The third "No Kings Day" program of protest actions in the USA are being organized for this Saturday. We will be out of the country that day, but hope and pray for a peaceful day, and a good turnout. I'd love to see lots of creative messaging that will reach new audiences, and a minimum of stupid caricatures.
Some USA citizens here in the United Kingdom will be marching under a slightly different banner, "No Tyrants," since here there is an actual king. The king is styled "sovereign" but, ironically, in normal times the British sovereign has practically no political power in comparison to King Donald.
The kings and queens in constitutional monarchies do have enormous symbolic power in their roles as stewards of national identity and guarantors of continuity. They would quickly lose that legitimacy and its grounding in the affections of their people if they became kings in the ancient tyrannical model described by God to Samuel, who—in vain—passed that warning on to the people demanding a king.
Many actual monarchs, having more majesty than power, still have the use of grand palaces, elaborately decorated, and they participate in impressive rituals and spectacles. They may have buildings, organizations, and various projects named after them, and their pictures may appear on currency or on the walls of government offices, but, again, if they themselves were to decree these arrangements, their legitimacy would suffer.
King Donald wants both power and spectacle. May he get an unmistakable NO on Saturday.
My June 14 sign.
On his blog, Interrupting the Silence, Michael K. Marsh points out that this upcoming No Kings Day is on the weekend of Palm Sunday.
This Saturday, March 28th, is the third No Kings Day protest and Sunday, March 29th, is Palm Sunday, but here’s what I wonder:
What if Palm Sunday was the original No Kings protest?
What if Jesus, the disciples, and the crowd that follows Jesus are protesting violence, injustice, and imperial power?
Instead of protest songs there were shouts of “Hosanna!”, a cry for deliverance and liberation, a plea for change. Instead of protest signs there were cloaks and palm branches, symbols of joy, peace, submission, and the celebration of a new way.
Here's how Nancy Thomas has been using slugs in her writing. It reminded me of the tradition among some pastors and seminarians to challenge each other to embed some incongruous word in sermons they'll be preaching.
Philosophers, political scientists, and advocates of civil discourse are grieving the death of Jürgen Habermas.
Jeremy Morris tells us why he thinks "Paul D’Anieri’s updated Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War is the single best book you can read to understand the domestic and geopolitical causes of the current war." He managed to persuade me to buy the book. I haven't started reading it yet, but I think Morris's post is interesting on its own ... as usual.
Back when I was first interested in Russia and the Soviet Union, in my mid-teens, physicist Andrei Sakharov proposed a new twist on Marxist determinism: that, among other factors, the demands of industrial management, the rise of consumer demand, and the danger of nuclear annihilation would cause the great rival superpowers to take on each other's better traits and eventually converge. The resulting societies would feature both rational economic planning and freedom of thought.
Sakharov did not live to see much of the "end of history" phase and the idealists' disappointments in both superpower camps—both with their individual fragilities and their discontented peripheries. The year 2000 featured secret bargains, manipulations, dangerous theatrics, and general confusion in both Russia and the USA, with Vladimir Putin and George Bush ending up on top. Not exactly the convergence that Sakharov had in mind.
In both systems, the neocons (creatively defined for my purposes!) relatively quickly demanded the right to define reality for the rest of us. Putin arguably was ahead in this development, as he and his allies slowly but surely extinguished independent media and built the cult of the indispensable leader. "Putin is Russia, and Russia is Putin," proclaimed Vyacheslav Volodin, currently speaker of the State Duma, in 2014. And since that year, just in terms of government process (setting aside the ultra-nationalist intellectuals and church leaders who are his favorite influencers), Putin alone is the stubborn owner/driver of the war in Ukraine.
The USA's equivalent developments, although far less linear and absolute (we did elect two Democrats in those years), have reached the point where Donald Trump can assert to a journalist that "MAGA is Trump" and that, in starting yet another war, he faces no opposition in true MAGA.
In this Russian bookstore, someone put the Constitution in the fantasy section. (Originally used here.)
Both of these countries' constitutions nominally have power distributed among several branches. In Russia, the legislators and judiciaries go through the motions of their jobs but, when the stakes involve the interests of those at the top, they see no point in resisting.
Our situation may be less bleak: the judiciary still displays some independence, but the president's party's majorities in both houses of the U.S. Congress mostly continue to fall in line. In the present case of Iran (and Israel and most of the Persian Gulf states), what the president wants is what he gets. Iran is, of course, just the most recent target of U.S. bombs and artillery in the past 13-1/2 months, after Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, Iran (June 2025), the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, Syria, Nigeria, and Venezuela. In almost every case, Trump gave the orders personally and did not deign to invite Congressional consent. And now he supposedly gets to decide personally who will be the next leader of Iran.
One of the lonely critical Republican voices in Congress, representative Warren Davidson of Ohio, points straight to the constitutional illegality of Trump's process, as reported in The Guardian:
Make no mistake, Iran is an enemy of the United States. As our military engages them, they do so justly. [sic] Unfortunately, they are not yet doing so constitutionally.
For some, this debate will be about whether we should even be fighting in Iran. For me, the debate is more fundamental: is the president of the United States, regardless of the person holding the office, empowered to do whatever he wants? That’s not what our constitution says.
In fact, the U.S. Constitution, and most Republicans' unwillingness to defend it, is at the heart of several of today's crises as we transition from a republican democracy to a personalist authoritarianism. Due process and equal protection of the law came into the Constitution after a terrible Civil War, but today's legislative timidity in the service of throwing out immigrants is shameful. So is the attempt to organize a permanent governing majority through federal legislation, when the Constitution makes it clear that the states are to make election rules.
In 1967, a group of anthropologists contributed papers on war at a conference of the American Anthropological Association. The resulting book, War: the Anthropology of Armed Conflict and Aggression, opened my eyes to the possibility of studying war as a human behavior just like many others, subject to the same disciplines of observation and analysis totally apart from the myths, justifications, and deference it usually gets in real life. One of the contributors proposed that societies are usually either in a "relaxed" state or a "mobilized" state, and anthropologists should study the process by which a society goes from one state to the other. A respondent pointed out that, in modern conditions, most of society can remain in a "relaxed" state while specialists conduct wars on our (supposed) behalf, often without ever seeing their opponents, not to mention the collateral damage. To me this raises a question that I hope you can help me answer: how do we mobilize, not in favor of war, but in favor of our Constitution, before our "relaxation" becomes utter and permanent passivity?
Or, as one of our Moscow friends used to say to us, ironically, "Welcome to Russia!"
Speaking of Friends World Committee (previous link), the Section of the Americas has opened up registration for its annual sessions on Saturday, March 21. This year the sessions will be 100% online.
Once again, another version of "Scratch My Back." I've presented this one at least twice before, but it takes me back to Chicago like no other.... Illinois Slim does the chicken scratch.
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!"
Friends began, not as a relativization of Christianity, but as an intensification of Christianity. We did not throw away the Baby with the bathwater, but (sorry if you've heard this rant before!), the new scented bathwater in use among some seems to be so fine that the Baby can be left in the cold, and this is somehow called Quakerism!
More recently, in July 2024 I mentioned where I first saw this expression used among Friends:
As an old London Yearly Meeting poster once proclaimed, as nearly as I can remember, "Tired of organized religion? Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater." Let's just watch out for that exceptionalist temptation, whatever our corner of the Quaker world—to replace the Baby with our own bathwater, whether that be the subtle rose-scented water of liberal Quakerism or the soggy cliches of imported evangelicalism.
Just in passing ... my memory is that London Yearly Meeting published a number of other clever posters in the 1970's. My favorite was something like this: Don't just do something. Sit there.
My own personal interpretation of the baby/bathwater warning in the Quaker context: those early Friends no longer trusted the religion industry to interpret either faith or practice adequately, but, contrary to the angry charges of their Christian opponents, they did trust Jesus.
("Angry charges"? Read the accusations and responses in William Penn's tract, "A Key, Opening the Way to Every Capacity; How to Distinguish the Religion Professed by the People Called Quakers, from the Perversions and Misrepresentations of Their Adversaries.")
Today I was following up some Internet rabbit trails on deconstructing faith, and I found Jim Palmer's comments on the usefulness and limitations of the baby/bathwater expression. The responsibility is always upon us (individually and as a community) to define who/what the "baby" is that we are being advised not to throw out.
Palmer points out that, honestly, nobody actually advocates throwing out a baby with its bathwater, so the expression is sometimes used manipulatively. Yes, your deconstruction can go so far, but no farther. Palmer challenges us to decide for ourselves Who or what the baby is.
So ... should we Quakers still be using this expression in addressing prospective seekers? We're promising that, by giving up the structures, doctrines, and ceremonies of their previous affiliations (or the choices they dislike in the religious marketplace), they'll still be able to keep that which is essential. But will they really do so? Take that story of the (alleged) Philadelphia Quaker culture that the late Gordon Browne told (according to my imperfect memory):
A recent convert went into a Friends meeting in Philadelphia and burst into enthusiastic testimony: "Friends, I have to tell you—I've met Jesus! I've found religion!" Not content with one outburst, he got up again and said, "I can't hold it in! I'm reading the Bible—I've found religion!" After a third such exclamation, an elder stood up and addressed him directly: "Friend, you may have 'found religion' but you didn't find it here."
I want to say, gently (because this can certainly be overstated!), that the fastidious reserve of particular Quaker cultures has become a sort of bathwater that obscures the Baby and deserves to be drained, or at least diluted! After those cultures have molded several generations of Quakers, the centrality of Jesus has, at times, faded, to our loss and our potential irrelevance.
How would we know whether Jesus is still at the center? We could dutifully answer, "By gathering in his presence and prayerfully seeking his guidance in our decisionmaking," but that requires
persistence in discernment, not falling for convenient shortcuts—formulas, ideologies, rhetorics of shame, and persuasive personalities that can distract us from listening deeply to each other as we wait for clarity;
knowing and loving ourselves and each other to such a degree that we learn what helps and hinders each of us in our own hearts in seeking (or avoiding) clarity, and we discover who among us has shown this capacity to speak God's guidance clearly.
To quote Thomas S. Brown ("When Friends attend to business"):
We are called to love those present enough to listen to what they have to say and to speak what is worth their hearing.
If Jesus is not relevant to a seeker's condition, there are certainly many other options in the religious marketplace, including the deceptive anti-baby of Christian nationalism. But we Friends who have experienced the liberating power of Jesus, can continue to offer (or ought to offer) a thoughtful and passionate devotion to the Lamb's War combined with a radical skepticism concerning the religion industry and its claims and priorities.
That skepticism is not a license to indulge in Quaker exceptionalism. It ought not to stand in the way of our cheering the Anglican communion for having chosen Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury, the first woman to serve in that office.
From "Discrediting" the Military to High Treason and Terrorism: Sergei Davidis on the evolution of political repression in Russia since the start of the current war. It's a disastrous and discouraging progression for those who yearn for "the beautiful Russia of the future."
In summary, political repression in recent years has clearly intensified: sentences have lengthened, convictions under the gravest articles (treason, terrorism) have reached record highs, and the victim count continues to grow. At the same time, measured as a proportion of the population directly subjected to politically motivated criminal prosecution, the scale remains comparatively moderate—especially relative to Belarus (where the per capita rate of political imprisonment is significantly higher) and, even more so, the Stalinist period of the 1930s-1950s.
This scale likely reflects the «functional» nature of current repression: it provides the regime with adequate control at minimal cost. Several thousand imprisoned for political reasons (plus thousands facing criminal charges without incarceration and tens of thousands prosecuted administratively) suffice under present conditions. Several factors facilitate this efficiency. First, the modern information environment vastly amplifies the deterrent effect of even targeted repression. The variety, unpredictability, and broad social and geographic reach of charges foster a widespread mindset of keeping one’s head down. Second, society has been conditioned over 25 years of deepening authoritarianism to accept the status quo as inevitable and without alternative.
Tom Gates connects Rene Girard's mimetic theory and Quakers as "scapegoat caste."
Becky Ankeny on prayer as the most important act of resistance to evil.
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.)
Maison Quaker à Congénies / The Quaker Centre in Congénies, France. Source.
There's a Russian phrase, both precise and vague at the same time, that translates to English as "in times like these...."
In times like these, we write about Friends' service in Russia with love and enthusiasm tempered with discretion. We don't give names of people and partner organizations. We do emphasize our nonviolent and truthful principles, just as we "harmless and innocent people of God" did in earlier turbulent times—the years of our movement's origin.
As a former member of the board of Friends House Moscow, I appreciated receiving this report on the meeting held this autumn in southern France. I'm grateful for the permission to use it here, with one or two edits. Links were added by me.
— Johan
Maison Quaker Congénies warm embrace of FHM
Seventeen Friends travelled from far and wide to be in Congénies in Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France during the weekend of the 24-27th October, 2025, coming from as far away as Berlin, California and Moscow. For some, the journey took several days to complete, which made it all the more gratifying when we were offered a warm welcome on arrival at Maison Quaker by the resident staff, Eli and Miranda. Their generous hospitality extended over the entire weekend.
Asked about the massive amount of work the FHM meeting entailed for them, both Miranda and Eli responded in the same manner: “It is lovely to see Maison Quaker so full. It is rare to have such a large group of Friends present all at one time. This makes it really special for us.”
Even the weather seemed to make an extra effort, sharing the last warmth of summer, while much of the rest of France suffered downpours in the wake of Storm Benjamin. In the beauty of Congénies, war felt a very long way away. Heavily laden persimmon trees in the garden sagged under the weight of their late-summer abundance; butterflies, including two-tailed pashas and fritillaries, flitted among the flowering bushes; the balmy nights were punctuated by the hooting of tawny owls. Congénies was a fine place to be: a place of quiet and peace, ideal for discernment of difficult and pressing questions.
The task of the board was to discern the future strategy of Friends House Moscow. This was no easy challenge. Given that the war in Ukraine shows no signs of ending any day soon—astonishingly, there has already been nearly four years of fighting, rather than the three or four days many commentators had predicted—nothing about the work of FHM can be taken for granted. The board thus needed to answer tough questions. Should we continue the work? And if we should, how do we do so practically, given all the challenges it now faces?
Our deliberations started with a look back in time through the lens of Sergei Nikitin’s history of Quaker relief in early twentieth century Russia, noting that there has been constant Quaker interaction with Russia for more than a century. We then examined how our personal motivations for this work live into the Quaker Testimonies of Peace, Simplicity, Integrity and Equality, before pivoting to look at the current political environment in Russia. We considered how these changes have affected the relationships of Friends to Friends House Moscow, asking whether or not there was continuing support from local and yearly meetings in Europe and the U.S. We agreed that there is still support.
Tight finances mean that FHM cannot do all it would like to, nor meet all the needs of those approaching it for help. Three days of discernment led us to the conclusion that we should continue to support the refugee centre, bolster our publishing work, and maintain our support for the language club.
Three priorities
The refugee centre continues to help the socialisation and education of children whose families have come to Russia in search of a better life and greater security. We have been supporting the Centre since the mid-1990s. The refugees and other migrants come from a wide variety of countries. Once in Russia, they face many challenges, and often need to keep a very low profile, which makes the centre so critical for them.
Our publishing efforts remain central. We have published 22 titles in Moscow, following translation into Russian. “Best sellers” include Plague, Pestilence and Famine by Muriel Payne, The Fruits of Solitude by William Penn, and Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster.
We will continue to support the language club. Over the past year we have conducted hundreds of language lessons for students who wish to develop confidence is speaking in public in another language. We view it as a sign of hope that students wish to continue learning another language and that cultural contact with other European countries has not stopped completely.
The way opens
By the time Friends gathered for meeting for worship on Sunday, which included members of the local meeting, board of Friends House Moscow had already spent two days in contemplation and debate, chewing over the difficult issues facing the organisation. There was still a further day to go, but by the time of meeting for worship, we were feeling positive about the future of FHM.
Around thirty, including partners and Friends from Congénies local meeting, shared lunch on Sunday. Like every meal in Maison Quaker, it was graced by excellent food. Each day’s breakfast were notable for being laden with pastries and croissants from the local boulangerie, L’ Amandine, which also supplied the cake for Sunday evening when we celebrated Pat’s birthday. Lunch and dinner were prepared by a local cook, so no one went hungry!
The final day was something of a threshing meeting, as we needed to match our finances to our priorities. Sterling efforts by those of us who understand spreadsheets and IT gave us all a clear understanding that, whichever way up we looked at things, they did not square—there simply was not enough money in the pot to do all we wished FHM to do. We the leading to continue the work, we concluded the three days by committing ourselves both to the budget and to urgent need to raise additional support.
Perhaps the most important support that Friends House needs is the energy and vision of people who may have never heard of this program, and might not speak Russian, but who recognize the need for Friends House and its potential for healing, reconciliation, and encouragement in times like these. If you have follow-up questions or ideas, write to me, and if I don't know the answer, I'll find someone who does. Also see the related link below.
In The Friend: some context for the board meeting described above.
Homeland Security (USA) is proposing to require certain tourists coming to the USA to make available their social network posts for the last five years and all e-mail addresses, personal and business, over the last ten years. Here's the form to read the details and make your comments. In the list of "newly proposed changes" to the data required from travelers, see especially (3) "Mandatory Social Media"; and (4) "High Value Data Elements," requiring data from family members as well as travelers themselves. Deadline for comments: February 8.
The promise of Genesis 3–4 is that despite our best intentions we will inevitably cause ruptures (such as on my second to last day on the field when in a wave of cultural exhaustion I exploded on my closest friends because they asked for money). The aim of cross-cultural service is not solely to avoid such things, though it’s worth our best effort. It is to be sent as ambassadors of the entire Ephesians 2 gospel, true ministers of reconciliation who abide the often mortifying work of repair—the costly reweaving of trust.
Sergey Kadyrov's music, and his scenes and holiday decorations from the cities of Noginsk and Elektrostal. Instant nostalgia, of course. Thank you, Sergey! (The cafe at our former workplace, the New Humanities Institute, appears briefly starting at 1:12; three views altogether.)
"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.
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.
Above: at Elektrostal's Victory Day celebration, May 9, 2010. (My photo.)
Below: selected pages from Khrushchev's "secret speech," February 26, 1956, as published by the state publishing house for political literature (Gospolitizdat') in 1959. Some of the headings: "Fabricated cases," "Stalin and the War," and "Genocide and Terror." Here's a link to the full text of this version and a link to one of the English-language translations.
Yesterday morning on our public radio station I heard Meghna Chakrabarti open her On Point program with these words:
It would later be called the Secret Speech, but on February 25th, 1956, a cold morning in Moscow, no one knew what to expect. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stood before the 20th Congress of the Communist Party and did the unthinkable.
For a few wild moments, before she went on to explain her reasons for referring to this speech, my memories flashed back five decades to my student years at the Institute for Soviet and East European Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. In those years, I studied Russian language and literature, Russian history, and the politics of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. The "secret speech" was a landmark event in Soviet history, and I remember being fascinated by the speech itself and the varied commentaries on Khrushchev's motives, what he should have said, what he should not have said, and the uneven progress of the destalinization efforts that followed.
Among our friends in Russia, one retired scientist in particular remembered hearing about the speech the next day, and the quiet celebrations that ensued among her friends.
I remembered reading U.S. ambassador Chip Bohlen's memories of hearing about the speech. (Witness to History: 1929-1969.)
It was two weeks before I heard anything about the secret speech. On March 10, at a reception at the French Embassy for former President Vincent Auriol of France, a rumor circulated that Khrushchev had made a scathing attack on Stalin. The rumor, like many others, was transmitted by Parker, the Moscow correspondent for the London Worker. It seemed evident that the rumor had been planted by Russians who wanted the word out.
Liliana Lungina on the secret speech (episode 12). Behind her, a photo of her late husband Semyon Lungin.
More recently, I watched the wonderful (and unexpectedly popular) autobiographical television series on author and translator Liliana Lunginaand read the book based on that series. (See this post: Ordinary heroes.) About the "secret speech," she told us,
It was not published, but read out in closed sessions. It was only published at the end of the 1980s. The address was intended exclusively for Party members. Nonetheless, everyone who was even slightly literate knew about it.
It dropped like an atom bomb, though much of what Nikita said people already knew. For [Liliana's husband] Sima and me there was absolutely nothing new in his speech, even the hint that Stalin had killed Sergei Kirov. And all the rest of it, too, about the “cult of the personality”—we knew all of that already, of course. Yet even for us, the fact that it had been uttered out loud, officially formulated and acknowledged, changed something. For others, for those who had tried to follow the Party line, it was earth-shattering.
I briefly wondered why Chakrabarti had brought up this event at this particular time. Yesterday's date doesn't match up with an anniversary of the speech. But she soon made the connection clear, and as she did so, my private reminiscences of student years came to a swift close. After talking about the speech and its impact at the time with Nikita Khrushchev's great granddaughter and with historian Wendy Goldman, Chakrabarti asked Goldman,
CHAKRABARTI: ... Okay, so we have invited you on today, Professor Goldman, to talk about what Stalinism actually is and was. Because quite a few historians and thinkers out there have wondered out loud whether the United States right now under Trumpism has anything to learn from Stalinism.
What would be your answer to that?
GOLDMAN: I think that there were certain signposts which were important on the road to terror in the 1930s, and I think these signposts are important for Americans to learn to recognize. So it's not that there's a direct comparison necessarily. And comparisons, I think, as many people have said, can be very easy or facile.
There were certain signposts which were important on the road to terror in the 1930s. ... These signposts are important for Americans to learn.
But in terms of looking at signposts, I think these are important, and I could talk a little bit about what some of them were, if you'd like me to.
They had my attention, though a sort of reflex skepticism came with it. I was familiar with some of the comparisons of the MAGA movement with Volk-and-violence fascism, but, I confess, any sort of linkage with Stalinism hadn't occurred to me. Then I remember what someone in Buzuluk, Russia, told us back in 2008, "Hitler was a kindergartner compared to Stalin," and I kept listening.
A trigger event: In the Stalinist case, one of the triggers was the assassination of Politburo member Sergei Kirov, which led to the notorious trials that eliminated prominent opposition politicians and led to ever-widening purges. Terms such as "terrorists" and "enemies of the people" came into frequent use.
Is it fair to cite the words of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, shortly after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, in this connection? On the Monday after Kirk's death, Miller and vice president Vance made these comments on the episode of the Charlie Kirk show hosted by Vance:
STEPHEN MILLER: The thing about anger is that unfocused anger or blind rage is not a productive emotion.
JD VANCE: Right.
MILLER: But focused anger, righteous anger, directed for a just cause is one of the most important agents of change in human history.
VANCE: Charlie showed that. Amen.
MILLER: And we are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.
There are several ways that MAGA authoritarianism is on full display now, and one of them is the creation of an internal army that includes ICE, an army under the direct control of the president, an army that does not respect the normal disciplines and safeguards of policing, such as detentions and arrests based on probable cause, carried out with minimal force. Real police officers do not knock people down as ICE and related forces do frequently in full view of camera-toting witnesses. But perhaps the most Stalinist aspect of this whole scene is the preparation of all of us to accept this by repeated use of untruthful and dehumanizing language to describe the "enemies of the people" who deserve such treatment.
The subversion of science: Another of Chakrabarti's guests, historian Paul Josephson, summarized Stalin's support for pseudo-scientific doctrines such as Trofim Lysenko's assertions that living organisms could be trained to adapt to new environments directly, rather than by evolution, to the great advantage of (for example, as he claimed) agriculture. This seemed to be in accord with the Marxist-Leninist vision of the "New Soviet Man." With Stalin's finger on the scales, this wasn't simply a debate among rival geneticists; those who disagreed with Lysenko could find themselves unemployed, even imprisoned, and the agricultural practices based on his principles were disastrous. One of the worst effects was the isolation of Soviet science from the rest of the world during the high period of this doctrine.
Now we have a U.S. administration that seems to be compulsively negative about climate research and non-carbon energy sources, ready to ban certain already-conducted research from appearing on government Web sites, cutting funding to health research it doesn't like, and promoting views on vaccination that are nearly 100% outside scientific consensus.
Stalin in the Kremlin is concerned about each one of us. Source.
Finally, the cult of personality. Once again, Chakrabarti on the secret speech:
Comrades, Khrushchev said, the cult of the individual acquired such a monstrous size, chiefly because Stalin using all conceivable methods to support the glorification of his own person. End quote.
Khrushchev said, those around Stalin, willingly, quote, used the most dissolute flattery, made Stalin into a Godhead, transforming him into an infallible sage. End quote. They believed Stalin's own description of himself as, quote, the greatest leader. Quote, sublime strategist of all times and nations. Quote, finally, no other words could be found with which to lift Stalin up to the heavens, Khrushchev said.
Fast forward to the present era. Drawing on the On Point transcript:
CHAKRABARTI: Professor Goldman, if I can, I'd like to go back for a moment to the concept of the cult of personality. Because it was so central to Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech after Stalin's death. I think you can argue in the affirmative that there is a, in fact, for probably a decade, there has been a cult of personality built around President Donald Trump.
And it may, Trump, it may be reaching, its apotheosis right now. For example, this summer at a cabinet meeting of the president's chief advisors, this is how all the cabinet members began their remarks. This is from August 26th.
LUTNICK: This is the greatest cabinet working for the greatest president, and I just want to say thank you. I'm having the time of my life.
NOEM: You committed when you ran for president to make America safe again, and today the average family and individual that lives in this country is safer than they've been in years because of what you've done.
WRIGHT: God bless your efforts. God bless your assembly of this team around this table. We're bringing the American dream back.
CHAVEZ-DeREMER: If you all haven't stop by the Department of Labor, Mr. President, I invite you to see your big, beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor because you are really the transformational president of the American worker.
ROLLINS: I do believe we're in a revolution. 1776 was the first one, 1863 or so with Abraham Lincoln was the second. This is the third, with Donald Trump leading the way.
WITKOFF: And there's only one thing I wish for that Nobel Committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since the Nobel Peace, this Nobel Award was ever talked about, to receive that reward.
CHAKRABARTI: All right. In order, that was Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, AG Secretary Brooke Rollins, and Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.
One final quote from the program, from Wendy Goldman, summing up the stakes while still reminding us that we're not "there" yet, by any means. To ask about the lessons in Stalinism for the USA is not an invitation to alarmism, but to vigilance and compassionate solidarity. I'm eager to hear whether you think Goldman has made a fair case.
I think this is something we need to all, as Americans, pay very close attention to. Folks, there's a playbook here. And when we study history and then when we live through these tumultuous contemporary times, we hear echoes of that history. And those echoes are chilling. So for example, part of the playbook is that certain groups are demonized.
There's a playbook here. ... When we live through these tumultuous contemporary times, we hear echoes of that history.
That happened in the Soviet Union and it's happening here. Here, we're demonizing immigrants, often hardworking people who have been in this country for many years. Some of them may be here illegally. They pay taxes. They do some of the most difficult jobs in the country. Their children go to school.
We have people here who are illegal, whose children are in the military. These groups have been demonized as criminals. And sometimes it's difficult to know what kind of America we're living in. So on the one hand, everything is going normally. And people can say, fascism, this is nothing like fascism, Soviet terror.
This is nothing like Soviet terror. And then at the same time, you can look out the window and see masked men who are armed, who are literally disappearing Americans off the streets of our cities. That's a different America and that's an America that I think we all need to pay attention to. Similarly with the attack on left wing people, this is reclassification of people with dissenting views as domestic terrorists, that is straight out of the playbook of the terror, and these are the kinds of things we really need to pay close attention to.
The Convocation Unscripted calls out glee over ICE brutality. Here's part of Jemar Tisby's response:
If we're coming back to the "what do we do part," here's a real simple one: re-read the gospels. 'Jemar, why do you say re-read, I've been reading that all of my life.' Yeah, but now we're under a fascist regime, and it might hit different when we re-read the gospels. And in particular, I'm thinking about Matthew 5, of course, Beatitudes. But then, "blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you, because of me.' And then, "Rejoice, and be glad." All of this is abstract, until you are living in persecution, until you are living in oppression.
Enough of Stalin and DJT for today! Just as important in the grand scheme: Beth Woolsey has a foster cat story. (With a nod to our own former street cat who's napping in the top drawer of a file cabinet....)
Dessert: Rick Holmstrom with a nice song whose name I couldn't figure out or find in his discography. (Can you?) If you like it, enjoy the whole set.
