Sanity in a Connected World

 

Cell phones, email, and constant news updates proclaim the digital world. In contrast, a farmer in rural Tennessee in the early part of the twentieth century recalled hearing of President McKinley’s assassination weeks after it happened.

In this second decade of the twenty-first century we are instantly bombarded with the tragedy of tornadoes, hurricanes, and volcano eruptions as well as terrorist attacks, mall shootings, and the actions of drunken drivers. If we do not exercise control over this deluge, it will control us. On one hand, we may become despondent and feel hopeless. Or we may become so used to suffering, that it no longer bothers us.

How control? Basically, by controlling the time we spend on them. An article in The Seattle Times by Ricardo Gomez, a professor at the University of Washington, and a recent graduate, Stacey Morrison, suggested that some are pushing back against the technology that binds them.

They state: “If we fail to make our own informed choices about use of technology, technology will make the decisions for us. . . . We can each take a stance. There’s no need to go cold turkey and drop out entirely . . . we can all do a better job at managing our use of technology to reclaim control over our time, our relationships and our daily lives.”

Bookshelves Cleanup: I Give Up

I couldn’t fit any more books into my bookshelves. The time had come to clean them out.

I buy a lot of digital books now, but I continue to buy books I really like in print format. I keep thinking of the ones I want to pass down to my children, not to mention how I’ll need print books if the electricity grid goes out or fries my Kindle collection or whatever.

The print books included old textbooks, outdated reference books, travel guides from overseas places where I had lived or visited and would never see again, and novels from the three book clubs I belong to.

After weeks of sorting, I got rid of the outdated textbooks, some of the ancient references, and a few book club novels that I absolutely hated. Most of my collection remained. I can read old favorites for the rest of my life. I’ll save them for the time I don’t have anything to read. (LOL)

I constantly refer to classics, poetry, books pertaining to my spiritual journey, background for current events in my blogs, the novels I write, and so on. So I saved those.

I threw out some non-book junk and made more room.

The shelves are still crammed, but a bit of space remains for new purchases. I’ve promised myself that if I know when I’m going to die and am still functioning, I’ll really clean them out then. I certainly don’t want to ever be bookless.

Gabe Habash in Publishers Weekly discusses his problem of too many books.

Boomer Recessional

 

The baby boom changed every age group it passed through because it was so large. Now the last baby boomers are passing through their forties, and the vanguard are retiring. Social services for the elderly are a major topic in analytical articles. How will we pay for their medical needs? How much of the national budget will go for social security?

Other issues relate to the gap in experience left by the Boomers’ retirement. Much expertise will walk out the door when they leave. Boomer numbers insure that they will be a force to be reckoned with for a while longer.

However, the current age that includes the Arab Spring, Wikipedia, and Facebook tinges the decades of the sixties and seventies with a sepia patina of nostalgia. In comparison with the changes since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the baby boomers’ time on stage appears almost innocent.

The Soviet empire, so easily identified as our enemy, is gone, replaced by an amorphous al-Qaeda and its offshoots. Organized religion is challenged by the “nones.” The booming suburbs are replaced by underwater mortgages and the resurgence of downtown living.

The children of the Boomers are not as child centered. Some wonder if they will even replace themselves.

The Boomer generation, so confident that their numbers would prevail in the ideological struggle with their parents’ world, is fading. We are still assessing the confused times they leave behind.

Place Lovers

 

We are creatures of place. In novels and movies, the setting of the story can prove as important as any character: the Russian Jewish community of Fiddler on the Roof, or Gilead’s Iowa religious setting, or Flannery O’Conner’s southern gothic background in her short stories. We are shaped by place, even in this era of generic fast food restaurants and blockbuster movies.

Place is felt strongly by the displaced. The first who felt it were the native Americans in the United States who were displaced by European settlers. The English who left homes in the British Isles for America experienced their own displacement as they tried to make early colonial America a subset of their former home. Germans moved in among the English-speaking communities. Jewish, Irish, Polish, and Italian immigrants arrived. The descendants of freed slaves moved north after the Civil War. Southern whites dealt with an increasingly changed landscape. Asians, Hispanics, free Africans, and Caribbean islanders came. Recently, Southeast Asians and Middle Easterners have wandered in.

Love of the old place, left behind family, and foreign heritage compete with attachment to the new place. Volumes have been written about the hybrid-American young adult seeking identity between two cultures.

Both old and new communities lay obligations on us. Americans of long duration in this country do well to recognize the gifts that newcomers bring, from the crop picker to the Ph.D. engineer. Newly-naturalized Americans retain pride in former cultures yet owe an allegiance to this country that supercedes allegiance to the old.

Not so much a bland melting pot as a rich-hued tapestry, somber tones alternating with cheerful ones.

Our Un-Wired Christmas

 

A huge storm a few years ago plunged much of Washington State’s Puget Sound region into electronic deprivation just before Christmas. My husband and I, along with the small island community where we live, faced the third of three nights without power, just before our church’s Christmas concert.

Word was passed that the concert would take place as planned. My husband and I walked to the church through dark and hushed streets in an atmosphere in tune with the real event in Bethlehem. The church had no heat, but no matter. The community packed the sanctuary and sat close together in parkas, stocking caps, gloves, and lap robes (like gatherings in earlier churches, I imagine).

A small generator provided a single light for performers. The choir sang as joyously as ever, accompanied only by the piano. The bell choir needed no electronic aid. The accomplished soloist and the cellist lifted us from ordinary lives.

I have seldom seen an audience so touched, so appreciative. When the concert ended, no one moved for several moments. We did not want to leave but finally made our way back to our darkened homes.

The next day, Sunday, power remained a distant dream. Still in our winter garb, we trooped back to church and watched the children’s Christmas pageant. After the service we gathered in the fellowship hall for the children’s “birthday to Jesus” party.

The candles were lit on the birthday cake, appropriately iced with the words “Happy Birthday to Jesus.” As we sang “happy birthday, dear Jesus.” my husband looked up and pointed. The electric lights had just flashed on. Not that we needed them now. We’d celebrated the season without them, thank you very much.

Come to think of it, the angels didn’t announce the birth of God’s son over the Internet. The three kings didn’t send gift certificates by email. Joseph didn’t even have a flashlight to guide him in assisting his young wife with the birth of her first child or modern plumbing for washing up.

Christmas came anyway.

What Drives You?

 

In her autobiography, My Beloved World, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor shares what has guided her life and work. She grew up in housing projects, raised most of her childhood by a single mother. She recognized, nevertheless, that many gifts had been given her: loving relatives, a good mind, the chance for scholarships to prestigious schools. A “synergy of love and gratitude, protection and purpose, was implanted in me at a very young age,” she says. “And it flowered in the determination to serve.”

The desire for happiness or material pleasure or prestige are the chief ends for many of us. A few, by contrast, choose the joy of service as the driving force in their lives.

These deviations from the normal self-centered life may result from the influence of parents or friends or gifted teachers. For all the knocks that traditional Christianity has taken in the last few decades, not all undeserved, the church has often been the catalyst for service. Christ, for whom the religion is called, said, “I am among you as one who serves.”

Hanging on to the Weird

 

Francis Spufford’s book, Unapologetic, isn’t the type one might review for a Christmas gift. He begins: “My daughter has just turned six. Some time over the next year or so, she will discover that her parents are weird. We’re weird because we go to church.”

spufford coverThis book is not the sort of writing expected of Christians. It isn’t just that the book contains a lot of four letter words not usually found in books written by Christians. It’s also, as Spufford says, not an “apologia,” a defense of Christian ideas. It’s a defense of Christian emotions “of their intelligibility, of their grown-up dignity.”

Older Christians may look askance at Spufford’s unorthodox treatment of Christianity. Younger Christians on the verge of giving up Christianity may find it refreshing.

Christianity calls for perfection, Spufford says. Since none of us is perfect, we are all failures. The flip side of this belief is that it’s very realistic. Any brand of Christianity that attempts to “circle the wagons of virtue” against the others has it wrong. We are the others. We’re all messed up. (He uses another word.)

From the beginning of Jesus’ group of disciples, Christians are a community of the messed up. The one hope is that Jesus really is a God of love like he said, who’s willing to work with his people, comfort them, lead them. It makes perfect sense that messed up people go to him.

Doubt is accepted as normal in today’s mixed mash of competing cultures and religions and no religion. Spufford emphasizes the Jesus who remains as he has always remained throughout Christianity’s spread through diverse cultures and ages. The Anointed One, God in his creature’s image, come to live among the creatures. The one we begin to know by faith.

Ritual Comfort

 

The only time I remember my family turning on the oddly-shaped lights over our fireplace mantel was on Christmas Eve. We gathered in those hours before the celebration and the presents and the big meal and turned them on and read Luke 2:8-14. Just those verses. I don’t remember why only those. It began, no doubt, in my brother’s childhood, before mine began.

A family, a nation, a tribe—whatever community we are part of—needs rituals. The playing of “Hail to the Chief” during presidential inauguration ceremonies—first for the departing President, then for the new one—symbolizes our peaceful transfer of power.

A child’s choosing of a favorite story at bedtime is a ritual that gives comfort before entering the dark hours.

A phrase repeated by a couple, a family, or a group of friends may mean nothing to an outsider but for them it brings memories they enjoy recalling. “Remember Foggy and Sweetheart?” for years reminded my family of the time our car broke down on a lonely country highway at night and a somewhat weird couple answered our call for assistance and fixed the car. Nothing major—just a tingling reminder of black highway uneasiness and the repair that enabled our family to continue our journey together.

Understanding Iran

 

Iran, ancient Persia, is a Muslim majority country whose inhabitants speak a derivative of Persian, not Arabic. The recent agreement between the United States, Iran, and five other nations on Iran’s nuclear capabilities is our first significant exchange with the country in over three decades. Iran agreed to curb its nuclear activities in exchange for limited sanctions relief. Opinions differ, to say the obvious, on how effective the deal is.

Drop out of the news for a while and read fiction to better understand this unique culture. Digging to America by Anne Tyler, for example, presents a touching international blend of an all-American suburban family and an Iranian-American one. They meet in an airport while waiting for the arrival of their adopted babies from China. The story follows the families through the years, allowing the reader glimpses of the Iranians’ past lives and their adjustment to America.

Or try a nonfiction book. We have not had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1979, when radical Iranians, followers of the theocratic leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days. All Fall Down, by Gary Sick, an official in the Jimmy Carter administration during the Iranian hostage crisis, gives a fascinating blow-by-blow description of the events. The hostages were released literally in the last few hours of Carter’s time in the White House.

Or listen to one of the former hostages, Michael Metrinko, held captive and treated badly at times. He was quoted earlier in the fall as saying, “I happen to like Iranians . . . I had a lot of close Iranian friends and still do . . . I don’t like the government of Iran. Politically, I despise it. But it’s there. Almost 80 million people. Vast resources. We as a country, a government, absolutely have to have relations with Iran. Deal with them in business, international relations, politically. Let people move back and forth. The world is too dangerous a place not to do this. Not doing that is crazy. We have to be able to talk to them quickly if the need arises.”

Remembrance of Pearl Harbor Day (December 7) and World War II: A Tale of Mercy

 

Visiting a relative’s grave site in a Nashville cemetery, my brother pointed out a nearby grave for a neighbor of our family. He told me a story pulled from our family’s history. Our relative, call him Odis, too old to fight, sold insurance during World War II.

As is common, friends and family depended on him for their insurance needs. The neighbor, call him Edward, had insured his house with Odis before he left to serve with U.S. forces, part of an air crew that made regular bombing runs over Europe. His wife lived in the house, hoping for her husband’s return, whenever that might be.

One day Odis noticed that Edward’s policy was due for another payment. “Don’t send out the notice to his wife,” he said. “We’ll wait as long as we can. Her husband’s plane was shot down over Europe, and he’s reported as missing in action.”

I waited for my brother to recite the rest of the story, for surely there was more. Yes, the plane had been hit by enemy fire. The crew bailed out. Edward, the last one, discovered that his parachute was defective. He jumped, resorting to his emergency chute. It deployed, almost knocking him out with its force. He revived to see a German fighter plane with his sights on him. For whatever reason, Edward never knew why, the German pilot did not fire on him but buzzed past. I like to think the pilot chose to show mercy.

Edward landed in a field, where resistance fighters picked him up before the Germans could find him. They got him out through enemy lines, his final rescue being by boat, and he returned to America.

A few weeks after the report that he was missing in action, Edward walked into Odis’ office and paid his insurance bill.

His grave and that of his wife, dates of death sometime in the 1980’s, rest within sight of the graves of Odis and his wife.

What Is An American?

 

What makes someone an American citizen? As a consular officer with the U.S. State Department serving overseas, I interviewed many parent couples seeking to claim American citizenship for their children.

In general, anyone born in the United States obtains American citizenship at birth. This is called jus-soli, “right of soil.” Many Americans are not aware that citizenship in some countries is determined by parentage, not by birth in that country.

American citizenship is granted through naturalization to legal permanent residents who have resided in the United States for a period of time and meet other requirements.

A child born abroad also gains U.S. citizenship if both of the child’s parents are U.S. citizens.

U.S. law is more complicated and has changed over time when only one parent is an American citizen and the child is not born in the U.S. If the parent has lived in the United States for a certain number of years, the child obtains citizenship from that parent. The number of required years has changed over the time.  (Ten years, then five.) I had difficulty explaining to some parents why one child in the family was not an American citizen and another one was. Between the two births, legislation had changed the law specifying the length of U.S. residency for the parent.

Some children I saw were not born in the U.S. and had no U.S. citizen parents but had spent most of their childhood here. Thus, they were not entitled to U.S. citizenship, though they had absorbed more American culture than many born abroad to two American citizen parents.

A child born in the U.S. to foreign parents but who grows up in the country of the parents’ nationality can become a difficult subset, one who is legally a U.S. citizen but may know little of the culture gained by living here.

What makes an American? The issues are complex. They deserve our unbiased consideration in this era of a world grown smaller by social networking and complex immigration movements.

Yes, Washington, There Is A Democracy

 

Our dysfunctional Congress sometimes moves even the staunchest supporter of democracy toward errant thoughts. This is democracy? This is what we are trying to encourage in the rest of the world? This week an event in my local Island County (state of Washington) commission meeting restored my belief in government by the people.

A packed house at the commission meeting on continuing a conservation futures levy resulted in a 3-0 decision by the commissioners to continue the levy. Two of the commissioners are Republican, and one is a Democrat.

According to the local South Whidbey Record, hundreds of the county’s residents contacted their commissioners in support of the levy. The levy uses taxpayers’ money to buy easements for conservation purposes in the county. Commissioners had considered placing the levy on hold.

The meeting to consider continuation of the levy was packed. One attendee said, “It’s interesting that we have a packed house. There’s bigger value in life than a dollar sign.”

Amen. The other Washington, as the place on the Potomac is known here, might want to take notice.

American Idol Politics

 

Americans tend to judge their leaders like they judge contestants on American Idol—spur of the moment. I thought about this when I read an article in Parade Magazine (November 2, 2013) about former President Jimmy Carter.

Carter left office in disgrace, haunted in the last year of his Presidency by Islamist students’ seizure of the U.S. embassy in Iran and the taking of hostages. Forgotten was his work with Egypt and Israel, leading to Egypt’s diplomatic recognition of Israel, the first by an Arab nation.

Today, Carter is one of the most respected of living presidents. According to the interview, Carter is enjoying the longest post-presidency in history and one of the most productive.

He began the Carter Center, which “wages peace” through various initiatives, many of them dealing with the eradication of diseases that so plague poorer nations. He won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” He is often called on by world leaders for his opinion. He teaches once a month at Emory University in Atlanta. He writes books. His wife, Rosalynn, is involved in mental health issues. Their marriage has lasted sixty-seven years.

You can do worse than that. May all our presidents be this successful.

 

WikiLeaks and the 24-hour News Cycle in the Digital Age

 

In the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, certain records remained sealed for years. Researchers are only now combing them for insight into the tragedy. It’s hard to imagine the information remaining unavailable for that long today. No doubt Julian Assange would have released it the next day on Wikileaks if he and the Internet were around then.

Formerly, a memoir at the end of one’s life or the discovery of letters after a death allowed time for passions to cool and a more balanced view of an event to emerge before background revelations. Today, what is whispered between two people is shouted from the housetops on the next hour’s newscast. Classified emails, texts, and top secret communications become entertainment on our tablets or phones as we munch breakfast.

News of thousands killed in a storm passes off the radar like a dream on awakening. A terrorist incident is old news the next day, eclipsed by the latest celebrity scandal.

We have gigabytes of information but a scarcity of wisdom. Wisdom requires time for reflection.

Middle East Quicksand

 

The Middle East has embroiled U.S. presidents since the end of World War II. Harry Truman’s administration recognized the establishment of the modern day state of Israel.

Under Dwight Eisenhower, the United States aided in the overthrow of a popular leader in the country of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh. This action has influenced Iranian sentiment against the U.S. ever since.

John F. Kennedy attempted to mend ties with Arab leaders while maintaining strong relations with Israel.

Lyndon Johnson, though involved with the Vietnamese conflict, pushed Israel to a cease fire agreement following the 1967 war between Israel and Arab nations.

Henry Kissinger worked under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford to effect agreements to end the Arab/Israeli war of 1973.

Jimmy Carter’s sponsorship of meetings between Israeli and Egyptian leaders led to the Camp David Accords and eventually to Egypt’s recognition of Israel, the first for an Arab state. In 1979, the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, resulted in the hostage taking of American diplomats. This event haunted the rest of Carter’s administration literally to the last day of his stay in office, when they were finally released.

In Ronald Reagan’s administration, a truck bomb killed sixty-three people at the U.S. embassy in Lebanon. Later, the bombing of U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon killed 241 military personnel. Though promising not to negotiate with terrorists, the Iran-contra affair revealed that negotiations were nevertheless carried on between the Reagan administration and Hezbollah for the release of hostages taken by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

George H. W. Bush led a coalition which pushed Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.

Bill Clinton’s administration shepherded the Oslo Accords, an agreement between Israeli and Palestinian leaders that promised peace between the two sides. The agreement fell apart in 2000 during failed meetings at Camp David. A terrorist called Osama bin Laden formed groups that began attacking American interests around the world. The Clinton administration responded by raids on Afghan camps of the terrorists.

The attacks of September 11, 2001, on U.S. targets by bin Laden led to U.S. military campaigns in both Afghanistan and Iraq under George W. Bush.

Barack Obama’s administration has struggled to extricate the U.S. from the military campaigns in these countries and has withdrawn troops completely from Iraq. However, the events in Libya and Egypt and especially the horrors in Syria bedevil his administration and promise no easy exit from Middle Eastern problems.

 

Imagination: Where Reality Ends

 

Reality is rationalism at work. A stove is hot, so we don’t touch it and teach our children to avoid it as well. We plan careers and investments (provided we have any extra money) on rational input. We make day-to-decisions on reality. A tornado advisory suggests we not plan a picnic today and we postpone it.

Rationalism fades when someone we love dies. Rationalism tells us that humans, like other creatures, die. We know this. Yet this rationalism goes only so far and not far enough. We want something more, not something that says reality is false—but something that takes over when reality doesn’t satisfy.

C.K. Chesterton talks of the truth in fairy tales in his Orthodoxy. No, we do not believe, literally, in little elves or fairy godmothers or trolls. It’s the truth embedded in the stories that calls us, a reality not evident in the material world. Sometimes our imagination, by its own weird reasoning, leads to answers unavailable in “reality.”

C.S. Lewis gave us his Narnia tales. One of my favorite characters is Puddleglum in The Silver Chair: Imprisoned by a witch, despairing of any change in their circumstances, Puddleglum and his friends are tempted by the witch to accept her view of things.

Puddleglum replies: “Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. . . . We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. Bur four babies playing a game can make a play world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world.”

The point is that sometimes the “real” world is hollow. Something is missing, something we yearn for, a new order, when things like death are not denied but transformed. Why do we yearn for it if it is not there? Perhaps it is. Sometimes we do catch glimpses of a new order, when a wrong is righted because of the courage of one or a few people to act irrationally for interests other than their own. And sometimes we receive comfort from unexpected, irrational places.

Happy Clowns and Literary Fiction

 

Brett Lott, a Christian who writes highly successful literary fiction, suggests in his book, Letters and Life, that Christians reclaim this category. Lott reflected on a keynote speech he gave to authors and publishers in an award ceremony for Christian novelists: “I’m afraid I may have made more enemies than anything else. . . . I don’t write what most Christians would call ‘Christian fiction.’ I felt myself the odd man out the whole evening long.”

As I read those lines, I thought, Bingo, Mr. Lott.

Further in in his speech, he said, “. . .unless we make room inside the Christian writing industrial complex to create worthy work—art—that in its craftsmanship and vision challenges the heart and soul and mind of our readers—then we will be nothing more than happy clowns juggling for one another.”

Years ago I created curriculum material for a conservative Christian denomination, one I had grown up in. I wrote my first novel with the same audience in mind. However, it dealt with a divorced Christian woman, a rare subject for that audience at the time.

Later, after many changes in my life, including several years working in the Middle East, my Christian beliefs, like Bret Lott’s, have strengthened. My immersion in cultures different from those I grew up in (and not only in other countries) have, however, given me deeper insights. In my fiction, I have struggled and struggle still to represent what I believe to be a more mature view. But I continue to write.

 

 

The Twain Meet: East and West

 

“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat . . .”

–Rudyard Kipling, “The Ballad of East and West”

 

Despite Kipling’s oft-quoted phrase, the east and west meet regularly these days. Our boosters in the Seattle area back the much-touted “pivot” to Asia. Many of the goods to and from Asia pass through our western Washington ports.

Walter Russell Mead, writing back in 2000, suggested a common core that begins to bind east and west perhaps more than trade—the Abrahamic faiths. Mead believed the communism of China to be a descendant of the Abrahamic faiths, a back door to a belief in beginnings and endings, as opposed to the more circular views of some Eastern cultures. When communism became dominant in China, a whole society was wrenched from traditional teachings.

Still unresolved is how to encourage the most humane way toward an end point.

Kipling’s poem, one in which two young men from different cultures scorn warfare for friendship, ends:

“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!”

Innocence Lost? November 22, 1963

The day of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, November 23, 1963, may be the day America lost her innocence.

True, the nation experienced horrible tragedies before Kennedy’s murder: Lincoln’s assassination, Pearl Harbor, the beginning of the Great Depression. This one, however, involved young children—Caroline and John-John, barely six and three years old. Pictures of innocence.

Before that day, we were on a roll as the unassailable victor of World War II, our nation physically undamaged by the carnage that had devastated Europe, free to lead the industrialized world. The Cold War was at its height, but Kennedy had stood firm during the Cuban missile crisis. The young and personable president was much more popular with the world’s peoples than the aging, dour Kremlin leaders.

Surely, the nation would conquer all. We would win in any encounter with the Soviets. We would buy our homes and enjoy rising middle class prosperity. Our children would go to college, find great jobs. We would enjoy sitcoms and sports events as the television age blossomed.

And then Lee Harvey Oswald killed the President, for what reason we are still not sure. In a bizarre anticlimax, he was killed by Jack Ruby two days later. Ruby died in 1967 of cancer. Speculation has boiled ever since.

Of course, even in Kennedy’s presidency, things weren’t as sanguine as they appeared. The baby boomers, beginning to grow up, would transform every demographic bulge they passed through. Something called “the pill” would challenge moral certainties. And U.S. advisors already were entering the little Asian country of South Vietnam.

Bridge Over Partisan Waters

 

“ . . . I am convinced that the common good requires us to be both personally responsible and socially just. These are the two best big ideas of conservatism and liberalism . . . .”

“What are the best and biggest ideas from each side that we will all need to listen to?”

—Jim Wallis, Conservatives, Liberals, and the Fight for America’s Future

The magic word: listen. Can we do that in Washington? In budget committees? In congressional debates? In local politics? In family conflicts? Can we choose not to hate but to respect someone who has different ideas or a different take on the same ideas?

I can remember opinions of mine, over the years, that I concluded were false. But many more of my opinions were not wrong in themselves but were transformed into a better idea when I listened to others.

Listening is a magic wand, more powerful than any brandished by the students of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts. And we don’t have to be magicians to use it. We just need a mustard seed of humility.