Al Ahli Hospital and the search for villains

Screenshot from source.  

Statement from the Patriarchs and
Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem.

Yesterday's statement from the patriarchs and heads of the churches in Jerusalem, concerning the missile strike and resulting loss of life at the Al Ahli Anglican Episcopal Hospital in Gaza, is blunt:

"We unequivocally declare this atrocity as an egregious crime. one demanding the severest censure and international accountability."

I read the full statement carefully, but found no direct accusation of blame. Censure and accountability imply that those guilty must be identified. So, who are they?

The prevailing assumption among Palestinians is that Israeli forces are responsible for the attack. The cancer center at the hospital had already been hit by an Israeli missile several days earlier. And all of this was against the backdrop of over 3,000 casualties already resulting from Israeli air strikes against the Gaza Strip.

Israeli claims are also weakened by their own intelligence failures around the original October 7 attacks by Hamas against Israel. If their constant surveillance and infiltration of radicals in Palestine proved inadequate to prevent Hamas's atrocities, why should we believe in their precision targeting now? Even if Israel has no intention to hit hospitals and schools, they're nevertheless being hit.

On the other hand, nobody could claim that the rockets used by Palestinian militants are accurate, and a misfire in the Al Ahri case is not at all out of the question. A significant minority of rockets fired at Israel fall short and land in the Gaza Strip.

Complicating all of this is everyone's investment in one villain or another. Israel is blamed by those who want to blame Israel; Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are blamed by those who want to see Israel cleared of blame. Those of us who honestly don't know who is guilty and aren't willing to assign blame based on our political loyalties, do not have the resources to investigate independently.

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It is worth the effort to find out whose willful action or whose deadly mistake resulted in all that sudden death and destruction. Terrorism (whether by non-state actors or by governments) must not become normal. I hope and expect that the same care that went into investigating Malaysian Airlines flight 17 should be applied to Al Ahli.

However, we do know some things:

Israel chose to respond to the Hamas crimes of October 7, not by finding and arresting the culprits, as befits the role of the power controlling the territory from which the crimes were launched, but by (functionally) declaring war against that territory.

Israel uses the language of "war" as if the Gaza Strip were an independent, sovereign country, which it is not. The civilian population of Gaza depends on Israel for its security and well-being, and Israel's government has made it very clear that these people and their security and well-being have no priority in comparison to the rest of Israel's territory. Their lives don't count in the same way.

Israel's allies who see the danger of this moment for the people of Gaza are pleading for concessions such as the restoration of water and electricity (water alone is not enough; water pumps require electricity, water trucks require fuel) and the opening of the Rafah crossing point with Egypt. Whether or not any of these pleas get satisfied, the overall context remains: Gaza is still a zone where Israel corruptly believes it has the right to ignore international law.

Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and several other militant groups claim to provide the defense and protection that Gaza would have if it were a country. But they too do not carry out the function of a protective force within international law. In opposition to the  Palestinian Authority, they reject any collaboration with Israel, and in fact claim to be pursuing the mythical goal of eliminating Israel altogether. They too show no concern for civilian life. 

For Palestinians who are have little hope for a future under Israeli occupation, it's understandable that they might see the militants as the only people actually showing some resistance. For this symbolic comfort, they are apparently willing to let millions of their own neighbors suffer as the militants' fake armies poke Israel in the eye in the service of their myth. So they poke, and Israel bombs, and they poke again, and Israel bombs again, and innocent people die.

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There are Israelis who see the full absurdity of this spectacle, especially in light of biblical ethics, and their own history. Likewise, there are Palestinians who also are not fooled by the myths and deceptions of those who see violence as the key to a better future. My best hope is that we who follow the Prince of Peace will keep finding ways to connect these prophets and peacemakers across all the lines that separate them. In times of despair, it's especially important to let them know they are not alone.

Politically, it's important to remind our own legislators that our tax money must reflect our values and our commitment to international law. (In the USA's case, the billions of dollars in military aid that flow to Israel annually are supposedly conditional on those values.)

Spiritually, it's important to be just a bit humble. When we see huge spectacles of violence here or there, we know that the myth of redemptive violence is having a field day. But that myth is widespread. We ourselves often let it gain inroads into the ways we treat each other, our political opponents, even ourselves. If we feel tempted to despair, let's take the time to remind ourselves of God's love for us and for our enemies. Let's claim our God-given authority to demand that the spirit of violence, of revenge, of cheap shortcuts to win conflicts, be ordered to leave our bodies, our homes, our world.

Speaking of being humble... It may be easy to criticize Israel's leaders for the inhumane and vindictive spirit of their response to the atrocities of October 7. Then I had to remember how the USA responded to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The rush to violence is not peculiar to any one country or region. It's normal behavior for our species. Our challenge as peaceworkers and evangelists is to make available a whole new way of regarding each other, a Divine source of energy for the ministry of reconciliation, and communities near and far who support each other in this way of life.

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Lon and Raelene Fendall at Camp Tilikum, 2017. Source.

Raelene Fendall, our wonderful friend of many years, died on September 26. Nineteen days later, on October 15, Lon Fendall joined her on that same eternal path. Their memorial meeting is scheduled for October 28, 2 p.m., at West Chehalem Friends Church, Newberg, Oregon.

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Japanese Maple, by Lucy Davenport. Source.

Friends Committee on National Legislation offers a briefing on the war in Israel and Gaza. October 25 at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Ahmad Amara, an Israeli Palestinian: Gaza is a test of human morality.

Baptist News: Unlike American evangelicals, religious bodies from Quakers to Catholics urge care for Palestinians and Jews alike.

Gaza in Quaker history: American Friends Service Committee's work with refugees in 1949. (A related film.)

Parker J. Palmer on becoming civilized. (Thanks to Faith Marsalli for the link.)

Why do we persist in trying to “solve” problems with violence, despite the fact that violence threatens our survival? That question has several valid answers. But the one I want to pursue here has yet to get its due and takes us directly to a key function of the spiritual life: violence arises when we do not know what else to do with our suffering.

Why Christian families should consider secular universities: Chris Gehrz interviews InterVarsity's Joe Thackwell.

The Quakers of Newmarket, Ontario, paid a price for their pacifism.

Lucy Davenport on bonsai as icon.

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"I've been falling and rising all these years, but you know my soul looks back in wonder, how did I make it over?" Mahalia Jackson.

The socialists are coming!!

I'm not much for labeling people,
but I have to make a living somehow. Source.

Among my friends and relatives, the supporters of Donald Trump's re-election as U.S. president have two top priorities.

Priority one is their opposition to abortion. I wrote last year about my own conflicted views on abortion (and added some thoughts more recently), but those who explain their support of Trump by saying "I’m voting for every unborn soul the Democrats want to murder," are probably not available for the conversations I advocated there.

Right now, in close second place, Trump supporters oppose the inevitable socialist apocalypse that would follow a Democratic victory in November. "Don't let the Socialist Democrats turn the USA into Venezuela," warns one popular graphic. Once again, the "socialist" label is being pressed into service, not in the service of a fair discussion, but as an epithet.

To be effective, this scare tactic requires us not to look too closely at what's behind that "socialist" label. We must believe that the democratic socialism of people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the same as the forms of socialism practiced in Venezuela and Cuba, for example, and that the factors that shaped those case studies would be present in the USA as well.

I can see why it would be tempting to encourage this confusion. Classic socialism -- government control of most or all markets for goods and services -- has a disastrous historical record. In theory, such a system would ensure that everyone gets their basic needs met, but the level of social control required to maintain these systems practically guarantees a descent into tyranny. For a preview of this tendency, look at the history of socialist and communist organizations. Only Protestant Christians rival them for the ability to quarrel and divide on doctrinal issues. If we just take the scare tactics at face value and assume that Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are hell-bent on creating that sort of system, we can be excused for fearing the consequences.

(For a fictional attempt at a spiritual x-ray of late-stage Soviet socialism, read Francis Spufford's novel Red Plenty, which I summarized here as "the most unusual book I've ever read about the Soviet Union.")

Democratic socialism shares the same major goal as classic socialism: eliminating the social and economic causes of suffering. Eliminating preventable suffering is also a major ethical priority of Christianity, which is probably why so many socialist thinkers have been Christians. For example, Canada's democratic socialist political party, the New Democratic Party, included Christian politicians such as J.S. Woodsworth and Stanley Knowles among its formative leaders. The Roman Catholic Church's social teachings helped form the modern labor movement in many countries. Prominent Christian socialists in the USA's history include Norman Thomas, Dorothy Day, A.J. Muste, Kirby Page, and Mother Jones. This history, if better known, might go a long way to correcting the impressions left by the celebrity Christians of the far right.

Democratic socialism recognizes that there is no way to impose this laudable goal of eliminating preventable suffering from the top down. Coercive centralized planning, no matter how elegantly organized or diligently practiced (see Red Plenty), involves a monopoly on power, and we humans have a terrible record with unchecked power. Democratic socialists rely on two major devices to keep power in check -- a system of political checks and balances, and a market economy. Strangely enough, these are the same mechanisms favored by conservatives! 

The mission of democratic socialists is simple and twofold:

First, they advocate and evangelize for their central vision: a good society ensures fair access to the community's resources so that nobody suffers needlessly.

Second, they compete in the political marketplace of ideas and policies, engaging with colleagues and opponents to find the right balance between two competing goods: building up enough resources for the community's social goals, while providing for reasonable incentives for the private marketplace to thrive and the hybrids (public utilities and other public/private joint ventures) to reward investors.

This is where conflicts often arise: advocates for the most generous social policies can collide with those who want to maximize entrepreneurial and investor incentives. The more we challenge each other to keep our shared values of social justice at the center, the more fruitful (my optimistic self says) these conflicts can be, and the more we can expose the hidden motives of greed and class interest that are in direct conflict with everyone (progressive and conservative alike) whose goal is fair access to resources and the elimination of needless suffering.

Democratic socialists propose solutions that analyze the division of labor between government management and the free market, and adjust that division in favor of our most vulnerable people. For all activities that are best regulated by the free market -- the vast majority of industries and services -- there may be no role for government beyond the preservation of public safety and mechanisms for resolving disputes. But for those activities that are basic to everyone's health and safety, such as police and fire services, roads, every-address postal service, guaranteed access to education, and (I would argue) health care, accountable government management makes sense. The free market simply does not know how to weigh private incentives and the public good in such large-scale concerns, though many will pretend (for their private benefit) that any alternative to the market is (scary music) socialism!

Improving this division of labor -- making better choices between what the free market does well, and what an elected government can accomplish -- is the actual conversation proposed by actual democratic socialists. Every democratic country in the world has already arrived at some such division of labor, including the USA, although nobody has done a perfect job. How can we in the USA do a better job together to "promote the General Welfare" and eliminate needless suffering? And ... really, does this urgent conversation sound so apocalyptic?

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In thinking about this theme, I found a couple of interesting articles.

On Wikipedia, "Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor."

And on Norway as a case study of democratic socialism, "Scandinavian Socialism: The 'Truth' of the Nordic Model."

On this site you can find one of Truman's more famous pieces of rhetoric, on the use of the word "socialism" by politicians on the Republican side. Here he is in Syracuse, New York, on October 10, 1952: 

Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

Socialism is what they called public power. 

Socialism is what they called social security.  

Socialism is what they called farm price supports. 

Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. 

Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

More labels: evangelical, conservative, radical.

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To call Jesus a socialist might be a suspicious use of religious rhetoric for political gain, but let's look with pure motives at how Wess Daniels describes the biblical evidence of the Savior's priorities: Jesus against empire.

Church during "lockdown" and a "hiddenness of life and worship...."

A sad anniversary: Samantha Smith and the Soviet Union.

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UPDATE on the Ramallah Friends Schools:

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the pandemic-era situations faced by several Friends schools. I've also been wondering how Ramallah Friends School in Palestine has been doing. Yesterday I got an update from Adrian Moody, director of the School:

We are currently preparing for a return to school on the 7th September. Cases in the Westbank are going up around 600 per day. We know if we get a case here at school then we will have to close again so things are really uncertain. We have to prepare whilst the goal posts are constantly moving.

The pandemic has really hit school finances. Shop owners were severely hit with all the closures but civil servants were also hit because salaries were cut up to 60%, A lot of our parents are struggling to pay their fees and have to pay for the last academic year as well as prepare for the new academic year. We do what we can to help and we have opened up applications for financial aid and fortunately were able to raise some emergency funds through donors to help our most affected parents.

The financial situation on the Westbank has been dire for some time and the pandemic has just made it incredibly difficult. We are in for a tough year.

To make a contribution to Ramallah Friends School and their resources for financial aid, visit the School's online donation page. To participate in Friends United Meeting's support for the School, visit FUM's donation page. 

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Enjoy Sue Foley breaking down the blues guitar for us:

Core sample of a Quaker culture

A few days ago I stumbled across a box of books that had hidden itself from our view among the many other items we put in storage for our years in Russia. To my delight, in that box I found two books that I'd given up for lost -- books from my earliest years as a Quaker.

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On the left, the light blue book is Christian Faith and Practice in the experience of the Society of Friends, which represented volume one of the Book of Christian Discipline of the then-called London Yearly Meeting. It also represented volume one of Canadian Yearly Meeting's discipline at that time.

Each yearly meeting had its own volume two. In the case of my yearly meeting, volume two was titled Organization and Procedure, and was published in a small loose-leaf binder for ease in incorporating revisions. My own copy has additional pages from two such revisions.

Although I loved both books, it's that second volume that brought back a flood of memories. The binder format made it easy to add my own little selection of Quaker tracts by taping them to blank pages. Not everything I collected in those years fit into that binder -- others went into my diaries for 1974 and 1975, the years I blazed like a comet (as I now remember, blushing a little) with naive conversion enthusiasm. But as I look at those items from which I created my personalized Faith and Practice, I notice that ...

• My very first experiences among Friends were completely consistent with the ideals in these little pamphlets. In "The Spiritual Message of the Society of Friends," Howard Brinton writes,

  A religion is spiritual if every outward word and act is a genuine expression of an inward state. Such a religion avoids all forms which are routine and planned in advance, for such forms tend to become hollow and empty of content. For this reason the Quakers abandoned the outward form of the sacraments even though these visible manifestations are often genuine evidence of inward states. The meeting for worship is as nearly without forms as possible in order that whatever occurs may be a true and spontaneous expression of the life within.

  Sunday after Sunday, the adventure of unprogrammed meeting for worship seemed to confirm Brinton's words. Furthermore, the disciplines of nonviolence, simplicity, equality, and prayer-based meetings for church management, all seemed to be natural outward analogues to this unadorned attentiveness to God's movements within and among us. All these pamphlets seemed to confirm what was drawing me to the men and women of Ottawa Meeting, whose relations with each other -- and kindness to me -- were, to my happy astonishment, such a natural and obvious way to be Christian.
  
  In the decades since these first years, I've rarely heard an assertion about the spiritual life, or the consequent ethical challenges of that life, that I am not tempted to analyze, defend, or criticize. Back then I didn't take into account who published the item, whether it was Philadelphia Yearly Meeting or the Tract Association of Friends, or (heavens!) Friends General Conference. As I read these pamphlets now, I can see assertions that seem weak or simplistic, or that beg for amplification. There is little or no acknowledgment of the majority of world Quakerdom that is pastoral and programmed -- and, ironically, I've spent most of my adult life in that pastoral and programmed majority. The lack of inclusive language is now a constant and cumulative irritant. Quaker platitudes abound serenely, as if no challenge from faithful followers of other traditions would ever intrude. But in those first years, I drank it all up eagerly as cool, refreshing water for my thirsty spirit.
• That particular moment in unprogrammed, "liberal" Quaker culture, while being very conscious of the specificity of its Quaker features, also seemed directly and uncomplicatedly Christian. At least that was the impression I got from my tendency to read all this stuff at face value. That was emotionally important to me, since my own conversion was strongly and specifically Christian and biblical. It wasn't Jesus I was seeking to avoid, nor a community gathered around him, but the religion industry.
  
  It took a while for me to begin seeing that the flesh-and-blood Canadian Yearly Meeting that I was gradually getting to know was not nearly as unified theologically as these pamphlets implied. The first controversy in the Yearly Meeting that I became aware of -- owing to the fact that the yearly meeting presiding clerk was a member of my meeting in Ottawa -- didn't involve Christians vs universalists, it was about the importance of formal membership. In any case, my own incubation period as a Friend was untroubled by theological complications.
• The printed material that was helping form me was almost 100% male in authorship. Pamphlets by Agnes Tierney, Eva Hermann, and Ruth Pitman were the exceptions in those first years. (Ruth Pitman's vivid phrase about vocal ministry, "... sometimes 'the water tastes of the pipes'," has always stayed with me.) In contrast with this exaltation of male writers, the people who were most influential in my own formation were some of the women of Ottawa Meeting, such as the gentle and wise matriarch (as it seemed to me) of the meeting, Deborah Haight.

I'm not advocating that any yearly meeting adopt the practice of offering a menu of texts from which members can assemble their own private Faith and Practice, but these innocently-gathered fragments of my first acquaintance with Friends remain precious to me. The geographical and historical segment of the Quaker movement that they represent was certainly limited, but I cannot regret the role they played in my life.

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One more sample of the Canadian Yearly Meeting culture of the time: here's the opening of Canadian Yearly Meeting's Advices, from the Organization and Procedure of that era. I soon memorized the first few sentences. The straightforward Christian voice is a balm to my soul, even as the male-gendered language begs to be updated ... which it has been. Much of the core content of these words remains in today's version, which you can read in Canadian Yearly Meeting's online Faith and Practice.

The queries from this era can be found in full at this post (scroll down)...

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Most of these pamphlets remain "in print" ... at least online. In addition to the links above for Eva Hermann, Ruth Pitman, and Agnes Tierney, here are some sources:

William Penn, "A Key"
John H. Curtis, "A Quaker View of the Christian Revelation"
Howard H. Brinton, "The Spiritual Message of the Society of Friends" (see 4th PDF page)
Thomas R. Kelly, "The Gathered Meeting"

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Patty Levering died on August 24. If you recognize her name, you probably already know that this news represents a moment of profound grief for many Friends and a loss to Friends everywhere. Her obituary and information about the memorial meeting on September 21 are accessible here. Her blog, which I discovered far too recently, is here.

Via Jim Forest of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, I found out about the death of one of New England's most inspiring and persistent activists, Frances Crowe, who had already put in a lifetime of witnessing for peace and justice when I lived in Boston four decades ago, and was still active this year!

Last Sunday, Reedwood Friends Church's meeting for worship was a collaboration between Daniel Smith-Christopher, professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University and a son of this congregation, and blues musicians LaRhonda Steele and Ed Snyder. "The Bible and the Blues" specifically focused on the connections between blues music and the book of Lamentations. You can listen to the meeting for worship here.

Jan Wood on the courage to see.

We, in the community of faith, have a unique gift to give to these times. We are the ones who experientially know that power of seeing, repenting and finding new ways forward together.

Images of Russia's racial and ethnic diversity -- and testimonies to the related challenges.

Sophie Pinkham writes about Vasily Grossman's novel Stalingrad, and the reasons it remained in obscurity so long. Warning: seldom have I wasted less time between reading a review and ordering a book.

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Albert Collins with a slow version of this classic.

Quakers and Native Americans: It's complicated

Photo by Judy Maurer  

What does an apology from [Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends] to Native Americans look like?

This question arose a couple of weeks ago at our Yearly Meeting's quarterly gathering at Eugene, Oregon. It has been put on our SCYMF Prayer Committee's agenda as an item for prayer, anticipating that we continue to pray and work together toward an answer.

One of the first things we had done on that quarterly meeting day, all of us together, was to participate in a workshop led by Dove John of North Seattle Friends Church. As background, Dove summarized the Discovery Doctrine -- the legal doctrine that supposedly justified European "Christian" powers in claiming that any lands their representatives "discovered" became those powers' possessions, and any claims by existing non-Christian inhabitants on those same lands were null and void. This doctrine was asserted by the young U.S. nation as applying to the territory that came to them upon independence, and then confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1823.

The Discovery Doctrine was never universally accepted even in Christian Europe, and in the European settlement of the "New" World, Quakers were not the only people who actually negotiated with the original inhabitants and paid for real estate. However, these precedents were disregarded by U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall in favor of...

... the uniform understanding and practice of European nations, and the settled law, as laid down by the tribunals of civilized states, [which] denied the right of the Indians to be considered as independent communities, having a permanent property in the soil, capable of alienation to private individuals. They remain in a state of nature, and have never been admitted into the general society of nations.

I recommend reading the full text of Marshall's opinion. I think it reveals his divided conscience (even despite his personal vested interest in the matter). However, his decision seems to rest on two poisonous assumptions ... and it's these assumptions that linger into the present, and must be taken into account in our work of prayer.

First, Realpolitik: Whatever misgivings we might have today about the "extravagant" and "pompous" claims of colonial powers and their descendants (most of us!), it's too late to do anything about it. "it becomes the law of the land and cannot be questioned."

Second, "savages" must bow down to civilization, if they are to be allowed to live. We of course are far too progressive to believe this (at least stated so bluntly) nearly 200 years after Marshall, but are we able to assess the damage done to actual humans and their communities by this principle, and its ever-more-subtle iterations, over the centuries?

And even if we are able to begin to comprehend the damage, Realpolitik is always right at hand to discourage our attempts at redemption.

Back to Dove's workshop. After background information on the Discovery Doctrine, we counted off by tens. We were all then ejected from the room -- all but one out of every ten, symbolizing the devastating effects of death and exile on the First Nations' population. After spending some time in exile, we were admitted back into the meeting room to reflect on our experience.

Some practical commitments arose among those reflections: first and most urgent, a commitment to find out who had preceded us as inhabitants of the specific places where our homes and meetinghouses are located. We also wanted our Friends community to respond to what we learn, to apologize to those people, and to their descendants, and if possible to find a path toward redemption.

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I became a Friend during my university years in Canada, and remained a member of Ottawa Friends Meeting for about ten years. In 1974, Canadian Yearly Meeting was drawn into a concern for right relationships with people of the First Nations by a dramatic incident at Kenora, Ontario, that began during our yearly meeting sessions. (Brief background here.) Shortly afterwards, I was involved in helping host the termination point in Ottawa for a Native Caravan in fall 1974. Their arrival at Parliament Hill was disrupted by a riot, provoked by a small contingent of radicals that I don't think was part of the Caravan, and by an overreaction on the part of the RCMP. I was in a group that got caught in between these two forces. That was my first, and so far only, personal encounter with riot police in full gear.

Canadian Friends worked at Kenora for peaceful resolution of the crisis, and after the direct conflict ended, they also helped arrange for expert analysis of the mercury pollution situation that had been a contributing factor in the crisis. To this day, a concern for justice for Aboriginal people has remained important to Canadian Friends.

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At our quarterly meeting sessions in Eugene, Dove's workshop touched on the mixed record Friends have had over the centuries. William Penn gets credit for honest dealing with American Indians in negotiating for land. His son Thomas was another story, notorious for the 1737 "Walking Purchase" that cheated the Lenape nation in a rigged land purchase. John Woolman and other exemplary Friends believed that Quakers and Native Americans could learn from each other, but as the appetite of European Americans for land and resources grew, Friends participated in the many evil ways by which the original inhabitants were forced to adapt. In place of the violent elimination of obstinate Indians -- the old conventional wisdom -- Friends advocated a new conventional wisdom, to civilize and christianize. That was the liberal view of their day. Just around the same time as Marshall's decision, Friends participated in setting up some of the first of the extensive network of church-run boarding schools into which Native American children were placed, with or without family approval, with the more or less explicit goal of making them more like white Protestants.

It is easy now to mock Friends for their participation in this approach, but that would imply unfairly that all Native Americans were only passive victims. It would marginalize those who, for example, made deliberate choices for Christianity, and whose own churches continue to this day, including a few Friends meetings. For a hint of this more complex reality, read this article about the Christian Reformed Church's 2016 Synod at which the Discovery Doctrine was declared a heresy.

"Heresy" is the right word. The Discovery Doctrine was not just defective colonial-era political theology. It was yet another face of our ancient enemy -- the primordial sin of objectification, of false witness, of denying the sacred image of God that lets us all regard each other as we regard Christ. For this reason, the first motion in answering the question with which I started this post ("What does an apology ... to Native Americans look like?") should be prayer. We need humility, curiosity, endless love as well as boldness. We need to overcome the double paralysis of Realpolitik and smug superiority. We need to confront racism that is so deeply embedded in our systems that I am sure the word "diabolical" is not too strong. We can't just choose from a political menu; in shaping and addressing any apology well, we need the leading and power of the Holy Spirit, and the cross-shaped (cross-cultural, cross-political, cross-fertilizing) community that the Spirit makes possible.

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Does an apology include some form of restitution or reparations? This question comes up in relation to slavery as well as our nation's evil record of relations with Native Americans. I can list the defensive objections that might arise:

• It was so long ago.
• I earned what I have.
• Not guilty! As an immigrant, I have an alibi. (For example, I was born in Norway. We Norwegians did our own Viking-era mischief much longer ago!)
• Mostly freeloaders will benefit, not honest victims.

I think these objections miss the point, spiritually.

It's not just that murder and genocide don't have statutes of limitations, although that's true. (John Marshall's interpretation of the Discovery Doctrine, that it's too late to reverse the consequences of conquest, should not still be allowed to decide things.) The main point is that repeated clusters of deliberate, organized cruelty, resulting in massive suffering, become almost like nodes of demonic oppression.

Whether you believe in an intelligent Satan (along the lines of Peter Wagner's ideas) or a more impersonal mechanism of demonic evil (Walter Wink), we shouldn't pretend that such nodes just go away. Their evil persists. The basis for apology and repentance is not white guilt or shame or any form of self-flagellation. Instead, it is to conduct spiritual warfare against the demons of racism and oppression and false witness, to declare them off-limits in the land that we now share, so that we can conduct our future stewardship -- and make our public investments -- in freedom and mutual regard.

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Who lived here in the area now named Portland, Oregon, and who are their descendants? This (pdf) booklet begins to give some answers.

Oregon's nations and languages. UPDATE: Hemisphere (and more) map. (Credit.)

Unlearning the Doctrine of Discovery in the USA, and in Canada.

Reporter's Indigenous Terminology Guide ( and pdf download).

From scandal to solidarity: Lindsey Paris-Lopez looks at Elizabeth Warren and Native American visibility in perspective.

Bryan Mealer on some evangelicals stumping for Democrats.

Joe Carnes-Ananias on increasing Bible study participation among busy people by ... asking for more commitment.

"Lord, keep me weeping" asks Stacey Hare. ("I know what you're thinking: 'you must be great at parties'.")

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Messages

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Hartwells Locks, Rideau Canal Photo by Tom Heyerdahl

What the president is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong Un would understand....

These words from U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson remind me of this ancient and totally misplaced trust in "messages," invoked whenever a leader can't explain the actual content or logic of a statement at face value.

A few years ago I examined the related use or misuse of the terms "mixed messages" and "mixed signals." At the time, we opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were told that our opposition gave our "enemies" mixed messages rather than the united message that would presumably shock and awe them into submission. Every major theme in this ephemeral cyber-world of blogging eventually cycles back, and so once again I'm looking at the wishful thinking about the messages our leaders are supposedly sending.

Of course the North Koreans are aware of the cluster of messages and subtexts represented by the U.S. president's "fire and fury" message and the commentaries of his associates in the U.S. government:

• The threat itself: be afraid of our weapons
• The possibility that it is all bluff and bluster, given the evident limited range of Trump's strategic imagination
• The insult contained in Tillerson's commentary, that North Korea's leadership would not be able to decipher a calmer, more straightforward message
• The possible challenge to call the U.S. bluff
• The functional assumption that North Korea will respond with more wisdom and maturity than the U.S. side is exhibiting.

North Korea is a difficult case, no doubt. It's not easy to communicate with a leadership that seems so paranoid and defensive (however we understand the background to that stance). But the standard advice for communicating with "difficult people" is to say the same reasonable and true and sustainable thing over and over, patiently and clearly, no matter how provocative the other side's rhetoric might be. They're already perfectly aware of the resources available at your disposal -- diplomatic, economic, military, and, most importantly, time. There is absolutely no need to goad them and thereby destabilize the situation and possibly lose the support of the rest of the world. And there is no need to fall back on "signals" and "messages" that are actually just transparent poses.

All you need to say is simply 'Yes' or 'No', said Jesus. Anything beyond this comes from the evil one. (Matthew 5:37.)

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Yesterday was Judy's and my 37th wedding anniversary. Instead of worrying about North Korea, we enjoyed time with our Ottawa relatives, including a wonderful walk around the campus of Carleton University, where I studied Russian back in the '70's. We also walked along the Rideau River and the Rideau Canal, whose ancient mechanical locks seem to work as well as ever.

Today we travel to Maine, retreating for some weeks to the village of Raymond (and its Internet-equipped library) before returning to Elektrostal.

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A language we'll soon be learning (I hope): the language of transition.

Hiroshima: an anti-transfiguration.

An interview on a new Christian movement characterized by multi-level marketing, Pentecostal signs and wonders, and post-millennial optimism.

Is Canada dealing with a new wave of refugees?

Controversial (?) Palestinian professor breaks his silence.

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Meanwhile in Moscow ...

Canadian shorts

On Sunday, Judy and I worshipped with River of Life Friends Church in Post Falls, Idaho. This was our third visit to this meeting. We appreciated the thoughtful questions that followed our sermon, and we look forward to more correspondence with those intrigued by our account of life and service in Russia.

Yesterday we visited Spokane Friends Church's midweek meeting and presented a program on our experiences in Russia. Again we felt very much among old friends--and again we loved the perceptive questions that the evening's participants asked us. I was happy to show them a copy of the brand new edition of Power of Goodness, of which I brought 21 copies with me to the USA. Twenty of them have gone to Friends International Library's Janet Riley in Sandy Spring, Maryland. The other copy is traveling with us to Friends churches this month and next.

New edition of Power of Goodness was published by Friends International Library and printed by Groznenskii Rabochii in Grozny, Chechnya.

In between Sunday and yesterday we had a mini-vacation in British Columbia. We stayed at the Red Shutter Inn in Rossland, a ski lodge that was, in this off-season time, nearly empty, and very calm. Our most constant companion those two and a half days was a large, very friendly cat named Reed.

During both full days of our visit, we spent most of our time in Castlegar, about a half-hour drive away. Our ultimate destination was the Doukhobor Discovery Centre, but on our first day we ended up just exploring the town and hiking on the Merry Creek Interpretive Trails. The weather was perfect.

On Tuesday, we finally visited the Doukhobor Discovery Centre. It was a fascinating glimpse of the tradition of Russian "spiritual Christianity," part of the specifically Russian equivalent of Western Europe's Protestant Reformation. Doukhobor theology seems similar to Unitarianism in the West, but clothed in a rural and communitarian simplicity. Despite important differences with Quaker faith and practice, it's not hard to imagine why Friends were eager to work with Lev Tolstoy to help the Doukhobors find a new land--Canada--that would be more receptive to their ethic of nonviolence than Tsarist Russia, particularly after the famous Arms-Burning of 1895.

Doukhobor Discovery Center. Below: Communal building (over Tolstoy's shoulder); lower level of exhibit hall.

During this period of uncertainty and tension in US/Russian relations, I confess that there was some sense of relief in spending a couple of days in Canada.

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During our days off, the relentless parade of discouraging news from the courtrooms of the USA and Russia continued. For example, the mobile Web site of the Washington Post had headlines on these two stories simultaneously:

1) U.S., Europe condemn jail term for Putin opponent.
2) Judge says genital searches can continue at Guantanamo Bay.

It's as if the two countries are competing to mock justice. Force-feed and grope prisoners at Guantanamo Bay on this side of the ocean, while on the other side, a judge who did not permit a single defense witness (except for prosecution witnesses whose testimony actually helped the defense!) can sentence a Russian political maverick to five years' imprisonment. A whistle-blowing Russian lawyer is convicted posthumously of tax fraud, as an American judge refuses to remove "aiding the enemy" from an American whistle-blower's long list of charges. The work of Amnesty International, urging the same standards of justice everywhere, is as important as ever. And I've not even begun to plumb the depths of grief over Trayvon Martin's death and the howling demons of racism still roaming the land.

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Koozma J. Tarasoff tells about a new video on Doukhobors still in the former Soviet Union.

Reactions to the Navalny conviction: "Frighten and be frightened." "...Shocked but not surprised." (Note comments.) "Final curtain on a tragicomic trial."

"...No idea of charges, handcuffed to a bed..."

Responding to Trayvon Martin: "Our renewed call to suffer together."

A New Testament scholar from Pune, India, experiences a "challenging visit" to Bethlehem.

"A short history of the gathered meeting." (With important links.)

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Jean-Rene Ella, a one-man barbershop quartet, and "Elijah"...