Tag Archives: Singing in Babylon

October Is the Perfect Month and the Best Month to Marry, Too

The poet Robert Browning liked the month of April: “Oh, to be in England now that April ’s there . . .” James Russell Lowell suggested June: “And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days . . .”

Personally, I love the tawny colors and chilly nights of October. It’s the birthday month for three members of my family. It’s also, this year, our 23rd wedding anniversary.

We fell in love in Saudi Arabia. I worked at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, and Ben was a flight training manager for Saudi Arabian Airlines, headquartered in Jeddah. We met at a square dance, held on one of the foreign worker compounds.

Our dates included square dances, hikes in the dessert, and shopping trips to the suq market. We sang Christmas carol in an expatriate home. Dating in a country which forbade an unmarried man and woman being together—anywhere— had its challenges. Some of those provided fodder for my novel, Singing in Babylon.

But when we decided to marry, no official Christian church existed in Saudi Arabia where we could plight our troth. (Contrary to popular myth, U.S. embassies and consulates are not authorized to perform marriages.)

So we flew to neighboring Bahrain, where Christian churches were allowed. The minister, an Egyptian Christian, performed our ceremony in the church, begun as a mission in the late 1800’s.

It seemed fitting for our international life.

Villains and Choices

 

My stories have villains, of course. I won a blog contest for best betrayal of a villain in my book Singing in Babylon. While portraying the villain’s evil intentions, I attempted to trace the reasons for his choice of evil. The villain chose unwisely after a wrong done to his family. A commendable trait, loyalty to family, became evil through the way he dealt with it.

Sometimes the villain is internal. Kaitlin Sadler’s early life was torn apart by tragedy in A Sense of Mission. Though she finds healing within the love of those around her, she struggles through the next few years with the inability to enjoy life to the fullest, sapped by the fear of evil that seems stronger than life. Kaitlin finally chooses to sacrifice fear for faith when she risks a new calling.

Fiction allows us to wrestle with evil through the lives of characters caught in its grip. The greatest stories give us hope that evil can be defeated through good. The recent movie version of Les Miserables depicts the thief, Jean Valjean, forever changed through one act of kindness. The kindness required sacrifice on the part of the benefactor. To turn evil to good may require such sacrifice, a giving up of possessions or of some part of the self.

Scribblings From Exile

 

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

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

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

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

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

Leaving Home: Scribblings From Exile

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Christian pastor executed by the Nazis in World II, wrote: “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow Him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call.” (from The Cost of Discipleship)

The reason I title my blogs, “Scribblings from Exile,” is that I believe Christians, even in America, are in exile. The blessings of democracy compel us to perform earthly citizenship duties, but we are, as the apostle Paul called us in one of his letters, ambassadors from another kingdom. Jesus rebuked his disciples for supposing he intended to be a political king.

A theme of my story Singing in Babylon is the understanding of this calling into exile. Kate and Philip, American Christians, feel themselves in exile when they journey to work in Saudi Arabia, a Muslim majority country. On returning home to the United States, they realize they are still exiles. They do not belong to the consumer culture of the West any more than they belong to the Muslim-majority Middle East.

If we Christians in Western countries understood the call to die to our culture, as we might if we understand Bonhoeffer, would our message be listened to rather than ignored or ridiculed?

To Community

 

A journalist friend of mine coined the verb phrase “to community.” He said we needed a verb form for the act of coming together in kinship-minded groups.

The protagonists in my stories often “community.” Their stories are sewn within the larger fabric of history, but the characters meld into community as they resolve issues in their lives. I don’t plan it that way, but for some reason, my characters can’t operate without this fellowship. It may be one of expatriate Americans in a foreign locale, or an impromptu group formed on a train, or a new family by marriage. The stories involve all kinds of plots, but the community forms in the midst of the action.

In Singing in Babylon, Kate and Philip find community in a home church in Saudi Arabia, then with Philip’s family. In Quiet Deception, a mystery set on a college campus, four students form friendships while some of their professors share shortcomings with their colleagues. In Searching for Home, Christian families bond in embassy communities in the Middle East as terrorism threatens. In Distant Thunder, it’s a group of strugglers who meet on a train, between Washington and Seattle, each at a decision point in their lives.

Communities are formed sometimes by age or interest and sometimes by circumstances that turn acquaintances into friends, then into members of a community. As my characters live out their stories, they teach me that Christianity is very much a community religion.

A Concern Beyond American Idol

 

In my novel Singing in Babylon, the female protagonist, Kate, moves to Saudi Arabia from her native Tennessee to teach. She travels for her first time outside the United States. On a drive with her friend, Philip, an American journalist on assignment to the Middle East, she notices a veiled and gloved woman pushing a child on a swing in a public park. The woman glances at the unveiled Kate, and Kate wonders how the woman feels about this Western female’s intrusion into her world.

Later, she and Philip explore a seaside camp for Western expatriates on the shores of the Red Sea. She compares the women in bikinis with the veiled woman she saw earlier. For the first time, Kate understands the struggles of an ancient civilization to come to terms with the strange culture thrust into their lives by oil money.

Fast food restaurants, unveiled women, and automobiles bring unprecedented freedom and rapid change to a nation in one or two generations. These changes arrived in a country accustomed to centuries-old merchant towns, Bedouins herding camels and goats, and ancient tribes familiar with the customs of generations.

Kate’s exposure to other cultures allows her further understanding of her own country, what is of  value and what is neglected, and what directions it should take. Her experiences mature her perception of the world.

Travel to other countries is not the only path to an informed view. We have easier access to news reporting about world events today than at any time in the past. If we confine ourselves to the latest celebrity stories, however, and ignore the in-depth news, the advantage of this wealth of information will do us no good.

The unrest in the Middle East, for example, has a direct bearing on our future. The current brutality in Syria, where unarmed women and children were murdered this past weekend, and the unrest caused by Egyptian elections will affect us. When desperate millions thirst for security, they will choose whoever promises it: dictators, Islamists, or al-Qaeda.

Our response to such challenges will be wiser if we understand the problems. Ignorance and uninformed politics can lead to disastrous decisions.

 

Thoughts On Themes As My Latest Book Is Published

The main protagonists in my stories suffer the death of loved ones, marriage breakups, career stress, romantic relationships, and challenges to childhood dreams. Deeper conflicts underlie these issues. Usually the characters are Americans of the Christian persuasion. But their conventional Christianity often is jarred by sojourns in countries influenced by other religions.

After the characters experience their faith as a minority religion, they can no longer accept it simply because it was a part of their upbringing. When they understand the unique message of Christianity, they return home stronger in this faith than when they left.

However, they remain, in a sense, in exile. Their conventional religion has become more subversive, standing in contrast to the materialism and self-centeredness they perceive “at  home.”

In both Singing in Babylon and Searching for Home, the protagonists live for a time in countries where another faith is predominant. In Quiet Deception, the background is the relentless change in the United States during the decades following World War II. This change is noted by one of the characters, a Vietnam veteran.

Distant Thunder, just released, happens in contemporary America, much of it in that iconic American experience of a journey west. But three of the characters have foreign experiences which contrast with those of the fourth, who’s never been out of the United States. One character recounts her experiences in the North African country of Algeria, once the domain of early church leaders like Augustine, but bereft of all but a few Christians today. “Nothing’s left but ruins,” another character agrees, referring to the ruins of ancient churches. Not persecution someone points out, “more like the Christian community just faded away.”

Perhaps by living “subversively,” not in violent subversion, but in the subversive life of love, they will be part of a renewal and prevent a similar fading away of their own faith communities.