I don't know why, but I felt like I was caught (having not sent him a cart) so I sent both of them a brief exerpt from what I'd sent. I felt sort of driven, like I had to do it.
But when I got a note from someone he knows well and would be in visiting in his area and I thought he would like to see her, so I e-mailed him (plus, I thought maybe he could use some spiritual guidance because I think he's messed up, but I wouldn't tell him that), but he brushed him off.
The thing is that with that brother it's a power thing so that I really feel powerless and it's scary too. I really am afraid of him, and it has a sexual aspect to it too. It's really creepy. I wonder if mom experienced any of this. I mean, I'm beginning to think that with him anything's possible, but I never knew about this aspect of him until after mom's death. So that's a new angle on him. I really don't care if I never see him again.
To that end I've been trying to figure out a trip out West. I thought I'd most likely fly in to that city, although another city is possible. With my health, I may need to fly nonstop and pay more. I may need to consider this my last foreseeable trip out west due to my health. I plan to get a rental car, but I'm really going to have to be super religious at maintaining my exercises. And I'll have to get the okay from my doctors too I guess. At this rate, though, my health is never going to be perfect.
Anyway, I would head off to mom's home town pretty quickly but try to rig it so that not too many people there knew so that my brother wouldn't find out. I just couldn't risk him finding out, is the thing. Under no circumstance do I want him finding out and coming out to join me. That would be the last thing in the world I'd want.
And then it's hard when people don't believe that this kind of thing is going on.
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The next text is another journal article:Golden, Karen A. (1992). The individual and organizational culture: strategies for action in highly-ordered contexts. Journal of Management Studies. 29 (1), 1-21.
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"In spite of their differences, each of these conceptualizations... suggests that the latitude for individual action increases as the orderliness of that context decreases." (p. 1)From an outsider looking in there didn't seem to be a lot of order in the Vienna mission and there certainly wasn't a written order that meant anything to speak of. But the organizational values and norms left little wiggle room, I think, for individual action, otherwise I would have had a lot easier time of it. Although the expectations might have varied a bit from individual to individual in the mission those individual-specific norms were generally nonnegotiable.
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"This article has incorporated a more dynamic perspective of action into the cultural analysis of organizations in order to highlight individuals as active agents in their surroundings...Based on these analyses, four general types of strategies for individual action emerge: (1) unequivocal adherence; (2) strained adherence (3) secret non-adherence; and (4) overt non-adherence. The first two types, strategies of adherence, result in an individual's conformity to the cultural guidelines. They differ, however, in the extent to which individuals share, or regard these guidelines as their own. Only the first strategies creates a close one-to-one correspondence between action and culture." (p. 17)
When I first arrived in Vienna I fully expected to be in position #1. In the first two or three months it became clear that that might not be quite as likely as I initially though, so I degraded to position 2. By the 5th month, when I was sent home to the USA, I moved to position 3, where I remained until I left the mission. I don't think I could have stayed in Vienna as a #4. I think they really would have treated me as if I were crazy. I can't imagine what they would have done if I'd gone open with my opinions and viewpoints. They scared the bajeebers out of me when they sent me to the States so I knew enough to keep my thoughts to myself, so I stayed a #3. I highly doubt that's what their intent was when they they sent me to the States, but that's what happened. The end result was to make me know when to shut up and keep my thoughts to myself. Think of it as an unintentional effect, if you will.
To say I held to secret non-adherence for most of my time with the Vienna mission, was true, does not tell the complete story. For one thing, I always did support the idea of what the mission did, because I had already before coming decided that it was cutting edge as far as something that was really needed for the church to grow in these countries. Also, there were some things that I could agree with. But it was hard to pick and choose, and the more there was to disagree with and the more fundamental the things I disagreed with then the harder it was to just pick out isolated things to focus on the agree with. It just took more work to do that.
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Well, that's it for that article. As you can see, some of these article just have a couple pieces I'm interested in taking from them. Next time I'll have someting different for you.
