Can you believe?: nonviolence

Showing posts with label nonviolence. Show all posts

13 March 2025

"Grandchildren are the crown of the aged..."

Your blogger as a brand new grandchild, in Oslo,
with his Oma and Opa, Emma and Paul Schmitz.

We can’t create a future fit for our grandchildren with systems built for our grandparents.
—António Guterres

Perhaps nothing is more predictable than politicians' sanctimoniously referring to the interests of "our grandchildren."
—Neil H. Buchanan

Grandchildren are the crown of the aged...
—from Proverbs 17:6.

It's not unusual for people to talk about grandchildren—now (with pictures) or in the future. I've been in such conversations. But I was brought up short the other day when a friend said, "I don't want grandchildren."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Just think. What kind of a world would they be born into?"

I'm embarrassed to admit that I've rarely considered these two things at the same time: what my actual family, friends, and neighbors, and their flesh and blood descendants, will experience, and the macro-scale trends forecast by our economists and ecologists—a future my contemporaries and I might or might not experience firsthand, but what we might reasonably anticipate for our children's children.

Politicians naturally might want us to believe that, with our support, they will help shape that future into a better direction. But I have some questions for them/us:

Will your recommendations benefit some children ("our" children) more than others? If so, what will happen when those other children catch on to your game? And will our children welcome this bias and be infected by your cynicism, or will they be repelled in favor of a more universal blessing?
How will you know when disastrous ecological changes approach a tipping point beyond which we cannot risk going? What risks of miscalculation are you willing to take? When are you going to go public with your own private realization that we have been postponing a true reckoning too long?
When will the dismantling of our (U.S.) constitutional structures and norms reach a similar tipping point? How will you know? How are you responding?
In any realm—political, ecological, economic, or the places where all three merge—can you envision joining a coalition of hope and change of a sufficient scale that it would compensate you for abandoning your personal dreams of political success—a success that honesty might well threaten?
Will you identify, join, or help build such a coalition? Will I?

If by some microscopic chance, our generation's grandchildren see this, my question to them is: well, how did we do?

Related, sort of: Sowing in tears, part one, part two. The long defeat.

Political tipping point toolbox: The Federalist #51, "The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments."

Environmental Research Letters: Observations and cautions on using the term "tipping point."

Climate change outlook (science and politics) for 2025 and more generally. It seems that the planet itself is not in danger, but how far can we push its capacity to host complex life forms?

Hannah Bowman: ways for your church to take solidarity beyond sympathy.

Food for vision, from George Lakey: nonviolence vs dictators.

Indivisible: example of a current coalition. (Suggestions of others, and your criteria for supporting them, are welcome!)

Friends Committee on National Legislation, lobbying on behalf of Quakers in the USA since 1943.

Revisiting George Lakey's writings, while assembling the list above, reminded me of the power of telling stories in advocating social justice. I still have vivid memories of Studs Terkel interviewing storyteller John Henry Faulk. (November 1, 1969.) I couldn't believe my ears! In fact, Faulk's argument from absurdity probably helped open me to genuine Christianity, as did the Christmas 1969 issue of Reader's Digest a month later. (I told that story here.)

Our old friend and colleague John Muhanji is giving a First Monday talk, April 7, at Pendle Hill in Pennsylvania. Contextualizing Quakerism to African Cultural, Social, and Spiritual Realities.

What is Lent, really? (Asking for a Friend!)

Eve Monsees, "Number Nine Train."

27 February 2025

In crisis and conflict, "the church is like a ..."

Memories of Elektrostal, Russia, in winter, thanks to Sergey Kadyrov (composer and videographer). (Not related to tonight's post.)

The president of the United States is vigorously putting his authoritarian stamp on all aspects of federal government. With the help of technocratic lieutenants, he is cutting ties with past practices and norms as quickly as possible, hoping to carve and cut as much as possible before (if ever) the courts, the Congress, or the people slow him down.

A crucial part of his core support is a network of charismatic Christians who believe that Christian authoritarianism is actually better than democracy, that their leaders are apostles and prophets in the biblical mode, and that their opponents are in the service of Satan. How might those of us Christians who value democracy, and are emphatically not in the service of Satan, organize our responses?

Last week I summarized at least one school of interpretation of all these developments. This week, I want to consider how we in the Church (capital C) might be responding. My ideal is a mutually respectful division of labor according to our spiritual gifts, temperaments, and leadings. And I'm organizing these tentative thoughts using the metaphors in my post from May of 2021, "The church is like a ...." As always, your additions, improvements, and personal stories are very welcome.

My overall point is this: each of us can do, and is called to do, only so much. Our strength is in Jesus, not in anxious overwork, and the church can be our point of coordination and mutual support.

"The church is like an incubator."

Are you a pastor or elder, a member of the meeting of ministry and counsel? Whatever your title, perhaps you have a calling as one who cares for souls. You can hold open space for grief, for lament, for the recognition of our losses, for our disillusionment and discouragement, and also for those whose idealism flares up in the face of all this.
You can watch for the new growth of leadership and prophecy for our times among young and old alike, and let them know you've noticed and are ready to connect them with mentors.
You will see who among you, and who in your broader community, has lost jobs as a result of the administration's slashing of the federal workforce and its contractors, and the cost of the MAGA war against the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement, and connect those people with aid.
Your role in the church might be to administer the funds or shepherd the connections that respond in practical ways to these challenges.
If you have the gift of prayer or healing, you will certainly be needed to uphold all of these ministries, and to pray protection over the community and its places of work and worship.
Consider how to bring children and newcomers into conversations that might come more naturally to some than to others.
How can our worship faithfully reflect the joy, grief, and commitment that we honestly feel as we put ourselves and our situation into God's hands? As Larry Norman asked fifty years ago, "Why should the devil have all the good music?"

"The church is like an observatory."

Not everyone can cope with the constant stream of news, rumors, and social-network posts that reflect the administration's actions and their consequences. But if you can do so, your careful work in discerning truth from exaggeration (from whatever side), urban legends, and outright false witness will be an important contribution to the whole community.
If you are an observer, part of your role might be to identify reliable sources of information, as well as predictable sources of misinformation (inaccuracies and exaggerations) and disinformation (deliberate deceptions and false narratives, no matter how persuasive).
Are you a legal expert or lawyer? In collaboration with other observers, you may see opportunities to initiate or join legal challenges to unlawful, unethical, or unconstitutional acts.
The prophets among you will be needed to give voice to God's leadings, and confirm them through consultation and mutual accountability among each other. Remind the community that, whatever other business the faith community may have, agenda item number one remains, "What does God want us to say and do at this time and place?"
Prophets can help us know when the time has come for civil disobedience.
You and other observers in your own community can be in frequent touch with other communities that have similar commitments to faith and trustworthiness.

"The church is like a laboratory."

Be curious! The Christians who choose authoritarianism over democracy have their reasons, and their own version of idealism. If you are feeling led, and are equipped and prayed-for in your community, reach out to our opponents and ask questions, supply accurate information, build relationships, pray for them, and bring your insights back to the rest of us.
Do you have the gift of evangelism? Pray for opportunities to open up a more complete witness of grace than the opposition offers. Be ready to explain concepts of spiritual warfare that that are not politically manipulative. For those who have never seen what spiritual unity looks like when nobody is excluded, be sure your community is ready to demonstrate what we preach, and don't conceal our failures!
When civil disobedience is called for, be prayerful and creative. Look to the past for inspiration (for example, in George Lakey's books) but also innovate. Build coalitions with trustworthy allies. Consider tax protests and boycotts, and be prepared to explain your actions to the public without resorting to activist jargon. Accept failure and learn from it, without losing heart. Stay in constant touch with pastors, elders, stewards, and prophets, cherishing your unity with those who may be called to prayer and stewardship but not to disobedience.
Does your community have divisions between mystics and activists, between cynics and idealists, conservatives and radicals, between those who rage and those who mourn? This is the time to experiment with new commitments to love and learn from each other, and use our differences to keep each other sharp and honest. There's nothing wrong with conflict, conducted ethically among those who love each other.

This list is just a start. Its biggest weakness: no stories. I could tell a few ... and make this post far too long. Better idea: please tell some stories of your own, and add some ideas and color to this list. Also, I'd love for us to know who else is working on church-based responses to the threat of Christian-sponsored authoritarianism. Let's build the network.

(Note: See the items from Beacon Hill Friends House in the link list below, under "Coming in March.")

Gospel order revisited

Living without lying

Worship and protest

Dining across the divide

Coming in March:

March 2, 4:00 p.m. Pacific time: Bremerton (Washington) Friends Worship Group.
March 5, noon Eastern time in Washington, DC, and online: Faithful Witness Wednesdays at the U.S. Capitol.
March 5, 7:30 p.m. and March 19, 7:30 p.m. Eastern time: Organizing for the Time We Are In, Session Two ("Know Your Rights and Community") and Session Three, online from Beacon Hill Friends House.
March 5, 6:30 p.m. Pacific time at Reedwood Friends Church: Daniel Smith-Christopher, Digital Doubts? Faith in the Future with A.I.
March 22, 7 p.m. Pacific time at Reedwood Friends Church: An Evening with Cornel West.

Kelly Kellum at Friends United Meeting writes to Donald Trump.

Today's OCHA report on the situation in the West Bank.

Since OCHA began systematically documenting demolition incidents and displacement in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in 2009 until recently, the main direct driver of displacement of Palestinians was the demolition of homes for lacking building permits issued by the Israeli authorities, due to restrictive and discriminatory planning regimes applied in Area C and East Jerusalem. However, in the past two years, displacement patterns have shifted, reflecting broader changes in the protection environment for Palestinian communities, particularly herding and Bedouin communities in Area C. In 2023, settler violence became a leading cause of displacement with more than 1,600 people displaced due to settler violence and access restrictions (mainly in Bedouin and herding communities), compared with about 300 people displaced by lack-of-permit demolitions in these communities. Between 2020 and 2024, settler-related incidents targeting Bedouin and herding communities that resulted in casualties, property damage or both increased nearly sevenfold, rising from about 50 incidents in 2020 to approximately 330 incidents in 2024.

Online presentations and conversations with Mark Russ (Britain Yearly Meeting) this year. Mark is the author of Quaker Shaped Christianity and The Spirit of Freedom.

A Friends Peace Teams story from Indonesia: Building a Children's Library with Heart.

Tom Gates posts the prologue to his study, Turning Toward the Victim: The Bible, Sacred Violence, and the End of Scapegoating in Quaker Perspective.

I vividly remember my first encounters, over fifty years ago, with the music of Lightnin' Hopkins, the subject of this affectionate tribute.

13 February 2025

Occupation: Myrtle Wright's experience

Cover design shows Grini Concentration
Camp main building. Print made by Ole
Olden and smuggled out as his greeting
for Christmas 1941. Nothing can keep a
star from shining.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted "Under occupation" as one of the ways I'm trying to make sense of the current USA presidency and its actions.

A commenter on that post mentioned Myrtle Wright's book Norwegian Diary 1940-1945. I just finished re-reading it, to my great benefit.

On April 9, 1940, Wright was a Quaker peace worker who happened to be on her fourth day of a brief visit to Norway when the Germans invaded that morning. She ended up remaining there for nearly four years. Thirty years later, her account of those years was published by the Friends Peace and International Relations Committee in London. It's now out of print but there are used copies on the market. Online, a Russian translation is available in various formats.

After the initial conquest, the German occupation of Norway seemed relatively mild at first; the occupiers hoped to convince Norwegians that the invasion was simply to protect Norway from the UK's hostile plans. German soldiers conducted themselves correctly, by and large; the German overlords mostly operated behind the facade of the Quisling government and other local collaborators. In summer 1942, the mass arrests of Jewish people began, including a group of Jewish children who became a special concern of Wright and her friends. Executions were more frequent, private radios were outlawed on pain of death, labor conscription began (often destined for Germany). The occupation became much harsher. As life in Norway became more and more complicated under these conditions, Wright began keeping a diary starting in June 1942 in order to record and remember significant events, travels, and contacts as they happened. The first four chapters of her book were written after the war, and cover her arrival in Oslo, the German invasion, the famous teachers' and pastors' acts of resistance. After those first four chapters, the contemporary diary itself begins, and takes up most of the rest of her book.

The book was published in 1974, the very year I became a Friend. In 1975, after my visits to Moscow and Leningrad, I spent a couple of weeks with my grandparents in Oslo. On Sundays I attended the Oslo Friends Meeting, and there I met some of the people whose names come up in Wright's book, and visited some of the locations she described.

Norwegian Diary reminded me of Patricia Cockrell's more recent Sketches from a Quaker's Moscow Journal. In both cases, much of their service consisted of making and keeping appointments, arranging meetings, carrying food, money, clothing, and letters, dealing with bureaucracy, responding to emergencies, and observing discretion in risky situations. The level and character of repression differ between the two cases, but, sadly, that gap is narrowing.

I wondered—what might Myrtle Wright have recorded in her book that we might find interesting in our present situation? Here are some of her observations on living in an occupied country.

The importance of community. Even after being unexpectedly trapped in a country under occupation, Myrtle Wright was not alone. Her overlapping networks—including Quakers, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and Old Woodbrookers (alumni/ae of Woodbrooke College in Birmingham, England), and their families and friends—were sources of mutual support. Although at the start of her story, Oslo had just one Quaker member, there were frequent opportunities for worship with likeminded people. Occasionally Wright was able to travel to Stavanger, the historic center of Norwegian Quaker life.

The importance of information. After the German authorities confiscated private radios upon pain of death, Norwegians listened to BBC news and similar sources on hidden radios at great personal risk, and then passed along war news by word of mouth and through underground newspapers—also a very risky business. Information about arrests, prisoner transport, and incarcerations, about the underground railroad to Sweden (its departures, arrivals in Sweden, failures and betrayals) needed to circulate under the noses of the occupiers. The book gives several examples of the code words used by the resistance. Despite all the impediments, Norwegians found ways to keep themselves informed. One example: the amazing story of the White Rose circle in Germany became known in Norway.

Pacifists' dilemmas in war and occupation. Myrtle Wright and many of her friends were committed pacifists, yet (as she writes eloquently) they understood that Allied successes on the battlefield would hasten the end of the war. Within Norway, most people agreed that nonviolence was the only basis for resistance, but many people quietly cheered the Allies' advances in the USSR, (Stalingrad is often mentioned), North Africa, Italy, and France. With these wartime realities, Wright and her friends preferred to discuss postwar visions of freedom, justice, and the growth of empathy without distinctions.

War and occupation create understandable bitterness. The pacifist outlook, as expressed by Wright and many of her friends, not only made violent resistance unacceptable, it also helped them preserve empathy (for example) for the German cities being bombed by the Allied air forces. Such spiritually grounded empathy was nothing if not universally applicable, and would be badly needed when the time for repair and restoration would come, as these circles believed it would.

The value of humor. Humor has the power to build community, point out awkward truths, reward divergent thinking, and restore perspective.

Myrtle Wright tells this story from Grini concentration camp:

At Christmas the prisoners had decorated the barracks and Per Krohg had painted a frieze. Fehmer, from the Gestapo ... came to inspect. He was evidently impressed and stopped in front of Per Krohg's frieze with the remark, "It is remarkable what a primitive nation can produce under German control." This became a byword in Grini and, when prisoners were digging ditches in slow tempo or on some other work, they would say to each other, "It is wonderful what a primitive nation can produce when under German control."

The importance of rest. The constant demands on Wright and her friends eventually brought them to the very limits of their energy. As the war went on and restrictions on travel increased, it became harder and harder to do the usual Norwegian thing—hiking on mountain paths, along rivers, on glaciers, in meadows ... and away from the stresses of daily life. Some of the most beautiful passages in Wright's book describe these wonderful escapes, even as they find their movements being more and more restricted by the occupation.

There are few direct parallels between the occupation that Myrtle Wright experienced and the looming threats to democracy in the USA, but I think that some of the values and capacities that aided her and her friends remain valid for today's resistance.

July 10 Saturday (from Norwegian Diary, 1943).

Landing on Sicily—the news has gone round like lightning and spirits rise at once. Everyone adds a few more details until there is no more to tell, and rumour does the rest. At least this is another step, and a long-awaited one. A pacifist, what should she think? Many lives will be lost, but every day of delay means more lives, to say nothing of illness and misery. The fury of this disease of violence is not likely to abate without much more loss of life, and, therefore, can one feel a little relief if only the end draws nearer? The physical death of the soldier cannot be worse than the torturing decay of the concentration camp, or the ghetto, or the terror of the civil population in the bombed towns. But physical death is not the ultimate test—what of the spirit which is bred in the warring nations and the occupied countries? We at least can do nothing to stop the fury of the armed warfare; our job lies in another direction and is quite clear, if only we can get it done. We have to prepare the minds of men for the moment when they again have choice and can by their actions, determine the way the peace shall be built; or will the end of the outward war show that Nazism, beaten in the battlefield, has won a victory in men's hearts?

Myrtle Wright (Norw.) married Quaker educator Philip Radley in 1951 and was then known as Myrtle Radley. She died in 1991. More about Myrtle and Philip.

Meanwhile, in Russia: Meduza's Lilia Yapporova and colleagues survey the realities and dysfunctions of the Russian opposition inside and outside Russia.

Trump and Musk aren't just tiptoeing toward autocracy.

Pope Francis denounces inhumanity to refugees.

From Tim Gee at Friends World Committee for Consultation, a letter to Friends for 2025.

Friday PS: "They won't let me down." On the anniversary of Navalny's death.

Evan Nicole Bell performs Albert King's classic "Crosscut Saw."

28 March 2024

Death triumphs, or so it seems (mostly a repost)

When I wrote the meditation below back in 2018, we were reeling from the Parkland shooting and the terrible disaster at the Winter Cherry Shopping Center in Kemerovo, Russia.

The spring of 2018 was our first in the USA since leaving Russia. In November 2017 we had sold our furniture to our wonderful landlords, said goodbye to our beloved kitties, and ended our ten-year residency in Elektrostal, Russia.

But for many mixed reasons, Russia is still often on my mind. The war in Ukraine, the life and death of Aleksei Navalny, and now the searing tragedy of Crocus City Hall...these are parts of the Calvary Road on the way to Easter 2024 for me.

Many of us are also paying close attention to the agonies suffered by ordinary innocent people in the Holy Land. Last Sunday I spoke to Friends at Spokane Friends Meeting, confessing that I had originally planned to give a sermon on hope, but found that I was not in a condition to do so. Instead I promised that next time I visit them, I'll try again. For last Sunday I chose the theme of trust. Regardless of whether our hopes come true, as Peter says in his first epistle, chapter 2 (quoting Isaiah), "the one who trusts in [Christ] will never be put to shame."

Here is my meditation from 2018, based on Emmanuel Charles McCarthy's Stations of the Cross of Nonviolent Love:

Source (pdf).

If you've been with me for a while, you'll recognize the graphic above as a page from Charles McCarthy's Stations of the Cross of Nonviolent Love, which I read every year during Lent.

A shroud from Assumption Monastery, Sviyazhsk.
(More information, in Russian, here.) Photo: V. Strelov.

In earlier years, when I mentioned McCarthy's stations in my blog, I usually provide a station a little before this one, number 13, which is (along with 14, "Jesus is laid in the sepulchre") the bleakest of all. But I'm still in a state of shock over two mass tragedies and the perverse backlashes that have followed those tragedies. I am not in a mood to avert my eyes from the evidences of bondage to violence and inhumanity represented by these incidents.

The first event was the shootings at Parkland, Florida, and the efficient killing made possible by an AR-15. The backlash: smear campaigns against the students speaking in favor of gun control.

My mini-shrine. A flower for Kemerovo's kids.

Screenshot from TV Rain's coverage of Moscow meetings.

The second incident happened since I last wrote here. Last Sunday, 64 people, at least, died in the Winter Cherry Shopping Center in Kemerovo, Russia, including 41 children. In some cases, parents were electronic witnesses to their children's last moments, thanks to mobile phones and social networks. The backlash: highly placed politicians charging those parents and other angry survivors with taking advantage of this tragedy for political gain.

(If for some reason you have a desire to throw up, just read senator Elena Mizulina's comments in this summary of Russian media coverage of the Kemerovo aftermath.)

[Comment from 2024: Some things don't change; witness the political exploitation of the Crocus City Hall tragedy.]

In the hours and days after the Winter Cherry fire, I watched as much coverage as I could, including the huge meeting outside the city administration building, and then Tuesday's memorial meetings in Moscow. A reporter asked one of the participants in Moscow for his feelings about the fire, and he said something that I've come to expect to hear every time something like this happens in Russia: "Whatever 'they' do, we live in the kind of country where these things will keep happening." It was this hopelessness that reminded me of Station 13: "Death and the dark side of reality are always the final victors."

Which is it? Violence, racism, elitism, cynicism, and death are the victors? We know too much about what that looks like ... what that continues to look like two millennia after Jesus.

OR ...

Will we realize something completely different on Easter Sunday? How will the world know that things are different?

Last year's [2017] station from McCarthy's booklet. And 2016's station (scroll down).

(Back to 2024...)

A group of performers honor Aleksei Navalny with a video in the style of his favorite TV show, Rick and Morty.

Putin's paranoia: Timothy Snyder on terrorism, delusion, and self-destruction.

Right Sharing of World Resource (where I once served as the one full-time staffer!) is now seeking a new general secretary.

The USA spends close to a trillion dollars on its military despite its string of failures in traditional war-fighting terms. But (says Tom Engelhardt) maybe the real World War III is best understood not in traditional war-fighting terms at all, but as a slow motion war on the earth—that is, on the physical planet that we live on.

"No more international travel"—Seasoned travelers Hal Thomas's and Nancy Thomas's "fairly firm" decision, until ....

Finishing up with some blues energy: Rick Holmstrom and Nathan James.

13 April 2023

Resisting the mystique of evil once again (partly a repost)

(Related posts: Evil. Declaring war. It's hard to believe in Jesus.)

Once again blatant evil is in the news. Photos and a video of apparent beheadings of Ukrainian soldiers are in circulation, leading to understandable outrage and demands for firm response.

What differentiates these awful examples of human capacity for deliberate cruelty from the many other instances of premeditated violence and terrorism that are happening constantly? Most obviously, they're right before our eyes; we cannot avoid them! Can they also serve to provoke us to go deeper than naming and demonizing the most obvious villains in any specific case?

History is a butcher's bench, as Emmanuel Charles McCarthy has said. Most of us on this planet have been taught, wrongly, that when we cannot prevail by other means, violence is the obvious and most effective option. Not everyone who believes this becomes cruel, but those who are predisposed to cruelty can feel justified. (Not everyone who likes alcohol becomes an alcoholic, but in an alcohol-saturated culture, addicts are statistically bound to arise.) So we can thunder against cruel crimes, and no doubt we should, but we also need to challenge our own systemic addiction to violence.

This should be second nature to Christians, who are always seeking to liberate God's children from every bondage. (We are, aren't we?) It's the reason for the natural partnership between the evangelist and the activist that I mentioned last week. But it's impossible to deny that we too have been beguiled too often by the myth of redemptive violence.

Here's my original post on resisting the mystique of evil, posted in October 2014 after an earlier cluster of cruel beheadings....

Signe Wilkinson; source.

I'm not sure what is more disheartening—the beheadings videotaped and published by Islamic State, or the utterly predictable responses from world leaders. Yes, there is palpable evil in the premeditated cruelty of those shocking videos, but here's my question: is the effect magnified by the demonstrative shaking of fists by public figures? What might be a more adequate response from believers?

I watched one of the videos from beginning to end, and haven't yet recovered. After a few moments of stunned silence, I flashed back to a piece of film footage from Viet Nam, a few seconds captured by an NBC cameraman when the national police chief of South Viet Nam summarily executed a Viet Cong prisoner during the Tet offensive. The clip was included in the documentary film Hearts and Minds, which I saw as a college student in Canada—and brand-new Christian—in 1975. Those images, too, still remain with me.

Unlike the Islamic State beheadings, the Saigon execution may not have been staged for video. Part of its raw horror was the way the shooting seemed so unexpected, so casual. On the other hand, its inclusion in Hearts and Minds was a deliberate choice. This moment of total ruthlessness drives home the clash of values implied by the film's ironic title. It shocks for a purpose.

Islamic State's video propagandists are also trying to shock us for a purpose. In fact, these crimes really should shock us if we are to hold on to our humanity, our capacity for empathy. In other words, we are absolutely right to recoil with horror—but not with fear. We ought to go on to pray for the victims, their families, and all those who are in IS's captivity. Our prayers also need to extend to the murderers and their commanders. Having unleashed the demons of cruelty so far and wide, they're all in grave danger of becoming spiritual zombies themselves.

But please deny them the pleasure of casting a spell of evil over us. Their victims die only once, the same as all the rest of us, including all innocent victims of all wars, and including the tragic "collateral damage" of political and military miscalculations. Above all, let's not permit the righteous rhetoric of our politicians keep us from seeing how their own actions, financed by our taxes and abetted by our passivity, can incubate such hatred. The cycles of grievance and revenge that feed terrorist groups such as Islamic State could never ever excuse such cruelty, but those cycles are nevertheless a powerful spiritual reality demanding to be confronted with prayer and discernment and bold truth-telling.

Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.

In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. (Ephesians 6:11-18a; context.)

Frederick Schmidt on navigating denominational decline; Jana Riess and Stephen Bullivant on why Americans are leaving their churches.

"It's really really difficult to argue people into the Kingdom of God." Josh Daffern on how evangelicals, of all people, have been getting evangelism all wrong.

William Shetter's review of Clarence Jordan's The Inconvenient Gospel. Caution: I had barely finished reading the review when I ordered the book.

To those who wonder whether they are doing "enough" good in the world, Alyson Rockhold has some wisdom from Mother Teresa and Thomas Merton.

Open Culture gives you access to a U.S. military guide from 1955 on how to detect communists, now available on YouTube. In another couple of generations, will we get a similar retrospective look at an archival guide to detecting critical race theory?

On the eve of the coronation of Charles III, we might ask: Should the Anglican church in the United Kingdom romanticize such coronations? Some thoughts from Jonathan Chaplin:

Surely we must question whether presiding over the sacral coronation of a political ruler has ever been theologically defensible for a church called to model the example of Jesus Christ, ‘who though he was rich, yet for your sakes he become poor’ (2 Cor. 8: 9 NRSV)

Rick Estrin and the Nightcats sending out a song "to all the senior citizens, to all my AARP people out here...."

09 March 2023

The joy of politics

CBS Evening News, USA's presidential election night 1964, screenshot from source.

"They still haven't counted the votes in Pennsylvania and
Michigan." (Posted on Twitter with hashtag "Envy.")

Politics is serious business.

Many of us correctly associate "politics" with the ways society regulates itself and allocates scarce resources. It covers the ways human beings, with all our colorful conceits and uniforms, do what all "higher" mammals do: define "we" and "they," mark territory, and mobilize against calamity.

What could be more serious?

The realm of politics becomes even more serious, and takes on even more negative overtones, when we look beyond the formalities of politics and see the corruption and shortcuts that give some of us advantages in the allocation of resources, and marginalize others. I spent most of my growing-up years in Chicago, and I have lots of memories and diary entries about the scandals that regularly erupted in Chicago politics.

(See the sample from Mike Royko in this post.)

Of course, all this seriousness requires some relief. That relief often takes the form of humor, as it did for Mike Royko, and for Sergei Yolkin, the political cartoonist who left Russia last spring. (The cartoon above is his.) Humor can give us precious relief and can remind us that the emperor has no clothes. But it can also be a gateway drug to passivity and cynicism.

In Russia, we often came face to face with this passivity, this utter lack of hope that we ordinary humans can have any influence on "what goes on behind those walls," with the additional reasoning that "why would we Russians need democracy?—we already do whatever we want," and the corollary, "We need a strong hand to keep us in line."

"Do we still have a long way to go?"
"I don't know, I'm not interested in politics."

I may have told this story before: In some of my conversation classes in Russia, I'd ask the students to imagine that they were the absolute monarchs of our city. If they had total power to change just one thing, what would it be? One young woman answered, "I'd like an honest policeman."

"Oh, you'd like an honest police department," I responded.

"No," she said. "Just one honest policeman."

Occasionally, when we talked about students' future professions, I'd ask whether any of them wanted to be politicians. In all the years I asked that question, only once did anyone say yes. The answer nearly 100% of the time was, "It's a dirty business. I wouldn't touch it."

During one of the big demonstrations in the 2011-2012 election season, we had some students in our kitchen. We ourselves never encouraged students to take any political action at all beyond voting (our school's directors told us instructors to encourage our students to vote), but when the subject came up, we were all ears. One student said, "Why should I risk going on the street to tell Mr. Putin that he is corrupt? He already knows it!"

Here in the USA, we have plenty of excuses of our own to avoid serious engagement with politics, whether it is passivity, cynicism, or despair at the deep divisions in our country's political life. But there's another way to consider politics, a way that starts out by regarding it as ... a spectacle to marvel at.

My best attempt at an analogy is sports. As in politics, sports has teams and competition. Some contests end up with winners and losers, some end up a draw. There are captains, coaches, referees, fouls; there are heroes and cheaters, and moments of sheer inspiration.

I used to think that sports were a trivial distraction compared to real life (for example, politics!). But then I thought about the vast amount of resources devoted to playing and watching sports, and the billions of people who care about their favorite teams, their heroes, their own children's teams, and all the facets of the sporting world. Much of this enthusiasm is voluntary and often it's joyful. Who am I to be condescending?

Then it occurred to me that there are people in politics who behave as athletes, and others who behave as avid spectators. They love the competition, they love the scorekeeping, they keep track of wins and losses—whether we're talking about candidates winning or their policies winning.

To see what I mean, watch this video of Bill Clinton nominating Barack Obama for a second term as president at the 2012 Democratic Party convention. Clinton is all about a serious task: contrasting Democratic political values with what Republicans offer, and explaining why Obama is the candidate that will honor those values. But one thing is incredibly clear throughout the video: Clinton is enjoying himself immensely.

Of course, for the dedicated spectator of politics-as-sports, part of the drama is that this same Bill Clinton worked his head off against Obama four years earlier.

(Speaking of politics and sports, Clinton says this in the speech about his wife's working relationship with Barack Obama: "I’m grateful for the relationship of respect and partnership she [Hillary Clinton] and the President [Obama] have enjoyed and the signal that sends to the rest of the world that democracy does not have to be a blood sport. It can be an honorable enterprise that advances the public interest.")

Source.

A couple of days ago, in anticipation of George Lakey's visit to our town and our church this weekend, I watched a video of a conversation about his new book at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Lakey has a lifetime of experience in organizing and training organizers for social justice, anchored in his Quaker faith. Early on in the presentation, Varshini Prakash asks Lakey, "How do you view the acutely polarized state that we're in?" (This link goes to that point in the Free Library video.) I found Lakey's response fascinating—not just for his analysis of past and present times of polarization and the possibilities that they opened and might again open, but also for the enthusiasm he brought to this analysis.

That's what I mean by "the joy of politics" in a context that takes humanity and justice seriously.

Later in the video, Lakey describes how he assigned students in his University of Pennsylvania classes to take a crate to Philadelphia City Hall plaza, stand on it, and speak to the passing crowds on a vital subject of their choice. "The students universally thought I was putting them through hell ... and afterwards they felt like they could move mountains."

Exactly.

Maybe the joy of politics isn't for everyone, but I'm absolutely sure that many more people would discover that joy, if we can break open some of our learned passivity currently bound up with "that dirty business."

The word "politics"—is it singular or plural?

George Lakey's visits to the Portland, Oregon, area, tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday. (PDF with live links.) And, specifically, his visit to our Quaker church.

Kristin Du Mez on Beth Moore's autobiography, on the use and misuse of theological labels, and on coming out as Calvinist.

Covenant community requires trust, so how do we know when to trust? Our traditions have weakened, our signals don't necessarily travel well. Emily Provance challenges us to propose solutions.

Nancy Thomas on "coming unglued" in a poetry writing seminar.

Ally Venable, Buddy Guy: "Texas Louisiana."

11 August 2022

More shorts: August dreams

Summer in Elektrostal. Videography and music by Sergey Kadyrov.

Dreams of my mother.

Last week I saw my mother in a dream.

I dream about my father's parents fairly often. In one memorable dream, I was aboard a ship that came so close to shore that I could touch lampposts on land. I was not at all surprised when the ship slowly made its way past my grandparents' china cabinet in their dining room in Oslo, while I clung to the railing and reached out to touch the glass, and my ship then passed by the sofa on which my grandmother always sat.

But I can only remember two dreams before last week in which my mother appeared. In both cases, she appeared to be the age she was when I was a teenager, although I myself was an adult in those dreams. Both dreams were made memorable by fire. In one of them, the wall behind my mother was on fire, and in the other one, the ceiling and roof were burning. They were strange flames--no noise, no heat, and no sense of danger, although in both cases I was aware I needed to leave. Also, there were no interactions with my mother in either dream.

This last dream was very different. I was on the second floor of an apartment building, and I could see my mother on the sidewalk, approaching the entrance to the building. She was elderly and bent over, looking very much like she did the last time I saw her. I thought to myself, "We are so alienated from her, I am not sure I want her to see me." She climbed the steps and came into the apartment (apparently the second-floor apartment we lived in during most of my teen years, in Evanston, Illinois), and I held back. She saw me, I saw her, we both froze for a moment, and the dream ended.

No reconciliation, no resolution, but even so, in my long quest to grieve my parents, maybe this dream was progress.

More dreams. In many of my dreams, I'm driving a car that is forced to stop or change course for one reason or another. Sometimes the car becomes a motorcycle or vice versa. Sometimes I have to park the car, but other times I can keep driving up one side of an obstacle and down the other.

Konotop, Ukraine. (View from our train.)

In the most recent car dream, a couple of days ago, I find myself in some kind of zone where construction equipment and bulldozers are all around, and causing the open space where I'd parked to be smaller and smaller. There were tall concrete walls on three sides. In the little space that remained, I suddenly saw a group of sidewalk vendors, who were selling huge toy animals. I bought one of the animals--an enormous tiger--and made my way back to the car. As I was walking with my big purchase, I overheard someone whisper to someone else, "We get some odd people here."

When I woke up, I realized where the images of huge toys may have come from--a scene we saw through our second-class coach windows as we were traveling by train from Kyiv to Moscow back in 2009.

Occasionally, in my dreams I'm riding a bicycle through a city that is a combination of Richmond, Indiana, and my childhood Evanston, Illinois. Once I was riding a horse.

Basement nightmare. I once had a nightmare that seemed incredibly detailed and realistic. In this dream, a war was going on and bullets were flying. My child and I had taken shelter in the basement of a solid-looking brick building. To my horror, a bullet came through a hole in the basement wall--the above-ground part, near the ceiling--and struck my child in the forehead. Death was instant.

That dream came vividly back to me when I read this report on the death statistics from the Russian occupation of Bucha, Ukraine.

After months of meticulous, painful and at times gruesome investigation, officials in Bucha said Monday that they had reached what may be the closest they will get to a final accounting of victims of the murderous rampage by Russian troops that set off worldwide outrage over alleged atrocities: 458 bodies, of which 419 bore markings they had been shot, tortured or bludgeoned to death.

As Liz Sly and Kostiantyn Khudov note in their article, these statistics mean that one of every ten of the 4,000 Bucha residents remaining in the town when the Russians took it over died violently during the course of the occupation. What will we find when places still under occupation are investigated with similar thoroughness? We watch and pray.

Adria Gulizia asks, "Do Friends still need the peace testimony?" She cites several examples of Friends becoming (in my words, not hers) more liberal interpreters of formerly strict disciplines. Wouldn't it be ironic that with this increasing liberalism in parts of our church, the commitment to peace became weaker?

It reminds me of a comparison I heard long ago--perhaps from Vail Palmer. Many Friends who applied for conscientious objector status had worked out careful rationales, but Vail remembered the simple statement of a Mennonite farmer's application: "I am a follower of Jesus Christ."

Konstantin Kolesnichenko's blues harp at Pepper's Club, Kyiv, February 11, 2022.

12 May 2022

Ukraine and the dilemmas of pacifism

"Peace to Ukraine," Eddie Lobanovskiy, source.

The urge to do something—anything—to stop the horrifying violence unfolding in Ukraine is deeply understandable. But this is the point where someone should be pausing to ask—is this deluge of arms [to be purchased with the money in the U.S. President's proposed emergency spending bill] going to result in the peace the Ukrainian people need and deserve?
It often feels like engaging militarily is the only way to end conflict. But if we have learned anything from the last 20 years of the war on terror, it’s that military gains are short-lived and exact a high human, financial, and moral cost.
The path we’re on brings us dangerously closer to nuclear war and global annihilation. We must do everything we can to help the parties agree to a ceasefire and lay the groundwork for enduring peace.
— "Investing in a Durable Peace in Ukraine," Jessie Palatucci, Friends Committee on National Legislation, April 29, 2022.
A Christian, as Friends have understood the word, is someone who elects now to live as though the world were Christian. He [sic] will remain a committed person though the heavens fall, because his inward condition demands it of him. He ardently hopes to end war—a political change—but he would continue a pacifist though certain his efforts would never bear any fruit at all. The purely secular pacifist, if such a creature exist, starts by being concerned with consequences. He is a pacifist because he wants to end war. His motivation is pragmatic, teleological, and political.
What happens when an act of faith is turned into a political creed? Secular pacifist ideology, so far as it is secular, cannot demand that its adherents remain faithful regardless of whether it works. So the ideologues of pacifism are obliged to figure out a methodology which they can say will probably work, or at least work better in the long run than any other method of social change.
— R. W. Tucker, "Revolutionary Faithfulness," Quaker Religious Thought, Vol. IX, No. 2, Winter 1967-68.

In any apparent war of aggression, a purely secular pacifist, "if such a creature exist," is confronted by an excruciating dilemma. In the present war in Ukraine, this observer should certainly be extremely uneasy about the lethal arms flooding into Ukraine to destroy Russian invasion forces and take back the territory that those forces now occupy, alongside an economic boycott that will certainly hurt the ordinary citizens of the aggressor nation more than its elites.

But the opposite response to the aggression is equally repellent: the spectacle of a country being abandoned by all its late friends and left to be diced and quartered, even to die on the field of battle, while the rest of the world continues to help fund the aggression through all the routine ties of trade that have enriched global elites on all sides of the conflict—while allowing, of course, politicians and church leaders to bemoan the aggression and call for ceasefires.

Depending on this observer's political orientation, he or she might be tempted to abandon pacifism, pointing out that there is absolutely no hope that placating Vladimir Putin, giving him concessions so that he might be nicer to Ukraine, will result in peace. It might be better to support the Ukrainians with weapons as a middle way that is less likely to result in global war than actually fighting alongside the Ukrainian military.

Or he or she might say that we Americans (for example) have invaded any number of countries ourselves, so what basis do we have to criticize Russia, which just wants to ensure safety from NATO's dubious agendas? So sad to see all those awful scenes from Ukraine, but maybe they're fake.

But let's say you and I have put all our eggs into the Jesus basket. Abandoning nonviolence is simply not an option. What can we say that is different from the calculations of our peace-loving friends and neighbors who are casting about for political solutions and compromises when evidence suggests that the aggressor is completely uninterested in what we think of him?

Here are a few thoughts. I hope that you will be able to add some of your own.

First, let's keep our capacity for clean and honest analysis. Am I right to assert that Vladimir Putin has voluntarily engaged in a war based on a theory of Ukraine's illegitimate existence as a Leninist invention? Do nations have the right to secure, peremptorily and violently, the civil rights of people in other countries who happen to speak the same language? Are Nazis a significant presence in Ukraine, or are they not?? Can I make these analyses without resorting to whataboutism concerning the sins of my own country, and deal honestly with those sins on a separate occasion? Live not by lies.
Second, let's reject the fantasy that our benign influence will make authoritarians nicer. On the other hand, it is not helpful to demonize them, as evil as their actions might be. They, and we, are all made in the image and likeness of God, but they (and we) are also caught up in worldly systems, some of whom include long-standing patterns of cruelty and bondage. Participation in the Lamb's War includes working together to discern those worldly systems and patterns, and confront them rather than objectifying those trapped in them.
Third, how can we use our spiritual gifts to "get in the Way" (referring to an early Christian Peacemaker Teams slogan) in our prayer lives, in nonviolent confrontations with authoritarian forces, in forming teams to be physically present in conflict zones (or paying and praying for those who do so), in not paying taxes for military purposes, in supporting politicians whose policies we like, or in running for office ourselves? The possible variations are as numerous as the numbers of spiritual gifts.
Fourth, let's grow our capacity to love the community that organizes around these responses, and ask God to help us direct our love even to those whom we've so far been unable to reach. In every war, this expansion of our capacity to love may be the hardest work of all, and the most urgent. Of all the Quaker testimonies, the testimony of evangelism continues to be top priority: to evangelize the secular world that still puts blind faith in violence, by communicating the love and mercy of the Creator as we have experienced it.
Fifth, let's do all we can to encourage the prophets and peacemakers in the conflict areas, and to sabotage the forces and technologies that seek to isolate them. For me, this particularly means staying in touch with the many people we got to know in Russia during our years there. Some have left, but most are still there. I'm careful not to endanger them by sending content that might expose them to danger; I let them take the lead in what to say or not to say. Some, but not all, of my channels are Christian—some specifically Quaker, and some Russian Orthodox and Baptist—and they include people who have raised up the banner of peace in amazing ways despite all the hazards. The doors seem closed to travel there myself at the moment, but I'm watching and waiting.

I'm struck by how often we Western idealists have good ideas about how others should conduct themselves. Our politicians should or shouldn't send weapons to Ukraine, for example; our oil companies should stop opening new oil wells. We often neglect to ask what we are doing to create or support good choices or diminish the market for bad choices. This is not to minimize the importance of holding authorities accountable, but we ought to hold ourselves accountable, too, and to recognize when our complicity weakens our case.

I don't consider myself qualified to say what the Pentagon or NATO "should" do to end the bloodshed in Ukraine. All their apparent choices look awful. I think I know what the Kremlin should do ... but in any case I am not content with the choices that imperial power politicians offer. I want to learn what God wants me to do, and I'd love to know how you are feeling led. And ... I want to know what might happen when all our meetings and churches, together, ask what God wants us to say and do in the face of war.

And here's an article on the Pope's reaction to Patriarch Kirill's defense of the Russian invasion. "I listened [to Kirill's list of points in defense of the invasion] and then told him: I don’t understand anything about this," Francis said. "Brother, we are not state clerics, we cannot use the language of politics but that of Jesus. We are pastors of the same holy people of God. Because of this, we must seek avenues of peace, to put an end to the firing of weapons."

A dialogue in Friends Journal:

Bryan Garman, "The Peace Testimony and Ukraine."

David Hadley Finke, "The Spirit of Christ and our Historic Peace Testimony."

(PS: "... When war's on the horizon, are the Savior's words less true?")

Here's the Guardian article that provoked my comment on oil companies not opening new oil wells. Among other things, the article describes the "carbon bombs"—huge projects already underway or on the drawing board that would destroy our chances of staying under the 1.5 degrees C climate goal. It's an important article, but it focuses mostly on the greed of corporations and hypocrisy of governments. I would love equally dramatic coverage of citizens' lack of concern about where they get their energy. The energy companies would not have these dramatic expansion plans if they didn't think they could sell their product at a profitable price. What can we do to shift consumers' mentalities?—prepare to pay the true price of your (my) energy, and support rapid conversion to more sustainable energy sources.

Bill Yoder on evangelicals in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

An interview with Alexei Yurchak: "It's impossible for the system not to change." Yurchak is the author of the highly-recommended book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation.

The latest update from Rights in Russia.

A sermon at Spokane Friends Meeting in Washington state, USA: John Kinney gives a superb, simple explanation of substitutionary atonement theology and its defects. (By the way, I usually speak at Spokane Meeting on fourth Sundays of the month.)

At the far end of a missionary's one-way ticket: Something new is being built.

Big Daddy Wilson at the Bluesmoose Cafe in the Netherlands. "I Heard the Angels Singing."

04 November 2021

Vitaly Vladimirovich Adamenko 1977-2021

Vitaly (right), speaking on the history of conscientious objection and alternative service in Russia, on a video prepared by the Soldiers' Mothers of St. Petersburg, 2017.

Screenshot from another video on alternative service,
with subtitles added by Friends House Moscow.

I want to tell you about our friend Vitaly Adamenko, mathematician, historian of pacifism and nonviolence, editor, librarian, and student of the Tolstoyan movement -- and now, at 44 years of age, a casualty of the COVID pandemic. He died this past Monday in St. Petersburg.

Historian Irina Gordeeva spoke for many of us when she posted these words on Facebook yesterday:

The first thoughts that come to us -- self-centered though they may be -- are these: how will we go on without him? He had such a detailed knowledge of the history of pacifism in Russia that, in one article, I had to write that those who participate in this social movement are ahead of the professional historians by one step. On any little thing I could turn to him for help -- for a clarification, a text.
And I feel so sad on a personal level -- he hadn't even reached 45 years of age.

We first heard of Vitaly through Friends House Moscow, which supported the periodical Alternativshchik ("The Alternative Service Worker"), which was published for conscientious objectors and the church congregations that supported them. At that time, Vitaly lived in Samara. On one of our visits to Buzuluk, the central point for U.S. and British Quakers working for famine relief and economic redevelopment in the early 1920's, we stopped in Samara, and he accompanied us on the train to Buzuluk.

That was how our friendship began. In 2011, when Vitaly needed to do some work in Tolstoyan archives located in Moscow, he stayed with us in our Elektrostal apartment. He returned for another visit three years later. As a vegetarian, he had a strict (it seemed to us) diet, consisting mostly of potatoes. I remember sometimes coming home from the institute where we taught, and seeing a big new pile of potatoes, I'd say to Judy, "I see Vitaly has done his grocery shopping."

Most memorably, we spent hours talking into the night at our kitchen table. Once the subject of Russian persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses came up. He later followed up in a letter to me:

... If they [Jehovah's Witnesses] did not have a principled opposition to violence, there would be no repressions and no attempts to portray them as extremists. Take the Roman Catholics, for example -- everyone knows that the Catholics for several centuries killed their opponents by burning them at the stakes of the Inquisition, but nobody tries to portray them as extremists. Everyone knows that there were Old Believers who incinerated themselves, but nobody tries to prove that the Old Believers are a totalitarian sect. Why? Because each of these, and others, by and large have nothing against participating in state violence and killing. I say "by and large," not wishing to forget about individual exceptions. And if in our country there were similar numbers of Quakers [as Jehovah's Witnesses], there would be a daily campaign to make them out as a totalitarian sect and the principal extremists of our country.

One of his other interests was late Soviet-era rock music. We spent several wonderful evenings looking at his collection of music videos of the bands of that period.

The last time I saw Vitaly was on Zoom, just a couple of months ago, August 29, when he dropped in on our Russian-speaking online Quaker meeting for worship. Later that day, he wrote me, saying that I didn't look any different from years past. I could say the same of him. As one of his fellow team members at tolstoycenter.org said of him, "He is really a unique person with encyclopedic knowledge and a pure heart like a child."

Goodbye for now, Vitaly. Eternal memory!

In our kitchen -- playing Dixit with our students and guests, 2014.

With Judy (left), Kara Maurer, and Anna Thomas, in 2014.

With Sergei Grushko at Friends House Moscow, 2011.

At the Sorochinsk newspaper office, 2011. This building was the headquarters of the U.S. Quakers participating in the Buzuluk-based relief operation. At center: Liubov Surkova, editor at the time.

A quiet moment in our apartment, Elektrostal, 2011.

Vitaly's legacy: the huge online Russian-language Nonviolence Library. The home page bears the sad news of Vitaly's passing, and continues: "... Now our task is to persist and not give up, to find time to communicate and support both our resources and ourselves, to continue adding high-quality content to the site -- now in memory of Vitaly's enormous contribution to the benefit of all seekers."

Once again, here is the bilingual Tolstoy Center for Nonviolence, whose organizers included Vitaly, and for which I served as an editor.

Mondoweiss: The Times Are a-Changin'? (Or, how happy is Israel, really?)

GetReligion gives a hat tip to Al Jazeera's strong coverage of religious persecution.

Emily Provance: When new people show up in your meeting or church ... hooray, and what next? (Part of her series on "being the church.")

Greg Morgan: The Northern Lights and the worshipping community.

Mark Russ on James Cone and white liberal Quakerism.

Steve Guyger in Brazil. "I Tried So Hard."

Can you believe?