My retreat from politics

When I Sounded the Retreat from Politics

Part Two of Retreating from and Returning to Blogging

By Dan McDonald

 

            In my previous blog I described how I sounded the retreat from writing during this recent Lenten season.  In this blog I will describe how I earlier retreated from politics and how that retreat led me to see life and politics differently.  My retreat from politics was not intentional.  I gradually grew discouraged and tired of politics.  I heard pastors, politicians, and co-workers describing our presidential election of 2012 as the most important in American history.  I had voted in every election since 1976 and expected to continue to vote. On Election Day I planned to vote when my work day ended.  But I was tired not only from work but of politics.  So I went home and took a nap.  After that it was like I no longer had a dog in the political hunt.  I moved from one county to another and didn’t bother to register to vote in my new house.  I suppose I was shirking my civic responsibility, but what started to take place is that having no dog in the hunt, I could listen to others speak without my need to feel defensive.  I listened and for the first time I heard things that made some sense from the people who voted against the way I had always voted. My mindset about politics changed.

            I began to think how many of us choose our political perspectives like we choose our sports teams, by symbol and image rather than by watching the legislation like sausage being made.  When I was a kid I was sort of torn between two favorite teams.  We sort of liked to pull for the underdog in our family, so I became for that reason a New York Mets’ fan and it was rewarded when Seaver, Koosman, Agee and Jones won it all in their miracle year.  I was also a Giants fan because I loved watching Willie Mays make his basket catch of fly balls with his glove next to his belt.  There was also the high-kicking Juan Marichal whose leg rose almost straight up in the air when he threw hard and fast out of the windup.  There was also Willie McCovey, who hit towering long homers bringing out tape measures checking the distance.  They were the Three-M's of the Giants.  I suppose I am thinking of them because I plan to go to California this summer, and even if the Giants don’t play in Candlestick any more, I will be sitting in their new park looking on a field where I will envision Mays, McCovey, and Marichal.  We often look at politics the same way.  One person likes the team that stands for individual rights, free enterprise, and limited government.  The other person likes the team that stands for equality, the working man, and progress.  But no one pays much attention to how legislation gets passed.

            My perception of humanity and government changed after I retreated to the irresponsible non-voting part of the citizenry.  I began to try to envision humanity from a Christian perspective existing as created in God’s image.  I thought of God existing as Trinity; as one indivisible God existing in three persons.  I thought of man therefore existing in the multiplicity of billions of human beings, each person unique and distinct from one another; and yet together each of us shares equally in our humanity shared with the first Adam and in our redemption shared in the second Adam.  As John Donne described it “no man is an island entire of itself . . . but a part of the main.”  As this perspective filled my vision of human life my previous view of right and left seemed to be a comical piece of stick art sarcastically being set forth as a serious expression of humanity’s life, energy, and common will.

            If we imagine the continuity of God’s revelation from Sinai to Pentecost we catch a glimpse of what this truly means.  Enshrined upon Sinai’s stone tablets is one sentence guarding the sanctity of the individual and his property rights, “Thou shalt not steal.”  But following Pentecost the yearning of redeemed humanity was expressed in a simple statement of how they held all things in common.  I don’t believe it was because they were commanded to hold all things in common.  I believe they did so because the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, informed them that they were one people, one loaf, one body, one blood redeemed one and all in the precious body and blood of Jesus Christ.  Thus they looked upon one another with the freshness of faith and said “I belong to you in Christ so what is mine is thine.”  No one stole, coerced, or manipulated them from a pulpit to force a life in community, but each gave the other not only what they owned but the wholeness of their beings; who they were and not just what they owned.  Because the Eucharist informed them they together were one.

            Because I retreated I came to see things from a different perspective.  God, in Christ, is redeeming not just human beings but also humanity.  He saves the entirety of our being human including reorganizing how we seek to move forward in societies with our neighbors.  So while I will not often blog about politics, if I do present a blog on politics, I want it to be a blog that helps present a view of this sort of understanding of politics.    I expect I will soon register to vote once more, but I never want to go back to how it was when I used to vote.

"Sounding the Retreat

“Sounding the Retreat”

Part One of Retreating from and Returning to Blogging

By Dan McDonald

 

            Have you ever felt like you had to “sound the retreat”?  A few weeks ago, just before the Lenten season, I felt a need to retreat from blogging my ideas.  I intentionally decided not to post blogs presenting my ideas.  I failed in my intentions a couple of times, but definitely reduced blogging about my thoughts during this past Lenten season.

            I am the sort of person who easily falls in love with his ideas.  That is my form of vanity and narcissism.  As Lent approached I was writing a blog for almost every idea that popped into my head.  That would have been okay for a diary or personal journal.  But, as a Christian, the moment I began to express my ideas publicly as though they were truths, I came under the authority of an apostolic injunction which says “Speak the truth in love.”  If I am presenting my ideas as expressions of truth then this should be submitted to others in love.  But if all I was doing was to be expressing my ideas then perhaps I needed to retreat from doing that enough to examine if I was expressing truth in love or merely expressing love for my own ideas.

            Sometimes we equate sounding a retreat with surrendering or giving up.  But in reality sounding a retreat can be a valuable strategy both in military application and within our personal lives.  General George Washington understood the importance of sounding a retreat as a valuable strategy. Washington navigated the American Army through a difficult scenario.  Especially in the early years of the war, he had a difficult time keeping the citizen army from going home instead of participating in a lengthy war for independence.  If soldiers felt there was going to be no major battle, they tended to think they were not really needed.  So Washington had to engage the British in military action if he hoped to keep his army up to a size that could possibly win a war for independence.  On the other hand if Washington engaged the British in battle he ran the risk of having his army defeated by a larger and often better equipped British Army.  Washington solved this dilemma by selecting his battles carefully.  He attacked when he had an advantage and just as rapidly retreated when his army began to be threatened by an often larger British force.  Washington’s ability to command a retreat was especially shown in the battle for New York called either the battle of Long Island or Brooklyn.  The British easily won the battle, but Washington commanded a retreat that kept his army intact, and both frustrated and astonished the British.  If Washington had been unable to command a successful retreat the American Revolution would likely have been a footnote in history describing how the revolutionary forces were defeated by overwhelming forces in the battle for New York.  You may read about the retreat in the hyperlink beneath the artist’s conception of Washington’s retreat from Long Island.

 

Washington’s Retreat from Long Island

The story of the Battle of Brooklyn or Long Island

 

            There seems to be parallels between the times we should sound the retreat in our personal lives with the sort of situation where generals order a retreat.  A retreat is generally advantageous when we find ourselves in a position where we are in it “over our heads.”   We realize that we have not the resources, training, or ability to stand in such a situation.  We order a retreat.

            Sometimes our reason for retreating can be out of love for others.  Jesus spoke to his own disciples and told them how there were many things he wanted to teach to them but they were not ready.  His desire to lead his disciples and by extension his desire to lead us into all truth is tempered by his desire not to burden us with information overload.  This is something to especially remember in theological debates that might gain our attention.  It gets messy when our abilities to assimilate truth lead us to being at different places in our understanding of the truths of the faith.  It can be important to help another understand truth they have not yet learned, but it may also be important to simply recognize that each of us are learning truth in different ways and varying speed of learning.  We easily get frustrated by the differences of where differing Christians and Christian groups are in their process of learning, but sometimes we need simply to realize that another may not be ready to learn what we have learned, and to realize humbly that also we may have not learned what another has already learned.  So in our debates we might need to retreat and ask how well we are dealing with differences.

            In the next blog or two, I will describe some of my conclusions from my time of retreating from blogging.  Meanwhile if you have experienced some times when you discovered retreating valuable, perhaps you might want to share.  Likewise if you are the timid sort who has needed to overcome the temptation to always retreat, share a story about overcoming that temptation.  That might be a discussion of interest to others.  I would only ask for you to be kind and considerate in your comments.

A review of "The Invisible Girls" by Sarah Thebarge

A Review of

Sarah Thebarge’s The Invisible Girls: A Memoir

Reviewed by Dan McDonald

 

The Invisible Girls by Sarah Thebarge

 

            The first writing I read by Sarah Thebarge was a blog entitled “Not Blue is Not a Color.”   I was impressed by how she used her blog to invite readers to a discussion of the theme which she addressed.  There seemed to be a kindness written into it, compared to so many of our blogs that express cold ideals or angry arguments.  She wrote as if to invite us to chat like best friends around a table she had decorated and supplied with treats and coffee for us to partake as we chatted away.  That is why I ordered a book she had written entitled The Invisible Girls.   I received the book with a number of other books recommended by people I respected.  I looked into the box of books and wondered “Which one should I try to read first?”  It seemed to me it made sense to look over each book thumbing through it until  I could decide which one to read first.  I happened to pull The Invisible Girls first.  I read the opening words, the first chapter, and the next chapter.  By the time I got ready for bed I had read every page, cover to cover.  You probably don’t know how rare that is for me to read a whole book in one evening.  Some of you readers do that a lot.  But me, I’m one of those persons who if he sits down, usually won’t take long to fall asleep.  If I sit down with a book in my hands that tendency to fall asleep multiplies immensely.  So when I read a book if I can get a couple of chapters finished I’ve considered it an accomplishment.  I don’t ever recall reading any other book in one evening.  I did just that with this book.  Sometimes I read pages through tears, sometimes with joy, and sometimes I almost felt proud for the lady who wrote this book.  Maybe I just needed to read the compelling story she told.  It was a compelling story because she lived it.

            What made this book so good?  I won’t pretend to be a book critic.  I once upon a time received a history degree, but most of my life has been worked out on factory floors, in an oil refinery, and pulling parts in a warehouse.  My intellect has been re-programmed so that my perspective is immersed in a blue collar frame of reference.  But this gal tells a story of how in living her life, life found her.  My job in writing this book review is not to critique her writing but to describe her book like someone would describe a rich exquisite dessert.  Once I have described this exquisite dessert I would turn and look at you and say, “Wouldn’t you rather savor this treat as it melts upon your tongue instead of hearing me describe it?”  That is exactly what I mean to do in telling you a little about The Invisible Girls.

            This book is the story of how Sarah Thebarge’s life intersected with the lives of a Somali mother named Hadhi, and her five daughters.  Sarah’s life and the lives of these Somali family members were so completely different that it meant they had a lot in common waiting to be discovered.  Our author wonderfully weaves and wraps two themes around each other.  She tells us about her story growing up as pastor’s kid, becoming an adult, getting surprised by her acceptance to Yale, and then at age twenty-seven beginning a long battle with cancer that threatened her very existence.  This is a theme woven and wrapped around this beautiful relationship to a Somali family.  It is fitting that the two themes are written wrapped around each other.  You realize that everything that went into the making of the person of Sarah Thebarge was somehow wonderfully invested into a Somali family that so needed the friendship and love she gave them.  But that isn’t the whole story.  The other side of this story is that Sarah Thebarge was like a deeply wounded soldier who had returned from the battlefield but was wounded and scarred in body, mind, and soul.  Her battle with cancer left her deeply wounded.  It wasn’t until she discovered friendship with a Somali family of needy immigrants that she found healing.  The needy Somali family provided the lady named Sarah with healing even as they playfully decided to call her their “Sahara” instead of Sarah.

            You will discover that Sarah grew up in a conservative Evangelical background, as one of the preacher’s kids.  You will discover that though that background expected women to play a support role to men in leadership that her parents never sought to be a barrier as she decided she wanted a profession and career and an independent path.  Her parents left room for their daughter’s need to process the issues of her life before God even though it was not necessarily creating the life they had in mind when they imagined their little girl growing up.  In this context you’ll love the story of how Sarah Thebarge decided to apply to Yale to go to graduate school and how she got accepted.  It is the sort of story I don’t want to spoil for you when you do read it.

Her bout with cancer is a painful story to read.  It tested her, it took from her so much of what a woman feels makes her a woman.  I won’t tell the details, they are probably the sort of a thing a man should not tell, well this man for sure.  I think someone like a cancer survivor should be the one to break this story to you.  The part I can tell you about is how her theology got severely tested, and how her theology added to the severity of her depression that came with cancer.  I know a bit about her sense of Evangelical theology.  On the one hand we like to tell how God loves us in Christ and how Christ came to die for our sins.  But we also emphasize how God deals with sin, even the smallest infraction.  That kind of theology got turned inside out and pointed against our sister Sarah as she battled cancer.  She began to wonder about God’s love for her as the costs of her cancer mounted.  We are not talking about the cost of medical bills, but pain, losses in one’s body, in one’s spirit, loss of friendships, and the loss of normalcy that comes with redefining hope to a hope that even if it is painful you will draw one more breath; not one more breath as long as you are able, but just one more breath.  Hope became something to push her to the next breath.  In the midst of such a struggle she began to wonder if there was some infraction she had committed that God now targeted her.  Then she wondered what sort of God would treat her in this manner for an infraction she did not know about.  Cancer left her wounded in mind, body, soul, and spirit.  She might be declared cancer-free by the physicians but she was far from being healed.  These are the wounds she had suffered and carried with her as she met a special Somali family for the first time.

The story of her meeting this family is actually at the very beginning of the book.  Sarah Thebarge was riding on a commuter train in her new hometown of Portland Oregon.  She was reading a book.  A little girl poked her head around the book and then pulled her head back.  Then she poked her head around the book again until Sarah realized the girl was playing a game of peekaboo.  Sarah played along and then began conversing with the little girl’s mother.  In her battle with cancer, when she was nearest death’s door, her support group had mostly dwindled away.  Sarah Thebarge had imagined herself at the time as an invisible girl which no one realized still existed.  As she met this Somali family, she soon came to realize these girls, the mom and five daughters; they too were invisible girls the world surrounding them never really saw as existing.  Every time I try to shorten this review it gets longer.  So this is it; my review of the book.  Don’t you think if it were an exquisite dessert, you’d want it melting on your tongue right now?  I think you’d like it, yes I do.

 

An Interview with Tamara Rice (Part II) regarding child sex abuse

An Interview with Tamara Rice:

 Regarding Sexual Abuse of Children

Part II:  If the Terrible Takes Place?

 

This is the conclusion of a two part interview, in which Tamara Rice answers questions concerning child sexual abuse.  If you have not read part one you may wish to read the first portion of the interview.  I am grateful for Tamara’s willingness to take time to reply to the questions I gave her, and trust you will find her answers helpful and informative.

 

What should one do if there is evidence or accusation of abuse?

What’s key once an allegation or signs of recent abuse surface, is that whether it was in a church or school or home, the immediate response must be to contact authorities. It’s not a pastor or elder’s job to investigate an allegation and see if it’s credible. That’s for the police and social workers. Every religious institution has to come to terms with this.

 

In cases where the abuse is so old that statutes of limitations are up or there are jurisdiction issues (foreign soil prior to the Protect Act of 2003, for example), authorities should also be contacted first. But if they are unable to take the case, a reputable third party team of investigators who are experienced in these abuse investigations should be hired, and (this is key) the victims need to be involved in choosing the investigative team.

 

Also key in responding to abuse is that the victim must take priority over the perpetrator. The victim is the vulnerable one, the victim is the one in need of the church’s protection. There is a time and place to offer the perpetrator mercy and grace, but that should never come at the victim’s expense. That should never come at the sacrifice of legal justice. That should never come at the expense of other children.

 

            A couple of months ago there were high profile credible reports of sexual abuse and sexual harassment involving Christian ministries.  It was at this time that your writings on these matters helped explain elements of abuse.  This helped change how I saw this problem.  I realized that in the New Testament, numerous sins entered the church and yet did not bring an end to the church’s God-given ministry.  But when a church chooses to cover-up sins; that does bring into question the reliability of a ministry’s proclamation of the Gospel.  Who is hurt when a church, school, or ministry covers up these sins rather than dealing fully with them?

Everyone is hurt. From the abuser—who gets no accountability for their sin and is free to go on abusing—to the victim (who is effectively told they are worthless, which is another act of abuse), to the ministry itself.

Hiding these sins—which are crimes, let’s be clear about that (and in many states it is also a crime not to report them)—becomes a cancer at the heart of the ministry. What we find is that ministries who have engaged in these cover-ups are either already emotionally manipulative and spiritually abusive or they become that way in order to keep their secrets. You don’t really hear: “I can’t believe that church/school/mission covered up abuse … their leadership is so spiritually healthy!” No, what you hear—what I hear from people who write to me, time and time again—is that these environments become (if they were not already) controlling and decidedly unhealthy places. They become toxic.

It is so much healthier to be transparent. When an allegation comes to light, what needs to be said is this: “This person who worked for us seems to have done a horrible thing, and we love him/her, we trusted him/her … but we also love and have compassion for the people they appear to have hurt and it’s important for us to do the right thing. It’s important for us to let the investigators do their jobs, and we encourage you to cooperate with them so the full truth can be known. In the mean time, we’re all devastated and we all need your prayers.”

Some ministries fear those words like they fear the wrath of God, and it is really, really sad. It’s really, really sad because those are the words that have the power to heal.

            I have one last question.  Are there any things you would like to say in addition to the questions you have answered, regarding abuse?

I think most Christians would say protecting children is vital. But how many would say that exposing a predator is vital to protecting children?

We have to get there as the Church. We have to grasp this and figure out how to do it well, do it out of love, do it with compassion and with concern for all. Has someone in your church molested a child? It IS your business. It IS NOT gossip. And it’s a piece of information that may hold the key for healing or protecting someone under your own roof.

            Thank you, Tamara Rice, for taking the time to participate in this interview.  I would like to add a comment endorsing something you have made clear in today’s answers.  It is vitally important that even if every defendant is to be recognized as innocent until proven guilty, that we consider it equally essential in the search for justice that every victim of abuse who comes forward is given the respect of having their allegation taken seriously and followed up with a faithful investigation.  There is perhaps no crime in which victims are so often re-victimized by the investigative and judicial process than when one comes forward to make an allegation against their abuser.  I thank you again Tamara for I think you have shed some much needed light on a matter we so easily seek to hide in the dark.