Category Archives: Journal

The Danger of Daydreams

Be careful what you dream about, what you wish for.

Once I had a good job as a computer programmer with a large company. The company reimbursed its employees for courses taken toward a college degree. What an opportunity, I thought, to advance my career. The career bored me, but perhaps advancement toward a higher position would vanquish the boredom.

Probably the company had in mind that those studying for degrees would earn them in computer science or business. I dutifully checked out computer and business courses in a local university catalog. Then I made a mistake.

What would I study if I studied what I really wanted to? It seemed innocent enough, thumbing through that catalog. I stopped at the section on geography and examined the courses—maps, other countries and cultures, and the ways different peoples on the globe interact. Before I knew it, temptation sucked me in.

When school began, I enrolled to earn a master’s degree in geography.

“Why are you studying that? What are you going to do with it?” people asked me.

“I don’t know what I’ll do with it. I just like it.”

After the school awarded me my degree, I flipped through a newspaper one day. A career columnist wrote about something called the U. S Foreign Service. The Foreign Service, I learned, was the name of the diplomatic corps of the State Department, the diplomats who serve in embassies and consulates all over the world.

A long shot. But, hey, I can dream, can’t I? So I applied, filled out reams of forms, took the exams, and met other requirements. (The State Department now has a website, making the process easier)

Somehow, (God was in it, I believe) I ended up as a consular officer in the U.S. Foreign Service, serving in places I’d only dreamed of visiting. And changing jobs and countries before I got bored. And continuing to learn in language courses and country studies. And witnessing some momentous events in history. I went to areas of the world I had prepared for without knowing it by studying those areas in my geography classes.

That dreaming’ll get you in trouble. Your heart may take over.

 

Creation of a Villain

Not long ago I entered the “Clash of the Titles,” a contest which matches passages from recent novels to determine the best fictional devices. Events have ranged from the best romantic scene to the best hook to pull readers into the novel. My particular contest called for the best “character description of an antagonist.”

I quoted a passage about Antun, the antagonist from my novel Singing in Babylon. In explaining how Antun developed in the story, I said he wasn’t anyone I actually knew but someone I would both fear and loathe.

Yet, as Antun’s character grows in the story, we learn that his brother was mistreated and killed a few years before. Antun lived to exact revenge. Like many “villains,” he had suffered a wrong. What made Antun a villain and not a hero is that he chose to react to the wrong by committing more wrongs.

As Jesus indicated in the Sermon on the Mount, to treat someone well who treats you well is no great feat.To overcome hurt, even to love the one who does ill to you is the badge of only a few and exemplifies what Jesus both taught and lived out.

 

Logic and Feeding Multitudes

We can’t even predict the weather accurately beyond a few days. The logical world we know as manageable by our current knowledge—math, physics, and so on—represents only a tiny part of the universe, according to something called chaos theory.

But chaos, so I understand, is not really chaos. It’s part of an order we don’t yet understand, like how to predict the weather.

That’s the way I look at Jesus’ teachings. They sometimes seem against our known wisdom. Giving up to have. Serving instead of accumulating. Putting our trust in what we cannot see rather than in this world’s material objects.

I see Jesus’ miracles in a new way, like the feeding of the five thousand. The disciples studied the crowd and wondered how they were going to feed the people, far from homes and fast food restaurants.

Jesus asked them what they should do.

They answered within the context of the world they knew. The money they had wouldn’t buy what they needed, even if they could find something to buy. They had the lunch a small boy had offered, but how ridiculous to think that could do anything.

Jesus had something else in mind. No one went away hungry.

Surely God knows of powers and systems, of universes and infinities for which we have no inkling.

 

Easter and a Novel

I knew it can’t be scientifically proven, but when Easter arrives later in the year, spring also seems to arrive later. So it is this year. Wasn’t it almost a month ago that bumps appeared on the apple tree limbs below my window? Yet they still have not budded, let alone blossomed.

But God, I trust, is there, in the growing, there in the waiting, which seems forever. A hard winter in some respects, or at least a long one. Lots of rain, more snow than the island’s usual vanishing trace.

Our church’s Lenten writer reminded us today of journeys into the unknown, like the Israelites in Exodus.We enter into the unknown and try to do the things we did before to overcome it, as some Israelites did in the wilderness—working more, going out on their day of rest to harvest manna and finding none. Instead, perhaps the waiting calls for more resting and pondering, less activity.

I have an idea for a story. I find it cannot be forced. Like this season, it comes in its own time.

 

Faith in a Time of Starvation

The life of faith, one of our church writers says in a Lenten devotional, is not for the timid. She discusses the seventh chapter of Luke’s gospel. In this passage, Jesus was astounded at the faith of a Roman commander. Across a chasm of cultural rank and religion, this soldier had faith that Jesus could heal someone he cared for.

God’s creation seems to be rebelling: volcanos halt our flying machines for days. Earthquakes demolish both struggling and developed nations with massive loss of life. Floods in Pakistan, droughts in Russia, unusual levels of snow in the U.S., all reveal our insignificance before such upheavals.

The fuel we pump from the earth has not been without cost: the Gulf Coast knew despair as a spill poured the black liquid for weeks on fishing grounds and beaches before it was halted.

The home, our supposedly one safe investment, triggered a huge recession when abuses led to collapse.

Rebellions take place in countries that supposedly would never have them. Will they lead to democratic governments or more terrorism? We don’t know.

I have often returned to a few verses in the Bible from one of the “minor” prophets, Habakkuk:

“Though the fig tree do not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.” (RSV)

Faith in a time of starvation, physical or spiritual, gives courage that sustains and transforms.

 

Thoughts on Japan

So what’s the lesson for us in the horrible tragedy that shook Japan (literally and figuratively )? For me it’s the negation of the idea that life is always upwardly progressive, both personally and nationally.

Who goes through life without problems? Death of a loved one, a debilitating illness or handicap, or a job loss may afflict us quite suddenly. In Japan in a few seconds, the lives of multitudes, including whole families, were wiped out.

Of all people, however, Christians have the resources to deal with these traumas, nor should we act surprised when they happen. Read Jesus’s story in the gospels. It includes torture, crucifixion, and death. But it ends in resurrection and life.

The Christian call is not to a trouble-free life. Yes, we know times when God answers miraculously. But we are not always healed. We may suffer traumatic experiences. Physically, we all die. The best marriage in the world will end.

Yet Jesus, in the midst of a life far from the glory he knew since the beginning with the Father, enjoyed life. He knew what was coming, but he still attended gatherings and feasts. He never condemned having a good time with friends.

Jesus knew how to separate the transient, both joys and sorrows, from the eternal life and triumph that we are made for.

 

Out of Our Comfort Zone

In my current Pacific Northwest home, many do not view Christianity with the favor it enjoyed in my earlier life in the American South. Indeed, the religious landscape has changed everywhere. Judaeo-Christian beliefs are no longer taken for granted. In addition, I landed here through a circuitous route that included several years in Muslim-majority countries.

As might be expected, the journey tested my beliefs and gave me new insights. The process, however, strengthened core beliefs, bolstered by the agape love modeled by Jesus.

Perhaps my journey mirrors the journey of Christianity in America. We Christians were once favored; now we have to earn that favor. We have to compete with other views. Our Christian convictions must stand on their own merit.

In the long run, such a process may strengthen our faith.

 

Visas and Stereotypes

For a time in my life, I was a U.S. Foreign Service officer and interviewed foreigners from a North African country applying for temporary visas to visit the United States. Since the country at the time was in a period of instability (and still is), many of those being interviewed saw a “temporary” visa to Europe or the U.S. as a path to a better life. Go “temporarily” and then remain, illegally if necessary.

As one who knows many blessings, I approached my job with humility. How could I not sympathize with the applicants and their problems? However, U.S. law required me to give temporary visas only to temporary visitors. The rules for permanent residence were more stringent, requiring sufficient family or employer support, among other requirements.

I had to refuse many, including one man who evidenced little reason to leave the U.S. if he were given a visa. Shortly after the refusal, the man’s relative living in the U.S. called to complain. As we talked, I tried to assure him that I had given the applicant a fair hearing, but that U.S. law forbade me to issue in this case. The caller’s parting shot at me was that since I had a Southern accent, I must be prejudiced against his relative.

I thought it ironic that he himself prejudged me. His idea, I suppose, is that if some Southerners are prejudiced, all Southerners are prejudiced, presumably against—well, against anyone not a native-born American, I suppose. Ironic also because, in another function of my job, I awarded immigrant visas to those of his nationality which allowed them to live legally and permanently in the United States. The difference did not concern origin but whether or not the applicant met the required legal standards.

The heart of prejudice is the attitude that assigns a stereotype to an individual because of his or her accent or nationality or color or political preference or whatever. The list is long. How much better if we remove the filters of group and relate as one individual to another.

 

Memories of Bahrain

The unrest in the Middle East has spread to the small multi-island country of Bahrain, off the east coast of Saudi Arabia and connected to it by a causeway. My husband and I were married in Bahrain in a Christian church.

We met in Saudi Arabia the year before through a mutual friend at the U.S. consulate where I was assigned by the U.S. State Department. My future husband, a fellow American expatriate, worked for an airline. Our whirlwind courtship included weekend runs in the desert with other expatriates. Or rather, he ran. I walked with the slower group over the goat trails wending through the rocky terrain.

When the courtship led to engagement, we decided to fly to Bahrain to be married, since no church existed in Saudi Arabia to marry us. We took our vows before an Egyptian pastor in a Christian mission begun in the 1800’s. We spent our honeymoon in the (then) relaxed atmosphere of the tiny island nation beside the Persian/Arabian Gulf.

I have a book spread before me, one of those coffee table types, that we bought then. One of its many photos illustrates Pearl Square, where the demonstrators now gather.

 

Wilderness Wanderings

Wilderness is a popular theme in stories of great leaders. Abraham Lincoln came out of the wilderness to usher the United States through the Civil War. George Washington suffered in Valley Forge before eventually bringing American troops to success . Winston Churchill knew his wilderness years when he lost political power for a decade before emerging to guide Britain to victory in World War II.

Jesus is no exception. After all, he was afflicted like one of us. After the blinding glory of his baptism, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness. Who hasn’t known wilderness days, sometimes years? Christian leaders like Charles Spurgeon and Amy Carmichael struggled with depression and illness over long periods.

What are these seemingly fruitless periods so many of us experience? We may ask the age-old question, where is God?

Jesus heard that his friend Lazarus was sick (New Testament, John 11), and we would expect him to rush off to heal his friend. After all Jesus healed in an instant others who came to him with illnesses. But though John tells us that Jesus loved Lazarus and his sisters, he stayed where he was for two days before finally traveling to the family and ministering to them. He loved them, but he stayed.
Oswald Chambers, in his classic My Utmost for His Highest, uses this passage to talk of God’s silence. The silence, Chambers says, is something God trusts us with. We receive no audible answer; perhaps we are in a wilderness of sorts and—nothing. Chambers suggests that the first sign of God’s intimacy may be his silence.

His silence isn’t a lack of love, but a tough love that trusts us.

 

Tide Tables and Moral Choices

I learn from my beach walks why we moderns so often forget God. We are not many of us farmers or fishers anymore. Our lives and livelihoods are no longer directly bound to sun and rain, weather and seasons, tides and storms—forces we cannot control.

When we are hungry, we buy food at the grocery store; when we want light, we flip a switch; when we want clothes, we shop at the mall. The temporary abundance of the industrialized world has deluded us into believing we are in control and can do as we want.

Before I stroll on the beach, I should consult a tide table. Otherwise I risk, if not actually drowning, a slippery climb up crumbling bluffs to escape rising water. For the tide, as the saying goes, waits for no one. And therein lies its fascination. No matter how the times of the tides inconvenience us, we must abide by their immutable goings and comings.

Consequences of moral choices may not intrude so abruptly as consequences of physical ones. The effects of moral choices can be subtle, over years of tide turnings. For decades we chose bigger cars, bigger houses, mindless entertainment, and instant relationships. Then one day we realize gas is no longer affordable, the house is being foreclosed, world events that we have ignored threaten our country, and the problems of our neglected children overwhelm us.

In my beach wanderings I consider the lessons of history, biblical admonitions, my own choices and consequences over a lifetime. I ponder and am convinced that God’s moral laws are as sure as the running and turning of the tide.

 

Memories of Tunisia

I lived in Tunisia, the small North African nation now in the news for its civil unrest, from 1997 to 2000. I served at the U.S. embassy in Tunis, the capital city. At that time, a tour there was an enjoyable assignment for U.S Foreign Service officers choosing the sometimes unsettled Middle East.

Young women dressed in the latest Paris fashions. I don’t recall any of them wearing a head scarf. Many were students in Tunisian universities. Our friends and family from the States visited us for trips to the Sahara and to stroll the nearby ancient city of Carthage. We took them to see the desert movie setting for the original Star Wars films. We boarded the train in downtown Tunis for the short ride to Carthage and a visit to the cemetery for American military personnel killed in Tunisia during Second World War campaigns against the Nazis.

The embassy during my assignment was located in downtown Tunis. On weekends, I would drive to the Embassy and park, then walk from there into the old city to worship in a centuries-old Christian church. The walk took me past a Muslim mosque and a Jewish synagogue. The Jewish settlement in Tunisia was ancient; some said it began with refugees from the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 605 B.C.

During the week, work load permitting, I enjoyed riding the bus from my home to work. Once in a while, for exercise, I walked all the way. We ate in local restaurants and visited ancient ruins scattered throughout the country. Tunisia at that time was perceived as a stable, progressive country, its beaches a destination for tourists from Germany and other countries. Golfers played on the links in Tunisia’s mostly sunny weather.

Now the tourists are being evacuated. The U.S. embassy moved to a newer facility in a safer location out from Tunis after the terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in east Africa. I notice from news pictures that some of the women appear to be wearing head scarves. The train station where my friends and I took the train was burned by rioters. The Tunisian president fled to Saudi Arabia.

What happened? Why the sudden changes?

Unemployment and economic needs are cited as reasons. However, more than the economy is involved. Hard economic times can be endured if all perceive the suffering as shared. In Tunisia, for years, as average citizens struggled for decent jobs, the country’s rulers lived in luxury and used their power to grab wealth in corrupt business deals.

In the over half a century since Tunisia gained its independence from France, the country has had only two presidents, the last, Ben Ali, seizing power in a bloodless coup. Only one political party was allowed to rule, jailing and sometimes torturing any perceived opposition. Now the country has need of leaders not tainted by the old regime, but few have had experience in governing a country or understanding the democratic process.

How much better if those in power govern justly, not using their positions for their own gain, but understanding their responsibility to serve. Best if they rule in humility, allowing others to participate, realizing that no single group is all-wise. Both the political system and the economic one should be perceived as fair.

 

Lessons From Ignorance

When I was about three or so, I thought little people lived inside the radio that grownups listened to and made the voices that I heard from there. At that age, I had no capacity to understand radio transmission waves. Little people inside a radio seemed reasonable based on my knowledge that people made voices.

Perhaps that is why, today, I suspect that all our theories and discoveries and knowledge are akin to those of a three-year-old trying to understand how people speak through a radio. God gave us brains and the ability to explore with our minds. To do so surely is one of our joys. We should advance our ideas, however, with much humility. Whatever ideas we advance are finite explanations dealing with the infinite.

The only thing I’m certain of is the value of what the Greeks called agape love. Jesus the Christ, whose birth we just celebrated, modeled this love. It values another as one values oneself.

One can’t have agape love if one doesn’t love oneself. Do remember, Jesus didn’t want to die. Not for him the self-loathing of suicide bombers or those whose rage leads them to murder fellow workers or strangers in a crowded restaurant or school children. His death was for others, out of love.

Jesus loved life. He turned water into wine so a marriage feast might progress. He spoke of his Father’s kingdom with metaphors of feasting and banquets.

Jesus knew the Father’s love and could love himself and know himself of worth and carry out the purpose God had for him. It seems to me that’s the pattern laid out for us: somebody loves us—God, if we will accept it. When we realize that we are of value, we can love ourselves, then love God, then those around us, and, if we allow God’s love to grow in us, even our enemies.

 

Called TO as well as FROM

Jesus came, not only to call us FROM our sins but TO a new life of purpose, meaning, direction.

Whether from the lure of drugs or prostitution or from the entanglements of anger or envy, Jesus calls us away from them, surely, but he gives us new tasks.

Releasing the exploited from the grip of the exploiters is not enough. Many revolts against despotic regimes flounder once the despots are gone. Too often the liberators become the new despots.

To simply “free” people is not enough; they become like the person in Jesus’ parable who was freed of unclean spirits only to have other spirits take over in the vacuum left by the departing evil. We need nurture as well as salvation, to discover, in community, our particular gifts and talents, a lifelong journey.

 

Why I Don’t Go All Out For Christmas

I spent my first Christmas away from my family when my job took me to an assignment in a foreign country, beginning in early December. Christians were a hidden minority. They didn’t worship openly, but I found a house church.

Our celebration of Christmas was probably nearer the first Christmas than the ones I celebrated as I was growing up. Certainly the scenery resembled the first one. Nobody dragged around Christmas trees or watched movies about a white Christmas or Rudolph or Frosty the Snowman. This scenery included desert scrub and flocks of sheep and even camels if you ventured far enough away from the city.

A British couple invited me to Christmas dinner. I learned about those party favors that you pull apart to make a snap sound. I don’t remember what we had to eat, but it probably wasn’t a turkey, and ham was forbidden in that country. Mainly, I enjoyed the fellowship with new friends who shared my beliefs about the reason for Christmas.

The next year I asked for leave during the Christmas holidays and traveled to the U.S. to spend the season with my family. I couldn’t wait to attend a real Christmas Eve service with carols and a real choir and evergreens and children dressed in bathrobes and all the other trappings of my religion at Christmas.

Being with my family was wonderful, but I was disappointed when I didn’t receive the high I was expecting from the service. It was nice, but I guess I’d built myself up for it too much.

In the years ahead, I spent other Christmases in lands that didn’t officially celebrate the holiday, where, for the local folk, it was just another work day. Forget open Yuletide decorating—not advised because it might offend. I chose gifts from catalogs and let Amazon or Lands’ End send them to family members. No rushing around crowded malls to become jaded by hearing Jingle Bells for the 1,000th time. Instead, I remember a carol sing in a private home and a clandestine Christmas concert.

Today, back home, I just can’t get into the swing of the normal Christmas. I keep remembering celebrations of simple gatherings to fellowship and remember Christ’s birth.

 

Creators and Free Will

Who hasn’t pondered why God, if he is good, allows evil? We, desiring justice, want God to intervene when injustice happens. Our innate wish for good, C. S. Lewis said, and our belief that evil should not triumph is one argument for the existence of God.

Nevertheless, the question remains, why?

As a writer, I have some thoughts.

An idea comes to me. Out of the idea, I create a story. I create characters to populate the story. And then the characters act according to their natures. I have created them, but having done so, I must let them act according to who they are. They are separate from me.

As many writers will tell you, characters take off and do things you did not intend them to do, things you don’t want them to do. Eventually, you finish writing the story, leading to the ends you desire. Sometimes you must bring in other characters that weren’t in the original story to get to the end, or other plots, or other insights—but eventually you, the creator, end the story.

This illustration is merely that, an illustration. I do think, though, that God, having created us, must give us the freedom to act, else it’s not a story. And God has created a story of sorts, with us as characters who have the freedom to be sub creators and choose our own story.

But, I believe, the story is God’s. He will lead it to the end he desires. We may decide to choose to be a part of the end God is leading toward, or not. We are free to choose.

 

God’s On Our Side, Right? Well, Maybe Not.

The question for the TV panel, a collection of famous Americans, including one religious leader, was: “Whose side is God on if the different religions all say God is on their side?”

The panel members stumbled to answer, but I think the question is invalid because it assumes we have a “side” and God comes at our beck and call to join us.

The question, it seems to me, should be “Who is on God’s side?”

We don’t set up our own little worlds and invite God to bless them. It’s God who sets up the universe and we either choose or don’t choose to go along with his way of doing things.

So what is his way of doing things?

As a Christian, I’d say we’re headed in the right direction if we judge a society by how well it takes care of the widow and the orphan, that is, those on the margins, those with little power.

Amos is one of many prophets of the Old Testament who castigate a society where the rich loll in luxury and slant the rules their way so the poor don’t have a chance.

Jesus appears to be concerned about the vulnerable as well. Remember his story of the rich man and the poor beggar, Lazarus? The rich man ignored Lazarus’ needs and was condemned for it.

Another rich man thought only of building bigger barns to store his wealth. God called him a fool.

In Jesus’ parable of the last judgement, justice is meted out on the basis of whether one
has fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, given clothes to the naked, and visited the sick and imprisoned.

I see nothing wrong with material success for work well done, for new ideas and entrepreneurship.  But what do you do with your wealth? Is it just the wealth and what it can buy, ad infinitum? Once you have food, clothing, shelter, and a few toys for fun (nothing wrong with an occasional banquet), why more? Warren Buffett and Bill Gates (senior and junior) have the right idea, I think. Once you reach a certain level, use the wealth for the good of society, for our fellow creatures.

How well do we take care of the vulnerable, those with little power? If we’re concerned that our society be on God’s side, that’s a good place to start.