Old Order Dying

“A stable world order is a rare thing,” writes Richard Haass, a former U.S. diplomat who has dealt with such trouble spots as Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.

Haass summarizes the history of the world order the United States helped create after World War II. (“How a World Order Ends,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2019.)

The U.S., tired of being dragged into two world wars it did not want, decided to work with allies on a new order. The new order would manage the growing Soviet threat with international organizations and treaties and cooperation between allies.

This order had its imperfections, but it staved off the totalitarian threat without another world war.

Now Haass fears a return to the end of this stable order that has worked for seventy years.

Factors influencing present instability include: the economic rise of a non democratic state, China; technological challenges; terrorist networks; drug cartels; smaller actors with the power to upend the order like North Korea; a refugee surge; climate change; greater inequality—to name a few destabilizing forces.

Haass believes the actions of the United States in leaving the world it helped create are disastrous: “It is one thing for a world order to unravel slowly; it is quite another for the country that had a large hand in building it to take the lead in dismantling it.”

He acknowledges the need for the U.S. to put its own house in order—dealing with debt, education, infrastructure, a better immigration system, the social safety net, and so on.

Concludes Haass: “The good news is that it is far from inevitable that the world will eventually arrive at a catastrophe; the bad news is that it is far from certain that it will not.”

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.

No pay, mortgages, orthodontics

Sunny Blaylock is married to a U.S. diplomat. She and their children accompanied her husband to his assignment in Malaysia. Families were not allowed at his next post, however, in Pakistan, due to terrorist concerns.

She stayed a year in Malaysia with the children, while her husband worked to strengthen U.S. interests in Pakistan.

Her husband’s next assignment was a home assignment, to the U.S. State Department in Washington. The family looked forward to being together again. Ms. Blaylock received the offer of a job with a small U.S. contracting company.

She began working for the company, but then the government shut down. The company could no longer afford to hire her.

Her husband continues to work, but without pay at present.

Meanwhile, the mortgage must be paid, and their orthodontist has told them that their daughter needs braces . . .

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.”

The Internet’s Shadow

Our information technology is a wonderful servant but a terrible master. It allows us to connect—but used without discipline it destroys connection.

It can obsess us, like a narcotic, if we let it. And corrupt minds use it to unleash hatred.

A writer, Gaymon Bennett in Sojourners (“Silicon Valley’s Original Sin,” January, 2019) complains of Silicon Valley’s lack of moral realism. “The trouble with the Valley, the trouble with the gospel of the iPhone, ubiquitous computing, and automation, is that it has been pursued as if technology doesn’t have a shadow.”

Science gets ahead of us, presents us with solutions but no understanding of shadows.

Advances in food technology freed populations in the developed world from the old scourge of famine. Who could not be grateful? Who wants starving men, women, and children? Yet freedom from famine, without discipline, led us to junk food and unhealthy lifestyles.

The widespread use of penicillin, beginning in the 1940’s, was followed by other “miracle” drugs to successfully combat the old scourge of infections. Yet, overused, the infections they fought became stronger still.

Science does not save us. It provides tools. How we discipline ourselves in the use of these tools determines their ultimate benefit. And that requires a moral compass beyond the capacity of science to provide.

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.

Family Reckonings

At the request of a relative, I began looking through old family genealogical records collected by my mother.

Both sides of my family, it appears, have been in North America since before the American Revolution. I read with interest the records of one ancestor when, as an old man, he applied for a pension for his service with the Continental army. He joined in 1777, took part in various battles as a “wagoner,” was captured at one point, but managed to escape, then rejoined American forces.

That’s the sort of ancestor you brag about.

Then I found another record. This Civil War ancestor “died of acute Laryngitis at Rock Island, Illinois, barracks as a prisoner of war. He is buried in grave 11170. Captured Oct, 1863 at Pinewood Factory, Company “A”, 24th Tennessee Sharpshooters.”

As I recall, rations for Confederate prisoners were decreased at Rock Island in retaliation for the inhuman conditions in Andersonville, Georgia, a prison managed by Confederates for captured Union soldiers.

According to family lore, the branch that produced my Confederate ancestor consisted of fairly well off Tennessee landowners. Probably my ancestor owned a few slaves. Perhaps he joined the Confederates to protect his property and his “right” to own slaves. Mostly likely he held racist views.

And I thought about the folly of slavery, growing in this country even as William Wilberforce and others in Great Britain were beginning the campaign to end the slave ships. That country was the enemy against whom my other ancestor fought.

The United States took an immoral turning in allowing slavery. And the war that brought those men to miserable deaths in fetid prisons was just as misguided.

Competition: Politics and Charity

I’m sure I’m not the only one inundated this past political season with emails pleading for donations for various candidates.

Some of them may have been from Russian trolls for all I know, but others certainly were from legitimate candidates, including those I voted for.

How much of the money we formerly gave to religious causes, to the needy, and to other charitable concerns is now going into political campaigns?

Politics has become more than a civic duty. It has become our newest religion.

That may be another argument for campaign finance reform.

Breaking that Iranian Nuclear Deal

John Limbert was head of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 when Iranian students stormed and took it over. He spent 14 months in Iranian captivity.

If anyone has a reason to see Iranians as evil, it would be Limbert. Instead, he believes the chief obstacle to better relations between Iranians and the rest of the world is the blame both the U.S. and Iran keep heaping on each other.

Targeting the Iranians’ support of militant groups in Lebanon is valid. Bending facts to categorize Iran as the source of all evil in the Middle East and elsewhere, however, is not only wrong but counterproductive.

It pushes Iran further away from any dialog with the rest of the world. If isolated long enough, Iran may indeed become a more militant player on the world stage.

Sure Way to Corrupt Religion? Join It to the State

Absent persecution, religion separated from the power of the state may flourish. Sometimes it triumphs even over persecution. Joined to the state, however, it tends to be corrupted.

During the European Middle Ages, kings used the church to increase their power. Religious leaders began allying with kings. The religious hierarchy become corrupted. Christianity itself split into warring factions.

Many lost faith in religion, and Christendom gave way to the Age of Reason.

Meanwhile, in newer settlements in North America, government began to separate itself from religion. Amazingly, religion flourished and gained influence.

Religion works best as leaven within a society. Join it with political power, and corruption sets in.

We’ve Been Here Before

Gary Sick, an American academic, worked under President Jimmy Carter during the Iranian student takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. He wrote an insightful book about the American/Iranian tragedy, All Fall Down; America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran. I used his book as a reference for the time lines of the crisis when writing my novel If Winter Comes.

Sick has written a thoughtful criticism of President Trump’s response to the Khashoggi murder. As might be expected, he faults Trump’s embrace of Mohammad bin Salman.

Trump, Sick writes, “while careless and ill-informed about every aspect of government, ultimately comes back to his few fundamental convictions: governing is a business, it’s all about profit, and he is the sole stable genius who knows how to make it work.”

Sick faults Trump for treating the U.S./Saudi relationship as merely a business deal to bring in money. The moral dimensions of the relationship escape the president.

Sick reminds us of a similar deal in the 1970s.

“We have done this before. In the 1970s our man was the shah of Iran.

“How did that work out?”

To Community

We don’t actually have a verb “to community,” but we need one.

We have morphed from extended families to nuclear families to couples and singles, from neighborhoods to isolated apartments. Some of us have lost the talent for community.

We demonize the “other.” We form, not communities, but polarizing forces.

This is not to say we should attempt a return to a nonexistent past. May we avoid the danger of thinking the past was a glorious time of togetherness. It certainly wasn’t for many “different” and left out people.

We have, however, been captured by a value system of things. Fewer people in bigger houses. More time on our digital devices and less physical time with friends. Less eating together and more solitary meals.

Being happy while alone is not a bad thing in itself. Solitude in a busy world can bless.

But when solitude turns into disconnectedness, we may need “to community.”

Working Citizens

David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times, recently wrote: “A lot of us pundits said President Donald Trump should run a positive campaign bragging about all the economic growth. But Trump ran another American carnage campaign. That’s because American life still feels like carnage to many.” (“What the working class is still trying to tell us,” The Seattle Times, 11 November 2018)

We have, Brooks said, fixated on economic growth and not on the ability of our citizens to produce.

This even applies, he wrote, to our programs for the poor. Welfare programs “have focused on consumption—giving money to the poor so they can consume more.”

He suggested, often quoting from a book by Oren Cass, The Once and Future Worker, that we should stress a multiple approach to education. We should be as interested in apprenticeship programs as in college preparatory courses, for example.

Most of us have a strong need to feel we are of worth, that we can contribute something to society. Indeed some of the drug culture among youth may stem from a sense of uselessness and lack of purpose.

Producing? Serving? Work as valuable? We could do worse.

Exhausted Majority

Something like 86 percent of Americans are a politically exhausted majority according to the results of a survey. (Sojo.net; Hidden Tribes)

The exhausted include: Traditional Liberals, Passive Liberals, Politically Discouraged (biggest at 26 percent), Moderates, and Traditional Conservatives.

Apparently the only ones enthusiastically pressing on are the Progressive Activists (8 percent) and the Devoted Conservatives (6 percent).

As the article points out, it’s no longer us versus them as far as the majority is concerned.

We need peacekeepers and civility projects and forums for the majority of Americans who are not extremists.

Ignore the haters. Visit the safe places to meet and heal.

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.

Writing Journey in Thy Dross to Consume

Mark Pacer, a U.S. diplomat raised in Mocking Bird, Georgia, solves mysteries related to his profession. He is again the main character in Thy Dross to Consume, the fifth novel of the series.

An older American man lies in a coma in a hospital in Cairo, Egypt. Mark, from the U.S. embassy, must find a next of kin to notify. The phone number in the man’s U.S. passport has been disconnected. No one, it seems, in the States or in Egypt knows who he is.

For Mark, suffering his own recent loss, the search for this man’s family becomes a pilgrimage.

That’s the plot in a nutshell: a mystery, changing relationships, and the old question of “why do the innocent suffer.”

Mark constantly struggles to reconcile his upbringing in a dysfunctional Appalachian church with his desire for a genuine faith.

A reviewer of one of my earlier books hit on a dilemma I face in marketing my writing. I’m not what is commonly called a “Christian” or “inspirational” writer.

I’m a Christian who writes.

If I say I’m a “Christian” writer, some take this to mean a certain type of literature. This genre is for Christians, often Christians who desire stories with strong “evangelical” themes. (Though I find the term “evangelical” unhelpful these days. It has become political, not simply related to spreading good news.)

This is not to denigrate those firmly set in the “Christian” market. I don’t write science fiction, but I certainly consider science fiction a legitimate genre.

I’ve decided, I write fiction for Christians, as well as other spiritually attuned, who don’t normally read “Christian” fiction.