Can you believe?

Good questions

I gave a talk on Russian-American relations this morning. Among the topics I included were "the myth of 'strategic partnership'" and American interpretive frameworks that help explain how we see Russia. After I was done, several students had questions and comments. For example: "I think that it is not possible to be friends and rivals at the same time." As we probed this theme, I asked whether

Sentimental shorts

Goodbye, Sebastian. A few days ago, our foster-cat Sebastian developed alarming symptoms, requiring a visit to the night clinic. The next day he seemed to improve, but by evening the same symptoms had come back. Judy and Eliot took him back to the night clinic, where they ultimately asked the staff to euthanize him. He came home again in a cute cardboard coffin, on which Eliot had drawn a cross and written Sebastian's name in large letters. He was buried in our front yard, just under his favorite observation window. Eliot conducted the burial in the presence of our retired cat Pounce (about 17 years old) and the black cat from across the street.

When Sebastian, a Siamese, first came to us a little over three years ago, he was all yowl all the time. In those three years, he had calmed down a lot, to the point where he could stay in our bedroom all night without my knowing it. (I sometimes DID know it, but not because of his noise.) His sudden absence from our lives is deafening. The other day somebody's dog yipped and for a few seconds I thought it was Sebastian.

Eliot drew the napkin picture while we were in a restaurant, the day after Sebastian died. The details of the story are his to tell, not mine; I'm just reporting the feelings that come to me when I look at the sketch: awareness of deep compassion and kindness, gratitude, and much that cannot be put into words.

On my eastbound Atlanta-Moscow route, on the way to Elektrostal (where this is being written), the onboard TV monitors were delivering the usual mix of what passes for entertainment on television. The series came to an end, replaced by the real-time map and flight parameter display that I find much more interesting. With a start, I realized that we were about to cross Norway's coastline right over Bergen. At no extra cost, I was being given a visit to the flight space of my homeland!

Although when the tour started everything was covered by clouds, by the time we passed north of Oslo, the ground was bathed in glorious sunlight. It was not the first time I had occasion to ask myself why I, a self-proclaimed global citizen, could feel such emotions 10 000 meters above a very particular piece of ground.

A spiritual GPS? One of the odder stories covered by ABC News in its segment of the inflight television entertainment was a new cellphone system that tells the holder of the master cellphone where the other units in the family group are located, enabling a parent to know where the children are. With the help of a computer program, their whole itinerary can be tracked. Not having had this technology, I can't count the times when Luke or Eliot phoned us from some point on their way home, and we said with relief, "Oh, thanks so much for calling. We were beginning to think you were in a ditch somewhere." If we'd had this technology, we could have had the reassuring capacity to know exactly which ditch. Instead we had to rely on trust, which is both cheaper and far more empowering, even if it seems as if more risk is involved.

Thinking about all this on the airplane, I imagined my heart as a sort of spiritual GPS. In spatial terms, I'm likely to spend all my mortal days on the same planet, and everything else is a matter of detail. However, wouldn't it be nice to know whether I'm heading in a successful direction, and what spiritual costs and benefits that direction holds, and whether this other very tempting direction is really all that bad? The GPS could tell me, "Detour ahead, but it's okay, your destination is still within reach," or "Danger: don't believe this flattery you're hearing, sweet as it is," or "Would you make that choice if someone else were watching?"

I have sometimes made a decision from sheer idealism that ended up costing me more than I'd ever counted on. However, when I think about choosing between that idealism and a more cautious approach to life, I can't feel too much regret about the choices I made. On the other hand, when I've consciously chosen a wrong direction, I generally knew it. It wasn't the absence of a spiritual GPS that did me in, it was me overriding my own heart.

Righteous links: Martin Marty recently published a Sightings newsletter, "Heeding Edward O. Wilson," in which he cites Wilson's recent essay in The New Republic entitled "A scientist's plea for Christian environmentalism." (Marty's essay is not yet in the Sightings archive but soon will be.) See Karen Street's A Musing Environment for a Quaker comment on Wilson's letter.

Another Derek Lamson video—performing "Deep Green Koolaid Blues" at Reedwood Friends—is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER2diF5VGCo

Here's a link I've given before that, in light of my current visit, seems important enough to repeat: Stephen Cohen's "The New American Cold War." Since the most negative possible interpretations of Russian behavior are rapidly becoming conventional wisdom, I consider Cohen's article one of this year's most important essays. (In case you think I'm becoming naive and sentimental about Russian politics, I'll add another link to my list of recommended reading.)

How the Grinch Stole 9/11

A year ago, I reported on how the Grinch stole Hiroshima, or how I resigned from the annual liberal wail-fest that August 6 had become among some of my friends. This year your Friendly Curmudgeon is passionately rejecting the conservative wail-fest that threatens to attach itself to September 11.

Last year I already resigned, in passing, from "the cult of pseudo-patriotic self-pity" that 9/11 has become. But this year, thanks to Tom Engelhardt's excellent book The End of Victory Culture, I have more of a sense of spiritual urgency about denouncing that cult. Engelhardt's book describes the ancient roots of Americans' tendency to kill, exterminate, wipe out the "other" based on an unreflective sense of righteous victimhood. Never mind that we are often larger and more powerful than the enemy of the moment; time and time again we see ourselves as having been held captive or ambushed, thus justifying our blindly lethal responses.

Engelhardt's book traces the demise of our cultural scaffolding for this "victory culture" in the aftermath of the atomic bomb (making a final American crusade too costly for everyone to contemplate) and the cynicism of the Viet Nam era. His book came out about ten years ago, so it doesn't cover 9/11, which makes the obvious parallels with the past even more eerie. Of course, the neocons claim that we've put Viet Nam behind us. Once again Americans have been ambushed, and once again no response is too cruel, too wasteful, too outright racist. No snide remark about "appeasement" or "defeatism" is too crass to aim at anyone yearning for some ethics, some wisdom, some ... Christian moral values, strangely enough.

May God give us all, leaders and protesters alike, the ability to see innocent victims in Iraq as having had the same right to live as the Twin Towers workers, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania victims, and the other tragic casualties of 9/11. Beware, neocons: if the crime of 9/11 could have been solved and justice served without five years of righteous bloodshed, you may be asked to account for every drop. I shudder to think of my own culpability, having done so little to gum up the godless works of my country's current leadership.

Our family makes frequent trips to our local Goodwill store, sometimes because we need clothing, but just as often to see what they're selling in their toy department. Over the years, we have built up quite a collection of stuffed animals. Jesus has joined our good crew (see photo), the only hero who outranks Sonic the Hedgehog in our family. By the way, you can't see it in this picture, but Jesus is wearing a "WWID" bracelet.

Speaking of heroes, the Oslo police have recovered the two Edvard Munch paintings that were stolen two years ago in broad daylight. (Aftenposten story here.) Now it's worth going back to Oslo, although, truth to tell, I've never seen this version of The Scream. The only one I've seen is the one that is on display at Oslo's National Gallery. That one was stolen, too, about twelve years ago, but it too was recovered.

Yesterday, Derek Lamson gave a concert at Reedwood Friends Church, to raise funds for his upcoming musical ministry visit to Burundi (accompanying Peggy Parsons). As he said, contributions to his Burundi project can be sent, earmarked, to West Hills Friends Church.

It was a wonderful evening for the relative handful lucky enough to be there. Among other songs, he performed his "Dark Green Kool-Aid Blues," and in honor of Peggy Parsons, "Hold On Let Go." Afterwards, I prevailed on him to let me record his "Tom Fox Song." (Apologies for quality of hand-held camerawork.)

The new Derek and Friends CD is in the can and awaits publication. Watch this space.

I innocently clicked on Nancy's Apology and, without warning, this post appeared. It's just the best: must reading for all Friends, evangelical and unrighteous alike. Thank you, Nancy. There's still at least one evangelical Friends meeting in Ontario; I wonder if anyone in that congregation would care to comment.

Safety and "the nature of the world in which we live"

For many years my Lenten season reading has included Emmanuel Charles McCarthy's booklet, The Stations of the Cross of Nonviolent Love, now available as a PDF file here. When George Bush responded to the court decision declaring his war-on-terrorism wiretapping unconstitutional by saying, "Those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live," I thought about the spiritual implications of Bush's words, and that reminded me of McCarthy's booklet.

On a political level, it's easy to see the weakness in Bush's logic. If our courts begin making decisions based on trying to interpret "the nature of the world in which we live," rather than trying to interpret the Constitution, we're heading for anarchy, or more likely, a dictatorship of the politically cleverest. But Bush's warning may be much more effective at a deeper level. Over and over again in history, we've seen people being persuaded that safety requires compromising our ostensible values.

Many years ago, James Prothro and Charles Grigg (I'm reaching back into my distant memories of studying political science at Carleton University!) found a distinct difference between people's support of political tolerance in the abstract and their considerably lower tolerance in concrete situations. Every once in a while, political scientists tweak the rest of us by showing that Americans claim to cherish the Declaration of Independence, but when shown actual unlabeled text from that declaration, they declare it dangerous, communist, and the like. So it's not surprising that today's politicians try out yet again that old argument that, during a "war," we cannot afford the luxury of our values. Or, rather, they propose another value, safety, that supposedly trumps civil liberties and due process.

However, to remain politically useful, "safety" as a value must remain abstract as well! When we begin studying safety in concrete terms, problems arise:

Somehow, the politicians must convince us, their audiences, that we will remain safe, while hoping that we don't think too much about the safety of others. For example, many innocent people have been severely inconvenienced or worse by being put on terrorist watch lists, arrested as material witnesses, or in a few (how many?) cases, kidnapped by U.S. or allied forces for interrogation and even torture. But we must believe that this won't happen to us, even though our protections are being compromised in the service of the war on terrorism, and the government argues that judicial due process would reveal too many secrets. Above all, we must not question the proposition that humans who are not U.S. citizens are to be completely disregarded in any offer of safety.
We must believe that the threat of terrorism is of a completely different order than the threat of natural disaster, crime, or any other danger whose probability increases as government resources are sucked away into this mislabeled "war." The government's unbelievably screwed-up response to Hurricane Katrina shows what the all-encompassing we-know-best claims of this war's leaders did for the actual safety of Gulf states' citizens.
We must believe in several lies at once: terrorism is a monolithic phenomenon, a new phenomenon, a manifestation of very clever subhumans who cannot be communicated with, an intractable and implacable reality that only our leaders can understand and manage, despite their disastrous record to date. We must want safety so badly that we overlook our leaders' actual performance in favor of their stern claims of authority and expertise.

The power of government to claim a monopoly on defining safety is ultimately a spiritual issue, and requires a spiritual confrontation, because in one sense, the politicians are right: we are not safe. Safety is not guaranteed, neither in terms of protection from physical harm, nor in terms of quality and scope of life.

Each of us, at this moment, faces multiple dangers, ranging at varying degrees of probability or absurdity from disease and accident, to violent crime, to a direct impact from a meteor. In an interesting paradox given George Bush's rhetoric of freedom, perhaps the more we actually claim and use freedom publicly and effectively in this world, the more we expose ourselves to danger. (Effective dissidents must count on the possibility that their activities will draw the attention of our "security" agencies.) This brings me to Charles McCarthy's main points on safety in The Stations of the Cross of Nonviolent Love. Addressing the pro-family claims of the Powers that Be in Station IV, he asks, "Can Christian family love and relationship find any lasting security in any source other than unconditional obedience to God’s will as revealed by Jesus Christ?" Addressing the hypnotic pseudo-security of our culture, he says, in Station VI,

It is easy to find hope, security and a future in the G.N.P., a national anthem, a football team, military technology, Disneyland, drugs, fashion and alcohol. It is nearly impossible in a capitalist society to find hope in the patient, secret commitment to the omnipotence of Christic love. Such a use of life is incontestable folly by all standards except one—Jesus’ teaching that the cross of nonviolent love is the power and the wisdom and the will of The Source of all Reality.

At a Friends World Committee regional conference shortly after the first Gulf War, T. Canby Jones warned us bluntly: We cannot understand Christian pacifism until we have confronted our own mortality. My corollary, in light of Bush's warning about the "world in which we live": The way in which we live in this world most not be dictated by fear. Otherwise, whatever safety we think we have, our death will come much too soon. If Jesus is our partner in shaping the way we live, and we have good friends listening and shaping and sharing our doubts and discoveries alongside us, fear and death will recede to their proper places—they're certainly not out of the picture, but whatever life we have, we don't live in their shadow.

One more excerpt from Charles McCarthy:

To those who do not believe in Christ’s cross of nonviolent love, its truth is folly, a scandal, an unrealistic waste of life’s time. To those who believe, it is nails, thorns, spears and suffering for others until the blind can see, until the lame can walk, until the imprisoned are freed, until the hungry are fed, until the oppressed are liberated, until the naked are clothed, until the sick are healed, until the rich are saved, until the homeless are at home, until the unlovable are loved, until all sins are forgiven. The believer in Christ’s nonviolent cross breathes in deeply the sufferings of humanity and breathes out freely his or her happiness in order to spread the healing power of nonviolent love as Divine Yeast in the dough of humanity.

If we advocate focusing on quality of life as a crucial dimension of safety, "nails, thorns, spears, and suffering for others" may seem to be unpromising lifestyle components. How can we breathe in "the sufferings of humanity" and breathe out "happiness"? For me, the crucial factor is the desire to have my eyes open, to be exposed to reality. I don't want happiness at the expense of ignorance, and it's too late to pretend not to know what I know. My mother survived Hiroshima, one of my sisters was murdered ... the Beast has come too close to my home.

My own experience is that, before my conversion, I never thought I'd be happy again, or able to trust. Jesus restored both joy and trust to me, but did not promise to keep me "safe" from reality. From my vantage point, reality includes both love and evil. My moment-by-moment task is to breathe love, and devote whatever power I have to its service, and let my God-given mind (and my faithful friends) help me stay alert to evil's attempts to divert my energy. That's why I want to deny politicians the right to put evil at the center of their definition of "the nature of the world in which we live." I can't live that way anymore.

Bill Samuel brought to my attention this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, on the difficulties of leadership in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's Quaker culture. He and I have both commented on the article in the related post on Martin Kelley's weblog.

Here's another writer, Pete Greig of Chichester, England and the 24-7 Prayer community, who recognizes the spiritual dimension of war and war language. It is so heartening to see a new generation of evangelical leaders grappling openly with the place of politics in their piety.

It is blatant to many of us (though few politicians will ever dare voice this particular truth) that the theatre of war is first and foremost a spiritual reality which requires a spiritual solution. You cannot bomb for peace. We all know that negotiation is better (and lets pray for Kofi Annan ... and the UN at this time) [how many American evangelicals say that?!], but even negotiation misses the root cause of contention. Here we have a series of conflicts that are deeply and ultimately spiritual, secondly ideological and thirdly territorial. You can bomb for territory. You can negotiate between ideologies. But the primary spiritual reality can only be engaged on earth as it is in heaven. This is why we intercede in prayer.

Short questions (even shorter answers)

What did the other guy say? Has anyone noticed a tendency in the mainstream media to report only or mainly what George W. Bush says, when covering a conference or conversation where he speaks, and not go into what the other participants said? Here's a recent blatant example: "President Bush had an 8-minute phone call Saturday with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora to discuss the truce." We find out what George Bush wanted to tell Fuad Saniora but not what Fuad Saniora wanted Bush to know. Do you really think they each got four minutes? In any case, why don't the reporters want to find out what both sides said? If the White House only wants to divulge Bush's side, then ask the Lebanese government. If the information is altogether unavailable, that's news, too. We get entirely too much of the imperial voice these days.

Are Lebanese deaths equal to Israeli deaths? Not in terms of moral weight, according to John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. That's what I read in an AFP dispatch on Yahoo, but clicking on the same link now gets me nowhere. (Cache still works, however, yielding this opening sentence: "UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - US Ambassador John Bolton said there was no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in Israel from 'malicious terrorist acts'."

More comment here on this theme in the TPM Cafe. However, I cannot pretend to be surprised. There is nothing that some politicians won't stoop to in order to oversimplify complex situations and shift all accountability to the politically convenient "enemy." Actually, I am desperately eager for American leaders to confront the so-called Party of God (Hezbollah) on the sheer blasphemy represented by any group with that name shooting missiles at population centers. But our country cannot do that confrontation with any credibility whatever; we have made our cause with those who prefer to bomb civilians (and U.N. observers) first, and ask questions later.

Although "there is a democracy in death," as Billy Graham said at Richard Nixon's funeral, some deaths can strike us as particularly poignant. One example: Uri Grossman, son of the Israeli writer and peace activist David Grossman, was among the Israeli soldiers killed in the recent Lebanese ground campaign. (Haaretz story here.) Although David did not oppose the fight against Hezbollah, he is one of Israel's steadfast supporters of justice for Palestinians.

What is the definition of political insanity? Judge for yourself, based on this quotation from Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article on the Israel/Hezbollah war:

“Strategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep on doing it,” John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me. Arquilla has been campaigning for more than a decade, with growing success, to change the way America fights terrorism. “The warfare of today is not mass on mass,” he said. “You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network. Israel focussed on bombing against Hezbollah, and, when that did not work, it became more aggressive on the ground. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.”

To risk an extension of the argument, one that Arquilla himself would probably not endorse: Violent military solutions to political dilemmas has been a failed concept for millennia and yet governments all over the world keep on doing it. Arquilla's recommendation for the "war" on terrorism, "hunt like a network to defeat a network," sounds to me like good police work ... the kind of work that might have prevented 9/11 and might also have been its most effective response.

Political sanity and insanity, part two: Why do people insist on spending lives and treasure on war, after millennia of evidence that it doesn't work? One ancient tradition points out the masculine bias in reaching for warlike solutions, and the relative feminine disinclination to try violence first. I was fascinated by a new expression of old insights in yesterday's post on Sean's Russia Blog, and the Haaretz article to which he links, about an Arab/Russian partnership for peace, represented by two Israeli women, Jana Kanapova, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, and Khulud Badawi, an Israeli Arab living in Haifa.

"The significance of Kanapova’s and Badawi’s gender is not the only unique aspect of resistance to this poorly planned and ill fated Israeli offensive," observes Sean Guillory. "Their respective ethnicities is what makes them attractive to the news. If they were two Ashkenazim, their presence and efforts on the Israeli Left would have perhaps been overlooked. Their presence allows for the peace movement to be conducted in three languages—Arabic, Hebrew and Russian—and according to Kanapova, this has allowed her to engage, and even convince some in her community to oppose the war."

Righteous links: Andy Stanley explains "Why I decided to cheat the church" and stop overworking in his church ministry. ~~ Archbishop of York John Sentamu decided to camp out in his church, maintaining a vigil in solidarity with war victims in the Middle East. Why isn't this more common behavior among religious celebrities? Yahoo News story here; Ekklesia's story here. ~~ I've been remiss in my Tangaroa coverage: the raft has reached its final destination! Congratulations to everyone involved in this wonderful expedition! See the English-language blog here. ~~ In the "thankful for good company" department, I was grateful for Bob Ramsey's commentary on the shameful political exploitation of the apparent liquid-bomb conspiracy uncovered by British investigators. I was going to say "shameful Republican political exploitation" except that the current leadership in Washington bears almost as little resemblance to historic Republicanism as it does to the Democrats.

Paul L at Showers of Blessings mentions Hibbard Thatcher in his post of earlier this week. I loved visiting with Hibbard and Ruby Thatcher back in my days of circulating among Midwest USA Friends for Friends World Committee and Friends United Meeting. I knew Hibbard's health was failing, but it's still hard to say goodbye. I love the letter his family sent out upon his death:

Dear Friends:

Ruby, Alan and Jonathan Thatcher here, writing from Nashville. Hibbard Thatcher passed away on Saturday night, August 5th. He had taken a turn for the worse early in the week, developed pneumonia and apparently had a small stroke. His last days and hours were easy, and his last communication, on Wednesday, was blowing a kiss to Ruby.

In accordance with Hibbard's wishes, there will be no funeral, but we are beginning to plan a memorial service. We are just realizing the magnitude of such an event and how many people will want to come, taking into account the Nashville Friends Meeting, Nashville Country Dancers, Sacred Harp singers, and many others. It will take some time to arrange, and to coordinate schedules, so we are looking at a tentative date of September 10th for the service. We will let you know more as soon as the date and place are fixed.

As you probably know, Hibbard had made a partial recovery from the very damaging pneumonia and staph infection he had in January. Over the last few months he struggled to regain his strength, and through heroic efforts and determination, he made a lot of progress. But ultimately it seems his body had too much lasting damage for him to survive.

During these last several months we got to see Hibbard at his best. Nurses and aides at the medical facilities kept talking about what a wonderful patient he was and as one social worker commented, coming out of an interview with him, 'What an interesting man!'

Family and many friends were able to spend time with Hibbard at St Thomas, at Select Specialty Hospital, at Stallworth Rehab Center, and at NHC, during this long medical odyssey. During these visits he was often very llively and voluble, and I know many of you had wonderful conversations with him, as we did. And Hibbard especially appreciated those who came and shared their voices and music with him.

We would invite you to write down any memories or stories of Hibbard, recent or otherwise, to share at the memorial service. Or, of course, we'd be happy to hear them now if you'd like to email them to us.

Thank you all for your support and love for Hibbard. Please continue to hold him in your hearts, and, as the Quakers say, in the light.

Love,

Ruby, Alan and Jonathan Thatcher

Perspective

A year ago yesterday, Judy and I spent much of our 25th anniversary on one of the historic Columbia River Highway walking trails. For our 26th anniversary, yesterday, we chose an urban variant: First we parked at OMSI. After buying something from their gift shop and leaving a message for a friend there, we set out on the Eastside Esplanade path along the Willamette River. We walked to the Burnside Bridge, crossed the river, walked ten blocks west, and strode bravely into Powell's bookstore. (Bravery is required there to resist temptation and ward off bankruptcy.) I added another couple of urban miles by making an additional loop to Way of a Pilgrim bookstore, specializing in Eastern Orthodox books and icons, at NW 21st and Hoyt. Reunited at Powell's, we escaped from there only $30 poorer. We returned to OMSI via Tom McCall Waterfront Park and the Hawthorne Bridge.

Inevitably, I've been thinking about how fast these 26 years have gone by, but also how much has happened in that swift passage of time. At the beginning, in 1980, the future meltdown of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is nearly unimaginable, and the Cold War (with the U.S. boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics) is a dominant paradigm. Also that year: El Salvador unravels further with the killing of Archbishop Romero; and Iraq attacks Iran, opening their savage eight-year war. In U.S. politics, the unholy alliance between evangelical Christian elites and right-wing politicians solidifies, as Bible-believing Christians are urged to favor the nominally religious Reagan over the evangelical incumbent Carter. A few years later, the names have all dramatically changed, but so many of the patterns are the same.

How much has changed in the Quaker world? In his talk at the 1976 Friends World Committee triennial meeting in Hamilton, Ontario, T. Canby Jones noted a trend of convergence, without (if I remember correctly) using the word: evangelical Friends were becoming more interested in silence and social justice, and liberal Friends were becoming more interested in theology and the Bible. We traded amusing anecdotes about people in one branch being totally unaware of the existence of Friends in other branches—not much has changed there, except that the Internet is a much cheaper way of exchanging anecdotes and reinforcing superiority than conference attendance.

I kept the July 1980 issue of Friends Journal because of an article by Parker Palmer, "Quakers and the Way of the Cross." He says,

I realize that the Christian story holds little merit for some Quakers, that within the Quaker community many are struggling to find new myths and symbols and images to bring meaning to a "post-Christian" world. And yet, I do not know how else to speak of my experience in life except in terms of crucifixion and resurrection. I look around me, and within me, and find the devastation caused by the threat of nuclear war; the relentless oppression of the weak and the poor; the impact of an econmy fueled by greed and a politics which relies on the tools of cercion and violence. And as I see these things, I find myself unable to speak of them as mere "social problems." I can only speak of a continuing crucifixion, a crucifixion of the Christ within every woman and man. And as I see these things, I am unable to find ultimate home in a multiplication of projects and programs for "social change." However important these things may be, I am compelled to reach deeper for hope, beyond our own works into the mystery of resurrection which only God can work among us.

Palmer continues with a sensitive walk through the outward and inward "stations of the Cross" that illuminate these opening words—stations and soul-movements such as recognition, resistance, acceptance, affirmation, and liberation.

Projects and programs will continue to come and go, along with the temporary heroes and villains who animate them. Their impermanence does not make them unimportant, it just makes me more concerned to locate them in a deeper story; in fact, in the ancient story of oppression, resistance, and liberation, of crucifixion and resurrection.

I even dare to think that the Quaker story must stop inflating itself and take a more modest and supplementary place. After three decades of idealistic Quaker-boosting, I am growing weary of cycles of complacency, gloom, and timid revival. I want to be watching and joining God's work in the world, not caught in some self-absorbed eddy. We Quakers have at least one important function in the wider Christian world—demonstrating to ourselves and everyone that church really can be as simple as a community of people who want to live with Jesus at the center, helping each other work out the processes and ethical consequences of that life. But we don't even do that one thing if we're so endlessly fascinated (or irritated) by our specialness.

None of that specialness need go to waste, actually. It's not the stuff of community that bothers me; we need to furnish our home with the furniture of shared references, models, doctrines, decisions, controversies. But I want that overstuffed home to be an incubator for people who will collectively have the spiritual sensitivity and prophetic courage to put the highest priority on the needs of people who've never heard of us, rather than on the perfection of our internal categories. Then today's projects and programs will take their place (as many already have, no doubt) in the ancient drama of crucifixion and resurrection.

Two songs: Last Sunday, at Reedwood, we sang a chorus by Martin Reardon that included these words:

Shout to the earth His name
Let the whole world know His name
That Jesus is alive and He reigns on high
Shout to the earth His name.

A few hours later, at Ministerios Restauración, we were singing these words from Juan Carlos Alvarado:

No basta solo con cantar.
No basta solo con decir.
No es suficiente solo con querer hacer.
Es necesario morir.

(By itself, singing isn't enough; by itself, saying isn't enough; it's not sufficient just to want to do; it's necessary to die.)

Going back to "Shout to the earth," I have friends who would rather die than sing songs like that; maybe that's why they might need to sing that song just once, and try to understand why, for some of us, in some sense, that is the whole business of discipleship. (Let the whole world know His name, not because we Christians, we Quakers, are better than anyone else—we're not—but because in that name we speak truth, we resist, we create, we sing, we love.) And I have friends who seem to think that singing choruses with the right words is all there is to being a Christian. Of course, they're wrong; you also have to write a brave-sounding blog.

I thank Sean's Russia Blog for a link to this interesting article by Charlie Ganske on Russia, the Middle East, and the complicated influences of oil prices on Russian-American relations. Another case of "the more things change...."?

August shorts

"The Middle East and the Barbarism of War from the Air"—an essay by Tom Engelhardt—came to my mind as I listened last night to discussions of the Hezbollah tactic of "using civilians as a shield," reasoning that apparently is supposed to justify the premeditated bombing of civilian areas. A quotation:

It may be that the human capacity for brutality, for barbarism, hasn't changed much since the eighth century, but the industrial revolution -- and in particular the rise of the airplane -- opened up new landscapes to brutality; while the view from behind the gun-sight, then the bomb-sight, and finally the missile-sight slowly widened until all of humanity was taken in. From the lofty, godlike vantage point of the strategic as well as the literal heavens, the military and the civilian began to blur on the ground. Soldiers and citizens, conscripts and refugees alike, became nothing but tiny, indistinguishable hordes of ants, or nothing at all but the structures that housed them, or even just concepts, indistinguishable one from the other.

When will an evangelical pastor who preaches the Gospel no longer be news? Last Sunday, the New York Times profiled Greg Boyd and his church, Woodland Hills Church in St Paul, Minnesota, USA. Although many are blessed by his against-the-stream message, about a thousand participants have left. What outraged them? Messages like this: "I am sorry to tell you that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ." From the study guide to that sermon, available at their site:

The early church exploded with growth because people were living kingdom values. They were willing to suffer and die for their faith. There was enormous power in this. They refused to take up the sword; rather, they chose the cross. When this is done, the power of the sword is undermined and the evil is exposed. Once the Church gained political power through Constantine, everything began to change.

The sword was now wielded by the church. Being a Christian began to have perks and benefits for those who would enlist. While the church was under persecution, being a Christian was a difficult thing and one really had to have conviction and strength to endure, even to the point of death. Christians who once turned the other cheek now cut off heads. Christians who once loved their enemies and willingly died at their hands now burned their enemies alive. Christians who learned to bless those who persecuted them now persecuted others. Can we not see that this is not victory for the kingdom but defeat? How we accomplish the building of the Kingdom of God is every bit as important as whether it gets built. Every time the church has picked up the sword, it has damaged its witness in the world. We who are to be known by our love demonstrate against ourselves. And don’t think the atheists don’t notice this! Be cautious of those who would tempt you to blend your passion for serving God with their political agenda. Few things are more dangerous than those who wield the sword with the passion of misplaced faith.

The more I hear from blues singer Janiva Magness, the more impressed I am. By the time she came to Portland recently, I'd already bought and downloaded tracks from four of her albums. She won me over completely with her presence, directness, intelligent delivery, and a wonderful voice that could range from sinuous and nuanced soulfulness to straight-ahead bluesy and almost liquid mischief. She and her band paused between songs while she chatted with her musicians—indications to me that split-second showmanship was not their highest priority. Instead, they projected confidence and delight in their music and each other. If merit were a more decisive factor, Janiva would be far better known.

Her Web site has a few audio teasers, but go to any site that has a good selection of her music (such as Yahoo Music) and listen to more samples. Here are some of my favorites so far: "The More I Keep On Losing," "Eat the Lunch You Brought" (great sermon on the concept of contentment and adequacy and the danger of envy), "Workin' on Me Baby," "Ain't Lost Nothin'," and the two songs I enjoy hearing together, "I Can't Stop Crying" and "Don't Start Crying Now."

Just a couple of righteous links this time: Yakov Krotov, Russian historian and radio commentator, has a Livejournal here. And at Northwest Yearly Meeting sessions we learned that long-time missionaries and missiologists Hal and Nancy Thomas are leaving the Bolivian Evangelical University in Santacruz, where they have spent the last years building up and leading the Center for Intercultural Studies. They are both joining the staff of PRODOLA as deans in what sounds like a fascinating and strategic ministry in Latin America.

Afternoon PS: That Friend speaks my heart. Kayla Walker Edin, our yearly meeting's peace education coordinator, sent out this e-mail:

From: "Kayla Edin"
To:
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 13:19:58 -0700
Subject: This morning's paper...

This morning, I picked up a copy of the Wall Street Journal that is a day or two old. One article on the front page broke my heart. It features several prominent “Evangelical” Christians calling for the continuation of fighting in the Middle East. They believe it is a fulfillment of prophecy and that God is behind the relentless slaughter of civilians. The quote below sums up my feelings about this hijacking of Christian values and of the misuse of Christ’s name to justify violence in any form:

"Sunday morning, I woke up to the news that an Israeli air strike hit a residential building used as a shelter in the southern Lebanese town of Qana, killing and wounding more than 65 people, including 30 infants and young children. According to tradition, Qana is the village where Jesus Christ performed his first miracle by turning water into wine (John 2). Now I hear of fellow Christians who enjoy seeing the turning of water into blood in the name of end-time prophecy. Their call should rather be to turn water into wine of gladness, peace, and life. Are we looking for the presence of Christ in Lebanon and Israel or for the presence of U.S. smart bombs?"

- Riad Kassis, executive director and chaplain at the J.L. Schneller School in West Bekaa, Lebanon.

Last week at Yearly Meeting, we approved a minute of peace, affirming our unique call as peacemakers in a broken world. Will these words remain on paper, pleasant to read but soon forgotten? Or will we live them out and insist that Christ’s gospel of peace knows no boundaries of race or people group? It is a gospel for ALL nations. And it is a gospel that is hindered by false interpretations of scripture, and by the misrepresentation of “God,” “Christian,” and “Evangelical.” It hurts my heart.