(left) Urakami Cathedral cross, Nagasaki, on display at Wilmington College's Hiroshima-Nagasaki Memorial Collection until 2019 (my photo); (right) graphic from Wilmington College's Peace Resource Center (source).
Last week's post considered some of the political and spiritual difficulties World War II posed for Quaker colleges in the USA. Among the specifics of that story was the welcome that those colleges extended to a group of Japanese American students whose families had been forced into relocation camps by the notorious Executive Order 9066.
Thanks to an article posted today on the Web site of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "The political implications of Hiroshima’s scarred 'maidens'," by Alex Wellerstein, I've been thinking about other Quaker involvements with Japanese and Japanese Americans—and the nuclear bombings—originating in that war.
First in chronological order were American Quakers who had special ties to Japan before the war, and who became advocates for the incarcerated Japanese and Japanese American families in wartime. The case I knew best was Herbert Nicholson, whose nephew Ed Nicholson used to tell us stories about his uncle.
(Ed died in 2018, and his wife of 63 years, Chris Nicholson, just died this past July 29. Aside from many other ties between the Nicholsons and Judy and me, they were great encouragers of our service in Russia.)
Another Quaker advocate for incarcerated Japanese people and their families was Floyd Schmoe of University Friends Meeting in Seattle. After the war ended, he expressed his concern for war-torn Japan and the consequences of the atomic weapons by beginning a project called Houses for Hiroshima. Of all the people mentioned in these stories, Floyd was the only one I met personally, thanks to my work with Friends World Committee in the 1980's.
The "Hiroshima 'maidens'" story mentioned above, published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, also had a Quaker connection. During the young women's stay in the USA for plastic surgery, they were accommodated by Quaker families, and spent time at Pendle Hill in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. More details in this Wikipedia article.
Those years—the 1950's—were a peak time for hydrogen bomb testing in the Pacific Ocean, which led to a series of protests against those tests, the weapons being tested, and the radioactive pollution resulting from the tests. Barbara Reynolds and her husband Earle were among those who sailed into the test zones in protest. She later established the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Memorial Collection at Wilmington College in Ohio, USA, part of the college's Peace Resource Center. Judy and I got to know and appreciate the work of this center during the years we lived in Wilmington.
One of the remarkable exhibits in the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Memorial Collection was a charred cross from the ruins of the Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki. In 2019, as described in this Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists post, the director of the Peace Resource Center, Tanya Maus, accompanied the cross on its journey home to Nagasaki.
There is a gap in this very brief summary: the experiences of Japanese Quakers themselves during the war. The only Japanese Quaker meeting I've personally attended, the one in Osaka, was founded after the war. I have family ties to Japan—my mother was born and raised in Kobe—but, sadly, those ties don't connect with Quakers. My mother, having survived the war and eventually moving to Germany and then the USA, never spoke to me about her war years. Her primary political concern in my childhood years was the threat of Communism.
I'd love to have more examples of connections among these themes—Quakers, Japan and Japanese people, and World War II. Please share additions and corrections.
God bless the memory of those who risked everything for peace and justice in those brutal years.
I mentioned our own short visit to Hiroshima here.
Clowning in Rome: Reflections on Solitude, Celibacy, Prayer, and Contemplation (1979).
You do not have to be a great prophet to say that coming decades will most likely see not only more wars, more hunger, and more oppression, but also desperate attempts to escape them all. We have to be prepared for a period in which suicide will be as widespread as drugs are now, in which new types of flagellants will roam the country frightening the people with the announcement of the end of all things, and in which many new exotic cults with intricate rituals will try to ward off a final catastrophe. We have to be prepared for an outburst of new religious movements using Christ's name for the most un-Christian practices. In short, we have to be prepared to live in a world in which fear, suspicion, mutual distrust, hatred, physical and mental torture, and an increasing confusion will darken the hearts of millions of people.
It is in the midst of this dark world that the Christian community is being tested. Can we be light, salt, and leaven to our brothers and sisters in the human family? Can we offer hope, courage, and confidence to the people of this era? Can we break through the paralyzing fear by making those who watch us exclaim, "See how they love each other, how they serve their neighbor, and how they pray to their Lord"? Or do we have to confess that at this juncture of history we just do not have the needed strength or the generosity and that our Christian communities are little more than sodalities of well-intentioned people supporting each other in their individual interests?
I was at the book sorting table at Mustard Seed, the excellent charity shop run by the Episcopal church down Woodstock Blvd., when I noticed that someone had brought in a wonderful selection of books by Henri Nouwen. I picked up Clowning in Rome because that book was new to me. Opening it to a random page, I found myself in the "Introduction," where the words above came from.
Nouwen's closing queries haven't lost their urgency, thirty years after his death and nearly half a century after he wrote them. But here's my new query, and I'd love your comments: don't we see some evidence that the church might be actually growing in the strength needed to provide light, salt, and leaven? And here's another question, maybe secondary but fascinating to me as a political scientist: what aspects of this recent growth is being provoked by overreach among those "new religious movements using Christ's name for the most un-Christian practices," and those movements' attempts to enmesh themselves with the structures of political power? (I have more than just the USA in mind.)
One of the ways I try to stay aware of some of today's positive ferment in the church, as well as the ways we're constantly being tested, is the podcast The Convocation Unscripted, which I've linked to several times. I'm tempted to build an index of links to show more evidence, but you can think up keywords and search for them online as well as I can. What I'd love to know is what you're finding out directly through your own experiences and decisions. Still echoing in my mind are the words from John Perkins that I quoted two weeks ago: "I want worship and justice to be done in the same building."
Do you see evidence of growth in the church's capacity to challenge oppression, scare tactics, division, climate denial, and Christian nationalist heresy? (Yes, that's my particular selection!)
For those yearning to get involved, what are some points of engagement?
What new challenges are, in turn, resulting from this fresh energy?
How can we encourage each other, give each other times of respite, and make room for joy and lament among us? How do we welcome all sorts of temperaments, including those who usually get on our nerves?
Within myself, I'm finding new love for this messy church that gave me a spiritual home a half century ago, and continues to frustrate and delight me on a daily basis.
Speaking (very respectfully) of clowns, as Henri Nouwen does in his book, I see that Paulist Father Joachim Lally has recently celebrated the 60th anniversary of his ordination. I vividly remember Joachim Lally from our years in Boston, when I was on the staff of Beacon Hill Friends House and Father Lally was at the Paulist Center, just a short walk away. In those years, his diverse ministry gifts included clowning, but I knew him best from our work together with the organization Social Action Ministries of Greater Boston, where I represented our residence and program center.
One of the participants in The Convocation Unscripted, Jemar Tisby, is ringing an alarm bell: "Pastors, You Cannot Stay Silent on Civil Rights."
Speaking of respite, here's an extraordinary (but also ordinary in an essential way) post by Beth Allison Barr, "Writing at a time like this."
Something in Nouwen's words about "exotic cults" and "new religious movements" reminded me of this article, "Is It the Voice of God, or Just Craziness?" by Joe Kelly in Quaker Life back in 2000. Now, as then, Joe ministers among Friends of the Light Meeting in Traverse City, Michigan, USA.
You already know that "the far right doesn't have a monopoly on Christianity" but it's nice to see an acknowledgment in secular media. Bill McKibben writes in The Guardian....
...A generation of Americans has grown up convinced that Christianity is a freak show, and another generation – those inside the evangelical tent – have grown old unchallenged in their thinking that scripture somehow demands the various cruelties we’ve seen play out in the “culture wars”.
Micah Bales (Berkeley Friends Church) on "Becoming Servants of the Unknown God."
I’ve never debated any Athenian philosophers. I’ve never even visited Greece. But my situation – and yours – is in some ways very similar to the one that Paul faced two thousand years ago.
From "The Bible and the Blues" at Reedwood Friends Church, here are LaRhonda Steele and Ed Snyder with "Up Above My Head." (This is the last of the six songs LaRhonda Steele performs in the course of the full meeting for worship; I encourage you to play the whole video.)
The apostle Paul, before his conversion, knew all about fighting. He condoned extreme violence—and maybe even participated in it. After his encounter with Jesus, though, he became the kind of man who would endure violence at the hands of others without returning blow for blow. When Paul wrote to his disciple Timothy, “I have fought the good fight” (2 Tim. 4:7 NKJV), he was not referring to anything he had accomplished with his fists. My prayer is that as I approach the end of my days, I too will be able to say that I have come to understand what the “good fight” is and that I have persevered in that battle.
John Perkins reached the end of his days among us on March 13 of this year, in a new season of privilege, xenophobia, racism, and Christian nationalist heresy. Just yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court's reframing of partisan gerrymandering took the remaining teeth out of the Voting Rights Act (under the guise of strengthening that act's constitutionality).
In this new environment of enthusiastic racism whipped up by national leadership and expressed in near-daily waves of social media noise, it is easy to feel very discouraged or just plain numb. This is why I've wanted to return to the words and vision of John Perkins, to be reminded and reassured that his immense legacy is still ours.
The book that I've been re-reading, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win, was one I first read just months before our time in Russia came to an end. When Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. presidential election (the result announced in full view of our students in our Mass Media class at the institute in Elektrostal) and began his xenophobic administration the following January, we knew we were in for a rough time. Reading John Perkins' book was encouragement we needed.
Today his words are even more important to keep before people of goodwill. In his book he doesn't just explain his central principles (such as relocation, reconciliation, redistribution), he candidly talks about the costs and heartaches of a life lived by those principles, the lingering regrets he had and mistakes he made, and above all, the central role of love. He makes it clear again and again that he does not want to be the hero of his own story; and to illustrate his point, he gives many case studies of churches and leaders who have embodied the vision of a multicultural church.
As he reinforces throughout his book, he's not opposed to parachurch agencies, but his vision is intensely focused on the local church. He wrote, "I want worship and justice to be done in the same building"—and his stories often make that point.
I first met John Perkins in 1975, in Jackson and Mendenhall, Mississippi, and I tell that story here and here. The next time I had a chance to talk to him was during his visit to Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1981. Our final visit came in 2007 not far from where we live in Portland, Oregon.
Here are a few more samples of his vision for our churches and our discipleship:
I think one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible is found in Revelation 7:9–12. It says,
After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” All the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom, Thanksgiving and honor and power and might, Be to our God forever and ever. Amen.” (NKJV)
All nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues will be together, praising and worshiping God in unity. I long for the day when this vision becomes reality. I long for a kingdom in which we aren’t divided over issues of culture or hatred of the past. I hear people arguing about everything from church pews to worship songs to old cultural traditions, but we need to start getting beyond this stuff.
Acts 17:26 declares that the people from every nation are “made from one blood” (NKJV), so we are all one race. Issues related to ethnicity and tribalism may divide us, but we have to start recognizing that we are one race—the human race. The problems that divide us are surmountable. We have been given a clear picture of what this kingdom is to look like—multiethnic, multicultural, multigenerational, multiclass—and we need to be on the side of that coming kingdom now.
No, we are no longer in a society in which white church councils have meetings about whether to even let black people enter the doors, but we still live in a time when the majority of churches today do not look anything like John’s vision in Revelation. But people like Bryan and Eugene [two of his case studies] give me hope that we might become one as Jesus prayed we would. Their thriving congregations and the many people catching hold of their visions remind me that there is a cloud coming up over the lake, even if it is only the size of a man’s hand. The people who gather together and worship at CCDA [Christian Community Development Association] and the energetic church planters who are part of these other conferences show me that the rain is coming. And be prepared for when it does, because if it is anything like what happened in Elijah’s day, this little cloud is about to take over the entire sky—and the heavy rain will come.
Part of the reason the church in America faces some of its current challenges is because of where we live and how we see the gospel message. The fullness and adequacy of the gospel is a message of togetherness and love across ethnic barriers. Churches that understand the fullness of the gospel and the greatness of God will serve people best. It’s also important to understand that our problems are always multifaceted. Areas such as economics, behavior, family, and customs all stop us at the door to truth, when in reality, we should view these in light of God’s justice.
We need to create an environment where truth can be told. Of course, we need the Holy Spirit to guide us in this task, but I think that can happen. This is really what our worship should be all about—seeking and telling the truth. Ideally, both the preacher and the congregation are there for this purpose. They should hope to hear and discover truths about themselves, about society, and about doing life together. And then, in the midst of seeking and telling truth, we find God’s presence.
"This is really what our worship should be all about—seeking and telling the truth." Thank you, John Perkins, for this vision!
More from Heather Cox Richardson: her comparison of Donald Trump's speech on the occasion of the British king's visit, and Charles III's own speech.
Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk's own country "has been under occupation, dogged by corruption and war. Yet even I’ve been bewildered by the way the US seems to be fracturing.... What I see now in the US is a profound inability to discuss seriously how the state can serve the public good."
Among the places in the USA she visited as a journalist is Wilmington, Ohio, where we lived during Judy's time as financial aid director at Wilmington College.
This coming Sunday at Reedwood Friends Church and online: "The Bible and the Blues: a comparison of biblical laments with African-American blues," with Daniel Smith-Christopher, LaRhonda Steele, and Ed Snyder. 9:30 a.m. Available later on Reedwood's YouTube channel.
LaRhonda Steele, a Blues and gospel singer and songwriter, is recognized as one the region's best rhythm and blues vocalists. She has been dubbed "The First Lady of Portland Blues"—a title of leadership that she lives up to as she shares songs that carry forth directly from her soul and spiritual life-force.
She currently fronts the LaRhonda Steele band, is music director of the nonprofit Portland Interfaith Gospel Choir, and is music director of Portland Center for Spiritual Living. LaRhonda regularly lights up the stage at the Waterfront Blues Festival, Alberta Rose Theatre, and clubs around town.
LaRhonda’s voice can be enjoyed on recordings of national and international artists including Gino Vannelli, Curtis Salgado, Lloyd Jones, Mary Flower, and Norman Sylvester, to name a few.
A couple of weeks ago, my therapist suggested that I write down some of my early memories, grouped chronologically. Maybe later we can discern some trends and common causes.
The task became easier when I reached the age of 14, when I began writing a daily diary, which I continue to this day. Still, I have memories from before that age ... many of which came back to me since I began assembling the list she suggested.
Judy is a volunteer at a charity shop in our neighborhood, and she primarily works with their used books. Coincidentally, the same day I accepted this memory-list assignment, Judy brought home a copy of Vladimir Nabokov's remembrances, Speak, Memory, which includes some of his earliest childhood memories.
Here's one of those memories:
Several times during a summer it might happen that in the middle of luncheon, in the bright, many-windowed, walnut-paneled dining room on the first floor of our Vyra manor, Aleksey, the butler, with an unhappy expression on his face, would bend over and inform my father in a low voice (especially low if we had company) that a group of villagers wanted to see the barin [that is, the master of the estate, Nabokov’s father] outside. Briskly my father would remove his napkin from his lap and ask my mother to excuse him. One of the windows at the west end of the dining room gave upon a portion of the drive near the main entrance. One could see the top of the honeysuckle bushes opposite the porch. From that direction the courteous buzz of a peasant welcome would reach us as the invisible group greeted my invisible father. The ensuing parley, conducted in ordinary tones, would not be heard, as the windows underneath which it took place were closed to keep out the heat. It presumably had to do with a plea for his mediation in some local feud, or with some special subsidy, or with the permission to harvest some bit of our land or cut down a coveted clump of our trees. If, as usually happened, the request was at once granted, there would be again that buzz, and then, in token of gratitude, the good barin would be put through the national ordeal of being rocked and tossed up and securely caught by a score or so of strong arms.
In the dining room, my brother and I would be told to go on with our food. My mother, a tidbit between finger and thumb, would glance under the table to see if her nervous and gruff dachshund was there. “Un jour ils vont le laisser tomber,” [“One day they’re going to abandon him,”] would come from Mlle Golay, a primly pessimistic old lady who had been my mother’s governess and still dwelt with us (on awful terms with our own governesses). From my place at table I would suddenly see through one of the west windows a marvelous case of levitation. There, for an instant, the figure of my father in his wind-rippled white summer suit would be displayed, gloriously sprawling in midair, his limbs in a curiously casual attitude, his handsome, imperturbable features turned to the sky, Thrice, to the mighty heave-ho of his invisible tossers, he would fly up in this fashion, and the second time he would go higher than the first and then there he would be, on his last and loftiest flight, reclining, as if for good, against the cobalt blue of the summer noon, like one of those paradisiac personages who comfortably soar, with such a wealth of folds in their garments, on the vaulted ceiling of a church while below, one by one, the wax tapers in mortal hands light up to make a swarm of minute flames in the mist of incense, and the priest chants of eternal repose, and funeral lilies conceal the face of whoever lies there, among the swimming lights, in the open coffin.
I love this piece of writing, which combines a child’s lack of full context with our childhood tendency to make fanciful associations, like the similarity between his levitating father in his wind-rippled white suit with the angels on cathedral ceilings, which he might have noticed during a funeral liturgy.
My home in grade school years. (Second floor, left.) Source: Google Maps, 2011.
In my family, such memories would have been unlikely to occur. We lived in an apartment building, not an aristocratic estate, and levitations of any kind outside our second-story windows would have been very hazardous. Furthermore, any mention of religion was strictly forbidden in our home, as I mentioned in this post a couple of years ago, so I would not have made any connections with angels on a church ceiling.
As I recalled in that post, I have a vivid memory from grade school, when our teacher asked us why we should be afraid to talk about God. (This was before the prayer-in-school controversy that began in 1962.) I found myself sitting there, strangely tongue-tied, and thought then that I would never be able to use the word “God” out loud in public. Still, I was fascinated that people who appeared normal could have such a discussion at all. It was as if God had very temporarily levitated above the windowsill of our schoolroom, as Nabokov’s father had when his tenants had lofted him into the air.
Another time that God briefly hung in the air in my childhood was when I found a Gospel tract on the floor of our building’s lobby. The author described something resembling what I would now call a conversion experience. This new believer had so fallen in love with the Lord that, in his daily walks in the city, he would go out of his way to pass churches so that his hungry eyes would see the name “Christ” on the church buildings.
A little later, but long before my personal conversion, I used to listen to a Sunday night church service on my favorite top-40 rock station, WCFL, the voice of the Chicago Federation of Labor. Normally, I would be listening to that station to hear Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs sing “Wooly Bully” or “The Hair on my Chinny Chin Chin,” or Herman’s Hermits sing “There’s a Kind of a Hush All Over the World Tonight,” or Tommy James and the Shondells’ unforgettable classic “My Baby Does the Hanky Panky,” or Wilson Pickett’s oh-so-suggestive “In the Midnight Hour.” Among my favorite memories of sheer escapism was the sublime chaos of Ron Britain's unique style of DJ'ing. I still remember this particular broadcast.
I also relied on WCFL for broadcasts of Chicago White Sox baseball games, via the voices of announcers Bob Elson and Red Rush. I dutifully recorded results in my diary, and was especially happy when my favorite relief pitcher, Hoyt Wilhelm, got credited with a save.
But Sundays at 11 p.m., something different was on the air. It was the weekly service of the First Church of Deliverance, with the warm, magnetic personality of the Rev. Clarence H. Cobbs leading the service. Years later, Rev. Jesse Jackson called Clarence Cobbs his “spiritual father.”
Obviously, I kept my being part of Rev. Cobbs’ radio congregation a secret from my family. I attended the First Church of Deliverance while in bed, listening with my little single earphone, with my head under the blanket. I loved the church's theme hymn, “Jesus Is the Light of the World,” which was my first exposure to Black Gospel music. I also remember "Jesus Is a Healer," "How I Got Over," "I'm going to Make It," and "Let Us Sing 'til the Power."
What really intrigued me was the pastoral prayer for “the sick, the shut-ins, the bereaved, the incarcerated, and all those who love the Lord.” Although I did not know intellectually whether I was included in those last words, they always gave me a distinct tingle.
My oldest memory of this kind was from sometime between the ages of two and four, during the years I lived with my mother’s parents in Stuttgart, Germany, before my parents came to claim me and take me to my new home in Chicago. I was sitting in my grandmother’s lap in our home at Robert Bosch Str. 104, and she was teaching me how to tie my shoes. And while she was doing that, she was talking to me about the Good Shepherd. I clearly remember that this was how she talked about Jesus. I like to think that these experiences of God rising into my field of vision for just a short time despite the obstacles, formed a golden thread that usually ran below the surface of my life until the day I came to know that I could trust that very same Good Shepherd, and eventually led to my being willing, even invited, to write and talk about God in public.
I used some of this essay in a sermon at Spokane Friends Meeting last Sunday. One of the slides I used that morning during the sermon was this painting by Willem Drost, sometimes interpreted as being a portrait of Timothy (recipient of New Testament letters from his mentor, the apostle Paul) and his grandmother Lois. I can't help associating it with my own grandmother, thanks to whom I caught one of my first glimpses of God.
Out of the many books on aging, Nancy Thomas has a specific recommendation.
(I continue to recommend John Yungblut's On Hallowing One's Diminishments for the specific aspects of aging he deals with. I wrote about that pamphlet here.)
Comments on the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine ... from Heather Cox Richardson, and from Jeremy Morris. The latter writes about the typical errors of commentators on Russia and Ukraine, and summarizes what he himself got right and got wrong over the past few years. As usual, his dense prose rewards careful reading.
Meanwhile, Timothy Snyder says that Donald Trump is "failing at fascism."
Collaborate or collapse: Matt Hisrich points to a possible new path forward in an era of shrinking markets and closures in higher education.
Top three Winter Olympic teams judging by medals, snipped from this page.
This past weekend the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy came to a close. Team Norway, as usual, did their (my) homeland proud. Among the other statistics describing the Norwegian triumph, I noticed something nobody seemed to comment on: Norway got 41 medals with a team of 80 athletes, while the USA got 33 medals with a team almost three times as large, 232 athletes. Here's The Guardian's rather routine analysis of Norwegian Olympic success. Timothy Snyder writes about watching the Olympic Games in Ukraine.
Now that I've got Norway's triumphs commented on, I can return to my usual conceit of being a citizen of the whole planet.
First Church of Deliverance is on the air! This recording takes me back to my teenage memories of listening secretly to these broadcasts. "Lift up your heads! Don't be afraid!"
Left to right: My mother Erika Maurer, me, great-grandmother Jenny Christine Maurer, my sister Ellen, my aunt Ada DenBraven, and, finally, Ada's brother, my father Harald Maurer. Evanston, Illinois. Late 1950's.
I've written before about how difficult it has been to grieve my parents. That inability has left a hollow place in me.
A little over a decade ago, at a retreat center for international workers, I promised a therapist that, after our month at this center ended, I would continue to work on this grief.
It's taken some time, but I'm glad to report that I'm finally saying goodbye—first to my mother. It involves speaking to her and my father directly, in the presence of a therapist (a trained and trustworthy witness is important to me)—that is, looking at the place in the room where I imagine my parents to be, asking them the questions I wish I'd had a chance to ask when they were alive, and saying goodbye.
I spent my earliest years with my father's parents in Oslo and then my mother's parents in Stuttgart, before going to Chicago to live with my parents and the two-year-old girl they'd had in my absence—my sister Ellen. Hence this sample from my questions:
"Did they send you photos of me? What did you think?"
I won't list all my questions here. My final questions to my mother: "How would you like me to remember you? What would you like me to remember about you?"
You may be among my readers for whom this kind of therapy is familiar territory. Maybe you've used a similar approach to address painful relationships or unresolved grief. In my case, even though this was my own initiative, I'll admit that I had to overcome some skepticism about the play-acting that seemed to be involved. To my surprise, the longer I stuck with the exercise, the more real it became.
I plan to continue.
I began the day thinking that today's blog post would be personal, and I could take a rest this week from the unfolding calamity of a rogue presidency. Then I saw the photo of five-year-old Liam Ramos, a photo you might also have seen in today's news. I first saw it in this article by the Washington Post's art and architecture critic, Philip Kennicott.
There was more shock to come. Asked about this case, vice president J.D. Vance said, "So the story is that ICE detained a five-year-old. What are they supposed to do? Let a five-year-old child freeze to death?" (Quoting from the CBC report.)
Did it really not occur to Vance or to ICE that there was another obvious option?—not to make the arrest! ... To use their better judgment. To have the humanity to leave these people alone! For God's sake, make a moral calculation (after all, you know where the family lives!!) in favor of the child and family and due process rather than an artificial urgency that inevitably leads to blatant public cruelty.
Canadian prime minister Mark Carney's remarkable seventeen-minute Davos Conference reality check. (And, sorry, PM, your invitation to the Board of Peace has been canceled!)
What strikes me most is how clearly this perspective exposes the spiritual sicknesses we too often mistake for holiness. As someone who loves Christ deeply yet hesitates to call herself a Christian because of how distorted the faith has become in practice, I feel this tension painfully.
Another perspective on distorted faith, from Peter Wehner: In case you were still wondering, "MAGA Jesus is not the real Jesus."
Jeremy Morris on Russia, Ukraine, and the "Western-culpability thesis," with Richard Sakwa as a case study.
John Calvi "had a small miracle occur"—see his year-end letter.
Blues from Canada: Whitehorse's version of "Baby, Scratch My Back."
Slim Harpo's original classic (including the chicken scratch) lives on! I've probably posted more versions of this song than of any other, but so many musicians find it irresistible. (More in coming weeks.)
A couple of weeks ago I sketched our travels from London, England, to Hampstead, New Hampshire, via Barcelona. As I prepared to publish that post, we were hearing reports of winter conditions predicted for the path of our upcoming train trip home via Boston and Chicago.
As it turned out, we traveled in great comfort (despite being in coach seats the whole three days), but winter weather did cause several delays, particularly west of Chicago. By Malta, Montana, outside temperatures were down to -6 F.
At one time, technical problems and "congestion" got us five hours behind schedule, but we pulled into Portland, Oregon, only four hours late.
I brought an 800-page book with me, and nearly finished it on the train. It was Anne Rivers Siddons's Peachtree Road, a fictionalized social history of 20th-century Atlanta, Georgia, mostly from the point of view of its midcentury elite families. It's a sweeping cultural epic combined with close-up accounts of family dysfunctions and episodes of social failure worthy of Tolstoy. In any case,the book had plenty to keep me occupied.
One moment in Peachtree Road was particularly poignant for me. The author described the impact of President Kennedy's assassination on the idealists in Atlanta's emerging leadership of the early 1960's. I remember the assassination vividly, but at age ten, I had not had any sense of the "Camelot" aura around the Kennedys' White House.
Now, reading the novel, I remembered an incident in my Russian history class at Carleton University. The professor was Carter Elwood, a central figure in Slavic studies in Canada and the world, and an inspiring instructor in the classroom. (And Carleton had no lack of inspiring instructors in Soviet studies—Vladimir Grebenshchikov, Paul Varnai, Halina Stepanovna van de Lagemaat—see last item here, Edward Lee, and others.)
On November 22, 1973, the tenth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, Elwood set aside his normal themes. He talked to us about that brief period of new ideals, energy, and elegance, that Kennedy's presidency seemed to bring, and that were ended so cruelly by Oswald's bullets. With tears in his eyes, he contrasted the Kennedys' Camelot with the state of affairs in 1973, Nixon having just gone on television the previous week to tell us he was not a crook.
We have made this particular three-day railroad trip several times before, but it's not the longest train trip we've taken. That happened in 2011, when we spent four days on the train from Moscow, Russia, to Sukhbaatar, Mongolia. Some pictures from that trip are here, and I described the book I read on that trip, Crazy for God, in the following week's post.
One final note on travel. This year I marked the fiftieth anniversaries of two trips that helped shape my life. The first one was to Mississippi, and the second, to Moscow and Leningrad. More on those trips at From Mississippi to Moscow.
The Friends Incubator for Public Ministry presents an online conversation with Windy Cooler and historian Tom Hamm on bold Quaker ministers. It's this Saturday at 11 a.m. Pacific time. Register through the link on this page.
Two Washington Post items on religion in the USA: "A hidden trend" (new fascination with faith among young people); and Senator Warnock's warning to all of us, particularly Democrats, of the cost of ignoring faith. (Video of Warnock's presentation is available here.)
Is there a moment of truth coming for the USA's NASA and its moon-landing project? Ars Technica's Eric Berger describes a recent congressional hearing in which one credible scientist made his doubts very clear.
I cannot, cannot press "publish" on this post without noting the vulgar inhumanity of Trump on Somalia and Somalis. It is a festering scandal that such a man occupies the White House. Words fail me, so I'll link to The Guardian's Moira Donegan.
In keeping with the travel theme, I'm closing this week's post with a classical pianist from London, Nataly Ganina. She began her musical education at age 5 in Riga, Latvia. We first heard her at a lunchtime concert at St. Olave's Hart Street, London, three years ago, and then again at the same place last month. I couldn't find a video clip from that location, but here she is at Holy Trinity South Woodford last October, playing one of my favorite impromptus from Schubert, as she did again a couple of weeks later at St. Olave.
(I've selected the segment that starts with Schubert's fourth impromptu from Op. 90, but if you have the time, listen to the whole concert.)
"A flag of peace and freedom"—a design for a post-colonial Russian flag. Source.
Since the death of Alexei Navalny, I've not written much here about the theme of the "beautiful Russia of the future." I continue to think about Russia often, and am in touch with some of our friends and colleagues of our years in Elektrostal, but the ongoing war, and the repressive political context, has complicated these relationships, to my sorrow and frustration.
However, I was reminded that this state of affairs won't last forever, Here's the communication I received today, written by two old friends, that reminded me:
Planting Seeds for Healing
A brutal war is raging in Ukraine and near the border with Russia. Will there be a winner in this conflict? I think not. In war, everyone loses. Both sides have lost many lives. The destruction in Ukraine is immense.
All wars eventually come to an end, and this one will not be an exception. When this war is over, the reconstruction begins.
However, it is not just the infrastructure and buildings that must be rebuilt. It is the lives of the people that will need restoring and healing—a return to mental and physical health. For every soldier who is killed, many lives are affected—parents, children, siblings, spouse, friends—and their lives will never be the same. Some sources estimate over one million killed plus many other wounded. There will be a great many people on both sides with unimaginable losses who suffer from trauma, stress, depression, hatred, grief, shame, regret, and many will carry unthinkable physical injuries for the rest of their lives.
Healing is a long-term process which will require dedicated professionals and volunteers who believe that, with compassion and understanding, it is possible to do healing work with individuals and groups. This process begins now in anticipation of the eventual end to this terrible war and the normalization of travel: willing professionals must be located; a sustainable program developed; volunteers
trained; money raised for transportation, office space, supplies, outreach.
There is a registered non-profit in the US that has been supporting projects in Russia and Ukraine for 29 years. Its supporters believe that an intense effort will be needed to answer the call for help from both sides in this war. They want to be involved and are looking for others who want to engage with the creative and inclusive process of assessing needs, connecting with the people in both countries, developing programs, raising funds, and implementing such healing.
Knowledge of the Russian or Ukrainian language is not necessary.
I can vouch for the authors of this invitation and hope that, if something stirs in your heart, you'll get in touch with the authors through that e-mail address.
Quakers have been involved in Russia and Ukraine for many years, dating back to Peter the Great. I know personally some of those who now carry these concerns for healing, but the majority of them are now 70 or more years old. If there are younger Friends with a concern for this part of the world, I'd love to hear from you. (johan@canyoubelieve.me.) And so would those who wrote the invitation above.
When I started studying the Russian language in high school in Evanston, Illinois, I didn't feel alone. It was great fun to go to the University of Illinois campus in Chicago on May 15, 1971, for the Illinois State Russian Contest, and see a whole lecture hall full of high school students with similar enthusiasm. (I won a "Superior" certificate!)
Stats for high school students of Russian then and now are hard to find, but college level enrollments have taken a dive since those years. At their peak (1990), there were about 44,500 students of Russian in the USA. (I wasn't one of them; I majored in Russian at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario.) By 2021 the number had gone down to 17,598. And that's before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which I'm sure made the language even less popular among those from non-Russian backgrounds. In my high school years, the Cold War (and the alarm over Sputnik I) gave some of us a sense of urgency, but the current grievous situation hasn't had the same effect.
As writer and critic Dmitri Bykov noted back in 2022, commenting on the full-scale invasion,
It is clear that Russia crossed many red lines. It cannot live any longer as it did in the past. The world will no longer see [in Russia] a place of spirituality, a place of great culture, a place representing victory over fascism.
That may all be true, now and for some time to come, but all the severe judgments, indictments, cultural boycotts, social and economic isolation, and other consequences that this nation has brought down upon itself through coercion, passivity, and toxic cynicism, I can't help continuing to cherish the vision of a "beautiful Russia of the future." And a key component for recovering that beauty is the gift of healing.
It may well be the case that young adults in the United States view Christianity as an impediment to women’s equality, a view amplified by the “Orthodoxy as Masculinity” narrative. But that is not what Orthodox Christianity proclaims.
I'm grateful for a wonderful time in London with our son, and for safe travels back to the USA on two airlines I'd never heard of. Both airlines—Vueling and LEVEL—are owned by the same company that owns British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus, and both serve Barcelona, Spain, through which we flew to get to our transatlantic destination, Boston. Although Vueling's A320 had the tiniest pitch of any airplane I've ever flown in, with my knees pressed into the seat in front of me, I was thankful for a reasonable fare for a one-way transatlantic trip.
I'm grateful for the wedding that was the occasion for coming back to the USA through Boston. Our nephew Ben Cabezas married Chris Rainville last Saturday, in Hampstead, New Hampshire. Among the many blessings resulting from the wedding was the biggest reunion of extended family that I've experienced for decades. Best wishes to Ben and Chris, and thanks for the wonderful occasion and reunion. On the most basic level, I'm incredibly grateful for family, wherever they may happen to be today.
Our next stage of travel is planned to start tomorrow: Amtrak trains from Boston to Chicago and then Chicago to Portland, Oregon. We made this trip several times during our Russia years, and are looking forward to those days of continental sightseeing through train windows and the Empire Builder's observation car, along with plenty of time to read and to do my daily Norwegian language homework.
One wintery wrinkle: significant snow predicted along our Amtrak route.
I'm grateful that this is a holiday post, and I can end this post a bit early, compared to my usual length! It's time to celebrate.
Diana Butler Bass: "This Thanksgiving, we do not give thanks. We choose it."
Becky Ankeny on having trust that is based on the character of God.
Micah Bales on adulting in the Kingdom. "This is really good news for us who are just trying to be adults in a world that feels like it’s flying apart."
A tribute to sweet potatoes (one of Judy's Thanksgiving specialties).
My first passport photo, with Oslo district police stamp.
My German grandparents and brand new me, at my Norwegian grandparents' home in Oslo.
It was a year ago, on November 21, 2024, that I began the process of regaining my Norwegian citizenship. Two days ago, I received a notice from the Norwegian government that began with the word "Congratulations." It was a notice that I'm once again a Norwegian citizen.
I was born a Norwegian citizen, but when my parents both became U.S. citizens and, later, had me naturalized as well at age 10, I became subject to the Norwegian rule that didn't permit dual citizenship. When that rule was changed, they set up a procedure for former citizens to apply for citizenship once again.
So I applied and paid the fee on that day in November last year, and on the same day I began the search for the necessary documentation of my or my parents' U.S. naturalizations. Most of the year was taken up looking for those documents, but we finally got them, thanks to the genealogy department of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. That was the most expensive part of the process, but ultimately successful.
It would have been easier if I had inherited my parents' own copies of their naturalization papers, but somewhere in all the drama of their lives after I left home, those papers were lost.
I also had to apply for a certificate of conduct from the Norwegian police. I left Norway before the age of two, and have been back for only brief periods since, so I haven't had an opportunity to be noticed by the police, but all the same I was glad to get it in writing. (I'm thankful for their patience with me; having optimistically—twice!—misjudged the time it would take to get naturalization records from the U.S. government, I ended up applying three times for that certificate, each of which was good for three months.)
Then I gathered up all these documents. and Judy and I took Amtrak to the Norwegian consulate in San Francisco to hand them in. About five weeks later, I received the good news.
Now that I'm a dual citizen, it's fair to ask why I went to all this trouble. After all, I'm already a resident of my favorite planet, and a grateful subject of the Prince of Peace. All I can say is, all my life I've had Norway in my heart, and I've always believed that one's public connections ought to reflect one's inner reality. (Furthermore, I never realized as a child that this particular outward connection would be cut. I just knew that my alien status delayed our family at the U.S. port of entry whenever we returned to the USA from abroad.)
Maurer family grave, Old Aker Church, Oslo.
I remain very loyal to the USA and its values. In the language of my parents' naturalization documents, I remain "... attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States." I see no conflict in gratefully claiming, at the same time and with equal loyalty, my deep roots in the place where I was born, and the joy and completeness I always feel when I return to that birthplace.
And finally, with a Norwegian father, and with a German mother who was born and grew up in Japan, and other relatives in Norway, Germany, Canada, and South America (at least!), I will always cherish all of my favorite planet.
We're about to be on the road on Thursday, so I'm posting this a day early. Hope to post again on (U.S.) Thanksgiving.
Journalist Elena Kostyuchenko loves her country, according to the title of her very moving, often distressing book, but it's a complicated love.... I recommend the book, but it's not fun material. Maybe this review will help explain. I'm not sure Kostyuchenko's book conforms to my foreign ideas of how to write about Russia, but then she has seen and endured many things I've not, and she's not on a mission to correct us.
Heather Cox Richardson: "Sugar dating," Epstein, and Abraham Lincoln's warnings about "the same old serpent."
On her blog, Life in an Old Growth Forest: Reflections on Aging, Nancy Thomas is exploring the dark part of the forest the way she knows how, by writing.
Marcelle Martin and Windy Cooler on the role of discernment in public ministry: an introduction to faithfulness groups on the Friends Incubator for Public Ministry Web site, and more information on their January 7, 2026, online conversation.
Klamath Falls. This shirt is available here. Photo by Judy Maurer.
No Kings Day v.2, October 18, found us in Klamath Falls, Oregon. For some reason, I didn't expect much No Kings Day participation in Klamath Falls, maybe because in 2024 Klamath County voted for the current U.S. president by a margin of 41 percent over Kamala Harris.
As it turned out, participants made an impressive showing in Klamath Falls, lining along both streets, both sides, of a major intersection, and garnering lots of car-horn (and truck horn) approval.
The evening before, in a segment entitled "Older, Wiser," Rachel Maddow spoke on her television show with environmental activist and journalist Bill McKibben concerning the impressive proportions of older people in public actions such as No Kings Day. Back in 2021, McKibben launched an organizing campaign, Third Act, to mobilize people over the age of 60 for climate change activism. Among other things, McKibben said,
I think one reason that older people have been turning out in such large numbers, and they have been heavily overrepresented in these demonstrations, is because everybody can tell, with the heart, can tell that the Trump regime is bad news. But if you have 15 presidents, in your experience, you know that it's not just bad news. You know that it's utterly different from every president that we've ever lived through before, good or bad; that this is a complete rupture with the America that we knew. And I think that may strike old people harder. We've certainly noticed at Third Act that there's a huge willingness of people to be out in the street over and over again, and not just at these demonstrations.
I didn't do a count, but I'm fairly sure well over half of the participants in Klamath Falls were in the demographic group McKibben described.
While in Klamath Falls, we enjoyed a reunion with Klamath Falls Friends Church. We stayed with the pastors, Leigh and Joe Tolton, and enjoyed the incredible view of Upper Klamath Lake from their home.
This was our seventh visit to Klamath Falls Friends over the years, and we felt very much at home. Joe gave a sermon on simplicity (and how it differs from plainness), based on Matthew 10:7-14, and with illustrations from the life of Diogenes the Cynic. It evoked a number of fruitful reflections from attenders during the open worship.
The leader as builder is an ancient idea, older than the Egyptian pyramids, older than the great public monuments of Rome, older than Emperor Constantine’s clumsy effort to eradicate memories of his predecessors by repurposing and rebranding their works as his own. Photography reanimated this ancient idea for a mass modern audience, rendering the leader as a colossus relative to the toy-sized representations of his architectural legacy. For democracies and authoritarian regimes alike, the image projected competence, the power and skill to serve the people with public works and leave a lasting legacy.
...
Trump made speedy demolition his priority, and speedy construction of the new ballroom is essential to his symbolic purpose, to offer a stark contrast to the dysfunction of Congress and, by extension, the torpid rhythms of democratic self-governance. He is the master builder, the developer who can cut through red tape. That image, whether deserved or not, is why many people voted for him. But to shred precedent is simply to set new precedents. And the precedent he is setting is that history doesn’t matter; laws, procedures and customs are irrelevant; and there is no role for collaboration, transparency and review in the construction of new buildings. Buildings are gifts to the people from leaders who are infallible, not the organic expression of civic values and ideals.
I can't tell whether the visceral shock of seeing FDR's East Wing utterly destroyed helped distract us from an arguably more important story: the U.S. military strikes on boats in South American waters. Another instance of making "speedy demolition" a priority?—and again we see striking passivity among the representatives and senators whom we pay to behave as coequal participants in governing the country.
Julia Steinberg entered Stanford University as a progressive. Her path to conservatism began her first year. Her story, "The Appeal of the Campus Right: It's Not About Trump," interests me because I have a friend in England who has undergone a similar transformation.
Steinberg arrived at Stanford expecting to participate in the progressive community there.
As the school year got under way, however, I began to notice something that grated on me. Debates in the classroom, whether about socialism or Plato or the Quran, felt highly delicate, as if everyone was afraid of offending everyone else. Rather than “I disagree with so-and-so,” it was more socially acceptable to say “piggybacking on so-and-so’s point,” even if there was a disagreement. When I finally found someone willing to have an extended intellectual debate with me—my problem-set partner for a logic course—I was interested to learn that he was a staff writer at the Stanford Review, the conservative publication on campus. He invited me to a meeting during winter quarter, and, mostly out of curiosity, I decided to attend.
What I saw there was the opposite of what I’d found in my classes: Students were encouraged to disagree with one another. At each meeting, students had to present—and defend—the articles they were working on; then the group would debate three topics, such as how the U.S. should respond to the war in Ukraine and whether Silicon Valley’s relevance was waning. I kept going back to Review meetings, but I didn’t tell many of my friends—I didn’t want to be judged.
Why the eggshell-walking among progressives? (Yes, I've noticed this, too.) I think it is partly because of the compulsive need to be right, and consequently to one-up everyone who differs. Deviations on issues of effective anti-racism, for example, cannot be tolerated. I hunger for the arenas where differences can be argued on their own alleged merits and defects, rather than as reflections of your or my obvious and intolerable defects.
These tendencies have made their way into a number of progressive Quaker communities. If these tendencies toward monopoly-style rightness are not challenged, I see a real danger of decline and an eventual future as small clubs of Quaker specialness rather than genuine churches. If I'm worrying needlessly, please tell me!
As Britain Yearly Meeting's Advices and Queries advise us (under no. 17), "Think it possible that you may be mistaken."
I'm not asserting that these kinds of personalizing of arguments and threats of shunning don't happen among conservatives as well. I particularly think of the theobros.... But I hate to see it among those who claim to defend freedom of speech and thought, and trustworthiness of process, as crucial values for an interdependent community.
Much of MAGA is not conservative in any classical sense.
What can we learn from these beatitudes and the Old Testament sources they derive from? We learn that centering our hearts on God’s character and God’s faithfulness is the place to start. (I’m trying contemplative prayer for this purpose.) It is always right to pray. It is not the last resort; it is the only resort in hopeless times. Prayer is the expression of hope when there is no basis for hope.
Death Bloom: a message of hope for times of transition. Amy Straub prepares to leave Zambia, not knowing what comes next. She reminded me of what it was like to realize we were approaching the end of our time in Russia.
More on powerlessness and prayer from Tricia Gates Brown. Her post reminded me of Anthony Bloom's words here (scroll down to the second quotation).
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