Community at Christmas

 

This year, the electricity stayed on. The forecast remains stuck in rain mode rather than snow. A few years ago, it snowed, and the power was off for days before our advent concert. We came anyway and huddled together in our winter coats and blankets, listening to a program powered by a generator. Regardless, the blessings are the same, the songs are heard and absorbed. The old story, is as precious as ever in a still-dark world, where innocents cannot be protected.

Our end of the island, about an hour north of Seattle by ferry, is home to around 15,000 citizens. Older islanders have been here for generations, farming, logging, and fishing. Newcomers join, desiring a slower pace. The island ambience attracts artists, who stay full-time or part-time between work in other places. Writers, sculptors, painters, dancers, musicians, dramatists, and others ply their craft.

The holiday season calls on much of this artistic talent, creating so many gatherings and performances that one has difficulty attending all of them. For our church’s advent concert this year, we knew to come early, for seats filled up quickly with islanders, not all from the church. We hardly breathed during the performance of musicians and readers. Where did all this talent come from? How blessed we are.

We know we are blessed. We have our computers, iPhones, iPads, Kindles, and Nooks, but they work only as long as we have electricity. We marvel at another blessing that our country struggles to keep—that of community.

Advent and Arc Lines

 

A novel or a movie contains what are called arcs: stories within stories, if you like. Each character follows an individual arc, a story line within a story, as he or she reacts to the events that make up the plot.

A separate arc may trace a relationship between two of the characters, as in a love story. Still another arc follows the story’s main “problem.” It can be a mystery or perhaps a secret which the story uncovers or a moral choice or a resolution toward which the story works as it progresses.

Seldom are all the arcs revealed at the same time. One may influence the other, but each has its own life: beginning, middle, end. Characters never know all the arcs in the story that they inhabit.

I think of real life like that, too. Some process begins, perhaps known to only a few people, until it bursts on the scene, influencing millions. The awful tragedy in Connecticut was the culmination of arc lines from many stories, some of which we will never know. Some witnesses to the tragedy will change the paths they were intending to go and live different stories than they planned before the tragedy unfolded. We can choose to change our arcs.

We ponder the evil in the world, the innocents who suffer. Events tempt us to despair. Yet, we don’t know all the arcs in the story. Advent is a symbol of waiting, waiting for all arcs to end, finally, for the conquest of darkness with light. We wait with faith for the arc to play out that began with a baby born in Palestine two millennia ago.

Weeping For Our Children

 

“Evil visited this community today.”

–Dan Malloy, Governor of Connecticut, after the murder of twenty-six people, twenty of them children, in a school in Newtown, Connecticut.

 

“When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’”

–Matthew 2:16-18, (NRSV)

 

“Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’”

–Luke 2:34-35. (NRSV)

 

Choosing Leisure in a Frantic World

 

Religious orders in the Middle Ages developed efficient methods of work in order to toil less and enjoy more leisure for prayers and other religious activities. As Europe entered the modern era, people began taking their surplus in goods rather than leisure. (Man, Energy, Society by Earl Cook.)

In prior generations, survival taught its own lessons: work efficiently, be frugal, or starve. After World War II, Americans found themselves in a golden age of plenty. One wage earner could support four or more people with a forty-hour work week. One could survive even though working less than ever before.

Americans, knowingly or not, faced a choice. We could work less and allow more time for other pursuits: family, religious activity, creative pursuits, community work, more education. Fathers could spend more time with their families, allowing mothers to explore outside career interests if they chose. Singles could work part time and obtain more education or pursue creative work that didn’t pay as well, if their talents led them there. Twenty-hour per week jobs might become the norm.

Or Americans could continue to work as they had and buy more and more things. Once “things” became the goal of work, however, the desire for more and more material goods required greater commitment to job and career.

To overcome consumerism, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that “we must rapidly begin to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.” By living “deliberately”—as Henry David Thoreau understood—we spend less, work less and enjoy life more.

We now are rich in things (or were before the Great Recession) and poor toward God, friends, families, communities, and our inner lives. To choose a Biblical metaphor, we worked the fields seven days a week, skipping our Sabbath days of rest. Now we find an enforced rest in unemployment and under employment.

 

Syria’s Chemical Weapons

 

While Christians in this country celebrate Jesus’ birth, we recoil at the horrors unfolding in the region where he was born. Will Syria’s Bashar al-Assad use chemical weapons on his own people? Perhaps creating a tragedy as happened when Iraq’s Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons on his Kurdish citizens in 1988, killing and maiming thousands? (We ignored this atrocity at the time because Saddam was our ally against Iran.)

Why does Assad not step down? He could find sanctuary. Russia has supported him. Supposedly, he has friends in South America. Why does he insist on this war of brutality against his own people?

Perhaps he fears retribution against his ethnic sect, the Alawites. The Alawites, a minority in Syria that has ruled the Sunni Muslim majority for decades, fear his downfall, sure of a war of revenge against them if he goes.

The use of chemical weapons is “a red line,” so we are told. What then is our response? What are our plans? We are weary of war. Chemical weapons apparently is the one step Assad could take which would bring retribution on him. But will we be able to act effectively?

What will happen to Damascus, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world? The apostle Paul was headed there when he experienced a spiritual turnaround so dramatic that the phrase “Damascus Road experience” has become the code for a life altering conversion. We are in need of such today.

Unbalanced Lives

 

Our work force is not the one of our parents. It now includes not only many mothers, but also fathers with a realization that they, too, want to share in their children’s lives. It includes singles who crave a life beyond work. It includes care givers with family members in need of attention. It includes those with a desire to take time off for a temporary stint with a non-profit or to gain more education or to experiment with new career directions.

Employers will profit by understanding that employees cannot always be only employees. Workers will shift goals when a new child is born or a parent needs extra care or a spouse suffers grave medical problems or one’s goals change. If the norm is for most adults to concern themselves with a career from the time they leave school until they retire, we need new patterns to balance our lives.

Long leaves should be expected from time to time. This doesn’t mean employers should be on the hook for long periods of salary payments when the employee isn’t working. It does mean an acceptance of the fact that workers will at times need extended periods of leave, even perhaps several years. The promise of reinstatement when the employee is ready to reenter the work force, within limits, as well as the continuation of medical benefits are items of consideration. Flex time or part-time work or work from home are possibilities in some careers.

The employees, too, must make choices. They cannot expect continued salary for long periods if they leave the work force for an extended time. The American habits of high consumption and low savings need drastic revision. Americans should expect not to work at certain periods in their lives and plan accordingly.

We need a rethinking of career. Taking time off from career for other needs should be the new normal, a normal of choice.

 

Bring Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses . .

 

Regardless of which political party won which offices in the recent election, immigration issues will no doubt be a part of congressional consideration in the next few years.

As a consular officer working for the U.S. State Department, I interviewed foreign nationals for both temporary visas and visas for permanent residence in the United States. Interviews for legal immigration were rewarding, often dealing with those who were elated at reaching their dream of living in the United States. These immigrants often had family who had immigrated to the United States before them. Others had earned their visas because their job skills were needed by an American employer.

In contrast, my interviews of those applying for temporary visits to the States exhausted me and the other U.S. visa officers. We knew that a significant percentage of the applicants hoped to use the temporary process to gain entry to the U.S. and then remain there, legally or illegally. We sometimes had to interview hundreds of applicants each day. The vast numbers required us to decide within minutes what were the intentions of the person before us. No wonder we were exhausted.

I found visa work to be not only exhausting but depressing. I disliked having the power to destroy people’s dreams, people who wanted nothing more than to escape often oppressive and/or poverty-stricken situations. These feelings found their way into the lives of two visa interviewers in my novels, Kaitlin in A Sense of Mission and Hannah in Searching for Home.

No immigration law will be perfect. More people still want to live in the United States than we can possibly accommodate. Web sites can aid us in making rational decisions about our immigration policies. You might begin with the Department of Homeland Security.

 

Peace in Jerusalem

 

One Christmas season years ago, I cut an article from a newspaper. The article bemoaned the lack of peace in Bethlehem, the place where the Prince of Peace was born, whose birthday we Christians celebrate during this season of advent.

Today, peace in Bethlehem and Jerusalem and Gaza and Hebron appears as elusive as ever. Only the very old can remember a time when Israelis and Palestinians were not at odds. A recent truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza brought yet another lull in a long series of halts that never seem to last. Hopelessness tempts us. Two ancient peoples trace roots to the same bit of land. Each can point to atrocities committed against them.

Diplomacy may bring halts to the violence, not a small thing. Diplomacy seeks a negotiated settlement, not a small thing, either, but in this land, all the wrongs can never be righted.

Christians, of all people, should practice hope, especially at this season, because this season brings the answer. The answer is forgiveness.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem and pray for forgiveness that can erase the hurts between two peoples and cause them to live together in harmony.

 

Confucius and the Holidays

 

Confucius, the oft-quoted Chinese teacher and philosopher said, “To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”

What a quaint expression—”to set our hearts right,” to order our hearts. It echoes the one for whom Christians celebrate the season, the one who said “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” Is it possible to seek the kingdom, to put our hearts in order despite the business? Probably not without the requirement for other worthy pursuits, that of self-discipline.

Can we leave our shopping, our texting, our twittering, and our Facebooking for a few minutes a day during this season? Practice the quiet “to set our hearts right”?

Black Friday Meditation

 

We are told that the only way we can come out of the recession is for Americans to spend the greater part of their salaries on goods and services, even go into debt. Especially on Black Friday, retailers count on the greatest spending spree by Americans of the entire year. If accounts don’t reach into the black on that day, retailers foresee trouble.

Most Americans reached a level of affluence, a luxury level compared to past generations, by the 1960’s or so. Yet we continued to build larger houses for smaller families while we deserted the six ounce soft drink for the jumbo sizes.

“How much Is enough?” asks the title of a book by Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky, How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life. This book and another, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, by Michael Sandel, were reviewed  by The Economist in their July 12, 2012 issue.

“Even if . . .the West could do with more . . , the pursuit of wealth for its own sake is folly,” states the reviewer of the two books. Perhaps these books should find a place under our Christmas trees this season.

Lost Generation

 

The New York Times columnist, David Brooks, wrote a piece titled “The Widening Opportunity Gap.” It dealt with the gulf that separates children who grow up to function successfully and those who don’t. Brooks discussed several reasons for this divide between children, but he pointed out that the amount of time parents spend with their children is a major factor in their success.

This gap between the parented and the unparented has increased since the famous baby boom following World War II. The boom gave way to other generations, born from the mid-1960’s onward. These groups are variously called Generation X, Generation Y (also known as the Millennials), and Generation Z. Until the economic recession that began around 2008, these children were born during an era of unprecedented economic growth, of the two-career family, of the housing boom.

Yet the good times knew a darker side: The high divorce rate of baby boom parents led to the fashion of their children forswearing marriage.  Why bother with marriage at all, since it so often ends in acrimonious breakups? they asked. Casual relationships developed a mainstream following. Babies born of them often appeared an afterthought.

Our emphasis on self fulfilment rather than on responsible membership in society, including parenting children instead of merely birthing them, may stunt an entire generation.

What’s a Sister? Or a Brother? Or a Cousin?

 

George Weigel (author of The Cube and The Cathedral, which describes the death of Christianity in Europe) was interviewed for Response magazine several years ago: He stated: ” . . . by 2050, on present trends, 60 percent of Italians will not know from personal experience what a brother, a sister, an aunt, an uncle or a cousin is.” This is, Weigel says, what happens when parents mostly have only one child, and only children marry only children.

Even couples in countries with traditionally large families, like Mexico, are choosing to have smaller families. If present trends continue, cheap labor from these countries may be a thing of the past, for good or ill.

What is happening is not a dastardly plot to kill families but has developed gradually. Birth control, the economic necessity of a paid career for all adults, and education that delays marriage and family all contribute.

Parenthood is not suitable for every adult. It’s good that we have a choice. However, many couples want to have children, but economic needs and the demands of career discourage parenting.

We are told that several jobs over the lifetime of an individual is the new normal. Perhaps we should consider new patterns that include parenting as one of those jobs for those who desire it.

 

 

Murdered, A Foreigner Working for the United States

 

Qassim Aklan, local employee of the U.S. embassy in Sana’a, Yemen, was recently murdered. Aklan, an employee of the embassy for eleven years, aided his American colleagues in investigations that the embassy carried out.

About 53,000 local employees help staff U.S. embassies and consulates  abroad. The mere fact that they work for the United States sometimes puts them in danger. Over the years, hundreds have been killed because of their employment.

Every American who has worked in a U.S. embassy or consulate and earned any accolades knows how much of the praise is due to the local staff who made their work possible. I especially remember the three Foreign Service Nationals (as we called them then) who shepherded me through my exhausting first tour. No way could I have survived that tour without them.

Perhaps in tribute, two of my novels feature locally hired staff who work in U.S. embassies where the American protagonists are assigned. Lavali, Farid, and Ramelon are the fictitious national employees from A Sense of Mission. They support newbie U.S. Foreign Service Officer Kaitlin Sadler. She depends on the trio as she struggles to master the interviews of a never ending line of applicants for U.S. visas, endures a Middle Eastern war, and falls in love.

Hatem Lakhdar, at another Middle Eastern embassy, provides Patrick Holtzman, ambitious U.S. political officer in Searching for Home, with the names of valuable contacts. One contact becomes a special friend. Later Hatem offers sympathy to Patrick when the contact is murdered.

The American officers come and go when their tours end. When posts become too dangerous, they are evacuated. The Foreign Service Nationals remain, sometimes with tragic consequences.

 

Attention, Mr. President!

 

Parade ran an article “Attention Mr. President!” in its November 4. 2012 news supplement. The article included suggestions from citizens involved with various organizations in the United States.

Suggestions included: reform the way Congress works; enact tough fiscal measures seen as fair to all segments of American society; build on proven ways to educate all American children; reform immigration laws to insure a pipeline of hard working, talented immigrants; reign in healthcare costs with more efficient billing methods; adopt measures to achieve energy independence; create training and jobs for veterans; strengthen infrastructure. (Examine the details here.)

We Americans have had a reputation as a practical people, able to seek the middle ground and  hammer out innovative solutions to problems. The point of the article was a wake up call to our leaders to conquer our present tendency toward paralyzing polarization.

Elections, Laws, and Lives

 

“There are not enough jails, not enough policemen, not enough law courts, to enforce a law not supported by the people.” So said Hubert Humphrey, one time candidate for the U.S. presidency.

Such was the case with the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Ratified in 1919, it prohibited intoxicating beverages. A backlash against it, however, led to its repeal in 1933. Too many people made “bathtub” gin or bought bootleg liquor (leading to an increase in organized crime) for the amendment to work.

Elections are important, but more for incremental change than sweeping mandates. The direction of a nation changes dramatically only if a broad consensus of citizens wants to go in that direction. We may suppose that an election will perform miracles, but it rarely does.

The day-to-day lives that we lead, the persuasion we bring to bear in civil discussions, and the proofs we are able to offer that one way is better than another count more than any election. Our nation is, after all, a republic. Before lasting change comes, not just the hoopla of an election, a significant percentage of the citizens must be committed to it.

Nones and the Rest

 

Recent polls cite the growing “nones” in American society, those who profess to have no religious preference. Judging by the declining numbers in established churches in much of Europe, religion appears less and less important in all Western countries. At the same time, recent revolutions in the Middle East have led to religiously affiliated governments. In some sense, the “nones’ of the West are balanced against the “rest” in a new array.

The current movie Argo pinpoints a beginning to this sea change. The movie is set in 1979 during the Iranian revolution. The revolution removed power from Iran’s secular leaders, including the Shah, and bestowed it on religious ones. The United States had supported the Shah and allowed him into the United States for medical treatment. In protest, Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy and took hostages.

Few at that time took seriously the notion of a revolution propelled by religion. Gary Sick, in his detailed book about that time, All Fall Down, includes a section on “Religion and Revolution.” He states: “We are all prisoners of our own cultural assumptions, more than we care to admit . . . the notion of a theocratic state seemed so unlikely as to be absurd.”

Since that time, religious movements have expanded in Africa and South America. They have increased in Asia, even in Communist China. In Russia, straddling the divide between Europe and Asia, the Orthodox Church realizes growing influence . The fiery conflicts in the Middle East, so prevalent in news reports, are part of this worldwide rethinking of secular and religious.

We are not seeing a clash so often between religions in the world today (though that certainly happens) as much as we are seeing a clash between the religious and the not religious, the rest and the nones.

When Losers Become Prophets

 

I had forgotten about former Senator George McGovern until his death was announced last week at the age of 90.

My memory of his brief appearance in American history as the candidate against Richard Nixon mostly concerned  his stunning defeat. McGovern took the electoral votes only of Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

Now I wish I had known more of him. He was the son of a Methodist minister and briefly considered the ministry for himself. According to reports, he remained a deeply committed Christian all of his life.

Many thought of him as a radical, joined in their minds with hippies who burned the American flag. Though McGovern fared poorly because of his opposition to the Vietnam conflict, he was not a pacifist. Like George H.W. Bush, he was a decorated veteran of World War II.

Richard Nixon became the president remembered for his resignation because of the Watergate scandal. McGovern, the loser, had spoken out against our military involvement in a small nation in Asia because he did not believe the country threatened us. Only later did so many others agree with him that Vietnam became a code word for failure.

Today, it is spoken when questions are raised about a proposed American military entry into a foreign country. Will it become another Vietnam? we ask. Perhaps that is George McGovern’s legacy.

 

Risk

 

Linked to the end of this blog is a short story, “Risk,” that I wrote several years ago and never published. The part that risk-taking plays in faith intrigues me, especially during times of change.

Stories in the Bible touch on risk as a first step of faith: the Hebrews had to step into the Jordan River before the waters stopped flowing so they could cross. Jesus told the man with the withered hand to stretch out that hand to begin the healing process. Four unnamed men took the risk of bringing their friend to Christ for healing. Why is faith involved?

As a society becomes less religious, we tend to leave religion behind, almost without realizing it, or only give it lip service. To choose a faith as the polestar of our lives during such a time requires a definite commitment, a taking of a risk.

I used “Risk” to explore these ideas.

Unfortunate Choices and Their Consequences

 

Past choices bring consequences, for individuals and for nations. Our past choices, for example, limit us in the help we can offer the uprising against the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Thousands of men, women, and children have died in brutal circumstances. Tens of thousands more have fled and become refugees.

The issue of chemical weapons hovers over the conflict. Bashar al-Assad has chemical weapons and has threatened to use them. No one doubts the brutality of the al-Assad famly. The father of Bashar massacred and obliterated the village of Hama in 1982 because of its opposition to his rule.

We can choose to send weapons to the Syrian opposition, but the opposition is fractured. It includes extremists like al-Qaeda. How can we be sure who is receiving the weapons? The opposition is fluid: groups frequently change alliances.

Our entry into Afghanistan and then Iraq after 9/11 wearied us and taught us the limitations and the costs of military involvement. Our actions in Iraq lost us good will among the Arab nations when no weapons of mass destruction were found there, which we gave as our reason for entry to that country. Whether true or not, other nations now assume that any move we make in the area is because we want the oil and has nothing to do with compassion for the Syrians or anyone else.

Our support for dictators in the Middle East haunts us. We supported them because they kept a lid on Islamist regimes, at the same time becoming both corrupt and brutal to their own people. Now that dictators in Tunisia and Egypt have been overthrown, the new government leaders remember our support for the dictators who sometimes tortured them.

Decades ago, in 1973, oil producing nations began an oil embargo against the United States because of our support for Israel. Gas prices soared. U.S. President Richard Nixon led the nation in measures to reduce our oil consumption. We talked glibly of loosening our dependence on oil in the Middle East. Once the crisis passed, we chose to return to business as usual, willing to pay a higher price at the pump. Eventually we paid on 9/ll and in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

Our desire for the oil of the Middle East has driven much of our foreign policy in the region since the Second World War. We are reaping the results of those policies.

Avoid Flaming Up

 

Our small island recently was invaded by a hate group, inflaming passions. Like the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, several people attempted to pass out hate literature to the public in several of our communities.

The literature wasn’t an intelligent discussion of a point of view, but epithet hurling diatribes.

Some citizens were incensed and called the police. The police came and watched but said no laws were broken. The group operated within their rights of free speech.

Those who ignored them appeared to offer the best response, in some cases silently walking around them on the sidewalk. It seemed the best response was indeed a refusal to engage, thus depriving the group of the attention they craved.

Such episodes illustrate the necessity for  exercising wisdom in our encounters in this deeply divided country. Blessed is a discussion between two citizens of differing opinions ruled by common courtesy. Each may learn something. They may even be able to compromise on a few issues or at least retain respect for the beliefs of the other.