Category Archives: Journal

Choosing the Imperfect

An interviewer for The Sun asked the writer, Jack Miles: “By signing up for an organized faith, am I not rejecting other religious truths?”

Miles answered, “Well, any choice limits us. You can’t practice religion in general; you have to practice one religion. You can’t marry all women or all men; you have to marry one person. OK, you might be a bigamist, but there are limits. And where there are limits, there are choices.”

We choose between imperfect candidates in an election, but we have to finally vote. Not to vote is to scorn the precious right to collectively choose our leaders.

We choose a faith for the sake of meaning and purpose and direction in our lives. We choose between admittedly imperfect and incomplete choices, for none of us has perfect knowledge, but even choosing to be an atheist is a faith choice.

To choose is not, or should not, be the denigration of what is not chosen. The fact that we are fallible human beings means we honor the different choices of others.

But we have need of spiritual choices so as not to waste our precious lives in aimlessness.

Sabbaths

I was raised in a church-going family—every Sunday, rain or shine, we attended at least two gatherings of our church. We made friends there. As a young person, I spent the greater part of my social life within its activities.

I’m aware that Sunday is no longer part of public consciousness as before, even if one was an atheist. Friday, Saturday, Sunday or whatever holy day the religious favor, all of us more often choose to use that day for other pursuits. We ignore both the larger community and thoughtful contemplation.

But we don’t just forget to rest one day a week—whether sacred or secular resting. We go full stop all seven days of the week. Our stores are open every day.

If religion sometimes led to bigotry and persecution, the secular alternatives are no better. Capitalism can be an efficient way to order our economic activities. When it becomes our god and our religion, it corrupts us. A country ruled by a capitalist cabal, divided into haves and have-nots, is just as harmful as a state ruled by religious fanatics.

The early Hebrews were enjoined not only to keep one day a week for rest and worship but also to proclaim a Year of Jubilee every 49 years. Family property, sold to strangers, now would be given back to the original family. We might call the system compassionate capitalism., capitalism with limits.

Neither Sabbath nor Jubilee was kept as intended.

When the Hebrews finally were carried off into exile, their prophets told them to consider those years of exile as the Sabbaths and the Jubilees they had neglected to keep.

Perhaps those recently passed days when we were kept by Covid from many of our communal activities were a kind of forced rest.

Is Secularism Necessary to Keep the Religious From Killing Each Other?

Did the rise of secularism in the West finally end Europe’s religious wars of the 1600’s?

Today we in democratic nations rejoice when Middle Eastern nations become more secular. Secularism encourages more religious freedom. A strong middle class may develop, influenced by material wealth rather than religious dogma. Nations with secularist trends are not likely to fight religious wars.

On the other hand, secular nations also have produced wars and brutality, as in the First and Second World Wars.

Religion is not necessary for evil to flourish. The desire to eliminate those we don’t like or to make them second class citizens so we can grab their wealth and cheap labor is embedded in our DNA.

The problem with religion is the problem with whatever humans touch. Religion can become a weapon, but so can national pride (Germany in the first half of the twentieth century) or desire for wealth (the invasion of Africa by European nations).

In addition, politicians can manipulate believers through granting special favor to one particular religion. Religious leaders may be tempted to use the power of the state to advance their beliefs, even to force them on others.

The United States was founded as one of the most secular nations in the world. To the astonishment of Europe and its state churches, religion flourished in the former colony.

Unfortunately, as Christianity became more influential, the old temptation to use it for power asserted itself. Though some political leaders certainly practiced a sincere religion, others less honest began to play the religious card to get elected.

Better to earn converts the old-fashioned way. Forget using the government as a tool to bolster your personal religious beliefs. Live your religion so people find it attractive.

Searching for “thou”

Somewhere along the language path, English lost thou. That is, we who speak English lost the way to speak to an individual in the second person singular.

We can follow this change in our English versions of the Christian Bible. Early versions, such as the King James version, differentiate between a singular and plural version of “you.” The KJV quotes one of Jesus’ early disciples saying of Jesus: “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God . . ..” The Revised Standard, however, records: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God . . ..” Our modern English no longer differentiates between a familiar you (one person) and a plural you (more than one person.)

Various segments of the English speaking world have ways to mark that plural “you.” In my native Tennessee, I learned to say “you all” if I was addressing more than one person (or the contracted word “y’all.”) To this day, I stumble if I’m addressing more than one person. I may say something like “you folks” to avoid using a simple you to address more than one person. It just doesn’t sound right to me.

I’m more concerned, however, with our growing inability to communicate effectively within our politics. Some of it is regional, divided up into interests according to the general views of where we live: east coast, west coast, Midwest, south, plains, and so on.

Immigration is particularly divisive: how many and where from. We also have different views depending on our political backgrounds, academic standing, economic class, etc.

The idea of people, and not an elite class, ruling a country is, taking in the long sweep of history, still a new invention. Hope comes from insuring that the next free and fair election is guaranteed.

That includes reasonable discussion, dissenting from a majority if one is led that way, and, especially, regard for someone to say that with which I disagree.

Thus, I give thee permission to peaceably disagree with me.

Perfection Never Arrives; Better to Look for Wisdom

Waiting for perfection is like the dilemma pictured in Waiting for Godot. Perfection never arrives, like the never–arriving title character in the play.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said, “The insistence on absolutes . . . is a prescription of inaction.”

Waiting for a perfect time to act may mean we miss the best time to act, a time which may never come again. Instead of perfection, better to look for wisdom. Wise leaders who know history can better lead in those imperfect times. Yet, Kissinger complained, we tend to prefer “charismatic leaders over crafty statesmen.”

To prefer charismatic leaders encourages politicians to choose a Hitler, as happened in Germany during the 1930’s. Blaming problems on the threat to a mythical “Aryan” race and espousing a desire for a kind of golden age, led to concentration camps for Jews, confessing Christians, the handicapped, and others considered enemies of this new order.

A perfect leader is a myth. Instead, choose the wisest imperfect leader.

Do I Really Want to Grow Old?

“Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith “A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!”
–Robert Browning
“Rabbi Ben Ezra”

As one now experiencing growing old, I reread the Browning poem. Should I look forward to old age as he appeared to do? What kind of old age am I likely to have?

My mother’s side of the family exemplified the optimism expressed by the poet. They often lived into their 90’s, typically in good physical and mental health, and also, because of real estate investments in a growing California, with adequate income. My mother spent some of her teen years with them, but returned to Nashville to her birth family to finish high school, eventually marrying my father. She died in her mid nineties, in generally good mental and physical health.

My father’s family members tended to die at younger ages, more often belonging to the working poor, with less access to medical services. My father died suddenly at age 53 of heart problems.

Perhaps I have been the inheritor of my mother’s optimism and my father’s health. No, thankfully, I don’t, so far, have heart problems. I have, however, been given to understand that I can’t be guaranteed that my mental health will be like hers. Indeed, so recent tests indicate, I already am experiencing present memory problems.

Obviously, this discovery is not good news. What do I do with it?

Thankfully, I am, so far, still able to enjoy the activities I’ve always enjoyed: reading, writing stories, walking, church activities, family meals.

I’m a Jesus follower, so I check with how He might lead in a situation like this. He died young, so I don’t have examples of how His actually living in old age would be.

Somebody once asked Jesus what the greatest commandment is. His answer: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:37-40.)

How do I do that? Perhaps I begin with developing that inner spiritual life: private time with God, public worship and study with others who seek to grow in His ways.

Then? Serving others? To answer that, I come back to doing what I have done since I made up stories as a three-year-old. Writing stories for others, as much as I’m given time and ability to do this.

Perhaps that will do as a beginning. We’ll see where God leads while I’m able to serve.

The Neighbor Parable

Story telling is an ancient art. Aesop told parables in long-ago Greece. Various ancient tribes passed down stories around the campfire. For centuries, parents and teachers have encouraged virtues with stories based on moral teachings.

No wonder Jesus taught with parables, a time-honored way to make a point.

A listener once asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus replied that he must first love God with all his heart and secondly love his neighbor as he loved himself.

“And who is my neighbor?” The listener asked.

Jesus then responded with the story about the man known as “The Good Samaritan.” An unfortunate traveler, after an attack by thieves, languished in need of care to save his life. A couple of pillars of the religious and political communities ignored him, passing by and leaving him. He was finally saved by a member of a minority group.

Jesus’ story made several points, of course, as effective parables often do. Those with power and resources sometimes choose to ignore those in need, caught up with growing their own bank accounts, not caring enough to share their resources with those we term “the less fortunate.”

Those in need surely would include children who don’t have enough to eat or proper medical care or adequate education. They would include many adults who work in jobs without health insurance. And surely, if we are to follow Jesus’ example of helping, we would include those who have made poor choices with their lives and end up homeless on our public streets.

Public funds should be adequately monitored to prevent fraud, of course. That anyone in our rich nation lacks food, medical care, and basic housing, however, surely puts us in the category of those who passed by the man who fell among thieves.

It may require tough love for those who have made poor choices—perhaps having them choose between supervision or entering a treatment program after too many public drug offenses. Or perhaps we may find better ways to offer treatment.

The fact that solutions are not easy does not prevent us from tackling the problems. We are called to do so.

The Great Divide: What Money Can Buy

Someone has suggested that what encourages inequality is not money itself but what money can buy.

They weren’t thinking of material possessions—classy houses or cars or clothes. They meant the non-material possessions—a good education, time to parent one’s children, health care.

My mother worked as an elementary school secretary, home for my brother and me in the afternoons. My father sold insurance and made an adequate income but was more interested in family and community.

Our neighborhood was fairly diverse, including both working and middle classes. The high level of community spirit infused the schools. Motivated teachers generally were caring and academically qualified to start us on the road to learning.

My parents also raised my brother and me with a sense of right and wrong, within their own loving relationship. They provided us a college education, less expensive than today. Our health needs were within my parents’ modest income to provide: regular checkups, medicine if we were ill.

Shouldn’t all parents be able to make a decent living with time to raise their children? And shouldn’t all our children have access to quality education and adequate healthcare? Should we be against public money being spent to insure these blessings to all our children?

It’s in our own interests to do so. These gifts enable children to give back to society when they reach adulthood, not simply struggle to survive or make choices harmful to them and those around them.

Getting What We Deserve

We tend to subscribe to the idea of good things going to those who deserve them. People who earn high salaries should earn them. People who receive charity should be the “deserving poor,” in need only because of a bit of bad luck. Politicians who win elections should be the best qualified.

We know, of course, that it doesn’t always work that way, but we want the rules to favor the deserving as much as we can make them do so.

Many of us, however, did not earn a good many of our blessings.

I did not choose my parents, who loved each other as well as their children, and worked hard to buy and maintain a home for us. That home, wonderful for the love in it, also eventually provided, when it was sold, the financial help my brother and I needed to start toward home ownership ourselves. Even more important, of course, were the good habits instilled by our parents in terms of managing money.

The idea of “no free lunch” has merit in that we should earn our own way, not be dependent on handouts we didn’t work for. However, should little children, having no part of their parents’ lifestyle choices, not have enough to eat or a safe home because of choices they had no part of?

I don’t suppose I have a definite answer to the question of how financial blessings should follow at least some baseline rules, yet that all those who cannot take care of themselves be taken care of.

However, we could ensure that no powerless person is unable to meet basic needs, be they children, adults with physical or mental conditions they had no part in causing, or those struck by momentous events they did not cause.

Jesus Christ did not seem concerned about how deserving were the people he ministered to. Jesus once called a man back to life simply in pity for the man’s bereft mother, a widow. He also healed a Roman centurion’s beloved servant, even though the Romans were overlords of Jesus’ people. Once, on the way to heal a religious official’s little daughter, he stopped to assure healing to a sick woman accidentally placed in his way.

And, as another example, our public school systems are ones we generally desire, without thinking about it, to benefit all children, those of the undeserving as well as the deserving.
The idea is not to sanction public money ripped off by the undeserving. It is, as much as possible, to see that a country as blessed as is this one, will provide all with certain minimum care and possibilities.

And we can all support private groups, including our religious communities, known for providing hope and care to “the less fortunate.”

Early and Late Bloomers

In the play 1776 (later made into a movie), John Adams and Ben Franklin visit Thomas Jefferson, who is struggling to compose a declaration of independence for the proposed new nation. Adams and Franklin inspect the writing.

“This is awful, Tom,” one of them says. He reads a part of it. It sounds like something a grade school child might compose. Eventually, after Jefferson spends time with his wife, whom he has missed terribly in Philadelphia, he writes the Declaration of Independence that we know today.

Sometimes my writing reads like this fictional Jefferson’s first efforts with the Declaration. Really awful. About as able to move the reader as a nursery rhyme. No, a nursery rhyme is better.

I hate the first writing of a novel. It’s forced, and I don’t know what I’m doing.

I love editing and rewriting. That when I experience the high of writing that moves me. I begin to know what it’s about.

This understanding applies to other parts of our lives as well, and not only for writers. Some of us run well right out of the gate. Others of us have to prod ourselves to keep going until, finally, we find our pace and our joy.

Why Me, Lord? (Kris Kristofferson)

Sometimes when the world seems to have reached a new level of desperation, I’m comforted by certain remembrances of my childhood. (I realize I’m fortunate in having those memories.)

When I was a small child, country music (maybe you call it folk music or something else) was a part of my life. I lived in a working class eastern suburb of Nashville, Tennessee. At the time, this kind of music was mostly followed by that same American kind of working class. The Grand Ole Opry was in Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on Saturday nights in downtown Nashville, a long time before its modern version in the Opryland amusement park. I attended this older version a few times, often to take visiting kinfolk, hungry for the South they had left for jobs on the West Coast.

A few of the stars on the Opry lived in our modest neighborhood, at least one within walking distance of our house. We thought of country music as a part of our ordinary culture.

So when the world’s and this nation’s troubles seem to overwhelm, I can sometimes find comfort in listening to that country music, either in older or newer versions.

Take Kris Kristofferson’s Why Me, Lord? One version is copied below. (Apologies if it’s preceded by an advertisement I couldn’t take out.) (Also that you may need earphones.

 

Reading the Comics

Every Sunday morning a half hour or so before my husband and I leave for church, I wander down our walkway to the newspaper box next to the street. I grab the paper and begin scanning the headlines on the way back to the house. Later in the afternoon after church, I enjoy a leisurely newspaper read, including, of course, the comic strips.

During the week, I read a couple of newspapers on the web. I prefer traditional newspapers because I trust them more. It’s easier to sue newspapers for libel than some incognito writer of a wild story on the internet.

No doubt my majoring in print journalism many years ago in college contributes to my favoritism for traditional newspapers. One of two print newspapers in my city at the time actually hired me as a summer reporter (the Nashville Banner.) I began on the “obit” circuit: calling funeral homes to check on which Nashvillians had died during the week, whose passing should be noted in print. After a while, I graduated to interviewing citizens for human interest stories. My final summer on the paper, the editor let me cover a religious convention convening in the city.

Alas, I never became the journalist I had intended. However, I credit my newspaper experience with the regard for the truth pushed by that rough city editor under whom I worked.

What will the internet do for truthful reporting? I don’t know. However, we adjusted (sometimes after harming innocent groups, it will be admitted) to the rise of newspapers. They performed valuable service to the rough democracies rising in the western world. Mobs and political machines learned to fear the written word.

The trick today is sorting the wheat from the chaff, finding reputable news sources. Print newspapers are a good place to start.

 

Two Flags and a Bible

In my childhood summers, we enjoyed swimming and playing games and freedom from the routines of school. In my particular church, “vacation Bible school” was also one of the summer’s activities. The sessions included Bible stories but also fictional stories to illustrate themes and morals. We had crafts and games, as well as refreshment time, always a favorite. Basically, my memories of those times were pleasant.

The beginning activity was gathering and marching into the auditorium behind two flags (Christian and American) and a Bible. We pledged allegiance to all three. It was a time of Cold War animosities, of Europe threatened with communist takeover. We knew the Soviets as enemies of Christianity. Easy to place America as right up there with church and Bible. After all, persecution of the church was real in some Soviet aligned countries.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more careful about where I place my country. That country has always been important to my family; many close relatives served in the armed forces, including my brother. Yet, my country, much as I love it, is not Christianity.

I think Christians have always been called to be good citizens of the countries in which they live, as was the early missionary, Paul, calling on his Roman citizenship to alleviate persecution.

However, serving country is not the same as serving God. America is not God. The temptation to worship other than God is a constant danger for Christians. America, however, is not a “Christian” nation. We revere our founding fathers and mothers, but some of them owned slaves. Some treated their workers poorly. Yet, one of the blessings of America is that we can change when confronted with wrong ways of doing things. That begins with loving and serving our country, but not to blindly worshiping it. No nation is completely “Christian.”

Joy of Escape Reading

We choose books to read for many reasons: we like other books written by this author; a person with similar tastes suggests it; reading a review convinces us we’d like it; we want to learn about a particular subject; the book attracts us while we look through a shelf of suggested books at the library.

I thought about this kind of choice when I happened on a cozily familiar book about a family mystery in a British town home in the late 1800’s. For some reason, novels set in this time period attract me when I want escape reading. I checked out the book from our neighborhood library (a blessing of life surely is a nearby library.)

Perhaps it’s because the late 1800’s in Britain were fairly predictable for a good many people. Certainly, for Victorian poor as well as some subjects of the British empire, life was less than ideal, even horrible Yet the period breathes more order than many other periods—especially when seen from the years of the world wars, the Great Depression, and the nuclear age. It’s escape reading. I know that. Certainly I don’t want all my reading to be of this variety.

Nevertheless, as pure escape, it beats a good many other pursuits sometimes done for escape: eating too much, shopping, watching too much TV, for examples.

OK, it’s after supper. My husband and I are settled in our chairs. I’ve read the news items about election politics, Near East conflicts, and Russian aggression. Earlier, my husband and I played Scrabble, so we’ve used our minds a little.

I can pick up my shallow novel and escape with a clear conscience.

 

My Tourism Experiences in Saudi Arabia

The New York Times, Wed, June 5, 2024: “Surprising, Unsettling, Surreal: Roaming Through Saudi Arabia,” by Stephen Hiltner.

In this article for The New York Times, Hiltner recounted his recent travel in Saudi Arabia, alone and without a driver. His journey appeared fascinating, beginning with the historic district in Jeddah. One of the first sites after Jeddah was the UNESCO World Heritage site in Hegra, with its rock-built structures.

Another stop was the Sharaan Nature Reserve, where the author slipped though a narrow canyon into a vast open plain surrounded by cliffs.

The author’s journey reminded me of my own tourist activities when I worked for the State Department in the U.S. Consulate at Jeddah. The atmosphere surrounding us then was quite different from Hiltner’s.

I remember eating in a Jeddah restaurant with fellow women friends, safely away in the “family” section. Afterward, we took refuge in a rug shop to await the end of prayer call, which was strictly observed.

Tourism, then, was not encouraged as it appears to be today. On one day’s outing, exploring the countryside with a group of friends, we of course steered clear of the forbidden city of Mecca, stopping to have our photos taken by the sign forbidding all travelers except Muslims into that city, before we traveled elsewhere.

We stopped and rested close to a spot where some boys were playing games. They closely examined us as we picnicked. No restaurants in the rural areas, of course, at least not open to women. We never saw any girls playing outside, either.

For rest that night we returned to our own homes on the consulate compound in Jeddah.

I recall another trip during that time, this one with my future husband for a jaunt out of town to hike along some dry creek beds. We left the car to hike and returned to find that someone had stolen the lug nuts off our tires. What to do? Wait for friends to note our absence and send out a search party? That was the one time I had neglected to follow the usual practice of letting friends know were we were going. If we didn’t return, no one would know where to send out that search party.

Fortunately, several Aussie families appeared on their own trip and went for help, taking Ben to find the necessary lug nuts in a gas station in a nearby town.

Today, any trip we took to Saudi Arabia would probably be with a tourist group. I’ve become a bit more cautious with experience.

Mandatory Christianity

When I began my education in a typical public school of the time, at least for the southern U.S., Bible reading was often a part of the school day’s beginning. I can’t say I remember much about those readings or whatever comments the reader, usually the teacher, might have made.

My family was actively engaged in a local church. The church became a major part of both my religious and social life as I grew. My Christian faith developed within my family and that local church. Evangelism in the community was carried out by individuals reaching out to friends and neighbors, as were welfare activities as well, such as food pantries open to all.

Personally, I’ve concluded that making the Bible a mandatory part of the school curriculum would result in a watered-down kind of religion, not at all helpful in spreading the good news of Jesus.

I remember several years in Muslim majority countries, where Islam was a part of national life. In some cases, no other religion was allowed. Religious observance appeared to me to be a rote exercise, without much personal meaning.

Those experiences turned me off from supporting any kind of state religion. The U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of a state-sponsored church is, in my opinion, one of its wisest sections. I think it’s also one reason Christianity, being chosen voluntarily, has seen seasons of great growth throughout the centuries.

I believe Christians should have the right to worship in any country. I also believe in freedom of worship for all recognized religions in the United States. That means also that no religion is officially favored.

If you want to ensure that Christianity or any religion loses its vibrancy, make it a state religion.

Jumping the Traces

Several decades ago I jumped the traces and left a boring job that paid well to take a job I loved dealing with historic preservation that paid less well. It was a wonderful trade.

Returning from an enjoyable conference connected with that job, I answered a call from a U.S. State Department representative with a job offer to join the U.S. Foreign Service. A couple or so years before, still in that first boring job, I had applied to join the Foreign Service. Nothing had happened, and I went on to take the historic preservation job. Now I no longer wanted the FS job—or thought I didn’t.

In answering the representative’s call, however, I told her that I would accept the invitation to join the Foreign Service. To this day, I’m still not sure of all the reasons that I, in a split second, changed my mind and agreed to this obviously major life decision. I can only say that I am so glad I did. Those years serving my country in the Middle East and other places opened my life to invaluable experiences and growth.

I’m not necessarily encouraging split second decisions that change one’s life. In my case, going back as an adult to study subjects that had always interested me but I hadn’t yet explored helped prepare me for that decision.

My spiritual life figured into that decision as well. I had never given up peppering my prayer life with the earnest desire that God would lead me to a better way to spend the life he had given me, with all of my loving family members, friends, educational experiences, and spiritual growth. I was blessed with friends’ support and time together during all of the searching.

I have an idea that this kind of continual, day-to-day journeying, study, and openness to what life brings is necessary to live the life God intends for us.

What’s a Public Servant?

Servant: “A person who performs duties for others” is one definition according to the Oxford English Dictionary. A definition of a public servant: “A person who works for the state or for local government.”

Since the dawn of prehistory, conquerors have taken over other people and recruited slaves and servants from the defeated population. As civilizations became more advanced, the elite classes made slaves and servants of the poorer classes. A servant was definitely an inferior. Few chose servanthood as an occupation.

Then a teacher named Jesus knelt before his disciples, took off their sandals, and washed their feet as a common servant. After this act of servitude—slavery even—he said, “You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

Jesus, called Lord of the universe by his followers, became a servant and called on us to do the same. Eventually, we understood that all our vocations—king, president, merchant, clerk, car mechanic, doctor—whatever we are called to do—are the means of serving others. A new idea was born, that government does not exist for its leaders but for the sake of the governed, whom their leaders serve.

Jesus stood on its head the usual way of doing things. But then he did this from the very beginning. The king of the universe opting to come as a helpless baby? And not in Rome or Athens, either. Not even venerable towns like Carthage or Alexandria. He came in a backwater Judean stable to a peasant woman. Who would have thought? Surely, it took God to think up that one.

My College Protest Days

A long time ago, I took part in a college protest. I’m not proud of it. It wasn’t about civil rights or government policies or anything important.

We walked out of the college cafeteria in protest of the meals we considered less than they should be. Think of that. Across the land, students were protesting Vietnam and segregation and foreign policy. We were concerned that the food didn’t taste that great.

Our political processes should always be under our scrutiny. Protests are a right of Americans, but I think they should be far down on the list of civic responses. I am against activities which shut down schools and civic institutions. I accept that I may be wrong. After all, some may point to times when protests led to changes. However, other ways also have led to changes.

I joined the walkout of my college years, quite frankly, because they were fun. If nothing else, they did bring us together. We were part of a group, and the actions gave us a sense of belonging. Of course, street gangs may give their participants such a sense of belonging.

I suggest that college students seriously concerned about Palestinians, or literary freedom, or other issues favor something I might call “teach-ins” or “learning days.” The idea is to set up safe places where students and others who are interested can share ideas. The rules would forbid harassment or destruction of property.

You could name it respectful learning, including a large dose of respectful listening.

Unfortunately, He Became Successful

Many a good person, movement, or religion has been ruined by success.

Success can be a worthy reward for hard work and creativity. Success can grant influence and even power to a person (or a movement or a civic group). Without careful shepherding of that power, however, it may become destructive pride.

A fancy name for this transformation is “hubris,” too much self confidence. The Jews knew the proverb that says “pride goeth before destruction.”

In one of his talks, Christ said, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

Meek? That’s a word we associate with a low-life, modeled by Uriah Heep in Charles Dickens’ novel, David Copperfield.

However, a French translation of meek uses the word debonair, more likely to mean courteous or cheerful. Successful people who are meek know their success doesn’t mean they are superior to others. It means they are blessed. Further they understand their calling to use their blessings to bless others, not use them as things.

Americans are tempted to hubris. The United States has done exceptional things over the years, like giving opportunities to refugees and allowing space for small entrepreneurs to create. Yet some things in our history should not have happened, like slavery and serious inequality between the wages of workers and owners.

Too much hubris and nations decline. Religions go through a cleansing, like Christ cleansing the temple.

People who assume they should be at the head of the table, may be called out to sit at the foot.