An Absence of Child Raisers

A society dies if it lacks child raisers. It literally dies if it does not produce children. It dies a slower death if it produces children but does not raise them.

Over the past century or two, life has become more difficult for child raisers. We have moved our work places further and further from our homes and communities. First, fathers left to work longer distances away from their children. Recently, mothers have followed the male model, working long distances from home.

Community, the village that helps raise a child, became less important. We separated first into nuclear families, then couples, now singles with perhaps an unmarried partner in tow.

Children, who need a great deal of care in the first years of life, are a hindrance both to the career-oriented lifestyles we have come to admire and the pleasure-oriented life others of us follow.

No one should be shamed into having children. Parenthood is a calling, and it is not for everyone. However, we need caring space for those who do want to become parents—time off to nurture their offspring, decent housing and schools, safe neighborhoods.

Our society lives or dies on how well we raise our children. How do we bring child raising back into the mainstream?

The Nightingale and All the Light We Cannot See: Different Perspectives But a Common Message

Two recent bestsellers, The Nightingale and All the Light We Cannot See, personify World War II from the viewpoint of a few European characters caught up in its horror.

The Nightingale’s main characters are women, two French sisters. One joins the resistance movement against the Nazis, and the other endures the German occupation with her daughter in her family home.

All the Light We Cannot See is set in the same time period but includes the German as well as the French viewpoint. One character is a blind French girl, upended by the occupation that takes her from Paris to a French village by the ocean and her subtle part in the resistance. A second viewpoint comes from a teenaged German soldier, traumatized by the violence he witnesses and struggling to find a way to overcome the sins he is called to commit.

Both novels highlight the awful suffering of ordinary people: starvation, rape, killing of civilians, and other brutalities. Even more tragic than the conflict itself is the understanding that it need not have happened.

The war was the culmination of centuries of conflict between European nations for mastery over the other. Each conflict produced a loser. National leaders preyed on the desire to overcome humiliation, increasingly demonizing other nations, until Hitler rose on a wave of Nazism fed by anger and economic hardship.

Unfortunately, such dynamics never die. They lurk in the background, like the evil that finally bursts out in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. How do we guard against the hatred and excessive anger that produces such horrors?

Poisoned Partisan Politics: We’ve Survived It Before

It may encourage us to know that the United States has survived other periods of bitter partisan divides. I recently read an article chronicling the battles between the president and Congress during the late 1940’s and early 50’s. (“When Congress Gets Mad,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2016.)

I had thought of the bloodletting between the two major parties in this current era as the worst since the Civil War. In contrast, I pictured the years of the Cold War and our conflicts with the Soviet Union as one of cooperation between all Americans, all united against Communism. It was actually a bitter period.

The race between Democrats and Republicans in 1948 was extremely close. The sitting president, Harry S. Truman won, but Republicans bitterly criticized his foreign policy, saying he wasn’t tough enough on Communists.

He had lost China and given a green light to North Korea to invade South Korea, they said. One senator claimed that the blood of “our boys in Korea” should be directly placed on the shoulders of Truman’s secretary of state. “Contemptible,” Truman responded.

It was the era when Senator Joseph McCarthy used the public’s fear of Communism to begin witch hunts that ruined careers of innocent citizens.

Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower won the next election against Adlai Stevenson in 1952. He continued many of Truman’s policies and began an era of constructive relationships with Democrats.

McCarthy was censured by the Senate in 1954. McCarthyism became a synonym for a campaign of unfounded accusations.

 

What Dorothy Sayers Taught Me

One book I return to again and again is The Whimsical Christian by Dorothy Sayers. The title is a play on words, whimsical meaning quaint or fanciful, but also is a reminder of Sayers’ detective series featuring the English Lord Peter Wimsey, set between World Wars I and II.

Sayers was a writer of both fiction and Christian essays. Her private life included a fling with a man who refused to marry her after she became pregnant. Her spiritual life seemed to deepen after the birth of her child, though she never publically acknowledged him.

Like some of the characters in her books, Sayers was flawed. She found meaning in her writing.

She first introduced me to the sin of acedia. It’s a sin which tempts me, but I didn’t know its name. She called it despair as well as acedia and explained it in terms I could understand.

“It is the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive only because there is nothing it would die for.”

It seems to tempt those of us afflicted with melancholia. I have found that the only antidote is prayer, followed by going on to the next task at hand. Never just sit down and give in to it.

Daring to pray, daring to go on doing “whatever our hand finds to do” is, it seems to me, an act of faith that says life is indeed a gift, worth living.

Amazon Reviews: Political Weapons?

Even Amazon reviews have become tools for rampant anger. Some reviews are written by people who haven’t even read the book or used the product. The reviews are written as a political polemic. They encourage one-star reviews as a political vote—not on the book or product itself.

One woman, writing a book on finding forgiveness after the death of her small child in a mass shooting, was pilloried by radical guns rights activists. Regardless of one’s views on the Second Amendment, such disregard for human hurt counts as less than civilized.

Hank Davis, of Peacemakers Alliance, a group working with gangs and violence-prone groups, commented on the killings of three children in separate incidents in Cleveland, Ohio: “…social media websites, especially Facebook and Instagram, have helped fuel and ignite deadly disputes rooted in someone feeling disrespected.”

Perhaps the anonymity of the Internet encourages the temptation to antisocial diatribes instead of dealing with our anger in more mature ways.

We don’t see the ones we post to, whose needs we can ignore. They are not in front of us for any meaningful discussion. We don’t see their faces reacting to what we write. It’s all about us and our anger, and we can rant for as long as we wish with no one to check us. For many, the Internet is an ego magnifier.

To be sure, the Internet makes possible a more diverse discussion. It gives a certain amount of voice to otherwise voiceless, ordinary citizens. It has its place.

But our digital communications require what any civil society needs if it is to function: checks on our ego and a respect for the broader community.

Surviving the End of the World

Hendrik Hartog, a Princeton professor whose parents survived the Holocaust, said he learned from his parents that everyday life was a momentary accident likely to disappear.

All of us have read about, and some of us have experienced, a moment when ordinary living did disappear in the face of some unexpected tragedy or momentous event.

Families must cope after an attack by a terrorist or a deranged individual kills innocent loved ones. A tornado obliterates an entire town, leaving survivors to live without familiar symbols. Jews in 1930’s Germany faced a madman calling for the complete extermination of their race.

We assumed that the demise of the Soviet Union meant a world order leading ever upward toward democracy and civil society. Then angry young men from the Middle East intruded on a quiet September day in 2001 and upended that assumption.

Any person living long enough will experience unhappiness—the natural death of a loved one or loss of a job or a child making a wrong choice. What we do not expect is a gigantic break with the ordinary for large numbers of people.

How do those Syrians deal with it, those who became, in a short time, refugees taken from ordinary lives as shopkeepers and teachers and housewives?

How do any of us deal with the possibility that the ordinary can disappear for us, too?

Me or the Community?

Regardless of the deity we may believe in (the majority do believe in a deity) when we ask “Does God answer prayer?’ we usually mean: does God answer prayer positively? Does God give us what we want? The fact that those of us who pray don’t always get what we pray for is used as evidence that God doesn’t exist.

But a sympathetic deity would hardly give us what we want all the time. Does a good parent always give a child what the child wants? (Candy five minutes before a meal? “No, of course you can’t have candy now. Wait until after supper.”)

What about those cultures preferring sons to daughters? Some couples no doubt pray for a son. Yet the conception of males and females remains the same.

Suppose all those prayers were answered positively? We have only to consider China, experiencing problems because their one child policy (recently abandoned) led to sex-selective abortions of daughters. Many young men now lack marriage partners. China may experience a labor shortage in the future as fewer marriages take place and fewer children are born.

A son may give a parent status or ensure better care in old age in some cultures. Individually, having a son may profit. For the community, however, too many sons may bring disaster.

Why would God give me something I ask for if it would harm others, i.e., the community?

God, it would seem, cares for the community as well as for me.

The Hunger Games and Star Wars: Sacrifice, not Pleasure

The Hunger Games and the Star Wars franchises have risen during a period of world turmoil and suffering, of tragedy suddenly inflicted on innocents by angry malcontents, and of growing inequality.

They provide escape, as movies and books do when times are evil. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote much of The Lord of the Rings in Britain during the dark days of World War II. France had fallen with most of Europe. The United States was still officially neutral. England stood alone as German bombers rained death on the island nation, contested only by a few remaining British pilots.

The Hunger Games follows this tradition but is flavored with today’s anxieties. The leaders in the capital preside over the ultimate consumer society. The workers in the districts receive only crumbs, providing the capital with goods and, once a year, giving their blood for entertainment.

The heroes of this series are conflicted. The winners are not always pure. Evil is not completely banished, but must be guarded against, for humans are morally frail creatures.

Yet these kinds of stories forever show the little guy against the storm troopers, victims pushed too far, willing to risk all they are and have for the sake of a more just order.

When we are threatened, we are less interested in pleasure and more sympathetic to sacrifice.

Christmas: Lifting up the Lowly

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.

His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.

(Luke 1:46-53; NRSV)

Library as Community

Within the comfort of my home, I can immediately download a book for my digital reader from my local library system.

Books are instantly available after the library closes and I find myself with nothing to read. Zip. I’ve got a book within seconds. (I’d rather go without chocolate than have nothing to read—and that’s saying a lot.) E-books also are useful when I travel.

But checking out a digital book skips the community experience. When I physically walk into my library, I nod to the librarian. She recognizes a steady customer and nods back.

We don’t talk as much as we used to, since we readers now check out our own books at a terminal. Still, the library remains a community. Sometimes I see people I know. I enjoy the children visiting with their parents over in the children’s section, maybe listening to a story.

Others use the Internet terminals, allowing online access to those without money to buy a computer or a smart phone, leveling the playing field a little. Of course, leveling the playing field in the book world is one reason libraries exist.

I browse the book shelves on my physical visits to the library. Infinitely more books are available in the digital library, but here I can take one down and flip through the pages to decide for myself if it suits me. I don’t have to depend on the review of somebody I don’t know.

My digital library is a useful tool, but I have a relationship with my physical library.

ISIS Plays to its Base, the Non-Belongers

The terrorist group known as ISIS brutally murders in digital time for all the world to see. Their actions shock most of us, but ISIS is playing to its base.

ISIS leaders know decent people will be appalled, but they are not recruiting decent people. They target the disaffected young person, the one who doesn’t belong. ISIS is similar to a youth gang, a way for members to belong and pay back the belongers by breaking their rules.

In the case of ISIS, its members work for a revolution to give them meaning and purpose, a revolution against established values. They don’t want freedom of religion or democratic elections because such practices imply that no man or woman is God, that we are all imperfect and need the input of the larger community.

ISIS prefers a state run by a few leaders who claim a divine mandate to decide issues, not one where citizens are given a choice.

The Nazi regime also spoke to its base, those Germans humiliated by their losses in World War I. Jews were a convenient scapegoat. Leaders convinced other Germans that the Jews diluted their society and kept it from reaching the heights of a world power, superior to others.

American politicians may choose to play to their base of followers as well. Political speeches today shock some for incivilities, even lies. But the speakers are not playing to those who cherish civility; they are playing to those who feel injured by the status quo, the disrespected, the non-belongers.

Until we find ways to disagree without denigrating, to take seriously the non-belongers, some will seek other ways to gain respect.

A Clash between Religions or between Religion and No Religion?

In the waning years of the twentieth century, a few years before the terrorist attacks of 9/ll, Samuel P. Huntington wrote a best seller, The Clash of Civilizations.

The Soviet Union had dissolved, and the Cold War was over. Americans reveled in the dawning digital age, freed, they believed, from fears of a global conflict. Huntington, a professor at Harvard University, did not share their optimism for the new age.

In the absence of cold war ideology, Huntington suggested, religion was becoming more important, not less. Secularization had disrupted communities and cultures. I saw this disruption in the Middle Eastern countries where I lived during the 1990’s. Oil wealth led to vast change in one, Saudi Arabia. A consumer society emerged in one generation from an isolated, desert kingdom, bringing in Westerners who got drunk and watched x-rated movies. Most of the 9/ll terrorists came from this shell-shocked nation.

Humans needed, Huntington said, “new sources of identity, new forms of stable community, and new sets of moral precepts to provide them with a sense of meaning and purpose. Religion . . . meets these needs.”

Are the clashes and terrorist attacks since the publication of Huntington’s book only a struggle between religions or do they stem more from a struggle between religion and no religion?

Western societies have assumed an upward progress toward secular utopias with high rates of material benefits. In an age of rapid change, ordinary men and women may yearn for purpose and meaning. Where do they find them?

Sixty Mile an Hour Winds Crimp Digital Life

Growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, I remember only a few power outages, usually from snow storms. Schools and many businesses shut down. During one of those times, after sledding for hours, I relaxed with my parents on the living room rug, finding quiet contentment as flames danced in the fireplace. The whole world seemed to pause and recharge.

Now I live on an island in the Pacific Northwest where wind storms roar in more frequently than those snow storms. The most recent one saw sixty mile per hour winds after days of torrential rain, toppling trees, flooding roads, and shutting off power.

Islanders powered up generators and brought in more wood for stoves and fireplaces. Yet the pauses for outages are less relaxing now, as our digital world is threatened. I could not work on my computer. Cell phone service for some of us disappeared. No internet service. No emails. No checking the weather. I read the news from a print version (still delivered by our faithful carrier).

Finally my husband figured a way to connect our digital notebook to the generator system. I managed to put out my bi-weekly blog. Then we went back to Scrabble on our iPad, charged up before the storm.

Later we enjoyed the stove’s fire, and soft reading under the kerosene lamp. Glad I have yet to become smartphone-addicted.

A Young Man Was Murdered in Our Community, But You Won’t Hear About It on National News

Four young men in this area have been arrested and charged with the gun murder of another young man, seventeen years old. The accused range in age from sixteen to twenty. The motive allegedly involved a $400 impound fee which the dead youth supposedly owed to one of the accused and hadn’t paid.

Murder rarely happens here. In previous years, immature anger between young men might end in fist fights. While regrettable, the fights were less likely to be lethal. However, as more guns are available, they now appear as weapons of choice for the angry.

In contrast to individual murders, mass killings do grab media attention. They have spurred calls for more citizens to carry guns to prevent them. However, this is not the era of Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the OK Corral. Even highly trained swat teams have difficulty not injuring the innocent while attempting to subdue shooters.

Mass killings, whether by those labeled terrorists or by others, result in headlines but are unlikely to be experienced by ordinary Americans. The numbers of those killed in mass attacks are dwarfed by other gun killings: suicides, accidents in which children find guns and accidentally kill themselves or their playmates, and, of course, immature young people who now use guns to settle scores and forever wreck lives.

A Hard Fought Campaign, But No Character Assassinations

The election results were certified after a close race between the two candidates. Generally, character or motive of the opposition candidate was not called into question by either group’s followers (other than one or two heated letters to the newspaper). Instead, the campaign stuck to the issues.

Campaign financing was not a problem. Neither candidate appeared to have wealthy sponsors.

The winner garnered 297 votes against his opponent’s 262. A difference of only thirty-five votes separated the candidates for mayor in our small Washington state town.

The current mayor, not standing for reelection, had endorsed the candidate who eventually won, as had most of the city council. Were those endorsements a factor in a closer race? We are told that voters today are disillusioned with anyone currently in political office.

Or perhaps it was the rabbit issue, pitting those for a solution (mostly humane suggestions, except one mentioning a falcon) versus those who wanted the increasing rabbit population to remain unmolested.

Or perhaps the election divided those who wanted a funicular or other mechanical means for moving tourists from the harbor to the town against those who favored keeping the status quo.

At any rate, the real test begins, now that the spirited but largely civil race is over. Can meaningful dialog remain between the elected and those who lost? Or will the work of the city now bog down in dysfunction, like that of government in the other Washington?

If the city government continues to work, the other Washington should study our example.

Give Them Food or Teach Them to Farm?

“To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.”
–Wendell Berry

Sometimes simple answers to world hunger lie in small improvements on old methods of agriculture.

Michael McClellan, a retired diplomat who has served in South Sudan and Yemen, says our objective in working to end hunger should not be “to feed the world” but “to enable the world to feed itself.”

As an example, he suggests the use of cattle to work as draft animals on small farms in places like South Sudan instead of expensive farm machinery. These animals cost much less than machines but increase output over hand labor. Animals also provide manure for fertilization of fields.

Some modern methods of farming have stressed chemical fertilizers, expensive machinery, and ever larger farms. These practices can lead to depletion of soil and the loss of land by small farmers to pay off debts.

When small farms become productive and a source of adequate income to their owners, farm populations remain stable. They do not flood into cities, adding to the unemployed poor.

Good farming, McClellan says, improves the land and keeps people on the land.

Whose Side Is God On? Wrong question.

A news analyst asked a panel of religious leaders: “How do you decide whose side God is on when each religion assumes God is on its side?”

Personally, I think the analyst asked the wrong question. The question is not: “Whose side is God on?” The question is: “Who is on God’s side?”

I doubt God is some kind of Santa Claus dealing in wish fulfillment. We don’t demand God’s blessing for “our side.” He sets the rules by which he decides. We accept them or not, but the rules stand.

I think those choosing qualities like compassion, mercy, and forgiveness are the ones on God’s side. Their choices may mean sacrifice, even seeming defeat at times. I believe, however, that they will ultimately be on God’s side, the side that wins.

How Many Peace Movies Have You Seen Lately?

“There are countless films about war, but so few about making peace.”
—David Holbrooke, speaking of his new film, The Diplomat, about his father, diplomat Richard Holbrooke (The Foreign Service Journal, “ A Love Letter to Diplomacy,” November 2015)

Perhaps war movies serve a purpose in forcing us to understand the horrors of war, but too many such movies, like all violent movies, anesthetize us to the violence they portray.

Study the young soldiers given medals for acts of heroism in war. We, most of us, have not known war. We choose to honor them as a way to show our appreciation. Yet, the honor frequently reminds them of friends they have lost. They survived and must deal with it, the lost years of their friends weighing on them.

Rather than being entertained by war movies, perhaps we should listen to those who have actually fought in war:

“I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”
–From “On Killing” by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

“Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!”
–General William T. Sherman, speech, 1880

This holiday season, search for a peace movie—one portraying grace, courage, or forgiveness.

Give Me Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free?

Foreigners come to the United States for all sorts of reasons. Some come for temporary visits to conduct business, visit tourist sites, or study, to name a few. Others are immigrating, and still others are refugees.

The bar for entry is highest for refugees. Typically, a refugee spends a couple of years after applying for refugee status while the claim is considered and checks are made. These include interviews, electronic checks, fingerprints, medical exams, and investigation of past history.

Obviously, our borders must be protected as far as possible from those who hate us and want to do us harm. We rightly guard traffic into our country.

To protect ourselves from any possibility of terrorism, however, we would need to forbid basically all entries—no business or tourist travelers and no foreign students learning from American universities, for example. Our country would suffer major commercial damage, not to mention losing influence.

Odd that refugees, who are vetted more than all others coming to this country, would be so feared.

George H.W. Bush, Where Are You When We Need You?

George H, W. Bush, father of George W. Bush, may be the last gentleman in the American political maelstrom.

The gentlemanly qualities of the elder Bush sprang from self-discipline and a desire to serve others. He was a naval aviator in World War II, almost losing his life for his country.

As president, he did break his promise about not raising taxes and even expanded the government, considered unpardonable by some politicians. Perhaps he thought the purpose of government is to serve the people and believed that a complex age demanded more services.

One of the reasons he lost his bid for a second term as president, it is said, is that he hated campaigning and abhorred bragging about his accomplishments.

Bush understood foreign affairs better than most presidents. Perhaps that is the reason he brought the first Gulf conflict, liberating Kuwait in 1991, to a successful conclusion in record time, then had the wisdom not to extend the war into Iraq.

Bush, according to an article in The Economist, “never claimed that his side had a monopoly on wisdom. In his inaugural address as president, he deplored ideologues who question not just opponents’ ideas but their motives.”

Ah, for such a public servant today.