Classified Leaks and Trust

 

In the past, social critics wrote tracts calling for change or published underground newspapers. The more violent assassinated national leaders. Today they leak classified information to the Internet.

Debate rages as to heroes and villains, constitutional rights and the necessity to know all we can about shadowy enemies. Certainly, secrecy is harder to come by.

The line is always fine between the openness needed for democratic governance and the secrecy required for certain operations. Legitimate reasons for secrecy range from stopping terrorist actions to negotiations that are best begun in secret when officials can be open and frank. They can speak uninhibited by the hype and hyperbole of the twenty-four hour news cycle—when every syllable must be carefully nuanced.

When I worked overseas for the U.S. State Department, I wrote classified reports, but they didn’t deal with state secrets or clandestine sources. Most reported on the welfare of Americans in foreign prisons or the children of American parents, children now living with foreign ex-spouses.

These narratives concerned the anguish of individual Americans caught in painful situations. They detailed private moments, not the plots you see in spy films. The subjects deserved their privacy. As all our secrets are indiscriminately vomited into cyberspace, perhaps private moments will no longer be possible.

What happens when individualism destroys all trust in our institutions? All ability to work privately? When we no longer allow institutions to function because we no longer understand their legitimate purposes? David Brooks poses and answers such questions in a recent column. A must read.

NEETS: Not in Employment, Education, or Training

 

According to a recent article in The Economist, a quarter of 15-to-24-year-old young people in the world are NEETS, not working or preparing for work. Other youth not counted as NEETS are underemployed or working in low level jobs where they learn few skills.

Perhaps fifteen percent of this age group in the more developed countries are NEETS, their numbers increased by the recession. Particularly in southern Europe, where growth has all but stopped, the jobless rate of NEETS is much higher than fifteen percent.

Studies in the United States indicate that joblessness among youth adversely affects their careers all their lives. They earn less, are more subject to intermittent unemployment, and develop fewer skills. They are less able to save for old age. The longer the joblessness, the more traumatic the results and the more likely these results are to harm the next generation.

Yet, in some surveys, more than half of companies surveyed in the developed world say they cannot find enough skilled workers for their entry-level jobs. Many commentators have warned that our economy will be permanently scarred and will suffer permanent decline if we do not invest more in the education and training of our youth.

 

Activists and Observers

 

One of my characters in the novel I’m working on is a young man, an American but raised much of his life in other cultures. He wishes only to remain in the United States all of his life, to write screen plays about the country which so fascinates him. “I’m not American the way you and the others are,” he says. “I know it as an observer.”

He sees himself as an observer of his native culture, not only because he is a cultural nomad himself but because he is a writer. I believe many writers, including myself, see themselves as observers rather than activists.

I sometimes feel guilty because of my introverted nature which flees, not only from conflict, but from normal actions which call attention to myself. I would rather write an essay encouraging reconciliation between different factions than join a protest for either one. The truth is, I often understand both groups and wish I could explain them to each other.

So I write as a minority in competing groups. I began my Christian journey at the age of nine and am kept on that journey by God’s grace. Nevertheless, at times I seem an exile from both “Christian” America and from secular America. I trace the journey with my characters as they find a way to live the subversive Christian life. I play interpreter. In my more optimistic moments I dare hope to be a reconciler.

Syria? New Candidate For The Blame Game?

 

If the United States gives weapons to the Syrian rebels, they may fall into the hands of terrorists. If we don’t give weapons to Syrian rebels, Syria may become a terrorist state. If diplomatic solutions are pursued, they may fail. If we don’t act now, bad things may happen. If we do act now, different bad things may happen.

As many have said, Syria presents no good options. Ethnic conflict has developed which is difficult to put back into the bottle. It has spilled over into Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel. No doubt some options are better than others, but it may be a while before we know if we have chosen the right one. And even the right one is bound to be less than ideal.

Perhaps we should just go for the “best bad idea.” Only, it is doubtful that the ending will be as happy as the Academy Award winning tale of the rescue of six Americans from Iran in 1979.

A problem for Americans is our belief in the quick, happy ending, as in the movie. Always. A way must exist for the Syrian crisis to be resolved peacefully, democratically, and justly. Preferably in a few weeks. If not, we must find a villain.

Americans want their leaders to make perfect decisions when no such decisions exist. Sometimes, because of the unfortunate political reality of today, leaders make no decisions or make them later than they should. They know fallout is going to result whatever they do. Each political party will attempt to make political mileage out of  it.

“Politics stops at the water’s edge,” is attributed to Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg in 1947. The idea is that partisan politics stops at the water’s edge, since both parties should desire the best for the country and present a united front in facing the nation’s foreign policy problems.

Alas, Senator Vandenberg, where are you now?

 

Religious Freedom, Ours and Theirs

 

The U.S. State Department recently released the annual Religious Freedom reports. The reports measure the freedom to worship or not, according to one’s conscience, in nations around the globe.

Sudden conflict and shifts in population movements bring us into greater interaction with those whose beliefs differ from our own. We may feel threatened, even angered, by the realization that our beliefs are not as widespread as we thought.

How do we remain firm in our own beliefs while allowing others to believe differently? Allowing religious freedom does not mean that we must live an amalgamated religion, with the unique particulars of our personal faith stripped out. Such a system is like an “established” religion, eliciting lukewarm response.

The early Christians in the Roman Empire lived in a pluralistic world much like our own, yet remained firm in their faith, even in persecution. They followed a Christ who refused to use political means to bring in his kingdom, even if it meant crucifixion. Without political power, they lived their faith and attracted others. Their very powerlessness to force their religion on others was a blessing. Indeed, when they later gained power, the faith of many lost meaning, becoming merely a superficial part of their culture.

The best way to destroy the heart of a religion is to force it on others. When we act as God, we usurp his power. If he is God, he is more than capable of working through the lives we live and our nonviolent witness. We do not need to take up the sword for him or use laws and prisons as cudgels. A person sure in his or her beliefs lives by faith, not by worldly power.

Cyber Hate: Wrongs With No Faces

 

My computer picked up a virus even though I have anti-virus protection. I took it to our local techie to clean it up. Some of today’s powerful viruses, she said, can make it through normal anti-virus software.

One who wishes to cause harm can now perpetuate wrong against nameless, faceless victims in record numbers. Was the person who caused the infection to my computer angry at a wrong done to him or her? Were they in rebellion against society or the government? Simply a hacker who does these things for the fun of it? Safe to say that they did not know me, had never met me.

The damage to my computer data was minimal and quickly repaired. But people’s lives can be threatened if power outages happen in more serious circumstances: to electric grids or hospitals.

The news is full of the new combat, cyberwar. Enemies fight through the ether, striving to destroy vital networks.

Perhaps in a society where we increasingly communicate through devices instead of face-to-face, such developments are inevitable. Human nuances and vulnerabilities are filtered out.

What can alleviate our detachment from others? We need more than ever the small face-to-face groups. Families, faith nurturing, and communities are as essential to survival, surely, as the digital grids we depend on.

What Do I Have If I Am All That I Have?

 

A monster storm in the Midwest takes lives, including those of babies and children, and destroys multitudes of homes. A neighbor’s house burns and she loses all her possessions. A report in The Seattle Times outlines the fault lines for earthquakes in our region. Refugees in various parts of the world carry a few pitiful belongings as they leave homes and vocations, fearing for their lives.

It becomes less of a cliche now to talk of the impermanence of things. Where, then, is the non-thing center we hold to?

Impossible to know how those of us still blessed with sufficient physical possessions will react if we become those people we now examine through the news and social media. With varying shades of sympathy we pause. We may shed tears or even contribute to the Red Cross before heading off to find out about the Arias murder trial or the latest political hype.

But what’s left if we lose all except our lives? Will we bemoan the loss of our wide screen television if our loved ones are taken? If loved ones are, thankfully, accounted for, we might then concern ourselves with finding a secure place to eat, wash, find a bathroom, and sleep.

If those basic needs are met and family safe, what remains from former lives? What is the center that remains?

I don’t know, of course. I can only speculate. Perhaps it’s coincidence, but I’ve been reading The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was a Christian pastor who was hung by the Nazis in 1945 for his opposition to Nazism. His discussion about giving up all one possesses for the one “pearl of great price” begins to penetrate.

 

How Many American Bodies?

 

How many American bodies had he sent home in the course of his career? Neal Hudson had not kept count, but he figured it must be close to fifty.

Dept of StateSo begins my novel, Distant Thunder, the story of Neal Hudson, a U.S. Foreign Service professional. Distant Thunder, like several of my books, deals with a Foreign Service officer, the official name for a U.S. diplomat. Most Americans have no idea our government has a Foreign Service. Thus, I often create a scene in my novels in which the officer has to explain what he or she does.

On rare visits to the States, strangers he’d meet in a hotel or a car rental would ask what he did for a living. He’d fumble around trying to explain. “I’m a consular officer.”

Raised eyebrows. “Oh?”

“A Foreign Service officer.”

“In the military, you mean?”

No, Neal says, and explains about overseas Americans and how Foreign Service officers notify loved ones when an American citizen dies overseas. They see that bodies are sent home. They visit imprisoned Americans and American children living with non-American parents. They perform more mundane tasks, acting as a notary in foreign countries and renewing passports.

Neal serves as a consular officer. Other specialities include political, economic, administrative, and security, to name a few.

Like professionals everywhere—firefighters, police officers, the military, nurses—Foreign Service officers are proud of their service and can never fully explain it to the uninitiated. The interweaving of tragedy, comedy, and an occasional happy ending with a touch of the exotic provides infinite plots for story telling.

Algeria Haunting

 

My assignment in 1993 to the U.S. embassy in Algiers, Algeria, lasted only about three months. During that brief period, I served as notetaker on an official trip to the western part of the former French colony in North Africa.

We traveled through rounded brown hills that reminded me of the wheat growing region of Washington State’s Palouse. However, an occasional abandoned farmhouse scarred the landscape, left from the bitter civil war between Algeria and France from 1954 to 1962.

Thousands on both sides lost their lives. Torture was common. After the French defeat, the French settlers in Algeria, some of whose families had been there for more than a century, left and wandered France like the exiled Acadians of Longfellow’s poem, “Evangeline” They were called Pieds-Noirs, “black-feet,” a sometimes derisive term that denoted their farming background.

Our official trip in 1993 was shortened when we learned of a terrorist incident in Algiers. Though we did not know it then, the incident foreshadowed a second reign of terror, this time  by insurgents against the native Algerian government. An election which threatened to put an Islamist party into power had been cancelled by the government.

A few weeks after our official trip, our embassy evacuated many of the staff, as the insurgency increased, making travel difficult. I left Algeria and never returned.

Some Christian monks who had remained in Algeria were murdered by extremists in 1996. The French movie “Of Gods and Men” is a fictionalized account of the tragedy. The Algerian farmers who were there for so long were mostly Catholic, of course, though the monks served their mainly Muslim neighbors.

I remembered our passage through a village on our long-ago trip. I noticed a building which could only have been a church at one time but wasn’t anymore. I wondered when the last Christian service was held there. Who attended? Where did they go?

Middle East Connectors

 

In a recent speech, William J. Burns, Deputy Secretary for the U.S. State Department, said: “The Middle East is a place where pessimists seldom lack for either company or validation, where skeptics hardly ever seem wrong. It is a place where American policymakers often learn humility the hard way.”

As Burns pointed out, the recent revolutions in that part of the world have unloosed ancient hatreds and ethnic conflicts, most tragically evident in Syria.

Should we wash our hands of the Middle East and turn our backs on it as we become less dependent on it for our energy supplies?

No, Burns said. The region “has a nasty way of reminding us of its relevance.” Much of the global economy still depends on its large reserves of oil. Extremism, once released from there, cannot be forced back into the bottle. Syria has chemical weapons, and Iran threatens to produce nuclear ones. Three major religions of the world worship at its sacred places.

Burns says we are far better off “working persistently to help shape events, rather than wait for them to be shaped for us.”

What can ordinary Americans do? Connect with the reconcilers. Dr. Lloyd Johnson, a Christian, has established dialogs with several individuals and groups in Israel/Palestine. Other groups, religious and secular, seek reconciliation between the different parties.

Develop respect and empathy for the diverse Middle East peoples, even those with whom you don’t agree. They are mothers, fathers, sons, daughters. They have fears and dreams. Some spew hatred, but others, in all the ethnic groups, work courageously for reconciliation. Connect with them.

 

Planning a Trip to the United States? What Governments Advise Their Citizens When Traveling to the U.S.

 

The U.S. government web site travel.state.gov issues warnings and advisories for U.S. citizens for countries all over the world. Information about riots, terrorism, natural disasters, coups, and generally nasty conditions in foreign countries that might impact American citizens are sent out for all to read.

What about travel advisories from other countries for their citizens who plan temporary stays in the United States?

What announcements from foreign governments might the recent Boston Marathon bombings cause, for example? I found this official advice from the United Kingdom for British citizens traveling in the U.S.:

There is a general threat from terrorism. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by foreigners. You should monitor media reports and remain vigilant at all times.

On 15 April 2013 two explosions took place close to the finishing line of the Boston marathon, killing 3 people and injuring over 200.”

I continued to mull over the way other countries might see the U.S. How would Japanese parents, for example, feel about sending their children to study in an American university following mass shootings on a college campus?

How about images of U.S. citizens toting guns at a city council meeting or walking down the street so armed (with proper gun permit, of course)? Might that affect foreign tourists’ desire to visit here?

We sometimes are unaware of how much money foreign tourists and students spend in this country. International visitors to the U.S. spent 14.4 billion dollars in March, 2013, according to numbers issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The student tuition from international students alone is a boon to colleges and universities facing domestic cutbacks.

After all, foreigners do have choices. They can vacation and study in, say, Canada, Australia, or the United Kingdom. These countries are democracies with attractions, upscale tourist facilities, and good schools, plus less of a reputation for violence.

Frightened By Knowledge

 

The people who killed the young U.S. diplomat, Anne Smedinghoff, in Afghanistan in April, are afraid of knowledge. Smedinghoff, a public diplomacy officer with the U.S. embassy in Kabul, was killed by a terrorist bomb. She and her colleagues were delivering books to a school in the war torn country.

Let’s be honest. Knowledge can change us. We take a risk when we choose to learn and explore new ideas.

However, such exploration also can give us more appreciation for solid beliefs taught us by our parents and communities. Certainly, my sojourn in a country with beliefs quite different from those I had grown up with gave me a better understanding of its culture.  I can never see its people as mere stereotypes. I am aware, too, of the common humanity that we share. At the same time, my own faith was strengthened. Seeing other belief systems caused me to think more deeply about my own, to test it, and to grow in it.

New knowledge can be challenging, but without it, we stagnate. True faith sends us out in confidence. We may incorporate new beliefs. We may reject them. We may modify our ideas. But only a timid faith refuses the opportunity to grow.

State Department Honors Its Own, Killed While Serving in a Year of Tragic Losses

 

The C Street entrance to the U.S. State Department is the one with the flags—the flags of those nations with whom the United States has diplomatic relations. It’s the place you see on television when news reporters cover stories about U.S. diplomatic response to foreign crises and conflicts, usually with the flags in the background.

What is not usually shown are the rows of names engraved on the walls of the C Street lobby. These are the names of U.S. State Department personnel who have died in the line of duty: 236 since 1780.  Each year on Foreign Service Day, the names of those recently recognized for giving their lives in service to their country are added to the rows. This year has been a year of especially tragic loss. Eight names will be added on May 3.

Four were killed in the terrorist attack on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya. Another was a young woman killed by an explosion in Afghanistan while she was traveling to visit a school and deliver books.

The majority of the State Department’s Foreign Service personnel will not be attending. They will be serving their country as usual in places far removed from the C Street lobby: London, U.K; Moscow, Russia; conflict-ridden Kabul in Afghanistan and Baghdad in Iraq; Sana’a, Yemen; Islamabad, Pakistan; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; genocide-haunted Kigali, Rwanda; and 200 plus other U.S. missions around the world.

Syrian Quagmire

 

Has the Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons? We study the evidence while experts tell us, no matter the use or not, that the Syrian problem has no good solutions.

Terrible crimes against even children cry out to us, but we fear a Vietnam/Iraq outcome. On the other hand, if we don’t help at all or only minimally, we fear that Syria will become an al-Qaeda bastion with chemical weapons.

Recent history is not optimistic. Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the blood and treasure we spent in those countries, are not our bosom buddies. Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya overthrew despotic, corrupt regimes but are at risk of replacing them with narrow Islamist ones.

Secular regimes have a bad reputation in the Middle East because most of them were/are despotic and corrupt. Islamist regimes may yield to the same temptations (witness Egypt), but when given a chance to vote in free elections, citizens seem willing to give them a try in a backlash against the secular ones.

We supported some of those secular regimes. Our decisions in helping Syrians begins with the sober assessment that our influence is limited by our past actions. Some reaping of what we have sown is inevitable.

Perhaps the best we can hope for is an Islamist regime that recognizes basic human rights. We can certainly increase our aid to the daily increasing number of refugees in Turkey and Jordan. From now on, better that we base foreign policy decisions on the common good rather than narrow, selfish goals that come back to haunt us.

Terrorism: Violence Used to Control Others

 

“Terrorism is violence used in order to create fear, but it is aimed at creating fear in order that the fear, in turn, will lead somebody else—not the terrorist—to embark on some quite different program of action that will accomplish whatever it is that the terrorist really desires.” So wrote David Fromkin back in 1975 in Foreign Affairs.

The terrorist desires to anger the enemy, so that the enemy acts unwisely in the emotion of the moment. The anger may be justified, but the actions may not be.

Some have suggested that our budget-busting military responses to the 9/ll terrorist attacks played into our enemies’ hands, leading us to near bankruptcy. They suggest that more terrorists were created by our actions than have been killed in military campaigns. The longer-term goal of tracking funding for terrorism may have proved more effective. This longer-term process, however, garners fewer headlines than military responses.

Be angry and sin not, the Christian apostle Paul advised, surely knowing how difficult that advice is to carry out. Injustice or the deliberate taking of innocent lives, as happened at the Boston Marathon, should anger us and encourage us to right such wrongs. The trick is to avoid “eye for an eye” retribution but rather to act “for the good of all.”

Striking for the opponent’s eye often is tempting and may accomplish short term goals. Working for the common good takes longer but wins more long term battles. Retaining the moral high ground requires discipline and patience.

Remembering Attacks on the U.S. Embassy Thirty Years Ago in Lebanon

 

Beirut 1983On April 18, 1983, fifty-two employees died when a terrorist drove an explosive-laden truck into the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. These included Americans and Lebanese. Other innocent civilians were killed as they visited the embassy or walked by on a beautiful spring day. More than one-hundred employees were injured.

Seventeen months later, a van drove up at high speed to a new embassy annex in Beirut and detonated explosives. Twelve people were killed and 63 injured.

Beirut BarracksBetween those attacks, terrorists blew up a U.S. Marine Corps barracks near the Beirut airport, killing 221 Marines and other servicemen.

Three of the dead in the first bombing had ties to the U.S. embassy in Tunis, Tunisia, where I was assigned for three years. Two were a couple who had studied at the Arabic language school in Tunis before their assignment to Beirut. One was a Tunisian  employee of the embassy in Tunis on a temporary assignment to Beirut.

Beirut memorial in TunisTheir names were carved on a small memorial at the Tunis embassy.When terrorists attacked that embassy last year, the memorial was vandalized. This year it was rededicated on the anniversary of the Beirut attack in which they died thirty years before. When I worked in Tunis, I passed it every day, a reminder of the sacrifice of ordinary people.

Both embassies endure, still staffed by ordinary Americans, Lebanese, and Tunisians  hoping for peace  in the Middle East.

Look For The Helpers

 

In this era, one person with grievances, real or perceived, can wreck the lives of countless others.

But one person can help, comfort, and bring goodness, too, even out of tragedy.

The words of Fred Rogers, of the old TV children’s program, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” are being tweeted and retweeted thousands of times following the tragedy in Boston. You may have read them, but they bear repeating:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

The words are from a book Fred Rogers wrote that was published a year before he died, intended to help parents guide their children through tragedy.

Indeed, the helpers in this tragedy, from emergency responders to hospital personnel to ordinary people who offered aid, far outnumber the perpetrators of this evil. It will take much good to overcome the evil that afflicted the men, women, and children killed, injured, and grieved by the incident in Boston, but the helpers are there.

Fred Rogers died in 2003. But his words outlive him, as good often does.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:5, NRSV)

 

Religious Communities: Players on the World Stage

 

“The success of American diplomacy in the next decade will be measured in no small part by its ability to connect with the hundreds of millions of people throughout the world whose identity is defined by religion.”

—From “Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for U.S. Foreign Policy,” The Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

The United States was a multi-cultural society from its beginning. The first Jewish congregation is dated to the colonial period, in Rhode Island, in the mid 1600’s.

Maryland was founded as a colony for Catholics, while many of the New England settlements were begun by Reformed Protestants. Baptists headed to the freedom of Rhode Island. Some of the country’s founding fathers were deists and even agnostics. Later, atheists and Muslims, Hindus and Orthodox Christians and countless others joined the religious mix.

Our ancestors left behind the world of established religions, countries whose identities were bound up in a particular religion, places where one might be persecuted for different beliefs. They left behind the wars of religion which so devastated Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Eventually, Middle Eastern immigrants left countries where Crusaders had fought Turks and other Islamist believers, as well as Jews.

We began a nation where the First Amendment to our constitution allowed for a religious freedom unknown in the old countries.

The countries they left are still there, and many of them consider religion a part of their national identity. Rightfully, we urge them to protect minorities. However, we should refrain from a feeling of superiority. Critics suggest our tolerance risks becoming antagonism toward any religion. Tolerance differs from denigration. If we denigrate religion, we will have a hard time working in a world where the majority find comfort and guidance from it.

Peace With Justice in the Holy Land

 

Dr. Lloyd Johnson has a passionate interest in peace with justice in the Holy Land. He is the guest writer today to introduce his novel, “Living Stones,” which touches on this theme and will be available this summer. He writes:

“Ann Gaylia O’Barr, published author of five books and with experience in the Middle East, invited me to write as a guest.  I’m honored since we share a common interest in the Holy Land today.

living-stones-cover-image1“Living Stones” being published by Koehler, a fiction imprint of Morgan James Publishers of New York, will be available in June as an e-book, and paperback in September 2013.  Briefly it’s the story of a beautiful graduate student Ashley Wells who is the victim of a jihadist bombing and is abducted in Jerusalem. She falls in love with a Christian Palestinian and is torn by her Zionist beliefs and her new desire to help the Palestinian cause

 She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nearly killed in Seattle during a jihadist bombing, Ashley recognizes the synagogue bomber and is later stalked by a hired Muslim hit man in Israel. There she visits the home of Najid, the Christian Palestinian scholar she had left behind at the University of Washington. She falls in love with him, putting her at odds with her Zionist pro-Israeli convictions.

 

 On the run, Ashley sees the beautiful rock churches and shrines. But the living stones, the people of the Holy Land intrigue her. She meets Jews and Palestinians, Rabbis for and against Israeli settlement expansion. Gentle Palestinians like Najid’s family, and those in the West Bank suffering under military occupation. Both Muslims and Christians living peacefully together.

 

Najid and Ashley find the bomber in Seattle despite the FBI dragnet put out to arrest him. Living Stones is the story of an American woman coming to terms with the truth of the Middle East, and the lies she had been fed. Will she survive the forces that threaten to tear her apart?

 

Visiting Israel/Palestine twice in past years, and living in Bethlehem this past summer, our hearts broke with the stories of ordinary people suffering the lack of freedom under Israeli military occupation.  For 46 years.  Imprisonment of kids for long periods, walls separating Palestinians from each other, even from their own farms.  Home demolitions, land evictions.  Israeli settlers continuing to displace local residents of family land dating back decades.  A historic and on-going national effort to cleanse Palestine of Arab citizens.  It’s the idea that one ethnic group has the exclusive right to the Holy Land.  The “others” must go.

 

Many Jewish groups of conscience actively oppose the Israeli government’s Zionist ambitions. E.g.,  http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/  This cruelty does not represent Judaism’s welcoming the strangers as Abraham did, nor the Good Samaritan teachings of Jesus about loving even our enemies, and doing to others as we would have them do to us.

 

The WallThat wall of separation larger and longer than the Berlin wall promotes the same apartheid we finally shed in the American South, and condemned in South Africa.  But now our American tax dollars enable it by funding this injustice.  Is this what we in the U.S. really want to do?

 

Our Christian Palestinian brothers and sisters realize most of us Americans know little of their suffering under military occupation as second-class citizens.  Although many excellent books currently available tell their stories, they are non-fiction accounts, often overlooked by all but the most interested readers.  (However, “Lemon Tree” by Sandy Tolan has become popular in America, a true story.  And Jimmy Carter’s “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”)

 

Dr. Lloyd JohnsonFiction appeals to many.  Who doesn’t like a good story with lots of adventure and a bit of romance?  So I am offering “Living Stones” as a story that will entertain, but also inform and leave readers questioning what they have always believed.  It may become another voice for peace with justice in the Holy Land.  At least I hope so.”

 

www.lloydjohnson.org

 

http://www.koehlerbooks.com/books/living-stones/

Scribblings From Exile

 

After fourteen years as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, I returned to the United States and to writing as my chief occupation. OakTara published five of my novels, and I created a blog with the tag, “Scribblings from Exile.” The theme of the first novel, Singing in Babylon, originated in the prophet Jeremiah’s exhortation from God to Jewish exiles to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile.”

As a Foreign Service officer, I was assigned to several countries where Christian believers were a tiny minority. After returning to the United States, I realized I am as much in exile in my native country as I was in those alien cultures. Christians are part of a “subversive” minority, the theologian, Walter Brueggemann, has said, a subversive problem in the consumer-oriented West.

At Christian writers conferences, editors and agents told me that American Christians were not interested in books with global settings. At a conference about a year ago, I asked a question in one of the seminars about my interests. At the close of the seminar, a man followed me down the hall and we talked.

We found our ideas compatible, although we work in different spheres. My blogs cover a broad landscape, anything that touches on Christians in exile from the mainstream, with a special emphasis on the Middle East. Dr. Lloyd Johnson’s concern is Israel/Palestine and a desire that justice be done there. We are committed Christians. We both hope American Christians will better understand the rest of the world, including that spot of the planet we call the Holy Land.

living-stones-cover-image1Dr. Johnson, a surgeon, has traveled widely, including trips to the Holy Land, and has written a novel to be released this year. I’m delighted to give him space to introduce his book, in this site’s next blog, because he is both knowledgeable and passionate in his writing. His enthusiasm has given me new hope that other Christian exiles will join with us in studying these issues.