Category Archives: Journal

What Is a High Value Religion?

Rodney Stark distinguishes in his book, For the Glory of God, between high value religions and low value religions. Religions, he writes, that require stringent dedication from their followers also give much of what the followers value. Low value religions require low dedication from their adherents and give less of value in return.

Of course, just because a group requires commitment doesn’t mean that it is beneficial to society. Drug gangs and terrorist networks require a great deal of commitment. Some religious groups develop loyal members while encouraging dysfunctional practices based on hatred.

The writings of Walter Brueggemann speak to me of a high commitment, high value religion, a subversive Christianity. This Christianity is a Christianity that offers an alternative to the materialistic, pleasure-seeking society that surrounds us. It preaches a prophetic message, one that brings hope, purpose, and meaning in an age that grows more meaningless all the time. It actively includes the excluded.

High commitment and high value? Jesus lived it, and it cost him his life. But as Jim Elliot, who also gave his life in service, said: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

 

 

 

I Worked for the State Department—Get It? Not the CIA. Or the NSA.

My hair stylist has just finished my monthly cut and turns to a man I haven’t met before, who’s sauntered into the shop. It’s a friend of hers. She introduces us and mentions that I write books and used to work for the State Department overseas.

The man, who seems truly interested, says, “Oh, the State Department. You were a spy?”

It’s not the first time someone has assumed that.

“Hardly,” I explain. “I was a lowly consular officer.” No one knows what that is, of course, so I offer my stripped down explanation. “I helped Americans overseas. Visited Americans in jail and hospitals and that sort of thing.”

I also have a grand collection of war stories about what it’s like to interview foreigners who want to come to the States—some legally, some illegally. Or what it’s like to be in Saudi Arabia during a war (twice). But I don’t want to bore people.

A column by Josh Shrager explains realistically what serving as a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) is like. Josh is a public affairs officer, one of several functions, of which consular is only one.

The Foreign Service life isn’t for everyone, but like a lot of FSO’s, I wouldn’t have traded my experiences for any other career. Although I do like to write novels.

How Do We Love When We Have Reasons to Hate? Two Examples:

 

Seattle Pacific University released a letter from Jon Meis, known for his heroic actions in the recent school shooting there. Mr. Meis is credited with confronting the man who had just killed one student, wounded two others, and was reloading his weapon. Police say Mr. Meis likely prevented other deaths, perhaps many. Included in his letter is the following:

“. . . I would encourage that hate be met with love. When I came face to face with the attacker, God gave me the eyes to see that he was not a faceless monster, but a very sad and troubled young man. While I cannot at this time find it within me to forgive his crime, I truly desire that he will find the grace of God and the forgiveness of our community.”

The family of the murdered student, Paul Lee, want to begin a foundation in their son’s name, aimed at raising awareness and support for the kind of person accused of taking Mr. Lee’s life. Mr. Lee, they said, planned on a psychology major and a career to help those troubled as the accused attacker appears to be.

What if more of us asked for the gift to see those who would harm us, not as “faceless monsters,” but as damaged humans in our image? To prevent their actions but not hate them? What if we searched for ways to help such troubled individuals before they commit crimes?

How Hope Overwhelms the Shootings at Seattle Pacific University

Which of us hasn’t sorrowed at the school shootings which seem to happen regularly these days? The one at Seattle Pacific University two days ago, however, especially affected me.

Seattle is the closest major city to my home. More than that, I’ve attended a writers’ conference there. I receive SPU’s Response magazine each quarter in the mail. I’ve quoted from it in this blog. I know at least one writer on the staff there. Each week, a guided Bible reading from the school arrives in my inbox that I use in my daily devotions.

SPU is affiliated with the Free Methodist denomination. The college lays great stress on the connection between faith and service in the wider world.

According to news reports, a lone gunman entered a building on campus and killed one person and seriously wounded two others. Another student is credited with saving more individuals from harm by attacking the gunman with pepper spray and disarming him.

What stands out for me in this tragic episode is not only the heroism of the student who dared confront the gunman. Even more significant for me are the images of hundreds of students from the university sitting afterwards in circles on the SPU campus holding hands and praying. They comforted each other in huddles. They gathered together for prayer in a nearby church.

I’m sure every student at SPU at this time will live forever influenced by this event. However, those students reacting to tragedy by coming together in spiritual community send a stronger message. They convince me that a force stronger than evil is loose in this world and will ultimately prevail.

How Do We React to Loss of Control?

We fear loss of control. We fear finding ourselves at the mercy of another person or of events “out of our control.” Suppose we experience a sudden accident, lose our job or our house in a recession, or suffer from an act of terrorism?

Perhaps wisdom begins with the possibility of failure. We can work for a certain end, for job advancement, for our candidate in a political race. We will not always win, or we may be disappointed when we do win and find it isn’t as rewarding as we thought it would be.

We may pray with Saint Augustine to change the things we can but accept the things we cannot. We relinquish, little by little, the idea that we are God.

Mans Search for MeaningWhen circumstances beyond our control and not of our making place us in bad, even horrible situations, we can remember the lessons of Viktor Frankl. Imprisoned in a German concentration camp, at the mercy of those who hated his race, Frankl continued to develop his inner thoughts and ideas. After release from the camp, Frankl expressed those ideas in a book read by millions, Man’s Search for Meaning.

We may not be able to control what happens to us, he said, but we have a choice as to how we react to those circumstances.

 

Showing Up on Easter

The CrossJesus is crucified, his body taken away.

The religious rulers are satisfied. They’ve won. They’ve handled this challenge to their authority by hinting to the Romans that they could have an insurrection on their hands if they didn’t take care of this peasant leader. Their plan worked well, with the Romans handling matters in their usual efficient way.

The Romans are satisfied, too, with the possible exception of their man, Pilate, who expressed misgivings. He went along, however, understanding that it was in his interest not to upset the ones on whom his job depends, so no problem.

The disciples, all men, have fled, taking refuge in some out-of-the-way bolt hole.

Only a few women stay with Jesus, and they follow to see where his body is taken. They spend the next day, the day of rest, preparing for his burial. He must be taken care of, even if all they can do is carry out a proper burial. They’re only women, and no one pays them much attention.

So they come to the tomb on Sunday morning. They find it empty. They are the first to know and the first to tell. What no one else did, they did. They came. They showed up.

Showing Up on Easter

 

The CrossJesus is crucified, his body taken away.

The religious rulers are satisfied. They’ve won. They’ve handled this challenge to their authority by hinting to the Romans that they could have an insurrection on their hands if they didn’t take care of this peasant leader. Their plan worked well, with the Romans handling matters in their usual efficient way.

The Romans are satisfied, too, with the possible exception of their man, Pilate, who expressed misgivings. He went along, however, understanding that it was in his interest not to upset the ones on whom his job depends, so no problem.

The disciples, all men, have fled, taking refuge in some out-of-the-way bolt hole.

Only a few women stay with Jesus, and they follow to see where his body is taken. They spend the next day, the day of rest, preparing for his burial. He must be taken care of, even if all they can do is carry out a proper burial. They’re only women, and no one pays them much attention.

So they come to the tomb on Sunday morning. They find it empty. They are the first to know and the first to tell. What no one else did, they did. They came. They showed up.

Farewell, Big Brother

 

He was seven years older than I, so I knew him my whole life. I never remember his showing the slightest bit of jealousy for my coming along and knocking him out of his position of only child.

We did fight in my youngest days, I the bratty kid sister who followed him around. Once I threw something at him, and he had the good sense to duck behind his bedroom door. I believe the dent remains in the door to this day where my missile hit it.

We were together in the same school only one year, when he was in the eighth grade and I in the first. The winter was especially frigid that year. One particularly cold day, we first graders were allowed to take our small chairs and gather in the front of the warmer eighth grade room. My nose was running, and I had no handkerchief. I saw my brother go to his teacher and say something. Then he brought me a tissue.

Our father died when I was thirteen and my brother in college. As we grew older we became friends, kindred souls, if you will. We could meet after months, even years apart, and begin talking immediately about things that were important to us.

We married and had children who became friends. He and his wife Nancy saw me through a divorce. They accepted my wanderlust that took me to accept work in the Middle East, even as a war began there. They welcomed my remarriage. Our mother died, then his beloved Nancy. He continued working. He taught a Bible study class in our childhood church.

This past Monday afternoon, I called to check on him. He sounded good, said he had slept well the night before. Despite the brutal cold in Nashville, he had gone in to work to keep a business appointment that morning. He was enjoying laying back in his easy chair in the living room, he said, keeping warm. We said we loved each other, the way we always ended our telephone conversations.

A friend came to check the next day when he didn’t answer the phone. He had died in the night, peacefully it seems, still sitting in the easy chair.

Thank You, Lord, for my big brother. May I be as much of a blessing to others as he was to me. For the first time in this life, I will be without him.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

Syria: Praying in the Peace

 

This afternoon Christians of all persuasions in our small island community came together to pray for the situation in Syria. The most peace I have felt in days washed over me in that quiet sanctuary.

I prayed for the people of Syria, for leaders in this country and abroad, for peace between Israel and Palestine, for the people of my faith in the Middle East, and for the people of all faiths in that conflicted land.

How often do we take time out of busy days to surround ourselves with listening silence, to pray without distractions?

I didn’t know such a quiet simplicity was so powerful. God grant peace to the nations such as I felt this afternoon.

Farm Summers

 

When I was growing up, one of my family’s relatives owned a farm about a day’s drive from our home in Nashville. We visited from time to time in summer when I was out of school. Sometimes I was allowed to stay a few days with cousins while my family returned to Nashville.

Those days were bliss: building dams across the creek in front of the house, hikes in the hills around the farm, a huge picnic under the big tree by the creek, trips to the spring for drinking water (the house had running water, but my aunt preferred spring water), swinging from grapevines in the woods, playing in the hayloft.

I remember the books. Stacked on shelves in the living room were the literary leftovers of generations of readers. My cousin and I would pick out a book and take it upstairs to read before bedtime, falling asleep with the books by our sides. In the morning when the cock’s crow woke us, we would breathe in the rural fresh air through opened, unscreened windows and continue reading.

Looking back, I realize imperfections. We had to watch out for copperhead snakes. The hills that I so liked to climb were gouged and riddled by the phosphate companies, to which my aunt had sold the mineral rights. Trees had covered the mining atrocities by the time I came along, but the scars still intruded. The pond that my cousins swam in had scum. I had to help with dishes after huge meals. The unscreened windows let in lots of flies.

Yet the freedom of those days is a blessing all children should experience before they pass so quickly into adulthood.

Fun’s Done

 

This is the age

of the half-read page

The quick hash

And the mad dash

The bright night

And the nerves tight

The plane hop

And the brief stop

The lamp tan

In a short span

The big shot

In a good spot

The brain strain

And the heart pain

The cat naps

‘Til the spring snaps

And the fun’s done.

–Virginia Brasier, “Rat Race,” The New Yorker, November 23, 1957

Life in 1957 included no email, cell phones, or digital tablets. Two-career households were not the norm. If life was a rat race then, what term would you use now to describe our frenetic lives?

Michael Hyatt suggests some positive disciplines to unwind our digital selves.

1.The discipline of rest.

2.The discipline of reflection.

3.The discipline of reading.

4.The discipline of relationships.

5.The discipline of recreation.

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.

 

Thoughts After A Whidbey Island Landslide

 

Thousands of feet of earth tore away from a bluff just before Easter on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, where my husband and I live. Whidbey Island, with 168 square miles of land, is one of the larger islands in the continental U.S., so most of Whidbey remains intact, and no one was seriously injured in the slide, though one home, so far, has been destroyed. Other homes sit precariously in danger of future sliding and have basically lost their monetary value.

In fact, all of us, whether we live on unstable soil or not, are never far from losing all that we have in some freak “black swan” event. Tornadoes, meteorites, prolonged droughts, or massive flooding are possible almost anywhere. Recessions can reduce the life savings of ordinary, hardworking citizens and threaten investment in homes.

Such possibilities are sobering when we consider how much time and money many of us have spent in obtaining material possessions.

Should we then become wandering hermits? If God so leads, but Jesus, whom I follow as a Christian, talked of the love of material possessions as the problem, not the possessions themselves. He himself accepted invitations to a good meal, even a banquet, when he had the opportunity. However, it was the community which was important, not the trappings.

Best to avoid major debt or excessive yearning after things, but enjoyment from honest toil, is not forbidden. One of our lifelong tasks is to find the balance between enjoying our material blessings and using them to advance the larger community, including the vulnerable and the have-nots. One way or another, we will lose our physical possessions, if not at the present time, then when we leave this life. They are on loan to us, and I believe we will one day be called to account as to how we used the loan.

Email in the Afternoon

 

The Internet entices like a box of delicate chocolates. Once you start, you don’t want to stop.

Our ancestors managed without checking the next six hours of weather every three hours, or following Britney Spears or Lady Gaga’s latest doings, or watching cute videos on YouTube. Do I even need to journey several hours through more serious stuff: the current Washington debacle, the latest on North Korea, or the most recent crisis in the Middle East? The Internet has a tendency to suck you in forever because it is limitless. If not managed, it leaves no time for real life.

A while back, I noticed the time I spent checking email, Twitter, Facebook, and the news. I decided to wait until afternoon and limit myself to less than an hour. In the evening, when I’m less productive, I allow myself to explore, for an hour or so, the unlimited links of the Internet world. Even so, I must guard against the monster gobbling up my reading time.

VORTEXMy life is more productive and more fulfilled after I snatched it back from the vortex. It’s my life. It doesn’t belong to unfettered digital wanderings any more than it belongs to drugs or other addictions.

I can exercise on my stationary bike and read my print newspaper and actually finish it. It doesn’t have a hundred links that tempt me to wander forever down the halls of the Internet.

Like other virtues with a potential to morph into vices, the Internet is a wonderful servant and a terrible master.

 

Meteors, iPads, and Neighbors

 

My neighbor calls. “Are you all right?” she asks.

“As far as I know,” I reply. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, it’s ten in the morning, and your back light is still on.”

I laugh. “We’re fine. Ben got into the news on his iPad, and we haven’t been down for the paper yet.”

I hang up. Comforting to know, in a age when images of a meter falling to the ground in Russia are instantly beamed to our iPads, that folks still keep track of a neighbor’s porch light.