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Obama’s administration has struggled to extricate the U.S. from the military campaigns in these countries and has withdrawn troops completely from Iraq.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.

“We have our thumbs on their jugular”

Someone once wrote an “interpretation” of diplomatic language: Example: “We had frank discussions” means “we have our thumbs on their jugular.”

Why is diplomacy so full of bland speech? Even hypocrisy? Answer: A frank assessment may shut down fruitful negotiations over delicate issues. Open agreements openly arrived at is an ideal that if literally carried out may result in zero agreements. Talks away from public scrutiny  may be necessary. Sometimes public announcements in which news is limited to those bland statements allow meaningful give and take to reach a compromise.

In negotiations when both sides want ninety percent, each will have to settle for less if they want to conclude an agreement. Naming your opponent an irresponsible egomaniac is unlikely to wring concessions from him. Bland speech may keep the negotiations going until a meaningful compromise is reached.

Not Even the British?

 

The leader of the writers’ symposium shook her head. “In pitches for your stories, you must compare your work to American authors.”

“Not even the British?” I asked. I had compared the current story I’m writing, part of a mystery series, to the novels of a couple of English mystery authors.

“Not even the British. Has to be American.”

The British, who practically invented the cozy mystery, who birthed Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, were not be mentioned in a pitch for a story? I guess not.

I should have been forewarned. Other times when I’ve pitched stories to editors or agents, I’ve seen them shake their heads. “The market for stories other than those with a domestic setting is slim.”

“Even with American characters?”

“Even with American characters.”

Growing up, I loved Kate Seredy’s stories of Hungarians. Others stories with Russian, French, German, Mexican, and of course British characters inhabited my childhood years. Granted, stories based in Africa or South America were rarely available in the public library of my childhood, but the global stories it held were favorites.

The United States is a large country. Like other large countries, such as India and Russia, we tend toward strong nationalism, toward an us and them outlook. Such nations develop strong creative impulses in literature, music, and art.

Yet, our ignorance of other countries and their cultures can lead to poor decisions in our relations with the world. The last war with Iraq is now considered a mistake by many Americans of both political parties.

To study other countries and read stories with international settings does not reflect poorly on the loyalty we have for our own accomplishments. In fact, one of the reasons for our country’s vitality is the stream of immigrants that flow into it from other cultures.

Most of us enjoy geography in music: a Polish polka, a German symphony, a Mexican dance, an African hymn. What about geography through fiction?

Social Security Versus Education?

 

In a column for The Seattle Times, Danny Westneat, 48, reminisced about his college days. It was possible in his college years, he said, to actually earn a year’s tuition to college with a summer job.

According to the columnist, in 1981, a year of tuition at the University of Washington was $687. Today, it’s $12,500. Part of the difference is that the government paid ninety percent of the tab in 1981. Today? Thirty percent. Westneat’s opinion is that his generation milked the system, but, having prospered from their education, aren’t interested in doing the same for the current generation.

Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, in their book That Used To Be Us, How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back, question resources transferred from the nation’s youth to seniors since Social Security was established in the 1930’s. The authors state: “The national interest depends on everyone, including seniors, making some sacrifice so that the country can make the investments it needs in America’s future.”

We might also consider the money spent on the wars we have fought in the last few years. They have taken money that might have been used to better fund our pension system as well as pay more for education for our youth. Our military adventures that sent our young to war also robbed them of educational resources.

De-Americanization?

 

In the wake of budget troubles in the United States and the near collapse of the nation’s promise to pay its debts, China has suggested the “de-Americanization of the world.”

De-Americanization goes beyond economics. China, Russia, and other nations are questioning, not only the primacy of the U.S. dollar, but the rules set up by Western-oriented nations, including the United States. China bristles at any questioning of its internal affairs.

Should any nation have a right to interfere in the sovereign affairs of another nation over alleged human rights violations such as torture? In 1948, the United States, one of forty eight nations, voted in favor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among other issues, the declaration prohibits signatories from practicing torture, slavery, or prohibition of religious preferences.

Most Americans take for granted that certain practices are good: freedom of religion, the presumption of innocence until proven guilty of a crime, the right to peaceful assembly, and so on. At times we have fallen far short of what we profess. Nevertheless, we adhere in principle to basic human rights and have allied ourselves with European and other nations who believe similarly.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Middle East took center stage. China rose meteorically in economic realms. The Rwandan massacres of 1994 brought frustration. Foreign policy was challenged by drugs coming from southwest Asia and South America. India and Pakistan, two old enemies, one influenced by Hinduism and the other by Islam, faced off with nuclear weapons. A bit player, North Korea, boasts of nuclear weapons.

These new players on the world stage appear with less history of adherence to our professed beliefs. How do we live peacefully with them in the new global community? Where did our assumptions originate? If we deem them “good,” how is the best way to encourage them in cultures far different from our own?

Slow Fiction

 

You devour fast fiction as you do fast food. You savor slow fiction like you linger over an old-fashioned Sunday dinner with family and friends.

In her book, God’s Hotel, Victoria Sweet writes of “slow medicine,” medicine that allows a health professional time to listen to a sick patient and to observe. Such practices lend themselves to chronic illnesses and to patients diagnosed with multiple conditions.

Cooks create slow food for leisurely eating, usually for enjoying in community with others.

Slow fiction, in the sense of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead or Ann Patchett’s Run, is best read slowly, time taken to consider the characters, their victories and defeats, and perhaps impart meaning to our own lives.

We need fast medicine when an emergency or an easily diagnosed condition arises: A broken leg requires definite and rapid action. Antibiotics heal certain infections in days. A heart attack calls for immediate measures to stabilize the patient.

A half-hour lunch means a quick meal, not necessarily an unhealthy meal. Apple slices with tuna and cottage cheese can be prepared in minutes.

Fast fiction is fiction whose world we enter immediately when we want escape from a period of tedium and boredom or to relax after a busy day.

I gravitate now toward slow fiction, both as a reader and as a writer. I’m less interested in fiction that sews up all the problems into a neat garment. I prefer fiction that “amounts to something.” This fiction gives hope through personal friendship, restored community, and joy dependent on character rather than outward attainments or answering all the questions.

Patriot Tax?

 

How about a Patriot Tax to pay off the war debt which the United States accumulated as a result of the Afghan and Iraq wars? Those who favor tax increases to lower our debt and those who favor spending cuts might cease their constant paralyzing disagreements by considering this tax.

Those who wish to raise revenue through taxes could recognize a Patriot Tax as a way to pay off debts without cutting Social Security or Medicare. Those who wish to cut spending could nevertheless see the Patriot Tax as justified, since this tax would pay only for the debt from two wars voted by Congress, in which our troops risked their lives.

Normally, when the country fights a major war, Congress and the President raise taxes to pay for it. We did not do this for the Afghan and Iraq wars. Thus, a Patriot tax seems fitting, even if a bit late.

Shutdown, Day 9, View Not From Washington

 

State Department officials attempting to carry out U.S. policy overseas, despite the shutdown, must answer embarrassing questions from the foreign press. John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State, answered one such question, as reported by ABC news.

“I am absolutely confident that when we get this moment of political silliness behind us, we will be back on track,” Kerry said in Indonesia, where he was attending meetings at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. We have recently recognized the importance of Asian nations to our economy as well as to our security arrangements.

President Obama was scheduled to attend but canceled his trip to stay in Washington while Republicans and Democrats wrestle with funding the federal government and bringing roughly 800,000 furloughed employees back to work.

The news report indicates how the diversion of our energy to the shutdown, and possible debt default, affects our influence overseas. China, of course, scored brownie points off our humiliation. Chinese officials cautioned that a default might change their thinking about the creditworthiness of the US government.

Shutdown on Whidbey Island

 

Due to the U.S. government shutdown, hundreds of workers at the naval air station on Whidbey Island, Washington State, where I live, have been furloughed. The impact of hundreds of people worrying about their paychecks will certainly impact the local economy.

A country commissioner pointed out that the local government is just now recovering from the recession and sequestration. She wished that the national government would stop manufacturing crises that only hurt the ordinary citizen.

The executive director of one of the Island towns commented: “Let’s just hope for a quick resolution to this. When you take people’s pay away for no good reason, it hurts everybody.”

As of this writing, the shutdown has entered Day 5.

Why Rachel Left The Church and Why She Came Back

 

A millennial explains why she left the church. In a nutshell: “We’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there.”

Then Rachel explains the reasons why she came back. They include: baptism, confession, healing, communion, confirmation, union with Christ.

Serious practitioners of Christianity have become a minority group in the United States. Searching Christians are driven away by the lack of sacrifice in a gospel that emphasizes material success for following Jesus. They are equally repelled by the lack of love evidenced in legalistic congregations.

Those Christians who have returned to the church after a departure may lead the church into a community more kin to its vibrant beginnings. This Christianity celebrates covenant community based on Christ’s love and discipleship. A minority community of committed “subversives” within the broader culture works likes yeast within dough.

Shutdowns, Debt Ceilings, and the Safest Currency in the World

 

The government may shut down. We’ve done this before, and Congress has usually resolved the issue in a few days time, albeit, at varying levels of inconvenience to constituents.

Far more serious is the threatened debt ceiling crisis. When Congress approached the brink on the debt ceiling in 2011, Standard and Poor’s, the credit rating agency, lowered the credit rating for the United States for the first time in history. At the last minute, Congress raised the debt ceiling (albeit at the cost of the infamous  sequester agreement) and the United States dollar remained the safest currency in the world. If we actually refuse to pay our bills this time, our premier standing will be at risk.

To our discredit, we lack understanding of how our financial crises influence more than our domestic interests. We don’t take into account how they affect our foreign standing in the world. How much would our influence in the world decrease if, say, the Chinese renminbi became the world’s top currency? And how can we expect others nations to aspire to democracy if they see the world’s most famous democratic nation writhing in constant financial paralysis?

Father, Dad, Mother, Mom

 

Our names for our parents or parent figures, the first adults we meet on coming into this world, tell a great deal about us: culture, age, status, and of course relationship with the parents.

I called my father “Daddy.” I never remember using “Dad.” I think this reflects my Southern heritage. I called my mother “Mom” most of the time, though occasionally my brother and I in talking of her would use the more affectionate Southern term “Mama.”

The parental terms used by the characters in my stories mirror these characteristics. In A Sense of Mission, Ethan, raised by elite New England parents, calls his father “Dad,” never “Daddy.” His mother he calls “Mother.” His aunt, brought up in an even more traditional atmosphere, called her parents “Mother” and “Father.”

Ethan’s son Brendan, reflecting their more intimate status, calls Ethan “Daddy” until he reaches a certain age, then calls him “Dad.”

Byron, the abused son in Quiet Deception, calls his father “Pop,” reflecting both ridicule and his social status.

Our names for the ones with whom we begin our lives mirror the affection (or lack of) that we first learn from them.

Ninety-Nine Percent: Less Money for Everything From Mall Trips to College Education

 

The top one percent (1%) of Americans earned over nineteen percent (19.3) of household income in 2012, according to news reports. This share is the largest since 1928, shortly before the Great Depression. Inequality is not merely the result of the recession that began in 2008. Income inequality has been growing for three decades, according to the reports.

Last year, as the recession eased, the income of the top one percent rose twenty percent. The income of the remaining ninety-nine percent rose one percent.

The generosity of wealthy people is well known: Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and countless others. However, a vibrant economy needs a large middle class. They spend more of their income. They are more numerous and buy more goods and services.

We may, and should, discuss the morality of a country in which the rich grow richer and the income of ordinary workers does not pay for decent housing and education. A just society rewards those who work hard, even if they don’t make huge incomes. However, sheer desire for a productive, growing economy compels us to address the reasons behind the increasing income inequality.

Diplomacy The Old-Fashioned Way

 

Noting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s peripatetic globe trotting, I remember a criticism someone leveled at U.S. diplomacy at the beginning of the digital age. Now that we have instant electronic communications, he said, we don’t need diplomats. Now the leaders can communicate electronically.

Thankfully, national leaders can and do utilize modern communications, but face to face meetings remain essential. These meetings do not magically appear. Venues, lists of invitees, translators, hotels, protocols (who will sit next to whom in an order established over centuries) must be organized, at times on short notice. Executive summaries, background papers, and talking points provide up-to-the-minute information for the principals, flying in for a day or two.

Diplomats who live in these countries and speak the language perform these functions. They hold conversations, not only with leaders, but with ordinary citizens of the country. They talk to the opposition who may one day lead and to the younger populace who will become the next movers and shakers. Person to person remains paramount. Electronic communication enhances. It can never replace.

Kerry is especially knowledgeable about the work of a diplomatic outpost. He is the son of a U.S. diplomat and spent at least a few years of his childhood living in U.S. overseas missions. Kerry likes to tell of the time when his father and family were posted to Berlin during the days of the Cold War. The twelve-year-old Kerry, using his diplomatic passport allowed him as part of a diplomatic family, biked through checkpoints one day over to East Berlin.

His father, Kerry says, was not pleased when he found out, confiscating his young son’s passport to prevent future such escapades. “You could have caused a diplomatic incident,” he lectured the future Secretary of State.

Syria Who?

 

Now with an agreement between the U.S. and Russia over the Syrian impasse on chemical weapons, we appear to have dodged the bullet, temporarily at least.

What a relief. Now we can return to what’s really important: Miley Cyrus, football, Justin Beiber, and the vendor who was fired for hating ketchup. As well as the personal tragedies (mostly American) served up to us on our news feeds as entertainment.