421. Military Chaplaincy, Pt. 39 (Sehested, pt. 1)

This next text is:

Sehested, Ken. (1994, March 2). The case of of Chaplain Robertson: loyalty test. Christian Century, 111(7), 212-214.

***

Lieutenant Colonel Garland Robertson is an Air Force chaplain at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, whose military record includes a Distinguished Flying Cross, which he won by rescuing a reconnaissance team in Vietnam.  He has also commanded a nuclear missile site.  Despite these credentials, Robertson is on the brink of being discharged from the Air Force.  Stripped of all duties, he has been removed from the chapel offices and sequestered in a windowless, closet-sized room adjacent to the base runway where he spends his days writing book reviews for a chaplain's resource bureau.

Robertson is accused of 'flouting' the very authority of the president.  In January 5, 1991, letter printed in the Abilene Reporter-News, he responded to a speech by then Vice President Dan Quayle assuring U.S. troops mobilized in Saudi Arabia that "the American People are beyind you." must be clarified to indicate that the American people are not united in their decision to support a military offensive against the aggression of Saddam Hussein in Kuwait." The letter was, he thought, a modest attempt to raist the question of what is a justifiable use of deadly force.

Behing Robertson's desire for public debate on the topic lay his own experience as a pilot in Vietnam.  "I assumed that our leaders were telling us the truth" about the need to support democracy and oppose tyranny in Vietnam, Robertson in a recent interview.

Robertson resigned from active duty as a line officer in 1976 to pursue a theological degree.  He earned both an M.Div. and a doctorate in theology from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth Texas.  In 1982 he was reactivated as an Air Force chaplain..." (p.212)

That's a lot to quote, but I felt like I needed to include the background material.  The main thing I want to discuss is the second part of the first paragraph, starting with "Stripped of all duties..."
The rest is there so you know the context.

Is this something that has "symbolic meaning"?  Is Robertson supposed to understand these moves symbolicly?  Yes and no.  I was moved around a lot, from the second highest position a secretary, at least, could be in (although I didn't want to be a secretary and fought against the mission's attempts to limit me to that straight jacket).  So that's one issue.  It wasn't symbolic because he actually was stripped of his real professional responsibilities, so that's not symbolical.  However, there were also symbolical meaning to each aspect of it that Robertson and others could pick up on and tuck away in their psyche for further reference (For example, "Note: freedom of opinion is not allowed here, remember to not attempt it or you will end up like Chaplain Robertson."). 

My situation was similar, there were actual aspects of my job changes, but there were also symbolic meanings to to each move as well. Generally, I could tell if I was in their good graces or not by where I was (physically in the organization).  The ironic thing was that I don't think I particularly changed that much through this whole time, except over the two years I eventually wore down, as much as I hated it, and started attending the English-speaking church, But somehow it was their perceptions of me that changed at various times.  For example, at some point they determined I could go back to Vienna, but I don't know what the basis was for deciding I could return at that point.  I don't think I'd done anything to change or anything.  So I returned and I think they thought I was at least more socialized than when I left some 7 (!) months earlier. 

But the main things I had gained was an internal strength to be able internally to maintain my own value structure (as distinct from theirs, which I refused to even entertain, except maybe individual values that I had no problem with, making it a smorgasbord style of values and norms acceptance which would never in a million years have been acceptable to them) and externally give not a hint of my having "a secret life of Meg".  The idea was for them to think that what they saw was what they got.  It was self preservation, although, as I recognized not long ago in a post, it really was deception.  I knew what I was doing so I wasn't deceiving myself, but I was deceiving absolutely everyone else, no exceptions.  So that's lying, and I really should have gotten out of there instead of going that route.  Its's the same thing they were doing for security's sake.  So I was really no better than they were in that regard. 

But I was so horrified - scared spitless - that that was taking the forefront and also my career was on the line and I'd prepared so long and hard for this.  I just couldn't wrap my head around the possibility that could possibly be as bad as it looked, like maybe there was some kind of explanation that I didn't understand and there would be an explanation and things would work out.  And I didn't know what other options, professionally, there might be, as I'd gone through pretty much everything before deciding on that mission.  So for these kinds of reasons I found it very difficult to just leave the mission.  But it only just recently struck me that it was deceptive to live that sort of double life where I hid my true thoughts and values from the world for that time with the mission.

 ***

"He knew the letter would raise objections, but the resulting furor caught him by surprise.  As revealed in documents and testimony at his September 1993 Board of Inquiry disciplinary hearing, Air Force superiors hoped to force him out of the service... The same psychologist who provided him a clean bill of health the first time concluded, after the third exam, that Robertson exhibited a "personality disorder so severe as to interfere with the normal and customary completion of his duties." This evaluation was made without an examination, breaching the most elementary rules of conduct for the profession." (p. 213)

I never had anything like a hearing with the Vienna mission (they didn't have a grievance process nor any disciplinary process where the mission would need evidence to "convict" the errant one of anything.  I don't even know if they gave out warnings, like in a regular job.  But anyway, the one thing that does clearly compare here with my experience at the Vienna mission, is that without any kind of exam at all, based only on rumors, the military chaplain/H.R. director at the Vienna mission declared that I had culture shock.  And not only did I have culture shock, but that the degree to which I had culture shock was bad enough to send me home to the U.S. for hospitalization.  I don't know about you, but to me if I was happy in the culture, had no complaints about it, spoke the language, when to an Austrian church, etc. This doesn't sound like culture shock in the first place, let alone that bad.  And diagnosed without an exam, but someone who was just a chaplain, not even a medical professional.  This is what I call, at the very least, unprofessionalism, and at the very worst, criminal use of one's position.  Maybe if I'd just left there I'd have had enough to suit him on...

***

"A civilian employee testified that her former boss, the senior chaplain at Dyess, had taken her aside after a Sunday morning service " to ell me he had to get Chaplain Robertson out of the service.  Chaplain Elwell went on to tell me that this task must be accomplished by a certain date ... so that [Robertson] would be entitled to full retirement benefits." It seemed evident, she said, that he "had been told that part of his job was to remove Chaplain Robertson."

Robertson was removed from the chapel's preaching schedule rotation "until the completion of Desert Shield/Desert Storm" (and later in the year, removed permanently)... One by one his other pastoral duties were withdrawn... Later a full-scale inquiry by the Office of Special Investigations was investigated.  Robertson was cleared of a mysterious charge of fraud." (p. 213)

If a good chunk of my problems with the Vienna mission were actually due to my relationship with my father, then there could have been some of this involved too.  And this would have even been more sensitive than if it were just a matter of regular socialization with the mission, because none of the parties involved (e.g., U.S. government, Vienna mission leadership, military chaplains/H.R. staff would ever have wanted my treatment to be connected to that.  It would have been one thing if I had told them upfront what my dad did and they had rejected my application for the position from the getgo.  That would have been understandable and would not have needed to have involve anything other than mission policies. But that's not what happened and nothing was ever voiced by anyone that that was an issue, although there may have been hints.

For me in Vienna moving me to lower positions where I would have less interesting work, less influence and clout, very limited access to interesting information, a much more tangential role in the work, was used, and as much as it hurt, I had to learn to take everything without complaining.   Once you start complaining than that's when they have an in to start getting to you, and I wasn't going to give them that, so I was going to stand above the fray.  So I was always happy, composed and never complaining.  That's not how I felt though.  It was the ultimate poker face. 

While I never had the level of position that Robertson had, before Vienna I had worked in some prestigious organizations, so I had that background at least and knowledge based on some firsthand experience as well as even primary sources research materials.  So no matter what the Vienna mission thought of me, I still had that background and knew I was capable of more than they ever used me for.  Although towards the end they were beginning to see, I think, what I could do. 

***

"At one point an officer from the Chief of Chaplains office in Washington, D.C. paid a visit. "He indicated that compromise was essential for becoming a successful military chaplain," Robertson said. "I suggested that 'cooperation' was the more suitable word, but he quickly confirmed his intentional use of "compromise." "If Jesus had been an Air Force chaplain,"He told me, "he would have been courtmartialed." But he said that compromise is necessary in order to maintain a presence." In a letter to the secretary of the Air Force, Robertson said, "If thise senior command chaplain is correct -- that compromise is necessary to survive in the Air Force as a chaplain -- then reveal this restriction.  The Air Force maintains that chaplains are free to proclaim and practice their witness without fear of reprisal .... It is important that we not deceive persons who look to chaplains for assistance in spiritual growth and faith development." (p. 213)

 Yeah, and I would like to have known from the getgo that people with parents in nationally security-sensitive positions are not actually free persons.  In fact, I never realized the full extent of what dad did until I had to think about it in relation to it's impact on me, which was way after I'd already spent years in preparation for my career in East European missions.  It would, indeed, be nice to know these things in advance.  But these are things that no one is going to tell you, because they are not "convenient truths." That is, they don't particularly make certain powreful parties look good, or they are potential bad p.r. harbingers.  So better left unsaid, except for people like me and Robinson who get the raw end of the stick just because the powerful party didn't want to look bad, so it thought it better to neglect to bring to light (or something more active than "neglect") these life-changing truths.

As to the word "compromise," the Vienna mission might not have used that word, exactly.  I'm not sure it would have gone over with the theologians.  After all, this was a Christian mission, not a secular armed force, that we're talking about, so the missioinary-theologians would have expected more of a theologically correct reasoning than the need to compromise, even if the end result was the same.  So they'd use some Scripture, or more likely, they'd use the "we know more about the East European mission scene and the full scope of our ministry (including in-country translators and textbook delivery, finances, etc.), so you should trust us that we know what's best for the mission" approach.  It sounds good, anyway.  And because this makes sense, because you really just know theology, you trust them and compromise in some areas ends out being an end result anyway, more than likely. The thing is that if you had to trust the mission completely, blindly really, then it seems to me that compromise at some point would be hard to avoid.   It's possible, though, that I got worse treatment than others because of my father and others can't relate well to my experience.

Also, what happens here, then, with the call for chaplains to have a prophetic role in the military?  If they are to compromise, as the Chief of Chaplains states, then chaplains will rather quickly lose their saltiness and their lights will be hidden under bushels.   So what role could there possibly be for chaplains in the military (or at least the Air Force) with such a mindset?  I can't see any.  I think in such a situation it would be better to have a ministry to them external to the Air Force and just work extremely hard at raising up lay leaders among the soldiers.'

Robertson's letter was probably naive, but if he sent it in he should have done so as a citizen, not as a chaplain or officer.  That would mean stripping all of his credentials and affiliations from his name; he could have even submitted it anonymously or requested that it be published anonymously, at least, even if the newspaper knew who he was.

***

"The [Chief of Chaplains] even went to the trouble of rewriting the official statement of the mission of Air Force chaplains... Chaplains, in other words, were to function as morale officers in the service of command directives.  In a February 1993 letter to officials at the National Council of Churches, Robertson wrote: "No minister of a faith community can comfortably encourage anyone to follow the direction of the state as a way to be at peace with God.  By functioning as a morale officer, the chaplain only succeeds in encouraging soldiers to accept the preferences of the state without questions."" (p. 213)

Nothing like this ever happened to me in Vienna because written documentation meant zilch to them.  You had nothing to fall back on as support; it was just you and the leadership.  If it looked like you might be right (let's just say, hypothetically), there was not written document they chould monkey around with to fix to back their position.  They wouldn't have had to do that.  They had brute force to do whatever they wanted.  Who needs documentation in the face of that?  And anyone who disagrees with them is certifiably crazy; everybody knows that.  It's like a law of physics or something that it was impossible to disagree with them.

I like this guy.  What he is doing is taking a logic and following it to the end.  He's my kind of guy.  I did that once while I was in Bible school and working part time at Pizza Hut.  We had an interesting collective of workers... very diverse.  Well, we got in a discussion about creation vs. evoluation.  It was me and a couple of muslims (!) vs. a satanist (practicing) and another guy.  Over a couple weeks' time when we could get in the back room, maybe while we were doing prep or something, we'd pick up on this discussion and I followed them through so that if you believe in evolution than this must be true, then if that is true, then this must be true... So finally the way we were going, the path we ended out on, led to communism.  So I told the one guy finally that if you believe this then that leads directly to communism.  And then he said that indeed he was a communist.  Then we had another whole discussion about communism, because I wasn't completely ignorant about that either.  He said that perfect communism was in Cuba (where I live now I'd have to maybe run for my life if I said that too loud). 

Going from chaplains being morale officers to following the direction of the state as being a way to be at peace with God is a kind of following an idea to its end.  It's a way of showing the ugly side of a thing or an idea, showing it's true colors, getting past the fluff.  It depends on the issue as to what exactly it (following something to the end) does.  I think he uses it very well here, though.

***

"Thus far, however, Robertson has maintained private support and official recognition of his certifying agency, the Southern Baptist Convention, along with the very public support of a Southern Baptist congregation in Abilene.  "We are supporting Chaplain Robertson, and we have no intention of revoking his endorsement," said Lewis Bernett, director of military chaplaincy for the SBC, in a telephone interview." (p. 213).

My home church and my other supporters did stick with me while I was in Vienna.  Of course, they didn't have a clue what was really going on.  It did bother me that I didn't think I was using using the mission support well.  That is, when you think about it, most of the time I wasn't really doing a lot of useful work.  The first 5 months I didn't do much, then 6 weeks lost then a few months part-time in the U.S. office, then about 8 months where I did real work then about 5 months where I wasn't doing that much again, although I was full-time.  .  But I was on full mission support the whole time.  I was really disappointed, though, that when I returned home for good my home church only just expressed sympathy, and that's all.  So I didn't have any support from them when I came home.

***

"Garland is the kind of person who stands up for his convictions, and that sometimes hurts him," Burnett told the New York Times." (p.213-214)

On the other hand, some people play it too safe and are too averse to troubles and their primary goal seems to be to be comfortable and please everyone.  But here's a couple verses to make at least Christian's think:

2 Timothy 3:12

King James Version (KJV)

¹² Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.

Jesus' words to the disciples:

John 16:33

King James Version (KJV)

³³ These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

Jesus' prayer for the disciples:

John 17:14

King James Version (KJV)

¹⁴ I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

 Something tells me that these verses would not describe Burnett. 

But I'd like to also turn my attention to the Vienna mission.  The thing is that the Soviets were accusing Western missionaries (en masse and a few spacific ones) of being or cooperating with spy agencies (CIA or whatever).  So if there actually was any of that or possibly if there was "the appearance of evil" (I Thes. 5:22) in this regard then in as much as this was true, suffering wasn't actually for godly purposes but for something else, possibly for sin (e.g., being unequally yoked with the world).   But the mission never stood up for any convictions; it only sought to draw new missionaries into its net and make them unquestioningly trusting, and this way the mission never had to really develop a rationale for certain aspects of its work that were not open for questioning (because of security most likely, of course)

 As for myself, I would most certainly have liked to have discussed my concerns with the leadership, but I wasn't going to be the one to aproach them on it, because I knew there was an obvious (!!) power difference to begin with and these weren't things I was going to be man-handled into just changing.  So they would have had to start a serious dialog with me on the straight up where I knew that I was being taken seriously and they weren't going to just manipulate me or force me into anything.  When they never ever made any more like that then that said something too.  That wasn't how they operated and they never ever intended to treat it's workers respectfully, or at least they never ever intended to treat me that way.  I wonder what kind of theology or psychology that is.

***

There is a paragraph discussing the regulation about writing letters to the editor, which they can do as long as it's not partisan.

"But according to the Air Force's own case against Robertson, heard by the Board of Inquiry last September, the letter to the editor was 'irrelevant.' Three ellegations ("Statement of Reasons") were brought to the BOI administrative hearing.  The first was that Robertson was "disrespectful in words and actions towards his immediate superior." the second: his "leadership skills were below standard. The third: he was diagnosed as "having a personality disorder."

After hearing extensive testimony, the BOI threw out the allegations about being disrespectful and about the personality disorder.  The remaining charge of substandard leadership was sustained, along with the recommendatioin of an honorable discharge.  The charge was supported by an annual evaluation written in April 1991 noting that Robertson's "leadership style produced minimal results." This contention marked a radical reversal, however, from the previous assessment, in which Robertson was characterized as "an outstanding pastoral chaplain always eager to help others and consistently displays industriousness, conscientiousness and diligence in his ministry."  The same senior chaplain and base commander wrote and approved both reports." (p. 214)

I never had a hearing at the Vienna mission, and I've had to try to piece together and figure out what happened, which is why I did all this research.  The mission didn't want it's members to understand and scrutinize things there.  I was in the outs a good chunk of the time I was there so I had maybe more reason to want to figure things out, but since I wasn't a part of the beast I could analyze it more objectively, except when they were trying to confuse me (different people telling me different stories about what was going on or what was going to happen).  And, of course, people on the inside had access to more information, but they couldn't think independently, I don't think, because they'd pretty much given that up to enter the mission, unless my experience is that different from everyone else's that only I was expected to do that, in which case, that would have either been because of some job they wanted for me or because of my dad, or both.

***

"The allegation was further contradicted by the sworn statements of two parish council members of the Dyess AFB chapel community, one of whom testified that she felt "that [Robertson] was being censored ... If our chapel is going to be the type of chapel where our chaplains are going to be told what they can and what they cannot say when they come before the flock, then we may as well disband the chaplaincy." (p. 214)

I'm sure some pastors from the former East Bloc countries can provide tips on how to survive in such a climate. 

I experienced censorship from the Vienna mission too, in that I had to have my prayer letters vetted and I even had to pare down my list of recipients.    That was before the common ownership of computers, so it was hard to keep up with writing to everyone if I didn't have them on my prayer letter list.  If I had a computer I could just have printed out the letters on my computer and mailed the extra ones myself.  (The other ones were mailed from a place that specialized in missionary prayer letters.)  But back then it wasn't like that. 

***

"If the government discharges chaplains who refuse to compromise their religious beliefs, speech and teachings to appease military commanders, we will ... have created a religious body, under federal salary, that exists solely to support government polity and objectives.  Yes, this is government establishment of religion in its purest form." (p. 24)

Where did the Vienna mission military chaplain/H.R. staff stand on this issue?  It seems like a continuum to me, from far right establishment of religion in its purest form to far left freedom of religious practice for the chaplains.  I knew the H.R. director better than the assistant director (also a military chaplain, though),  and my sense is that he was somewhere on past the middle on the right side, maybe pretty far over on the right even, because I don't think he was the kind of person to stand up for anything.  He was more the kind of person that would support the military and help soldiers see things the military's way.  I think he really bought into the military and its ideals and values and what it did.

***

I didn't get to church today.  I got out to the car and I realized I wasn't feel very well.  It seems like it's my migraine, but I'm not sure.  I didn't notice it as long as I was sitting and just walking around here a bit was okay.  So I don't know, I'll have to see what's going on.  Hopefully it's nothing new, and just my migraine.

399. Military Chaplaincy, Pt. 17 (Pendergraff, pt. 2)

Continuing with the same text...

The chaplain is still mediating the case of the soldier who has become a conscientious objector while serving in the army.

"The chaplain would need to emphasize the fact that personal integrity or self-respect requires that the soldier's actions are consistent with his values." (p. 42)

 This, of course, seems like it would be a central part of the case the chaplain would be making.  And it was a major issue with me in the Vienna mission, also.  Well, besides that, it may have been problematic anyway because of my father's work in SDI at Boeing, but other than that, it was clear that I had some values differences with the Vienna mission.  But the problem was that it shocked me that I should have these differences because I had come with great respect for the mission, and certainly its credentials were what some people would call "impeccable."  They were certainly above suspicion for the kind of thing that I found when I arrived.

So I was faced with a dilemma also.  However, the fact that these issues were secretive was another problem, so that added another whole problem.  Here's how I'd compare the Vienna mission with the Army:

1. soldier enters army
2. soldier doesn't like what he sees/experiences and in the process...
3. soldier becomes conscientious objector
4. soldier goes through rigorous process to determination whether or not he is eligible for honorable discharge

1. I arrive in Vienna
2. I am shocked by what I witness and experience
3. I am unable to completely accept the mission's values and norms
4. I have the following options: a) leave and probably have the mission's ire trying to make me into truly a crazy loon in the process, because the things I disagree with are not common knowledge; b) stay and succumb to their wishes and change my way of thinking; c) stay and hold on to my way of thinking and live a double life; d) some combination of b) and c).  

So the big differences were that

1. The differences I found the mission was unlikely to publicly acknowldge even existed (at least for the most part); and 
2. There was not mediation process or any kind of grievance process of any kind in place at the Vienna mission.

So those are the similarities and differences between the army and the Vienna mission in this regard.

***

Here the author is talking about the two conscientious objector cases of the military doctors described at the beginning of the article.

"The chaplains did not function as specialists in the field of religion...

... He is the soldier's spokesman.  It is of prime importance that the chaplain be considered just, fair, impartial, discerning, helpful, and convincing in order to mediate effectively." (p. 43)

I have no idea whether the military chaplains in the H.R. Department at the Vienna mission, ever played roles like this in the Vienna mission, but I never saw this side of them if so.  All that I ever saw was this sort of belittling sort of man that thought he could use a stupid article on culture shock to convince me I had it and then use this forced fatherly countenance with me.  It was like syrupy sweet.  I'm not talking just now of how I feel about it, because my B.A. was in European Studies and I'd been to Europe on extended trips and I had a class in intercultural communication and I at least knew what culture shock was and this was so stupid and idiotic.  These people thought I knew like nothing.  I don't know, maybe they thought I crawled out from under a bush or something. 

But I can say most definitively that he never, ever was any of these things to me.  But then neither was anyone else the whole time I was with the Vienna mission.  And that includes my sending mission, too.

There was no effective grievance procedure in place.  Period.

***

"The commanding officer may not be a virtuous man.  He may not be able to acknowledge values higher than those of constitued authority.  If this occurs the chaplain should become the soldier's advocate to salvage his claim." (p. 43)

They were in bed together!  Christian or no! Seminary or no!  All the stuff from the last text applies here too.  I had no support from anywhere.

***

"He is a citizen of a democratic country which grants him the right to follow the dictates of his conscience and to adhere to his religious beliefs, yet his political military community does not always grant him that right... Conflict arises when civil and military rights are not in total agreement." (p. 44)

That's what I kept saying about my rights to in relation to my dad, but children with parents in certain high security positions don't have all the rights that everyone else has.  I've always wanted to find a support group of other children of parent like that who have been detrimentally affected like I have.  No one ever told me I couldn't have any career I wanted.  Do you know how many years of my life I spent with political problems?  It could have started as early as '83 (just being noticed among emigrants) and I'm not even going to say now when it might have ended.

I'm not even going to comment about the last sentence.  That's the end of this article.

374. Commitment, Pt. 16 (Angle & Perry, pt. 1)

This next article is:

Angle, Harold L., & Perry, James L. (1981, March). An empirical assessment of organizational commitment and organizational effectiveness. Administrative Science Quarterly, 26(1), 1-13.

In the literature review, under a section titled "Organizational Commitment and Organizational Effectiveness," we find the following quote:

"Although general organizational theory holds that the structural features of an organization should fit the demands of an environment and technology..., organizational design, alone, will not ensure organizational effectiveness.  Even where the structural prerequisites have been met, there remains a cruicial requirement -- that the members of the organization behave in a manner supportive of organizational goals."

I certainly agree with this and even agree wholeheartedly, even as pertains to the Vienna mission.  But the thing is that I thought that I was doing everything to meet organizational goals and I thought they decidedly were not acting in a way that would point toward those stated goals.  So that, as you can imagine, was very confusing to me. 

I was already dedicated, I already understood the perils of the communists (at least I thought I was pretty sure I did, even experientially, as well as having read some first hand accounts of believers at a research center).  The fact that they so mistrusted me was insulting and they should have told me that upfront, maybe before I even got there. 

Well, the thing was that I agreed with their goals and I was committed to them about as much as anyone could be, but I was told I would be a secretary and I wasn't so committed to that part of it, except to do my best and make a positive contribution to the mission. 

But the way the mission treated me at the beginning - which is the fountainhead of when everything else began, so is the most important time, I think - was like it was testing me.  And the reason you test someone is because you don't really trust them.  If you trusted him/her you wouldn't have to test him/her.  So the mission didn't think, evidently, that I had commitment.

Well, the thing was that when they tested me, they were testing me for something other then the goals that are publicly known, so they have other things than the publicly known goals.  Are these other things "goals"?  I'm not sure, because I never really became an insider to find that out.  But they definitely were values and norms.

***

The study itself is not too applicable to my situation, but the discussion makes a broad statement that is interesting:

"This pattern suggests that any impact of employee commitment on the organization may indeed depend on the specific kinds of behaviors to which the employees are committed and, of course, the effects of such behaviors on organizational outcomes." (p. 10)

So, for example, allowing me opportunities to actually teach was something that would have motivated me more than being a secretary.  Or if there are different tasks of a job that one prefers or dislikes, that kind of thing.  For me, there wasn't particularly anything that I disliked about being a secretary, it's just that it's not where my heart lay and that's not what I wanted to do.  Not to mention it wasn't challenging to me. 

I still have to figure out the reasoning of some of the things.  They did start to let me take trips, but then it all fell apart after my parents left and dad attributed it to my being too independent.  If so this is what might have happened.

Before I left Seattle for Vienna in 1987 Dad told me I might have to have a debriefing from his work, but that didn't happen for some reason unbeknownst to me.  But maybe they (the security gurus, military security, CIA, whoever) decided that I could go but only on a short leash.  But my sending mission didn't know that (they were a British mission, so maybe they were out of the loop) when they said they didn't think there should be any problem with me working with Austrians since I'd mostly be working in Austria as a secretary (i.e., not making trips to East Europe).  So I arrive in Vienna and they have orders that I am to be on a short leash and they fight against me with all their strength to get me to be reigned in.  Probably only the leadership knew about what was going on, but my boss was the assistant director, so I was working among the leadership, so they could make it difficult for me using just the leadership.

But that went (and goes - current) against everything I believe in.  My values and my approach to ministry.  If that is what happened, my response remains the same except my view of my father is that much horrified, because he knew all along.  He must have if his saying that I was "too independent" is accurate, then that means he knew all along.  But I need to work that out some more too.  So that's not my final theory. 

***

That's the end of this article.

311. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 37 (Bowditch, pt.4)

It wasn't much of a spiritual retreat yesterday, but it was a start.  Today I have a morning appointment with one of my neurologists.  Late yesterday evening my legs got pretty bad so that I had less control of them.  They're a little better this morning though.

***

One thing I got to thinking about over the weekend is the difference between my dad and I.  Both of us were stymied from doing what we really wanted to do, but how that happened and the effect on either of us was completely different.

Dad wanted to be a pilot - an airplane pilot.  He told me about this when I was a late teenager I think.  He said he wasn't allowed because he wore glasses and at that time he was disqualified from being a pilot because of that.

Well presumably that was something that he would have known upfront and that wouldn't have been difficult to find out about, so you'd know early on that you couldn't go in that profession.  So there was that point.  But then there was also the issue that he wasn't going to let that, as far as I could tell, ruin his life.  When he was drafted into the Korean War (although he never saw battle because the war ended before he got out of boot camp), he chose the Air Force because of his interest in flying, and then he worked for Boeing after finishing his draft enlistment.

But I never was told that I couldn't become a missionary to Eastern Europe... although after I left the Vienna mission a missionary with Campus Crusade for Christ told me that sometimes the don't let people with parents in the military work in missions in that part of the world.  (Note: although my dad wasn't in the military he was in aerospace, the "military industrial complex" end of Boeing).  So I put years and years and lots of money (and my parents' money and even my Grandmother's money) into preparing for that profession and if, say, the U.S. government didn't want me in that field I was never told about it.  It wasn't at all like knowing in advance that wearing glasses automatically disqualified one from being an airplane pilot.  I was way way way emotionally invested in this and I really felt that God had called me to that field and I still think that.

So then the other thing is after leaving Vienna I was broken but after some regrouping I was so convinced of God's call that I took another stab at it again.  By myself, Sans mission.

So the thing was that I faced all these nebulous entities, often hard to explain problems that always seemed to make my way difficult - sometimes exceedingly difficult.  It seemed that nothing about my career denial would be clearcut like dad's denial because he wore glasses.  Of course, you could always blame it on me, saying I was incompetent, crazy, or the like.  But that would only work for my Vienna years (1987-1989), not my Russia years (1991-1997), for some strange - or crazy - reason.  And I did have some problems in Russia, just different ones.

The work itself was also much different, of course, which bears noting.  Dad couldn't just decide he was going to try to work around the system and try to become a pilot despite his wearing glasses, as the airline industry is, was and always has been highly regulated regarding licensure of pilots.  He'd probably have to go to a third world country to become a pilot where wearing glasses wasn't an issue, which, if he wanted to become a pilot badly enough, I suppose was possible.

However, in my case, the field "Eastern European missionary" was not exactly what you'd call highly regulated - it's not as if you have to get a license to become one, for example.  Criteria for entering this profession are rather idiosyncratically set by the particulars of individual missions, positions, locations, etc.  So there should have been a lot more opportunity for me to work around any barrier, if I'd known of one.  So, for example, if it was true that children of military members might not be allowed into work in Eastern Europe, does that mean that all missions across the board wouldn't allow them?  does it mean that these potential workers wouldn't be allowed into any position in any country under any circumstance?  etc. And this assumes that all missions cooperate with the U.S. government in disallowing these types of workers.  Otherwise, how do they find out that these potential workers are children of military?  I don't remember being asked about it, so were the mission leadership informed about my dad?  (Considering they had 2 military chaplains on staff this isn't a completely unreasonable supposition, I think.)  Also, it is not completely unheard of for missionaries to work on their own or to set up their own mission.  Even one of our administrators had done that very thing instead of going through a regular sending mission.  So who's to say that I had to go through a mission anyway and be subject to their determination that I was disqualified from ministry to that part of the world because of my dad?

So you see, my area of work did allow a lot more opportunity to try to get around the system than did dad's line of work.  He would have to have left the country to work as a pilot.  As for my line of work, however, there was no way, really, for me to know up front who I could maybe work for and who I couldn't, but then I didn't know that there was a roadblock out there in the first place.  So dad's roadblock was black and white, but very unforgiving, and mine was hidden and only discovered by trial and error.

Another issue, of course, is the gender one.  For me, I began to see more and more that giving up on my dream meant becoming Susie homemaker, and some Christian men thought missionary experienc and the like was very noble and attractive, like it made one more of a trophy wife in Evangelical circles.  That really is demeaning to me.  Is that all it means?  That's it?  That's not what it means to me and that's never what it meant to me.  And I fiind it very disgusting to have it trivialized like that.

Anyway, that's it for the comparison between dad's and my work roadblocks.

***

This next main subject heading is "ORGANIZATION-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONS," and this is from the introduction:

"This section looks at some of the ways in which managers and organizations deal with their environments in terms of: 1) managerial efforts to reduce uncertainty by controlling the environment; and 2) attempts to structure organizations so they "fit" environmental pressures and demands." (p. 165)

***

The first sub-heading is: "Controlling the Environment."

"Thompson has noted five basic ways in which organizations attempt to exert control over their environment to reduce the level of uncertainty in their planning.  First, under 'norms of rationality,' organizations try to buffer or isolate their core technologies (inner operations) from external influences.  Through both input (e.g. stockpiling of inventories) and output (e.g., marketing) mechanisms, managers attempt to ensure that the core task of the organization is not directly affected by external conditions such as scarcity of materials (input) or changes in consumer preferences (output)." (p. 165)

The other 4 ways are basically an escallation if the first one doesn't work, but I don't think those other methods are very helpful for my purposes here.

The "core technologies" in the Vienna mission case would be the various secrets, including names of students, when classes are being held, what the classes are, who the missions are, where the money comes from, how textbooks get to the students, etc., etc.; basically all the things that the security system protects.  So this "buffer or isolate their core technologies" is more or less part of the security system, and marketing might include some of the misinformation ("We're an international publisher.").  But the marketing, especially back home, also serves the purpose of making sure that there are good vibes there to keep the financial support and supply of workers coming so that the work can continue.  Also, they want a certain image of the mission back home and they want to be the ones defining the image, so that everyone has a general appreciation for why it might be necessary to maintain a certain level of secrecy, etc.

They did need to make sure they had textbooks on time or ahead of schedule for the courses to be taught because it was very difficult to reschedule courses since so much advance planning went into the scheduling and it was such a complex process to get everyone on board at the right time in the right place, and even then something could go wrong.  So having the logistics taken care of on the mission's side was very important, leaving only changes to happen on the Eastern European side of things, so they did try to plan ahead for the environmental uncertainties.  They couldn't control much on the Eastern European side of things, so they focused more on controlling what they could of the part of the work that took place in the West to minimize disruptions.

***

The next sub-section is "Struction-Environment Fit."

"As the earlier discussion of mechanistic and organic forms of organization, and the concepts of differentiation and integration pointed out, there is no one ideal form of organization structure... As Burns and Stalker argured, the most effective structure is one that adjusts to these environment requirements - a mechanistic form of organization in stable, certain environments, and an organic design in more unpredictable, turbulent fields." (p. 168)

I'd just say here that the formal structure of the mission was pretty stable, but I don't think my changing position is exactly organic - I didn't choose to change, for example.  One area where the mission might be considered contingent is the constantly changing instructional teams.  They had to keep changing to defy the attention of the authorities at the borders, for one thing, but there were other reasons as well for this, such as bringing in outside experts, introducing other potential recruit missionaries to the mission, etc.

None of the structure descriptions are particularly helpful in describing the mission.  The closest one, I think is "professional bureaucracy," but even that is not that helpful.  Basically it would just say that the theologians on staff couldn't be easily regulated, decisions were decentralized and there was less formalization than in some other structures.  This was largely true as far as the strictly theological aspects of the work was concerned, except that they had to get everyone on board with every single theological jot and tittle - all the missions, all the denominations represented by the students in each of the countries the mission taught in, etc.  So all of a sudden things don't seem quite so decentralized after all, because of the environmental complexity that was integral to the work the theologians did.

***

That's the end of this chapter.

I saw one of the neurologists today. (I have 2).  This neurologist isn't that helpful, but I am afraid to leave him because the other one, while I like him better, when my legs are very bad (from spinal stenosis), then it's hard to get out there to him.  It's frustrating.   He wants to wait to get my heart taken care of before anything else, though, which is probably a wise thing.  He knows my cardiologist and says he's good.

272. Reprieve Continued

I think everything is starting to get to me and I'm pretty burned out after all these crises one right after the other. Now I learned today that I do in fact have a new stenosis at Lumbar 5/Sacal 1 (L1/S1), and I have an epidural shot scheduled for next week for the pain. So far the neurological symptoms are too bad, mostly tingling in the feet and only a little weakness in the legs. I think it's affecting my gastro-intestinal system though.

I'm still dealing with things around mom's death and the family, but that's going to take some time to come to grips with it, and whatever implications there might be.

And the condo search is taking longer than I'd like too, and it turns out that there aren't many options of places that meet my criteria.

But the reason I'm posting this time is to discuss my relationship with my brothers. It was nice that while I was in Seattle staying with a family friend for the funeral a month ago I mentioned something I was getting frustrated about as being a male thing going on in the family and he said he recognized it too. (He's known the family pretty well over many years.) I find it encouraging when someone else has observances that mesh with mine, as it serves as a kind of confirmation that my observational skills are pretty good, and it seems they generally are pretty accurate.

I have to decide how I'm going to relate to my brothers now. Ever since I returned to Florida over a year ago now I haven't been filling out "emergency contact" forms, and if I have to put anyone I designate my pastor as the emergency contact. Within this context I've thought of what the implications might be or should be regarding naming my brothers as beneficiaries in financial matters. The thing is, of, course, that I don't have anyone else, so I'm stuck. Or am I? It's been my observation of people from the two generations before me that this kind of felt dilemma makes people make otherwise uncharacteristic compromises of one sort or another. Such compromises generally don't sit too well with me. That doesn't mean I'm above such compromises altogether, but Scripturally such compromises are sin in as much as "whatsoever is not of faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23).

The latest dialogue dealing with these relationships regards my contention that mom was the last person who really loved me. I mentioned feeling like this (among other things) in an e-mail to my brothers, which they (rather predictably) vehemently protested. But is this a case of where "methinks thous protests too much" could be an issue? Also, I'd like to turn to another Scripture, although I might be doing so somewhat out of context; that is James 4:20: "But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?" Or more aptly, I John 3:18: "Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth."

Now before I get in to this too much, I should say that I am just as guilty of this as my brothers are. On my part my neglect of my brothers has been fairly intentional, such as in response to something one of them did or said and/or an attempt to avoid partaking in what I see as unhealthy familial interpersonal relations. But, no matter what the reason, the end result is basically the same I think.

The recent time where the contrast between mom's relationship to me and my brothers' relations with me are in direct contrast was when I was in the hospital last January after my cervical surgery. I didn't hear from my brothers at all during that time, but mom called me a lot, especially that day after the operation when I was in so much pain and not being adequately treated for it. She really was very upset that I was in so much pain... because she loved me.

The other thing that comes to mind on this issue dates from the month before I left my brother in New England to return here to Florida. As it happened I was supposed to start on a Cognitive Behavior Therapy treatment, but ended out instead dealing with what was going on there and other relevant family issues. As one point the psychologist asked me if it must be confusing to her my brother there say he loved me when he was treating me like he was. I shrugged this suggestion off, saying that I mostly ignored it, but I thought my brother really did think he loved me, but I thought his concept of love is warped. It's hard to say anything has really changed in the past year or so since then.

This, then brings us back to the issue of whether or not my brothers and I love each other. I mostly think we don't although I think they love each other.

The other thing is something I've talked with one of my cousins about, and that is my determination that our family runs on a "survival of the fittest" mentality. She picked up on this and agreed wholeheartedly, thinking in the broader family terms (I just meant my parents and brothers and I, but she interpreted it in extended family terms). In this value system, mom was the weakest link and now I am the weakest link, followed by my handicapped nephew who has muscular dystrophy. Now we all know what happens to "weakest links," at least in Darwinian terms. Weakest links get shoved aside and left to die while the stronger and more fit forge ahead, or climb some kind of ladder of success (however "success" might be defined). I hope you can see how the weakest link is not exactly the object of massive quantities of love, or at least might feel that way.

Unfortunately, I wasn't in a position to help mom much and the males in the family pretty much saw to that, making my role to be one of encourager, which was touted as being very important in the grand scheme of things. Early on after dad's death 5 years ago I offered to live with mom but that was responded to with resounding nos. Short of that, from a distance there wasn't much I could do without entangling myself in familial relations I didn't want to get caught up in. The other thing I did a few times was call someone back there in Seattle to help out in one way or another. But that's about all I could do. A few times I called mom right when she was having problems and so was able to help out from a distance in that way. But she was not good at reaching out when she needed help. She maybe called 2 or 3 times for help after dad's death, but those were the exception. And she never seemed to reveal her struggles with me like she did with my brothers. I think that's partly because she saw me in some ways as competition, which I won't go into now, but that's a whole other issue by itself. Let's just say that this is where the book "In the Company of Women" could be helpful.

But to return to the issue at hand, I need to decide what my response is going to be to my brothers' assertions that they love me. By response I mean how I think about it primarily, but also what my response actions might or should be. I really don't want to get caught up in unhealthy family relations, but it would be difficult to completely break ties with my brothers, so I have to figure out what my response will be.

It's late and I"m tired... Good night.

6/1/11 (next day) Addendum:

After thinking about this post I thought of a couple other things I should add or clarify.

First of all, I don't know that my brother in Seattle could have done any better than he did at taking care of mom. He did get frustrated with her sometimes, but I'm not sure that my other brother or I would have done much, if any, better on that score. If there was anyone who was better in this regard it was dad. My other brother might have gotten angry (or possibly even angrier), but I might have been more inclined to sort of make moratoriums with mom, which could have left her to her own devices more. This may or may not have been a good thing. To a certain extent it could have been helpful (regarding her well-being), but at other times it could have been tantamount to abandoning her. That would depend, to a large degree, on her response to being left with more responsibility for her own care and how I handled giving it to her. Sometimes being given more responsibility can encourage more self-effort, but there would have to have been certain safety mechanisms in place that didn't just left her high and dry if she messed up and I don't know how good I would have been at that part of it - making sure there were appropriate safety mechanisms in place. This would have been much like taking the parenting role in dealing with her.

The other issue regarding my relationship with my brothers has to do with sibling "equality." I don't remember this being an issue until dad started saying things about it starting sometime when I was living in Russia during the 1990s. My recollection was that he put it in terms of him being limited in how much he could help me because my brothers were demanding more equality in our parents dealings with us kids. I'm not sure how this transpired between my parents and brothers, so I can't really speak about that. I don't remember really having a problem with this except that I blamed my dad for a lot of my problems anyway, as I've discussed a lot in this blog. I didn't see him as being to blame for any difficulties my brothers had in which they might have needed help. But in general I don't think outside of my problems being related to dad I don't think I had a problem with this premise. But I did see a potential of this equality issue as being a sort of scape goat to get dad off the hook for my problems. Of course dad might not have been directly the cause of any of my problems. That is, he didn't make me do anything or order any of my problems. So it was an indirect causation at best, and the more indirectly the problem could be attributed to being related to him and his work the harder it would be to expect him to try to compensate for my problems or help me get out of them. So at some point the finger would have turned to be pointing more at me and less at him as far as taking responsibility is concerned. To a certain extent, I think, this is justified, but in one way it isn't. What I mean is that it depends on how much one considers past events as having a bearing on current events. The logic might go something like this:

I probably never would have had the problems I did with the Vienna mission if it weren't for dad's work.

If I hadn't had problems with the Vienna mission I wouldn't have had to change careers (missions being all but a closed door at that point).

If dad hadn't been in the work he was the Soviet guest I helped host during the Seattle Goodwill Games wouldn't have been someone other than who we expected and probably a spy (with no other known reason for why he was there).

If I hadn't helped host a Soviet guest at the Goodwill Games who was most likely a Soviet spy I probably wouldn't have gotten the call I did the next January inviting me to the Soviet Union to teach ESL.

If I had been invited to teach ESL in the Soviet Union by a group who ended out being the Young Communist League (although they denied it vehemently) I wouldn't have had the problems I did in the USSR/Russia.

If I hadn't been invited to the USSR under questionable circumstances I would not have had the trouble I did leaving Russia for good in 1997.

If I hadn't had the political problems I had to that point I wouldn't have had the problems I did with the universities in Indiana and Pennsylvania in trying to make me do or be something I didn't want to do or be. (You'll have to wait for more details on that until I get closer to that point in my autobiography.)

If I hadn't had problems with the universities and then with jobs too I wouldn't have had to make another career change to become a librarian.

Etc., etc.

After I left Russia the connection with dad became gradually more and more tenuous. The most likely continuing connection would have been something akin to being based on hearsay or the like. I'm not quite sure how I can attribute these experiences to dad, other than it just felt like my problems were too systematic and predictable to be just coincidence. Of course, this is exactly how dad might appear justified in not accepting responsibility for my life experiences. And the rest of the family would have not understood these things so anything past Russia they wouldn't have attributed at all to him. But I think dad also might have honestly thought those involved in security related to his work (or former work, depending on the point of time in question) had strict legal boundaries that they adhered to. In other words, he attributed to these security-related individuals and institutions a certain integrity and ethical nobility, which I've come to question, to say the least. Fortunately for me I'm not the only one who has ever questioned these things. I say "fortunately" because it gives me a little more credibility. Whether or not I have credibility and/or security organizations and individuals have integrity does not prove that in particular situations I was a victim of monkey business. Rather, it only opens up the possibility that I was such a victim.

Still, I did make my own choices along the way and I have to take responsibility for those choices. The main issue I have here is regarding how free I was to make the choices I did. Some of the limitations might include my value system, how much political manipulation was going on, and how much relevant information I had (or lacked) in order to make good decisions.

I think that's enough for now and I have to go to physical therapy.

254. Reprieve: Parents

I've been lying in bed and have hardly slept at although I guess I must have slept a little. But I've been thinking... there's so much going on to think about.

Before this happened with mom, her death, I mean, I was thinking about writing a post about more of my thoughts regarding my parents. I need to work on writing something up that could be the start of an obituary, though, but not right now.

The thing is that I'm still trying to make sense of my life, which is what this blog is all about, and there are some new thoughts that have come to me and some old ones that I haven't discussed here yet.

First, about dad. I got to thinking more about his title on his business card (post #12), which is "Program Planning and Control Manager." I think the "control" part could be security-related and as such, if this is so, could point to him having some intelligence-related responsibilities, at least enough to make sure his workers were all in line.

Another thing that hit me is when I was a teenager, once mom got recertified as a nurse (after about 12 or so years of being a stay-at-home mom) and started working part-time again, and she used to say how she was so much busier at her work than dad was. And dad used to play bridge with a group of others during lunch at work. So I'm thinking that this could have been some of the sort of security "clan culture" types of things going on that I experienced in Vienna. That is, such activities as bridge and "down times" were not as frivolous as they might have on the surface seemed; they served an important role in the scheme of things by way of "control".

Then I'd also been thinking about mom. I've wondered for years about how much she knew or didn't know regarding dad's work. She was pretty guileless, though, so it's quite possible she was naive to the significance of anything related to dad's work. But she used to go to dinners they had with dad's work, such as after winning a proposal, and she went down to Albequerque at least once with dad when he went on a business trip. It's hard for me not to compare what I experienced in Vienna with what might be going on related to dad's work. In Vienna, even if the women were not active in the ministry (although some occasionally took women's ministry trips), they had to know a lot of the security things, including how to keep their kids reined in, such as how to talk about their father's work and what they (the family) were doing in Vienna. So did mom have any of this kind of thing? Of course, dad's work and our family situation were quite a bit different than the Vienna mission. For example, we didn't have to "explain" what we were doing in Seattle. And Boeing was such a major employer in Seattle that kids especially wouldn't have thought anything about a parent working there... not like the Vienna mission which could have raised childish curiosity.

So I'd been thinking for a while about writing a post like this, but now, of course, it's all different after mom's death. Saturday I mailed off a little something for her for Easter. It was one of those big no-sweat glasses with her initial on it and some homemade chickpea chips I'd talked with her about on the phone. I filled the cup with the chickpeas. So what should I do with the glass now when it arrives in Seattle? Fill it with flowers and put it by the grave?

In a lot of ways it feels like mom was the last person alive that loved me. When I had my surgery in January she was the only one of the family that contacted me during that time, and she called repeatedly while I was in the hospital, especially when I was in so much pain because the nurses weren't giving me enough pain medicine. It really hurt, though, when she didn't even call me on my 50th birthday less then 2 months after the fiasco with my brother that landed me back down here.

Then I think back on the statement by a physicist who had worked under dad, who in 1981, on the sister-city trip to France he said I should have studied Italian instead of Russian - Italian is half my heritage on dad's side, and Ukrainian is half my heritage on mom's side. How much of my experiences and life can be explained because of the conflict with dad's work and my interests? And how much did mom know or understand?

242. Vienna Mission Years, Pt. 3

"One effect of education and the media and the ideologies pertains in a special way to distribution: A general and unchallengeable conviction is created that those who do certain kinds of work ought to receive lower incomes and be content with lower levels of consumption than those who do other kinds of work. A classist society is thereby, in people's minds, canonized as something morally correct, as a situation demanded by justice. Although both ideas are equally false, this conviction should not be confused with the medieval belief that the son of a shoemaker should also be a shoemaker and the son of a prince should be a prince; sociologists call this situation a lack of capillarity or social mobility. Today one can indeed 'ascend' the classist ladder and it is even ideal to do so. The depravity to which I refer is the conviction apparently ineradicable although entirely mythological, that certain work is forever destined to receive low income and other work is 'in itself' worthy of greater remuneration. This conviction is one of the worst violences inflicted on the workers to force them, in the labor contract (and in its indispensable complement, the multiple contract of bargain and sale of consumer goods and services), to submit to the conditions which are favorable to the capitalist class."

Miranda, José. (1974). Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression. (John Eagleson, Trans.). Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, p. 9.

[Note: I have this book because I wanted to understand how some Christians can accommodate Marxist thinking into their theology, which is known as liberation theology.]

***

I have to backtrack some because I decided to look through the human rights report I wrote while living in Russia, and there is something I missed, so I'm just going to quote it here:

"Before I left for Vienna my Father told me that I might be requested to undergo a security briefing at his work. He had already told me that he had a security clearance through the Pentagon (not through Boeing, per se, as I understand it). I didn't think anything of this, that it was anything to worry about. Dad was always very supportive of me going into mission work. Nothing ever came of the possible briefing, but Dad did also mention that it was possible that in a communist country someone might try to kidnap me in exchange for information from Dad. (That was the only concern I ever heard about to this point.) I got the impression that everyone thought that I was trustworthy on that regard - although it wasn't until much later that I thought about it like that.

Actually it never occurred to me till several years later that it was even possible for me to have problems on account of Dad's work. But after my Vienna years, back in Seattle, [D. B.] of Campus Crusade for Christ told me that many people whose parents are in military work aren't even allowed into East European Mission work. That certainly had never even crossed my mind as being a possibility. By that point I had lived through enough that it didn't matter. I had already decided that I had to obey God rather than man (i.e., government) and I felt called by God to work in those countries, especially the Soviet Union. No one had ever told me not to study Russian, work with emigrants, etc., anyways. I had already spent several years of my life in preparation for that kind of work and it was the primary professional training I had received.

I later had to study some about professional espionage workings in order to make sense of what was happening to me...

I left for Vienna via Holland and train from there in June of 1987. Sure enough I was put up with [the secretary from Alaska] in another girl's apartment (she lived alone because she was in women's ministry) who was in Dallas for the summer working on her Master's degree.

It quickly became clear that this was a very clickish [sic] group. It is quite contrary to any theory of Christian missions or Biblical example or teaching of the same to operate as they did...

Here I am going to unabashadly reveal what to these mission groups are great secrets. The purpose is to expose their unjustice since neither the churches in America or [sic] the Russia have proven themselves inclined to do anything about them which is how it should Biblically be handled. It's a shame and disgrace for 'the world' to have to be judges of the Church, but if the Church won't do it, then someone should.

I figured that since I was told I'd be a secretary and that I, in this position, probably wouldn't travel much (i.e., into Eastern Europe), that I would be able to work with/amongst the Austrians in my free time.

As it turned out, almost everyone except those who specialized in E. Germany and a few exceptions (such as.... ) attended one of two English speaking Evangelical churches and had little contact with the Austrians. Although one month of German language training was technically promised all this was rarely realized in fact. It seemed to me that as workers could be 'trusted' they were allowed this 'privilege,' but the stated reason was that there was too much work to do. However, this logic didn't really seem to match the circumstances a lot of times, as in my case.

I was 'allowed' to attend church with ... (that church was the nearest where I lived). I was accepted well by the believers and was invited to teach a Sunday School class, even in my early months in Vienna.

We "found" an apartment for me within walking distance of the ... office. It was a studio apartment which was already furnished. The owner, ... a young veterinarian attended the Vienna International Chapel and was a friend of some of the [mission] workers. A former [mission] worker... had also lived there a few months before I came."

So that fills in some gaps. I had forgotten that they didn't have the apartment for me right away and also about the part about dad. The part about dad, I think, is especially important because there will be some things that happen in Vienna that apart from influence from his work would be hard to understand... and things are hard enough to understand anyway.

***

I think this is enough for this post, so next time we'll start where we left off, which is July 10, 1987.

234. Pre-Vienna Comments 6

Okay, so here is what I've come up with so far, at least from one angle of the theory-building process. These are the broad-stroke options:

1. The mission truly wanted me on board and anything I might have experienced with them was by way of socialization and the standard way they treated everyone (given similarities in response by the new member, etc.) In this theory, anyone could have experienced the things I did if they had responded as I did to the mission's socialization efforts.

1A. My view of the mission was greatly distorted by the fact that I was unique in how I responded to the mission, and so their response to that gave me an understanding of the mission that otherwise wasn't accurate, or at the very least was different from how others' viewed the mission. (In other words, I saw the mission at its worst, but this was an aberration of its usual self or nature.)

1B. My view of the mission is relatively accurate, either despite the mission having to respond harshly to my nonconformance or because I saw the belly of the beast that others didn't get to see. (In other words, I saw the mission at its worst, and that reflected its true nature.)

2. The mission - or at least those in a position to influence this - were influenced in how they treated me because of who my dad was (his job).

2A. The mission - or at least those in a position to influence this - wanted me to work with them, but only under certain conditions that wouldn't put my father or the mission at risk. This would mean I would have to be more controlled than other members of the mission and there might have been less of a toleration for 'independence' in me. (In other words, my experience of the mission was only partially similar to others' experiences of it and my actions only partially explained its responses to me - since my father's position would have been an extra consideration.)

2A1. My understanding of the mission was, therefore, errant because the mission wasn't acting towards me in a way that truly reflected its basic nature.

2A2. My understanding of the mission was, therefore, more accurate than others' interpretations of it because I saw and experienced what the mission was really like.

2B. The mission- or at least those in a position to influence this - didn't want me there at all because of my dad. In this case, the mission did all it could to get rid of me so I wouldn't be a liability to them.

2B1. My understanding of the mission was, therefore, errant because the mission wasn't acting towards me in a way that truly reflected its basic nature.

2B2. My understanding of the mission was, therefore, more accurate than others' interpretations of it because I saw and experienced what the mission was really like.

***

Let's just briefly take these one by one, in order. I'm not doing a comprehensive analysis, here, you understand.

1. If this is true, then there should have been evidence of variable treatment by the mission with other newcomers, and differences of treatment by the mission should be reasonably explainable based on typical differences such as individual response to the mission's socialization efforts and the nature of the position the individual was filling. It seems like there would have to be some kind of a congruence there between treatment and the apparent reasons for its treatment of the individual.

1A. In this interpretation, the mission acted out of character in how it treated me, even though there treatment of me was all related just to regular socialization efforts. In other words, I was a hard nut to crack and it used uncharacteristic means to pull me in line. Since the mission's actions were otherwise out of character, and my understanding of the mission is based largely on how they treated me, as a result, my understanding of the mission is inaccurate.

1B. In this interpretation, the mission acted in character, but it usually didn't have to use such strenuous means to socialize a newcomer, so members weren't used to seeing that more extreme side of it. As such, my understanding of the mission was accurate in the sense in which what I experienced was truly within its very nature. [For example, if I have a car that can drive 100 miles per hour (160.9344 km/h), but I only ever drive it on side streets, until one day I decide to try it on the expressway, the nature of the car has not changed at all - it always could drive at higher speeds; it's just that I had never driven it that fast before.]

2. In this option, socialization might have played a part in how the mission treated me, but if so there was also the added influence of my dad's work.

2A. Here, the mission wanted me to work for them, but only under tightly controlled circumstances that wouldn't cause a problem. So they really did try to socialize me, but might have been harsher because of the seriousness of the other issue involved, namely my dad's work.

2A1. In this case, the mission's consideration for my dad's work was unusual and did not reflect how it usually operated, in that it didn't normally have any political connections nor respond to these kinds of influences. In this case, my experiences of the mission and the resultant interpretations I gave those experiences did not reflect what the mission was really like.

2A2. If this is true, then how I experienced the mission was fairly indicative of what the mission was really like, because connections and influences of a political nature that resulted in them being concerned about my dad's work was a part of who they really were and how they functioned. In this case, I saw a side of the mission that a lot of people at the mission probably knew little or nothing about.

2B. In this case, I was treated differently from others from the get-go, and nothing I experienced with the mission could be considered socialization in the usual use of the term, because they would have been trying to get rid of me instead of assimilate me.

2A1. In this case, the mission's consideration for my dad's work was unusual and did not reflect how it usually operated, in that it didn't normally have any political connections nor respond to these kinds of influences. In this case, my experiences of the mission and the resultant interpretations I gave those experiences did not reflect what the mission was really like.

2A2. If this is true, then how I experienced the mission was fairly indicative of what the mission was really like, because connections and influences of a political nature that resulted in them being concerned about my dad's work was a part of who they really were and how they functioned. In this case, I saw a side of the mission that a lot of people at the mission probably knew little or nothing about.

***

I'm posting these now, but there will be more to say about them.

193. Socialization File, Pt. 75 (Starr & Fondas, pt. 1)

The next thing I want to discuss about my father is regarding his Christian growth, at least from my perspective.

I think as part of my growing anger about how my dad's work seemed to be affecting me (starting somewhere around 1983 or so, when I moved to another city to attend Bible school and work with Soviet emigrants on the side) was my trying to make sense of dad as to "how he could do this to me" and why I might be having these apparent troubles. I put the "how he cold do this to me" in parentheses because, although it expresses the kind of thing I was thinking - especially earlier on - I think I eventually came to the understanding that a certain unidentifiable (from my vantage point) amount of what I was experiencing was not directly "caused" by him in that any causation would mostly, and to varying degrees, be indirect, with other intentionally acting parties intervening between him and me. Who those parties were, how much my dad might have known about their involvement, and what type of involvement they might have had would have varied depending on the situation. So, to give a clear example of what I mean, dad would have had no influence over the Komsomols when they invited me to Siberia in 1991, but they undoubtedly invited me there because of my dad's work (which he suddenly was retired from 2 months after I got to Siberia).

Nevertheless, I harbored a growing anger towards my dad for "ruining my life", and I'm afraid that I still have some of that anger, although it's largely subdued and has taken backseat to other more pressing current concerns, like how to recover from my recent cervical stenosis and resultant surgery and find a way to supplement my disability income.

As part of this anger I am afraid that I could be rather unkind to my father in my thinking, which I'm sure spilled out from time to time in my words and actions. One of the things that I decided about him in my new-found interest in watching him and figuring him out was that I came to the conclusion that I didn't think he was that "spiritual" of a Christian.

From where I am now I think that even if that were true, and I think there was a certain amount of truth to it, which I'll get to in a bit here, what I did with this thought was not appropriate and I'm afraid it does not put me in a very good light, but I hope you know already that in the process of explaining my life (at least how I see it) I'm not afraid to be open about such flaws or even sins, especially when I think they might be helpful in understanding my life. In my anger I used this conclusion to sort of slam dad as the "judge and jury." I'm not sure he ever knew I thought this about him, but I think a few people could vouch for me having said this - and it would have been more than 10 years ago that I might have verbally expressed this kind of thinking.

But now I need to explain what about dad made me think this way and then I want to tell you about a later transformation I witnessed in him (albeit from a distance). I started thinking like this probably somewhere during my time in Vienna, when I began more in earnest thinking he might be affecting me in more ways than I could ever have imagined. Also, by that time I may have been on a somewhat of a spiritual high and so there was a tinge of spiritual snobbery about my attitude, which is a pretty ugly thing, really, but I think that's a fair representation of it. I began to see that dad didn't read or study the Bible much nor take the lead (as a man of the house should) in saying grace (especially, I mean after us kids had moved out of the house - for good or otherwise). So I began to see him as a good man, but not very spiritual (although sometimes I even doubted how good he could be for me to be experiencing what I was because of him).

First I'll describe the transformation in him, and then the transformation in me.

Some time after dad retired from work he really changed and grew spiritually, including taking a lot more interest in Bible study. I wasn't around for a lot of that (I was in Siberia for the first 6 years after his retirement) so I don't know how or when this change happened, but it did and I'm pretty certain about that. To me it felt like there was some kind of a connection between his retiring and the spiritual growth - and by connection, I mean more of a [partial] cause-affect connection than just a correlation connection. I'm not sure of the mechanism involved in that relationship but I have two theories, either or both of which could be true, I think:

1. The nature of his work was somehow a hindrance to his spiritual growth and/or
2. The time demands of his work was a hindrance to his spiritual growth.

In this way, the removal of either or both of those possible hindrances freed him up to be able to grow spiritually, which took intentional effort on his part. I think the second hypothesis is not very controversial, but the first one might be. That is family members, for example, might deny that anything about the nature of his work might have hindered his spiritual growth. If the nature of his work had that effect, however, that might have implications for others too in such positions, although it's possible it might not have that same effect on everyone either.

Now to me. I think our spiritual growth, mine and my dad's is indirectly and inversely related that is, my experiences largely caused by dad's former work took their toll on me and made me more and more disillusioned with organized Evangelical Christianity and that affected my spiritual life. But this is not "brain surgery" (i.e., something so difficult to understand), because the connection is clearly stated in the Bible:

"10He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. 11But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes." (I John 2:10-11)

I can't love what I think is hopelessly corrupt and intentionally manipulative. So wherever I live I try to find a church that isn't tainted by the horrors of what I've experience and seen. And by "tainted" I mean doesn't embody the same kind of thinking and attitudes that permitted what happened in Vienna (and to a much lesser degree in Russia) to happen. And, in my mind, even being nonchalant about those things smacks of being tainted. The Vienna mission knew that if a newer member could partake in socializing someone even newer, that person had grasped and internalized the organizational norms. And my version of that is that if a church isn't willing to stand up for what is right and try to change things (as "iron sharpeneth iron" (Prov. 27:17)), then they really don't believe that these things are wrong. Right? I think so. So where do I go (to church I mean)? That's the million dollar question.

Through all this, though, I've never doubted my faith, the Bible or Christianity, just institutionalized Christianity. But even so, my spirituality has suffered, I think. To me, if I go to a church I must have an openness to grow spiritually from that relationship and I must also trust the Church to lead me in a direction that I think is spiritual. Barring those conditions, any relationship I have with a church will only be tangential. Or, maybe I should just stay home and content myself with reading Jacques Ellul.

That's not why I missed church this morning, though. I woke up around 7:00 and was still tired, so I pulled the CPAP off, turned over and slept for 3 more hours. Usually if I do that I only sleep for 1 or 2 more hours, either of which would have allowed me to make it to church, but 3 hours made it too late.

***

Enough about that... Our next text is:

Starr, Jennifer A., & Fondas, Nanette. (1992). A model of entrepreneurial socialization and organization formation. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 17(1), 67-76.

This article has a somewhat different context - that of socialization and organizational culture development in the context of starting a new business. Nevertheless, this text addresses the issue of motivation, which I don't think has been adequately addressed elsewhere, except that we now know that I did not have a high need for feedback and that I'm field independent.

***

I'm skipping sections, as I'm doing more and more since I've already covered a lot of territory regarding socialization and so there's bound to be more redundancy of thought. I'm picking this text up in the section "A Model of Entrepreneurial Socialization," sub-section "New Entrepreneur Socialization."

"The organizational socialization literature emphasizes the adaptive processes that occur in the early stages of the newcomer's experience after entering a new organization. The newcomer's experience is viewed as an ongoing, sensemaking process, whereby initial expectations and experiences are revised and reinterpreted within the new organizational context (Louis, 1980, in press). The newcomer's critical tasks include mastering job basics, building role identity, building relationships, updating one's frame of reference (finding out how and why things are done), mapping key people and social networks in the organization, positioning oneself in networks, and learning the organizational vernacular (Louis, 1980). The objective is to develop strategies that reduce cognitive uncertainty, improve perceptions and interpretations, and enable the newcomer to gain control and acceptance in the new environment." (p. 69-70)

A lot of this rather encyclopedic summary of socialization has been covered elsewhere, but not all of it. I will take the opportunity, however, to hammer in the fact that mastering the job basics didn't involve much (maybe I should have asked if I should take a speed reading class before arriving, instead of a class to learn software used by the mission).

I'll take these activities individually:

"Role identity." As I've said before, I was shocked at how totally the monicker "secretary" seemed to define my relationship to the mission and life while with the mission. But I did also need to accept that that seemed to be where they were starting from ("seemed" is key here; whether or not this was actually the case, I don't know, so I can only go by how things seemed to me). Then I could try to accept their definition of me, in total or in part, or try to negotiate a different understanding of me (apart from a role within the mission) and also my role within the mission, and this "different understanding" could have ranged from only very slightly different from how they'd apparently understood and pegged me to something completely different. Needless to say, this could only have been done effectively as I learned more about the mission and how it operated. And even then whether or how much I could have affected their image of me at all was the other issue.

"Building relationships." I was certainly open to and even eager to develop relationships within the mission, and I don't think there was ever particularly a question there, although, as I've said before, how much I felt like I could relate to the other secretaries had a limit and this seemed to be a very important type of relationship to the mission. Eventually, though, the more I experienced of the mission the less candid I think I was in my relationship with others, so that my interactions might have revealed less and less of what I was really thinking and my concerns about the mission.

"Updating one's frame of reference (finding out how and why things are done)." In the Vienna context this seems to be virtually identical to "sensemaking," since this (especially the "why" part) dominated my confusion about the mission.

"Mapping key people and social networks." This would have been part of my trying to make sense of what made the organization tick, because it seemed that these people were the real powerhouses behind the organization, although mid-level leadership also played an important role in defining their departments and influencing their underlings, and also in being conduits for supporting the leadership of those above them. This isn't particularly surprising, although in a total institution this kind of thing has the potential of having more far flung impact than in other types of organizations. In this I might have been at a somewhat of an advantage compared to new comers in other positions, because my position gave me a better vantage point to watch the top leadership. That is, my boss was second in command and his office was right adjacent to mine, and the director and his secretary were right across the hall from us. In addition, I also got to know my boss's wife and family better than any other family in the organization, all because of my being his secretary (at least part of the time I was with the mission). So if I was going to figure out what made the mission tick, I might have been able to see things closer to the source than if I'd been someone else's secretary down in the basement, for example.

In any case, I think I felt that understanding these power relationships within the organization was fairly important to understanding what made the organization tick. But, at the same time, I didn't limit my observations just to them, especially at the beginning when everything was ambiguous. And since I had so much trouble making sense of the organization I think I tried to process (mentally) all the input I could.

"Positioning oneself in networks." I never have been very good at "positioning" myself. That kind of office politics never particularly interested me and, besides, it wouldn't fit the naive side of my personality. I don't think either of my parents are/were like this either. They have/had a lot of integrity and just believed in doing the best you could. I can't see either of them playing office politics, and I don't think any of us "kids" are like that either. The world might snarl and consider us easy pushovers, but I think of it differently: that it displays a certain respect for people, integrity and lack of meanness. Besides, I don't think that the opposite of "positioning oneself" is being a "pushover"; rather I see it more akin to respecting others as you'd like to be respected.

Other than that, however, there was the issue of trying to figure out where I did fit in the broader scheme of things, whether in the formal hierarchy/power/communication sense or in the informal hierarchy/power/communication sense or some hybrid of the two. I think this was part of how I understood what kind of an identity the mission had prepared for me to fit into when I arrived. To a certain extent I did want to correct erroneous aspects of that prefabricated identity, but on the other had, the more I learned about the mission the more I also realized that it might be wise to not reveal everything. And I'd like to use an illustration that I thought of long ago but didn't see where I could use it:

In 1979, the summer between my freshmen and sophomore years at college I house sat for my Grandmother who'd married a man from St. Petersburg, Florida. They spent half the year there and the other half in Seattle at her house. While in St. Petersburg I worked and also took a course at the local community college, where I met and befriended a Colombian gal. She had a Colombian friend studying English in the city who wanted to get out of the dorm, where Spanish was spoken all the time, and my friend asked if her friend could live with me. After getting approval from my grandmother we spent the next month living together before I returned to Seattle at the end of the summer. She really was pretty much a beginning in English and I knew virtually no Spanish, so our relationship was quite interesting. I worked at Pizza Hut and she knew the word "pizza" and I knew the word "cucaracha" from a song I'd learned in elementary school music, so we used to joke about having cucaracha pizza. One time when we were out in her car (running an errand or something) she got stopped by the police for speeding. Although she knew perfectly well what was happening (her English wasn't that limited), she broke out in fluent nonstop Spanish when the officer came up to her window. She made like she didn't know any English at all and I think she just got a warning or something.

But I present this illustration because it might help you understand some of how I carried myself for a lot of my time with the mission, namely, not letting on to what I understood and thought. In this way, I think they eventually thought I might have more potential than they thought, they didn't know everything, and, to a certain extent, I wanted it that way too. That is, I didn't want them to know what I was thinking or the implications of some of my prior background that gave me the framework and basis for my thoughts.

So getting back to "positioning of networks," I don't think I particularly did this, except I did try to wriggle out of the confining secretarial straight jacket they seemed to have prepared for me. Another way to exemplify this is by the fact that I did a fair amount of entertaining (on my own initiative), but I don't think it would be possible to see any of that as "positioning" myself, and certainly not taken as a whole. However, I did broaden my net way beyond secretaries, including others in the mission, people from other missions (including my sending mission), Austrians and people from other nationalities (like the Canadian conservatory student I befriended).

"Learning organizational vernacular." I think there was an "organizational vernacular" in the sense of things sometimes having a direct and indirect meaning. But somewhere along the line I think I realized that I wasn't ever going to really understand that until I took that "leap of faith" and submitted myself to the total institution that the mission was. And I thought/think that was so because the whole purpose of it - the vernacular - was that it served as part of the security-oriented identity and norms of the mission. So it was intentionally difficult for outsiders to understand. And, believe me, it's difficult to work in a total institution where you have no hope of ever understanding the organizational vernacular because of your unwillingness to accept their ways and trust them.

Okay, now to the last sentence of this text: "The objective is to develop strategies that reduce cognitive uncertainty, improve perceptions and interpretations, and enable the newcomer to gain control and acceptance in the new environment."

I did want to do all that... but only under certain conditions. That is, I wanted to develop strategies that reduce cognitive uncertainty, improve perceptions and interpretations, and enable me to gain control and acceptance in the new environment ... so long as I didn't have to do anything that was contrary to my well-thought-out and strongly held beliefs and values. As long as nothing along those lines was asked of me I did want all these things; but not at the cost of my well-thought-out and strongly held beliefs and values. In this way I could go along with the mission to a certain extent, but no further, unless I became convinced along the way that what the mission wanted did not entail going against well-thought-out and strongly held beliefs and values. Is it necessary to say plainly that I never felt that the mission's requirements didn't entail transgressing my well-thought-out and strongly held beliefs and values?

So it's not that I didn't want these things (reduce cognitive uncertainty, etc.), but that there was something I wanted more than I wanted those things, and that was to not contradict and/or give up my well-thought-out and strongly held beliefs and values. Giving them up was out of the question because there was virtually no chance the mission was going to sit down and, without using the strong arm of force, have a nice little egalitarian chat with me about these things. And I learned that pretty early on, at least by my 5th month with the mission.

***

I need to take a break and get on with other things for a while.