strategies to disguise the kleptocracies they create, which they use to accumulate massive personal fortunes. “

(H. David Baer: (“The Return of the Tyrants and the Price of Democracy”; The Cresset; Trinity, 2018.)

“So this is how liberty dies, to thunderous applause.”

These words were spoken by Natalie Portman in her role in a Star Wars movie, The Revenge of the Sith, in 2005, as an autocrat took power. Some have taken to quoting the line as “So this is how democracy dies, to thunderous applause.”

The Star Wars franchise, as we all know, has made millions for its creators, a capitalist enterprise that has done well.

But perhaps its staying power, beginning a generation ago in 1977, is due to its light versus dark struggle. Its timing mirrors clashes in the real world between falling empires and ideologies: collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990’s; a war in Iraq in 1991; the 9/11 attacks in 2001; the following wars in Afghanistan and later Iraq; and more recently, engagements with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries, not to mention China and North Korea.

In a recent review of the book How Dictatorships Work, the reviewer writes: “…today’s would-be dictators . . . go after the courts, intimidate the press, hamper civil society, and use parliamentary majorities to push through new laws and constitutions. . . . Even in places where formal institutions are more robust, such as the United States, the informal norms that uphold democracy have become fragile.” [The book is by Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz; the review is by Anna Grzymala-Busse in Foreign Affairs, January/February 2020, “Paths to Power.”]

The reviewer’s “informal norms” suggest a certain decency, a regard for one’s opponents, a healthy humbleness.

No better example exists of regard for these norms than the late Senator John McCain’s concession speech on losing the presidential election to Barack Obama on November 5, 2008.

He said in part:

“Tonight — tonight, more than any night, I hold in my heart nothing but love for this country and for all its citizens, whether they supported me or Sen. Obama, I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president.”

How would you judge each presidential candidate today beside McCain’s example?

Entertainment Malls and Affordable Housing: Skiing But No Houses

Recently, our newspaper’s business section carried an article about an entertainment mall in the populous northeast. The mall features snow (manufactured within the mall) and skiing. The mall plans more than half its space, not for shopping, but for entertainment. (The Seattle Times, “The Mall of the Future? “February 5, 2020)

Included or under construction are an ice rink and a theme park. Apparently, investors believe malls now are candidates for “experiences” as well as for shopping. They hope this change will rescue the empty malls cluttering our landscape.

The same business section featured a commentary on the need for affordable housing in the United States. (“The puzzle affordable housing poses for America”)

According to the commentary, “Half of families who rent and nearly one-fourth of homeowners pay more than 30% of their monthly income toward their housing costs. This level is widely considered unsustainable.”

Perhaps the articles are not related, but to me they illustrate a grand division forming in the United States: the haves with money to spend on nonessential entertainment and the have-nots, who struggle merely for the basic necessities of life.

Homelessness is a condition we read about every day, but this commentary was basically not about the drug addicted or the mentally ill. It touched on working families who can barely survive in our society.

One does not need to be a socialist to see the devastating cleavage in our country. The different political factions—conservative, liberal, and in-between—face a crisis. Basic shelter, medical care, and education and job training are public needs that must be addressed if we are to survive as a successful democracy.

White Evangelical Reckoning

Two editorials in Christianity Today, one by Mark Galli, editor of the magazine, and the other by Timothy Dalrymple, president and CEO, rocked the evangelical world and sent waves into the secular media.

The off-quoted figure of white evangelicals who supported Donald Trump in 2016 is 81 percent. On December 19, Galli called for the removal of Trump from office following his impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives. So many people tried to sign on to the magazine’s website, that it temporarily went down.

On December 22, Dalrymple wrote his own thoughtful opinion piece. He spoke of the reaction by the magazine’s readership to Galli’s editorial. Some readers were moved and said they no longer felt alone. Others were incensed and insulted.

Speaking of Galli, Dalrymple said: “While he does not speak for everyone in the ministry . . . he carries the editorial voice of the magazine. We support CT’s editorial independence and believe it’s vital to our mission for the editor in chief to speak out on the issues of the day.”

He went on to say, “We are happy to celebrate the positive things the administration has accomplished. The problem is that we as evangelicals are also associated with President Trump’s rampant immorality, greed, and corruption; his divisiveness and race-baiting; his cruelty and hostility to immigrants and refugees; and more. The problem is the wholeheartedness of the embrace.”

Long before Trump, some evangelicals shifted toward politics to enforce a religious agenda.

As white American evangelicals began to identify with political parties, their young people drifted away and attendance fell in their churches. Rightly or wrongly, they are associated in many people’s minds with a particular political agenda, not with the good news of Jesus.

A religion seeking to use secular power to enforce its beliefs almost always becomes corrupted by that power. Witness what happened to European Christianity during the Middle Ages. Eventually, religious wars devastated the continent and led to a weakening of the Christian faith.

In a democracy, individuals vote, and Christians certainly have the duty to vote wisely, and to become involved in government. But all human activity is subject to error and should be undertaken in humility and with respect for those who disagree. Holding up any political party as chosen by God is, I believe, a dangerous position.

Jesus knew the dangers of worshiping power. When people wanted to make him a king, he sent them away. When finally the time came for him to present himself publically, he entered Jerusalem, not on a charging white steed, but on a poor person’s donkey.

Christ’s model is not political power. It is healing and kindness and the embrace of outcasts. It remains the model for today.

Why was the Christmas Eve service so meaningful this year?

I have been to many such services in my life in all sorts of different places and times of life. So, as my husband and I walked the short distance to our church this year, perhaps it was more out of habit than hope.

But the familiar message—I’ve heard it enough to have it memorized—helpless babe in a manager, come into a hate-filled world full of hurting people.

But this year, tears glistened in my eyes, evidence this time of the message going deeper.

Why? Perhaps because this year, this end of 2019, the times appear especially hopeless, and we are desperate. We’ve been through a deluge of hate-filled, hurting words. Homeless men, women, and children are everywhere. Some have become so desperate that our birth rate is falling and the death rate of young and middle aged people has been hastened by overdoses and suicides.

And, we are told, 2020 will not be any better, maybe worse: impeachment trial, bitterly fought elections, a world with almost daily evidence of climate change affecting millions with droughts and floods.

Yet, in that way grace has of coming at the oddest moments, the message, the familiar carols, struck deeper, became beacons of hope for this time.

Somebody loved us and came to us, then preached love that has affected people mightily since that time: death didn’t stop him: His weak, sinful people have been transformed time and time again, overcoming even their own misreading of his message.

Slavery was abolished and racism, though still strong, is challenged. Women have entered public life. Young people are concerned about climate change.

When the times are right, those touched by this season’s message have always found pathways to counter the worship of wealth, power, and greed.

Waiting in a Troubled Time

“The furred magnolia buds we bring to warmth
here in the heated room soon bloom and sicken;
the tree without keeps its own secret time.”
(Jane Tyson Clement; “Out of a Difficult and Troubled Season”)

Sometimes patient waiting is our best choice. Not idle waiting, but rather a recharging kind of waiting.

Maybe we touch base again with family and friends. Maybe we read poetry. Maybe we use a winter’s day to ponder while watching flames of a small fire in our fireplace or the rain spattering on our windows.

We do the necessary tasks, but we admit our limitations. We look for ways to appreciate those with whom we disagree.

We turn off the shouting and the tweeting. We go slowly, thoughtfully for a while. We wait patiently for the turning.

Ann Gaylia O'Barr

Culture and World Events from a Christian Perspective