422. Military Chaplaincy, Pt. 40 (Summers, Jr., pt. 1)

I'm really not feeling well.  As long as I'm stationary I'm okay, but as soon as I start moving around, and the longer I move around, the worse it gets.  I'm not even sure quite how to explain it.  I think it's somehow connected with the migraine though.  I guess we'll deal with it tomorow at physical therapy if I'm still having it.

***

This next article is:

Summers, Jr., Harry G. (1990, Spring). The chaplain as moral touchstone. Military Chaplains' Review, 3-8.

This should be an interesting article for me for where I am now in 2012, or at my post Russia (1991-1997) years.  Here goes

***

"Can We Be Good Without God?" That was the question posed by University of Massachusetts political science professor Glenn Tinder in his provocative essay in the December 1989 issue of the Atlantic Monthly.  An excerpt from his new book, The Political Meaning of Christianity (Louisiana State University Press), Professor Tinder argues that "the notion that we can be related to God and not to the world - that we can practice a spirituality that is not political - is in conflict with the Christian [and the Judeo and the Islamic] understanding of God."

"And if spirituality is properly political," he goes on to say, " the converse is also true, however distant it may be from prevailing assumptions: politics is properly spiritual..." (p. 3)

I included a link there to the article if you want to read it for yourself, but I thought the last page was especially closer to what I might want to discuss.  However, I don't want to branch out too much, because he has a lot of good stuff there and I could really go on for a while on it.  But I'm not sure it would be necessarily relevant to my situation with the Vienna mission.

I've said before that I never really considered myself political and even though my B.A. was in European Studies and I studied the history, I was more interested in the social history than the political and military history, for example.  I did study then and later on about politics in Eastern Europe, just because that was an issue I was going to have to deal with and I wanted to also understand their lives and that was a big part of their lives.  And although I was told, for example that there were KGB spies among the Soviet emigres in the city where I went to Bible school, and where I helped at an emigre center.  But I never bothered to ask who they were and I never got into the red scare thing regarding ministry in Eastern Europe.  As far as I was concerned it's one thing to be careful and it's another to go in  panic mode like those people who built bomb shelters in the backyard during the red scare in the 50s or something.  That's what it felt like with the missionaries who were so panicky about the red scare.  It's like, "Okay, keep your cool, yes, they're communists and you need to be careful, but you really don't need the bomb shelter."

Anyway, that was Vienna.  After Russia I felt I had a whole truckload of material to pretty well prove that I had had political problems because of my dad's work and I was leaning more and more over on the far left towards pacifism.  Then I wanted to work more for the underdog and tried to work that round.  It took me awhile to find my way, but finally it looked like I was going to be able to do that as a librarian... until I got sick.  I was doing research on social movements, though and grassroot community development, but all of this I felt like some of these doors I wasn't going to have open doors ever because it was political.  You don't know how many jobs I've applied for here in the USA since returning here in 1997 - hundreds.  I have to see if I can add them up on all my floppies when I get to this part of my autobiography.  See, that's the thing, as a librarian at least I got work (I worked as a library assistant after leaving Vienna/before going to Russia.  Or I could have taught English for a Russian school in the US.  But I might as well have stayed in Russia then.

So the thing is between returning from Russia to the States and getting sick I was pretty political.  But really, here is my view of Christians and politics:

I agree with Tinder that the Christian's relationship with worldly social institutions is ambivalent, Scripturally speaking.  As a Christian, my citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20).

So all these things are true.  But we could also say the we are given a lot of instruction about what to eat spiritually (I Cor. 3:1-3), but does that mean that I shouldn't eat at all?  And the Apostle Paul tells Timothy that physical exercise isn't as important as spiritual exercise (I Tim. 4:8).

So the thing is, I think that we need to keep things in perspective. The spiritual realm always takes precedence for the Christian.  Or it should.  But that doesn't mean that the other things are completely neglected; it just means that they're of lesser importance than spiritual things.

Now I have a special consideration for the Church as a collective.  I don't think the Church (the Body of Christ - not the stones and mortar, I don't care about those, or about the paper constitution or whatever) should be political.  I'm not going to go into a whole long drawn out theological thesis on this, but basically, I believe the church is about saving people and building up people in the image of christ, building the body so that it is a functioning whole and working by faith in and by the power of God and the Holy Spirit.  The church, of course, freely uses the gifts God gives, whether inside or outside the church. I think that's a good start. 

***

"And if spirituality is properly political," [Tinder] goes on to say, "the converse if also true, however distant it may be from prevailing assumptions: politics is properly spiritual." (p. 3)

I already answered the first half of the equation, but as to the second, I don't think politics should be spiritual because, in a country like the USA (and this was written here for this audience), you have such an ideologically/religiously diverse citizenship that you'll just end out alienating some groups by doing that and I do think that governments should be government for all (and I'm not speaking necessarily as a Christian here, but as a humanitarian, a concerned citizen).  If politics is properly spiritual you could be heading down the state church road too, depending on how strong a single church or coalition of churches might be.

However, I think that the Vienna mission probably would have agreed with this statement.  Just in that They were political as relates to Eastern Europe.  Remember the anti-Communist handout we had during my candidates' course?  We only had that kind of thing for the USSR, and it was in particular the comparison between how effective their economic system was vs. the U.S. economy!  That has absolutely no bearing on whether or not I am going to choose one over the other;  However, I can think of a lot of other better reasons than that.  But that is the first clue, not that I think of it, that they think in terms of ends justifies the means.  That is, the USA Gross National Product, for example was better than that of the USSR so that means that Capitalism must be better.  Or, but another way: The ends (better GNP) justifies the means (capitalism).  That's exactly the kind of thinking the Vienna mission used to justify their security methods (probably half of which I never knew, because I wasn't trusted enough to be privvy to them.)

***

The rest of the article doesn't have anything that I'd like to comment on, so I'm going end there.

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.

190. Socialization File, Pt. 72 (Ott, pt. 1)

This next thing I want to say about my dad is only true, I think, within very specific parameters, and as such will undoubtedly be met by a great volley of protests from people who knew them. So I want to be clear about the specificity of my observations here about him. That's going to be hard to do though, because I'm not very sure about the mechanisms involved (i.e., how or why exactly he fit the description I'm going to peg him with in certain ways and situations).

I think I've already demonstrated how my dad had fairly conservative gender views, but these weren't particularly extraordinary within the context of him aligning himself with both conservative Evangelical Christianity and also conservative Republican beliefs. Also, I should add that he did support my education efforts and might even have been proud of my accomplishments in this realm, so there was a limit to how pervasive his gendered views were.

But I think he also had a certain amount of ethnocentrism. How this became clear to me, was in a way, however that might have also had another motivating factor - a contributing variable in the equation, if you will - and that was regarding language.

At some point in my 20s we had at least one discussion about education, K-12 especially, in which we hammered out what each of us thought should or should not be required subjects in school. Language was one of those subjects we discussed, but so as physical education, for example. He didn't think language was necessary because English was the universal language anyway, so there wasn't such a need for it, in his opinion. I held the contrary opinion.

The other situation came up in a discussion about a recent business trip he had been on, in which, as he described it, the Swedes would discuss things amongst themselves in Swedish during the course of formal business discussions around a table. He got rather irate (at least "irate" in relation to his usual demeanor, which was normally very easy going and steady) that the Swedes had the gall to do that when the Americans couldn't understand what they were saying.

This was wrong on many levels (as one of my brothers is prone to say). Here were my reactions (spoken or otherwise):

1. You mean to tell me that a country the size of Boeing can't even send a single person to language school (such as Berlitz) to learn Swedish or even hire a translator?

2. Why should you expect Swedish people in Sweden not to speak Swedish? And, conversely, why should you expect Americans in Sweden to only get along speaking English?

3. And what happens when the Boeing people speak English amongst themselves?

Etc., etc.

I think you get the picture.

I think that dad probably did think of the USA as the best country in the world, although I'm not sure if I ever heard him say this specifically. He did enjoy travel to other countries though, but I think mom was probably the one that probably would have taken the lead in cultural understanding aspects of such travel or even relationships, such as ongoing relationships mom's maintained with Japanese exchange students they hosted over 20 years ago now. Although mom was naive enough (that's where I got it from, remember?), that she might have been bordering on a cultural relativism stance, at least in her actions and relations, if not her thinking. I think I've explained before that I'm not a cultural relativist because I believe in moral absolutes (biblical absolutes) against which all cultures - including my own - should be compared.

Hopefully you know me well enough now to understand how I might have been quite at odds with my dad in this area. So, for example, when he took steps to help me get out of Russia for good in 1997 he could well have been thinking about what scoundrels those Soviets/Russians were (I was first invited there when it was still the USSR) and that I was returning to a blameless country that very rightfully had been doing everything it could to maintain its best-nation-in-the-world status. I'm not sure to what extent he might have eventually believed that I didn't agree with this assessment. He did, however, come to understand that I had come to hold somewhat (!) more liberal political views than him. In returning to the USA, I was actually doing so only rather begrudgingly, thinking I might have a better chance of moving on with my life. In hindsight I think my reservations about returning were were not completely ill-founded.

So coming back to my assertion that I'm an equal opportunity criticizer... I don't think the same could have been true for dad. That is, he wasn't so blind as to think that the USA was perfect, but just that it was the best. But I think he still used the USA as a measuring stick by which to compare all other countries. And since I'm an idealist in the manner of St. Augustine, I used a different measuring stick by which all countries fall short, and this idealistic measuring stick allows for me to be somewhat more "equal opportunity" in my criticizing that dad could have been in making the USA his yardstick. That being said, however, it would also be naive of me to think that my being raised in the USA and in the family and other specific contextual confines that I was raised in didn't affect my view of what this idealistic yardstick might be. But my education, formal or otherwise, and experiences should have helped temper those early constrictions on my views as to what ideal might or might not be.

Also, I might add that I think dad was actually more informed than I was regarding the issues, even with my efforts to make up for certain gaps in my understanding and knowledge. But he was gracious enough that he didn't force his views on me, but let us sort of "agree to disagree" without forcing issues, and this is true for other areas we eventually didn't see eye to eye on. And we didn't see eye to eye in as much as I had changed, not him.

I do want to make sure to add here that dad didn't treat people in noticeably bigoted ways, probably because of several reasons, such as there being limits to these prejudices, his magnanimity and graciousness in how he related to others, and an ability to get past stereotypes to treat people as individuals.

***

Now that we're all thoroughly confused on that score (just kidding, I hope that's not true!), let's move on to another arena, as defined by our next text:

Ott, J. Steven. (1991, Fall). Disentangling the rites of organizational passage. The Journal for Public Managers, 20(3), 53-56.

***

"The government working environment is often highly political, which reduces the usefulness of rational objectivity for establishing reality. Rationality is only one of many realities..." (p. 53)

Ignoring the specific reference to government agency contexts, this point still is one, I think, well worth considering even in an organization like the Vienna mission. The way in which the usefulness of rationality as a means of functioning might have been limited within the context of the Vienna mission might be different than those described here (e.g., change of administration - Republican vs. Democratic), but I think there's still an element of truth to it (at least by way presenting a different and useful vantage point) vis a vis the Vienna mission context that it's worth pursuing, so I will do just that.

Of course, a major irony might be well worth noting before I get started, and that is my very use of rationality - both then and now- to disentangle the quagmire that the mission became for me. And, undoubtedly, the mission would also have preferred that I not be so bent on rationally trying to make sense of things - either then or now.

That being said, I don't think that I really believed that what was going on in the mission was completely rational in the sense of people having sat down and decided in a completely rational manner how the mission was going to run and that's how I found it when I arrived on the scene. No, I might have been naive, but I wasn't that naive. But, of course, my understanding of the potential non-"rational" aspects and impacts on that specific mission grew as I learned more about the organization over the course of the 2 years I was with it.

The "politics" part of how the mission came to be the way it was (and here I'm referring to the "office politics" kind of politics, which isn't to say I'm excluding the possibility of any other kind of politics, but just that I'm not talking now about anything else) involved somewhat of a balancing act in its attempts to please all 15 of the missions as well as the people in the countries they worked with. For example, specific aspects of theology had to be hashed out to not unduly raise the ire of any major party in the mix. So it is very possible that a good chunk of how the mission came to be the way it was is because of this kind of attempt to navigate potential land mines.

But understanding this, because of who I am (my personality, etc.) wasn't likely to make a lot of difference in whether or not I could go along with it, especially in things I had strong convictions about being wrong. In other words, I didn't/don't think making certain compromises could be validated just for the sake of pleasing everyone. This, of course, could use some fleshing out.

Part of the problem with this process (making compromises to please stakeholders) not only serves as a decision-making framework, but also becomes a part of the very value structure of the organization. That is, each time a decision is made in this manner, there is a byproduct of the process that is expression of and development of value structure. In this way, the organization comes place an ever increasing valuation on this as a proper and valid tool for decision making. But it also serves to construct and reinforce an organizational value structure, in that each time a decision is made using this method, it is decided, in regard to the specific issue at hand, that pleasing all parties is more important than the issue itself and also that the means used is more valid than any other means vis a vis that particular issue. Before you know it, pleasing everything is more important than anything else.

As a Christian and idealist one at that, that position was untenable in Vienna, although I couldn't have said it so succinctly then. But I think I did suspect something more or like this was going on behind the scenes. One of my concerns was, and is, not knowing who all the "stakeholders" were that were part of this process. That is, I knew who the missions were, but I wasn't sure if there was anything else going on or not, and the ambiguity and secrecy didn't help matters in that regard. In fact the extent of the ambiguity and secrecy, above and beyond what I thought was reasonably necessary only served to increase my concerns if anything.

Another problem is the assumption that it was necessary, above everything else, to try to please everyone. Was there a point at which it might have become inadvisable (in the eyes of the mission) to try to please everyone? As far as I was concerned there didn't seem to be such a point. And if there was such a point, what would have been the basis for it? The answer to that question could also be very telling about what the mission was really like at its heart.

Also, with this kind of a decision-making set up, its not too hard to see where such a set up could lead to excessive security measures, as it would be necessary to please the missions with the strictest security demands, and if different missions had different security requirements, then all of these different demands would need to be incorporated into the Vienna mission protocol. But again, that's assuming that the mission accepted the premise that pleasing everyone was more important than, say, at some point trusting God. In this way trusting God could come out on the short end of things.

If I can, I'd like to make another comparison/analogy.

Let's say that I'm afraid a hurricane will destroy my apartment this year (I live in southern Florida, after all), and I talked with a lot of people that had an interest in me protecting my belongings, but they all had different ideas as to what to do, and so in order to please them all I go out and buy several full insurance plans to cover my belongings, just to make sure I'm pleasing everyone. In doing this I pay full insurance premiums on all of these policies, putting a high valuation on not upsetting any of my advisers, against a calculated risk that a hurricane is going to destroy all my belongings.

Would you think I was overdoing it a bit? Maybe I was too obsessed with pleasing everyone, leading to steps that might be considered paranoid and excessive, and that a good dose of counseling and faith in God might help put things in better perspective? Now you get the idea.

And just because the mission used a politically charged decision-making process and related value structure, didn't mean I had to accept it any more than if they'd ended out the same place through a completely rational process.

***

We've just started on this article, but I'm going to stop here to do some other things.

137. Socialization File, Pt. 20 (Dubin, pt. 17b)

I'm back again because I thought it unwise to let the ink dry on some of the ending comments in my last post, so the purpose of this post is to (hopefully) clarify things a bit.

This is the reference text (along with the elaborations that followed):

I said that to be successfully socialized into the organization, one probably had to be "caught up in the red scare mentality, being a rampant right-wing Moral Majority, card-carrying Republican (or the equivalent in whatever country the missionary comes from), and a sexist."

Using the categories used in my statement, I would say that first of all, that by then I had developed a fairly well developed opinion about the theory of Communism, and that was, in brief, that it didn't and couldn't work, primarily because it had an errant view of man. I mentioned earlier in my chronology about the economics comparison handout in my week-long mission's candidate course; even at that time I thought it out of place, and that would have been at least in part because it seemed irrelevant to mission work, and for our purposes, if there was anything better about the West compared to the USSR, it would have been freedom of religion. That's the kind of thing I'm referring to. I don't think the issue was my not understanding the issue and the implications of it; it's just that I didn't think that was cause for wholesale changing our approach to missions - which, I think is safe to say, included a sense of fear about it. Why else would they be willing to take such measures? II Timothy 1:7 comes to mind:

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (NKJV)

I have many faults, but this isn't very often one of them (unless we're talking about really big spiders in close proximity). As I continue with my life story (including after I leave Vienna), I think you'll eventually see what I mean.

As to being right-wing, etc., I wasn't very political and was actually somewhat naive / ignorant, especially regarding local and national politics which never particularly interested me until the 1990s, when I was living in Russia, when local events were interesting to me. Before that I was always, even from late elementary school, more interested in international news and issues. That being said, however, between 1982 and 1985, in the course of some education and also being influenced by the general climate of American Evangelical thinking of the time, there were some issues that are usually considered right-wing Republican, that I had grown to espouse. But I'd had a class in Bible school on modern Christian issues, and one of them handful of topics we covered was the Moral Majority; the professor thought it wasn't good for the Church (as in the church universal), and this topic, I think, had particular influence on me. So some of my beliefs might have been considered conservative, but I wasn't terribly politically oriented otherwise, and was leaning towards the belief that churches (and Christian organizations) should not be too involved in politics.

The sexist issue maybe isn't as central to socialization into the mission, but I think it was part of why I had a problem, in that I never before that saw myself as a "helper" of someone else but as being capable on my own to have a significant ministry. None of my East Europe ministry involvements before arriving in Vienna was structured in a gender-limiting hierarchy like that. But all of a sudden I was in a world where women pretty much existed to help men. Even the women's ministry, while led by women was about teaching women to have a ministry as a helpmate to their husbands (who were often pastors). I think that structural element contributed to my feeling stifled and unwilling to be content with limiting myself to how I perceived things were laid out for me, which was pretty well defined along gender lines.

So why do I say that these things might have been necessary to navigate the potentially treacherous socialization waters? Because if you were already emotionally committed to anti-Communism, pro-Westernism and a discriminatory gender social structure, it probably was just a small step to becoming emotionally committed to the mission's demands, and the mission might not even seem like such a total institution. Jerry Falwell and Dr. Dobson would probably have fit in very easily.

Also, I think getting emotionally riled up about something makes it easier to do things you might not be so prone to do if emotions weren't involved, and I wasn't terribly emotionally involved in the above political issues. It seems to me that in order to willingly participate in such personally invasive security measures one would need to see such measures as warranted, which I did not and do not to this day.

In any event, upon arrival in Vienna, apparently unknown to either myself or the mission, I did not have a mindset for being easily socialized into the Vienna mission. Taken by itself this is a significant enough barrier, let alone other possible contributing factors leading to how things turned out for me there.

I hope this makes it clearer what I'm trying to say here.

~Meg

62. Spy File Interrupted: My Allegiance

One of the hard things about doing this real time (vs. just publishing my autobiography as a complete work all at once) is that life interrupts the process of writing. After writing that last piece, especially the end part, I began to think that I might as well address it now because one major piece of evidence occurs during my Bible school days, which we just finished prior to starting on this spy file.

But before I go into that, I'd just like to say that I'm frustrated because I got all the way to my doctor's appointment and they are adamant the my secondary doesn't cover the co-pay left over from my primary insurance (all my other doctors and physical therapy accept it that way - that it covers the co-pay) and I couldn't get through to the secondary insurance, and don't have the money to pay my $30 co-pay, so I had to turn around and come home having not seen the doctor. We re-scheduled for next Mon., and I hope I have money by them (one of my sources of income isn't completely predictable as to when I get it). I hate living like this, but my $550 semi-annual car insurance bill is due next month too, so this living paycheck to paycheck isn't going to end soon.

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The issue I want to deal with is my political alliances (or lack thereof). Now that it's come up that ideology (the "i" in SMICE) is one hook that's used to recruit spies, and then I got into the ideology more in my discussion of Jerry Falwell in my last post. So I think I should deal with it more before moving on in this book I'm currently discussion.

Upon my return to the States in 1997 after living in Russia it gradually became evident to various people who had known me for a long time that I had developed rather liberal political views. There may have been some who thought that that was from an influence by Communists. That is most adamantly not the case.

I went to Vienna with strong anti-Communist views (anti the theory and system) not only because I didn't like how it was embodied in Communist countries, the various abuses and the like, but also because I thought the very theory of Communism itself was wrong, and I still think that to this day.

However, at the same time I have become more and more critical of the West and America in particular. This is not from influence by Communists on me, though. This is largely a by-product of the research I did when I returned to the States on a visit while still living in Russia. The files I am discussing with you are the very research that ultimately changed my views - it wasn't by any coercion (which is the absolute least effective way to try to win me over) but through careful study and deliberation that I did on my own with no one else even really knowing I was doing besides the friend I was staying with during that visit and maybe one or two other people I may have mentioned it to. So let's put that dog to rest once and for all. And besides, I really like the Russian Yabloko Party, not the Communists. And Yabloko adherents would abhor any insinuation that they are akin to Communists.

But before I move on from here, here's a piece from my Human Rights report that I initially put in the report for this very reason, but I skipped over it here on the blog because I wasn't sure how relevant it was at that point. This happens in the winter of 1982-1983 several months before my second trip to Europe. Here it is:

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"Also at this time I had an extended conversation (2 weeks) with a dishwasher at Pizza Hut, which bears on the topic of this report, and which others there might remember, especially the Lebanese Muslim manager, Mr. Monsour. This cook one day, out of the blue, said to me, "So you don't believe in evolution, then, do you?" Presumably he asked me this with reference to my being a student at [Bible school]. I agreed with him that, no, I didn't believe in evolution, and then proceeded to follow a track of logic learned in an apologetics course at [Bible school], wherein you take a person to the logical end of their belief, lifestyle, etc. I believe that the logical end of evolution is Marxism/Communism - so I led him down this trail. After a week or so I told him, quite bluntly, that if he believed this and so (which he had already agreed to) than he must be a Communist because Communism explains the social, political & economic evolution of man. He immediately agreed that he was a Marxist, which actually surprised me. He later told me that the perfect Communist state is Cuba, so I shouldn't look to Eastern Europe & the Soviet Union to give examples of how this philosophy doesn't work. Those countries are corrupt forms of Marxism. I, of course, pointed out that thousands of boat people from Cuba disagreed with him. Throughout this time my Lebanese Muslim co-workers backed me in support of creation. That's an unusual combination, Christians and Muslims siding like that, but that's how it happened. The point is, that this conversation is evidence of my firm disagreement both on logical and practical grounds with Communism as a theory and as experienced in modern-day countries."

The reason that conversation took so long (2 weeks) is because we were also working while having it, so it was a little bit here and there.

My opinions on this front never changed. What DID change was my opinion about America. Since I wasn't very political before trying to figure out my life, I wasn't particularly patriotic, but now I've become a lot more critical of my own country, in particular. Also, I eventually began to see America as a roadblock to my reaching my goals of ministry in the Soviet Union, and I really resented that - this is a free country isn't it? And it's not like I wanted to do something bad or immoral or unethical (well, some think mission work is unethical, but I won't go there right now). I felt like a nonentity. My best friend in Russia at one point said I was just a pawn and "they" didn't really care what happened to me. She was referring to the Russian authorities, as I remember it, but I think there is some evidence that this could be said for the USA too. But I haven't gotten that far yet in my story. The point here is that if anyone thought that the "ideology" in SMICE might have been a hook for me, they didn't do their homework very well because they were dead wrong and this was never a possibility.

~ Meg

21. Evangelical Missions, Military, and Economics -- oi veh!*

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*That's supposed to be an allusion to a joke in an earlier post, as well as bearing some similarity to the famous "Lions and tigers and bears, oh, my!" line in the Wizard of Oz.

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I didn't always have pacifist leanings, but I developed them over the years, largely based on my experiences and thinking them through, and then studying some about pacifism.

Actually, I didn't really have strong political ideas either, but they developed along with my pacifist beliefs. (I should add here, that I won't say I'm the best at living out these beliefs, but a lot of people think pacifists are just doormats, which is not an accurate depiction of this way of thinking and living. But it can be a challenge finding ways to not be a doormat while also living according to pacifist ideas - that is, avoiding being a hypocrite.)

When I worked with Russian emigrants in the States, I did so only as either a short-term worker or on the side while I was being a student and working part-time to also support myself. The head of the work was also in the military reserves, although I forget now which branch of the military. He did research for them using his Russian language knowledge and would do at least part of that research at a university. We were supposed to keep it a secret that he was in the reserves, so some other explanation would be given for his periodic absence to fulfill those responsibilities. Not long after I left there, he and his family moved to the Washington, D.C. area so he could take a job with the Pentagon. At that time I didn't really have any opinion about his work.

Another thing I'll just say in passing here is that I was told by the full-time workers that there were KGB among the emigrants and they and some of the other Russians knew who they were. I never pursued that to find out for myself though. But I have a hunch that it was while I was working there that might have first put me on the radar for the USSR, as far as being the daughter of someone working in Star Wars is concerned.

A couple years later, from 1987 to 1989 I worked in Vienna, which I think I already mentioned to you. That work in Vienna involved over a dozen missions cooperating together; different missions would send workers to participate in this work.

When I was in Vienna there was a 2-person human resources office at the joint effort mission. Both of the men in that department were also U.S. military chaplains. I don't know of anyone else in the joint mission who had such connections. They were able to buy things at the military commissary, for example. It was probably also them who were able to reserve Hitler's Crow's nest in Germany for our annual retreat the last year I was there. Here's quote about the history of Hitler's Crow's Nest from LetsGo-Europe.com

"The allied bombing and battles of World War II left the building intact and today the Eagle's Nest remains in its original state. In the years after the war, the Eagle's Nest and the surrounding area of Berchtesgaden remained a part of US Armed Forces property in southeastern Germany. The US military set up a recreation center where servicemembers could hike in the summer and ski in the winter. The US military returned the area to Germany in the 1990s."

Also, one of the missions working with us was Slavic Gospel Association, the mission I wrote the Freedom of Information Act request about. So you know there was a lot of room here for political things, and I'll tell you later about being told that sometimes missions don't let people in who have relatives in the military. So my contention is that I was so qualified and had such good connections (I had really prepared a lot for that work in Eastern Europe) that it would be hard for them to reject me upfront, but they could try to push me out.

Also, as a young adult I didn't really have strong political views - I mean views about left or right, Democrat or Republican. My parents were both conservative and my dad was a precinct committeeman for the Republicans for a while. I think Mom's family was conservative too, but Dad's side of the family was more liberal politically speaking.

When I went to orientation with the mission that sent me over to Vienna, there was some political opinion presented amongst the training and literature we were given. Part of our training in this week-long orientation was an ongoing course on European Studies. Following the usual expanded outline format of information about the USSR there is this 2-page sort of ode to the wealth of the West. Huh?

I mean, I'm not a Communist, primarily because I believe that it is based on the false premise that man is (or can become, given the right social environment) primarily good and will forsake personal ownership for the ultimate good of everyone. I believe this understanding of the fundamental nature of man is wrong.

Besides that, I understand that there were/are a lot of bad things in Communist countries. But I also believe that there are bad things in many other countries, such as dictatorships, and even here in the US. I don't believe the U.S. is necessarily the best example to follow, either, although I don't believe it's the worst necessarily either. This could evolve into a very complex discussion, but I just want you to understand some of my views on this. I did mention in an earlier post that I'm an "Equal Opportunity Critiquer" and this is an example of what I mean by that.

As far as economics is concerned, which is what this text addresses, there were also some things in the USSR, such as virtually no homelessness, universal health care and free education that we don't have. This paper, reading it now makes me almost wonder if there was some subconscious prosperity gospel thinking going on to elevate material wealth so much. I mean, we're talking about a Christian mission here, and they're feeding this to their potential recruits, so I assume they wanted us to think like this too, like the ideas in this text. It's almost propaganda-like.

Here is a copy of the sheet from the orientation binder, which I still have in its completeness.






Based on this text, we should all move to Monaco (everyone's rich there, aren't they?). Ooops! I forgot, I can't afford to move there right at the moment. I must have just been born in the wrong country.

~ Meg