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.

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.

A Sorting of People

In his book, A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety, former President Jimmy Carter pinpoints the first time he was aware of racial prejudice.

Growing up as the son of a white landowning family in a mostly black community, he played with the black neighborhood children. For him, they were simply playmates.

Then one day he and his friends were going through a farm gate. His black friends fell back, allowing him to enter first. He thought they had set up some kind of childish trick—something in the path, perhaps, that he was meant to stumble on. Then he realized that they were giving precedence to him because he was white.

A thousand thoughts must have clicked in his mind. That was his first understanding of a system that favored one group of people above another because of skin color.

His pilgrimage toward understanding the absurdity of racial prejudice mirrors the journey of many Southern whites. Some of us who struggled on that journey are now amazed at the strength of prejudice in this day and age.

We the People?

We have great cities, huge corporations, a dynamic economy. But we are failing to develop our people.

The wealthy accumulate more wealth, but the tax base shrinks. More of our taxes come from ordinary working people rather than the wealthy. Ordinary people pay taxes; the wealthy hire lawyers to find loopholes.

How much better to invest more of that wealth in building up ordinary families: schools, college, continuous job training, health care. “The country needs to rethink the role of human capital and invest substantially in doing so.” (Kenneth F. Scheve and Matthew J. Slaughter, “How to Save Globalization,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2018.)

One with minimal schooling and training can no longer walk into a life time job, with benefits. Yet jobs—our daily service—are part of our self-worth.

It is, as the authors point out, not just too many ill-paying jobs but the fact that labor is so unrewarded for too many.

They propose investments, not only in education but in life long training to meet a changing job market. “ . . . it is human capital, more than any other asset, that determines an individual’s changes of thriving in a dynamic economy. The United States should expand its investments in human capital at every stage of American life.”

In other words, invest in “we the people.”

Power Off Here; Children Dying There

A windstorm blew through our island community this week. The power flickered off about ten in the evening. We went to bed under our quilts. By next morning, power was restored, as we expected. Safe in a peaceful community, we had never doubted we would again have heat and food and hot water.

But even as we waited, securely, for normality, recent scenes haunted me from Yemen, in the Middle East, where nothing is ever normal and children die a slow death from starvation.

We have taken the side of Saudi Arabia against Yemen, war ravaged for years, though few Americans have any idea about what is going on there.

The bloodletting is part of an ancient struggle, begun in the seventh century, between different branches of Islam—Sunni and Shia. Saudi Arabia is the Sunni leader. Iran, descendant of ancient Persia, is the Shia leader.

We’re mainly interested in the oil pumped from Saudi Arabia. That and the money we make from selling arms to them. Oh, yes, also, Iran has become public enemy number one, and we want Saudi Arabia’s backing against them.

Neither side is pure, of course.

Iranians stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and imprisoned our diplomats for 444 days. They also sponsor Hezbollah, a political and militant group in Lebanon.

On the other hand, fifteen of the nineteen terrorists who attacked our country on September 11, 2001,were from Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia sponsors that war against Yemen.

You can blame either side, if you like.

For me, though, taking sides becomes irrelevant next to children slowly dying from starvation as helpless parents watch. Others have been bombed by weapons we sold to the Saudis.

I don’t care who you choose as your enemy, but what we have abetted and allowed is a sin against God.

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.

Today’s Town Crier

In the days before widespread literacy, some governments announced public proclamations by a town crier.

As time passed, literacy became more important for commerce and making a living. Public school systems increased.

However, news, other than local, was not yet an important part of ordinary life. In the novel by Paulette Jiles, News of the World, Civil War veteran Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd makes a living by traveling to small Texas towns and charging money to read newspapers to audiences.

It took radio and the advent of world wide wars to make news a staple of the average American household. Television brought the horror of the Vietnam conflict into the living room.

From earliest colonial times, courts decreed that truth was the deciding factor in what could be printed as news. Even if a news story was derogatory to public officials, it must be allowed if it was true. If it was not true, the source of the falsehood could be sued for libel.

Today, we have fewer “gatekeepers,” that is, editors and investigators, to test stories for the truth before they are “printed.” Today, because of the internet, truth and lies can unsettle whole populations before stories can be unraveled.

Whether this glut of words—news, opinion, knowledge, entertainment, lies, gems of wisdom, personal data, and a hundred other kinds of reportage—is good or bad is an open question. The outcome depends on how responsible we literate beings are in what we choose to read.

What Overcomes Allegiance to Our Political Tribe?

Early Christians were the first to place religious convictions above tribal loyalty, wrote Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury.

“For the first time in human history, individuals claimed the liberty to define the limits of their political loyalty, and to test that loyalty by spiritual and ethical standards.” (Rowan Williams, “The Two Ways,” Plough Quarterly, Autumn 2017).

In answering accusations against them, one early group responded. They were not rebels against the state and had no wish to overthrow it, they said. They would pay taxes to it. They would not, however, worship the emperor. “They would not grant the state their absolute allegiance.”

Throughout history, states and empires have come and gone. Some have established centers of civilizing influence. All demanded some form of loyalty to the state apparatus.

The early Jesus followers called for a loyalty higher than the tribe, higher than whatever state was in existence at the time. They proclaimed their allegiance to his teachings and said those teachings took precedence over any other authority.

A question for us today, the religious and the non-religious alike, is whether we worship some political cause or, instead, give allegiance to greater causes like justice, mercy, and serving the widows and orphans.

Climate and Other Changes

Suppose climate isn’t changing because of human activity, but we pass legislation as though it is?

Our air and water would be cleaner, for one thing. Flooding would be better managed, and newer sources of energy would create jobs in new fields.

Why, then, are we having difficulty cleaning up waterways and passing stricter emission standards?

Possibly because coal miners and others will lose jobs, at least the jobs they have now. Some employees of industrial polluters may lose jobs, too. Standards will be stricter and may cost money to enforce. We may have to give up activities we are used to doing. Development on sensitive land may be forbidden.

Yet, data points to unprecedented and rapid warming of the earth. We have a conflict between what is good for the “community” (a cleaner environment and better management of our resources) over against difficult changes for some.

How, then, can we work toward a zero sum game for all players?

We can begin by acknowledging the hardship caused to some of our population by climate change policies. Change, any change, usually requires that someone give up something.

Our jobs are changing and not only from climate policies. We cannot stop change. We can only manage change, if we so choose. We can begin by asking questions.

Why are we wedded to practices of the industrial revolution when that revolution is long past?

Why is our economic system arranged as if most families can survive with only one wage earner?

Why do we live as though the norm is lifetime employment with one company? A company we must depend on to provide essentials like health insurance?

Climate change is only one change we face. Our digital revolution is another. Continual training, available for all who need it for new jobs, is essential. Universal health insurance, not dependent on an employer, is another.

Given the means to change, we also must be willing to change for the benefit of the community.

Smorgasbord Samplers Versus Full Meal Dealers

We tend toward one of two groups: the smorgasbord samplers or the full meal dealers.

The smorgasbord samplers are the internationally minded post moderns. They are turned off by the brutality and slaughter of competing groups. They believe good is found in all cultures.

They have foresworn the close associations of past communities. They prefer to choose from a variety: one may be an atheist and a Buddhist. Or a Catholic married to a Jew whose child follows an Indian holy man. If one appreciates all cultures, one is less likely to condone ethnic/religious bloodletting, they say.

The full meal dealers find meaning in a long term community dedicated to common purposes: shared religious faith, social justice, meeting the needs of vulnerable people, for example. They crave long term commitments.

In truth, the two camps can learn from each other. The smorgasbord samplers need the purpose and commitment of the full meal dealers. The full meal dealers need the empathy and humility of the smorgasbord samplers.