Three Cups of Tea
January 31, 2009 by Julia King · Leave a Comment
On the cover of the book, in small print at the bottom of the page, is a quote from Tom Brokaw: “Thrilling…proof,” it reads, “that one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, really can change the world.”
It’s a reassuring thought, this notion that an average person can change the world, but it’s not exactly the story that unfolds in Three Cups of Tea, the New York Times bestseller by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Instead, Three Cups of Tea tells the story of an extraordinary man (Mortenson), one willing to endure almost anything to accomplish his mission.
Mortenson’s mission is peace, and his strategy is to provide education for the poorest children in some of the poorest parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, far-flung villages that despite their remoteness are desperately intertwined with modern Western life.
I read much of the book sweaty and out of breath, pedaling my stationary bike alone in my living room, exerting energy for no one’s benefit but my own — as if to punctuate the fact of my existential stinginess. Mortenson’s life is one of sacrifice and tremendous effort spent for others (although that’s not his claim; he would say that in the end his work benefits everyone, including him).
The beauty of this story is that it never appears easy. Too frequently, those who accomplish amazing things carry out their tasks with what looks like effortlessness. Not here. Three Cups of Tea is a journey into rugged land and harsh conditions. And it is a story of contrast, of a man straddling two different worlds (one week he’s walking the shiny marble floors of the Pentagon, and the next week he’s bouncing along dusty, craggy mountain roads in a beat-up jeep). Ironically, it is the thorny details of Mortenson’s projects — and of his exhausting schedule — that make it all so believable, so possible.
Like many Americans, I hadn’t paid much attention to places like Afghanistan until September 11. Since then, however, I’ve developed a strong appetite (possibly an unhealthy one) for dismal Middle Eastern focused literature (both fiction and non-fiction) like The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Iran Awakening, etc. – my desire to solve the puzzle of Islamic extremist repression forever nudging me back to the page.
Three Cups of Tea doesn’t shy away from the darker aspects of these regions, but neither does it define such places (and the myriad people who inhabit them) by the least common human denominator, by anti-western jihadists, or by beheaders. Mortenson and Relin take us across the globe and introduce us to men and women we can relate to, men and women – and children – who are on “our” side, meaning the side of compassion and tolerance and mutual understanding.
In short: read it. If you’re looking for something that makes sense amidst the chaos and the jumble we’ve come to know as the “Middle East” (however imperfect the term), here is a place to start. Here is a way. I’m late to this book (it was published in 2006), but the work it represents is still in its infancy.
Duty and Community: Where Do They Begin and End?
January 19, 2009 by Julia King · Leave a Comment
Although I don’t exactly know him, he does grow some of the food I eat (sells it at the local farmers market), so I was pleasantly surprised to see his familiar face in the jury room full of strangers. The last time we spoke he had introduced me to the most delicious squash ever (delicata) and for that I will always be grateful.
The bailiff explained the process: She would call 12 names. Those people would line up by the door, followed by the rest of the prospective jurors, 37 in all. At the judge’s secret signal (a telephone call to our upper level room), we would march together through the hall and down the steps like an elementary school class. We would file into the courtroom, with the first 12 taking seats within the jury box and the rest of us sitting in the general section of the courtroom. The defense and prosecuting attorneys would ask questions of the 12 seated in the jury box and dismiss them at will, replacing them with new people until they were satisfied with 12. Then they would add one for good measure, the alternate.
As we made our way through the building and into the courtroom, we carried with us the same buzz of excitement that children take to an all-school assembly or out into the parking lot during a fire drill. We tried to shed our nervous energy with extra-good posture and clever little asides.
We settled into the courtroom, many of us sitting before the judge’s instructions to do so, then standing, then sitting again with his bass, “You may be seated.” All the prospective jurors (those in and out of the jury box) took an oath and were told the defendant had been accused of… child molestation.
Party OVER. There wasn’t exactly a gasp, but there was a silent shift in the mood. This was not a game. This might not even be fun. Ugh.
The woman next to me quickly lowered her head and whispered, “I feel like I’m going to cry. My father molested me. I say cut the guy’s head off.” There is a story there (obviously), but I’ll tell it another time.
This story is about the organic farmer, the one who grows some of the food I eat, the one who made my eyes several sizes bigger when he refused to serve. In his gentle voice, he said he did not believe in this system, primarily because he believes disputes must be settled within “a community.” He said his beliefs were based on his Anabaptist faith (presumably Brethren or Mennonite, but he didn’t specify).
He went on to say he couldn’t judge a man if he didn’t know his family or his friends or where he went to church. The judge asked if he could try, if he could understand that he wasn’t stamping the defendant “good” or “bad,” just helping to determine if the defendant had committed certain acts. This farmer, this man I had considered a member of my community… said he could not. He could not try. He could not “do his best” — as the attorneys put it — to follow the law. We may have physically shared the courtroom (and the farmers market, and the streets of our town), but apparently I was mistaken to believe we shared a community. I surprised myself by feeling utterly rebuffed. The judge dismissed him and he left the courtroom.
It was a bold and public proclamation of faith, this refusal to serve, this rejection of the larger community in deference to the smaller one. Clearly, the man was earnest and intended no malice toward any of us (even me). He was simply living out his deepest principles, which is not at all a bad way to live.
And yet… as the case unfolded, the case the farmer refused to own, it became clear that the people involved had very little “community” of the sort the farmer described. They were largely transient, moving from job to job, from house to house, from town to town, even state to state. Who, then, could reasonably be expected to step forward to listen to their stories? To secure a defendant’s freedom and reputation, or to grant a child protection?
In an ideal world, we would each fit neatly into some safe spot on the planet where others would know us and care for us, nudge us in the right direction from time to time when necessary. This, plainly, is the kind of world the farmer wishes for. It might even be the kind of world in which he, himself, lives. If only everyone were as fortunate.
If it sounds as though I’m picking on this farmer of faith, I don’t intend to. Obviously, each day humans take on some responsibilities and let others go. I don’t pretend to know the quality of the farmer’s life, or faith, or commitment to others. I only know that he drew the boundaries around his “community” so tightly that he left me wondering (even worrying?).
So, what – exactly – is a “community”? My own working definition is, perhaps, so large and expansive that it’s unwieldy, excessively vague. There are distinctions within that expansive community, of course (family, friends, acquaintances, strangers… neighborhood, town, state, country, world, and so on). I have (and should have) more influence and responsibility in some arenas than in others, but I would be hard-pressed to find a space I would define as “outside” my community.
Considering the nature of the word (“community”), the fact that it is inherently social and connected to (or separated from) others, it’s something I am unable to define alone.
What are your thoughts? What is your definition? Where does your community begin and end?
Jury Duty
January 15, 2009 by Julia King · Leave a Comment
I know the line I’m supposed to tow: The system sucks! Tear the whole thing down and start over! (Etc. etc.)
And yet… here I sit with a full heart and a satisfied mind having just completed the most famous (or is it the most infamous?) of civic duties. For two days this week, I was a juror. Technically, I was the alternate, an understudy of sorts, watching and waiting in the jury box just in case someone was struck with appendicitis before the verdict was rendered. With no medical emergencies to speak of, I remained an observer during the final deliberations.
It was both simple and difficult, the trial. Simple in that when all was said and done it was apparent that the accused was guilty; but difficult in that the case — and therefore all the testimony — was about child molestation. It was not a light-hearted two days.
But at the end of our task, one man summed up all our feelings when he said, “You know, if I’m ever accused of anything — I want you all to be the jury. You guys are great.”
Of course, the truth is that — as individuals — we were probably much closer to “average” than to “great,” but together, with the help of an ideal, maybe we did achieve “great.”
More later….
Rick Warren and an Opportunity for Unity (?)
December 23, 2008 by Julia King · 4 Comments
Depending on whom you ask, President Elect Barack Obama’s decision to invite conservative mega-church star Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation is either brilliant — or a betrayal. In one day last week, I spoke with friends stunned and angered by the choice, and with friends gratified by the choice. All of them voted for Obama and all of them are members in good standing with the Left-of-Center Club.
So, is the choice fantastic, a great strategic play that will immunize Obama against the far religious Right? Or is it unfair, a dose of injustice meted out to the “least among us,” the easy mark, the relatively small gay and lesbian community?
To say that it’s “brilliant” is a little bit like saying that the feelings of millions of gays and lesbians don’t matter. Because regardless of the larger strategy, homosexuals will be grimacing through a Warren inaugural prayer (considering the pastor’s public stance against gay marriage and his comments that adult homosexuality is akin to incest or pedophilia). Yet, to say that the invocation pick is a “betrayal,” is to ignore the long, slow road that progress has always been.
The notion of Warren leading our entire nation in prayer doesn’t sit well in my gut; but I can’t yet say whether it is “correct” or “incorrect” because I don’t yet know if the event will put Warren under Obama’s wing… or Obama under Warren’s wing. I don’t yet know if Warren and his followers will be emboldened by a spot on the national (and international) stage, or if they will be humbled.
Will Warren speak words of genuine inclusion and justice – and finally convince himself they are true? Or will he pepper his speech with coded messages to his evangelical followers (as so many have done before him with phrases like “family values,” or “culture of life”)?
Will Obama make a point of saying on inauguration day that everyone is entitled to equal protection under the law and that majorities don’t have the right to vote away the rights of minorities, regardless of faith? Or will he mistakenly think of his role as a personal host to Warren, imagining he must be especially gentle with his guest?
What is most clear is that Obama wants to be different from George W. Bush. Unlike Bush, Obama wants to reach out to those who are not necessarily his natural allies — and for THAT he deserves credit. Clearly, Obama will avoid making the same mistakes Bush made in the early days of his presidency… but that doesn’t mean Obama won’t make mistakes; it just means his mistakes will be different. Let’s hope Warren isn’t one of them.
This Dog is Gifted
December 18, 2008 by Julia King · Leave a Comment
This Dog is Gifted
When my daughter entered middle school some years ago, she came home one afternoon and told her father and me about the little laminated placard she would wear around her neck throughout her school day. We thought she was confused.
“If you get good grades, you get a bronze card,” she said, “but if you get Cs or worse, you get a white card. And the kids with good grades get to sit in a different part of the cafeteria.”
“Oh, honey,” I assured her, “they wouldn’t do THAT. It would be so… I don’t know, weird.”
Well, they DID wear color-coded placards and it WAS weird. When I complained about it to one of the school counselors, she told a story about a guy without arms or legs who made an incredible life for himself as an inspirational speaker. A bronze-card kinda guy if ever there was one.
My daughter agreed emphatically that the system was wrong, that it demeaned the average (and below-average) achieving kids in some fundamental way, but she clung to her bronze card and her comfy space in the school cafeteria. Those “other” kids were a little wild, she confided. While she sympathized with their plight, she was not exactly ready to sit with them and their exploding ketchup packets. After a while I gave up trying to convince her to take up her uncle’s advice and stage a mass protest, tossing the cards — Vietnam Vet style — over the lunch counter. And after a couple of visits to the cafeteria myself, I secretly loved the seating arrangements. My polite, obedient, skinny little daughter most definitely belonged on the “safe” side of the room partition.
It was classic Kubler-Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally… acceptance. It’s no big deal. It’s how grown-ups live anyway. Trailer parks for some, and multimillion dollar houses behind gates for others. Teach them when they’re young, right?
Recently, a researcher in Vienna, Austria discovered (or maybe we’ll just say “documented”) jealousy in dogs. Dogs were taught to reach out their paws and when they did, they were given a treat. Then they changed the rules, gave some dogs delicious treats (like sausage) and others slightly boring treats (like bread), until finally they took the treats away entirely from some of the dogs — and gave the other dogs sausages right in front of the snouts of the unrewarded dogs. Eventually, the unrewarded dogs stopped trying. They rolled paper into spit balls and threw them at the researchers. They started skipping class and smoking pot. Okay, they totally would have if they could have.
Probably there is a dog somewhere (without legs or legs) that would not have given up. That dog would be an inspirational barker for other dogs.
Most kids are at least as observant and sensitive as dogs. Finally, after many years of teaching and observing them (kids, that is), the Montgomery County Maryland school system has figured this out. They have decided to stop giving some kids sausages and some kids nothing, meaning they will retire that loveliest of all lovely school terms — “gifted.” They will still offer a range of school work, some less and some more challenging; they just won’t publicly label the children. Not surprisingly, some of the parents whose children were so-labeled are disappointed. These people will no longer be able to toss the term around at dinner parties, which is the best thing about labels.
*Update (Jan. 2009): After the initial article (about Montgomery County Schools dropping the “gifted” label) appeared in The Washington Post, a school official wrote to the paper and said the claim was untrue. Sausages, Anyone?
(Holiday) Shopping as Though it Matters
December 6, 2008 by Julia King · Leave a Comment
Once, long ago, I asked a Wal-Mart employee if he could tell me anything about a certain $4 shirt in the store. I actually just wanted to know about the person who made it, or more specifically, about the working conditions under which the person made it.
My recollection is that he said something along the lines of, “Ummm…,” before turning his head first in one direction and then in another, slowly eyeing the sea of merchandise that surrounded us. I let him tread water for a minute before I tossed him an, “Oh, never mind.” Together we nodded our heads and shrugged our shoulders, silently agreeing on the absurdity of my request.
Somehow, mentioning a worker on the other side of the world as I stood in a Wal-Mart in Indiana made me feel like a nun at a swinger’s party. As an official Fair Trade goodie-goodie, what was I even doing in a place that preaches rock-bottom prices for shoppers?
It reminded me of the time my mother stepped up to the counter at a Kentucky Fried Chicken and asked, in her best health-conscious voice, “Do you have anything that isn’t fried.”
“Coleslaw,” I had said loudly in my best 40-year-old-teenager voice, “and baked beans, and biscuits. Those things aren’t fried, MOM.” Then I smiled at the kid behind the counter and attempted to telepathically send him the universal cuckoo sign.
The good news is that with so much information at our fingertips, Americans expect more of it all the time. Is that organic? Decaf? Low sodium? Is Jolie pregnant? Sure, a lot of what we seek is inconsequential, but we’ve definitely developed an appetite for information. Eventually our desire for cheap goods will bump up against our desire for information; and when that happens, the marketplace will change.
Happy Holidays! Shop like you mean it.
(More later on consumers, product labeling, and capitalism…)
Dear Lord, Why Must People Pray at Me?
December 3, 2008 by Julia King · 4 Comments
A couple of nights ago, my husband and I attended an Obama victory party. We sat at our table drinking beer, chatting with friends about the President Elect’s latest Cabinet picks and admiring the Obama logo ice sculpture on the buffet.
Just before we were released from our tables to partake of the shrimp cocktail and strawberries, a minister made her way to the front of the room to offer an invocation.
Here in the Midwest, prayer before food (regardless of the venue) is customary. Restaurants, private parties, public school potlucks, all gatherings where food is present are seen as opportunities to pray. My big city coastal-dwelling friends and family find this hard to believe, but it’s true.
So, the minister walked to the front of the room and asked us to bow our heads while she talked about the faith that got us this far and about God’s role in our political victory (I’m paraphrasing here). Then, in Jesus Christ’s name, we ate.
And as I chewed my food I wondered for the thousandth time why so many people believe their desire to pray with me should override my desire not to pray with them. My problem is not with God, mind you, but with the people who claim to speak for God. They know not what God thinketh. They only thinketh they knoweth.
The content of the prayer that night left me shaking my head in disagreement. The notion of angels that guide the faithful to the polls or a God that reaches down and pokes holes in butterfly ballots makes a mockery of democracy. Additionally, thanking God for my new president would require that I curse God for my last president, something I’d rather not have to do.
The point is that God resides so deeply in our individual souls that to invoke Him in the midst of everyday life — with people who have not gathered for that purpose — is to forever challenge someone else’s unspoken, but equally strongly held version of Him (or Her or Insert Other Name).
Prayer has been with us since the beginning of time… and will be with us until the end of it. Textual, meditative, musical, visual, ancient or modern – whatever its shape or size, its power is undeniable. And because of that power, it should be handled with the utmost care. Prayer should be sacred and heartfelt, entered into gladly and without reservation. To utter the wrong words at the wrong time and with the wrong people is to chip away at its holiness.
When I (and presumably others) visit a place of worship, I do so with a heightened respect for the various traditions unique to that particular religion. My heart is open to the message, even if my head doesn’t always understand or agree. The same holds true of a private home, where I happily welcome a prayer from a host or hostess. Such experiences become intimate ones, the result of spiritual exploration or friendship (or both).
Now, I’ve known enough devout people in my life to realize that religion is often inseparable from a person’s identity, that asking someone to pipe down about The Lord Jesus (or Allah, or Krishna, or the Goddess) while I eat my chicken breast is like asking me to stop expressing my opinion. If loud prayer is your thing, by all means, have at it. Just remember there are always people in the room bowing their heads and praying that you will soon be done.
The truth is that despite my discomfort with prayer that’s thrust upon me without my prior consent, I’m sincerely interested in the spiritual beliefs of others. I care about what moves people – and expect them to care about what moves me. Unfortunately, one person purporting to speak to God for an entire group is hardly the best model for mutual understanding.
The faithful or religious don’t need to be silent, but they do need to consider the purpose of their prayers – especially those uttered at events not planned specifically for religious expression. As far as I can tell, there are two basic reasons to speak prayers aloud. One reason is to influence those within earshot, to steer them in the “right” direction; and the other is… (?) Is there another reason?
Happy Thanksgiving — 2008
November 26, 2008 by Julia King · Leave a Comment
William Faulkner said, “Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.”
He might have been exactly right: just like gratitude, creating electricity is a task for which not everyone is equally well-suited. Energy is relatively easy to come by, but electricity is not – a thought I have had countless times as I’ve pedaled my stationary bike to nowhere in my living room. “If only I could use all this pedaling for something worthwhile,” I often lament, sweat dripping from my brow.
Surely gratitude production is reliant on forces at least as complicated as electricity’s electrons, positrons, and ions. Perhaps science will one day create the mathematical formula for measuring an individual’s life situation against her nature/nurture constraints to equal her gratitude quotient. Something along the lines of: In order to feel (X) amount of (G), patient (Y) will need to expend (T) amount of (E).
Faulkner’s notion of gratitude as electricity (complete with my own addition of the stationary bike) was reinforced for me this morning on NPR’s Morning Edition. While still in bed, I listened to a story about a Fort Wayne, Indiana Christmas tree with lights that connect to a generator and stationary bike. Holiday frolickers take turns pedaling to light up the tree; when the battery that holds the energy gets low, an alarm sounds.
It’s a perfect set-up and not at all unlike gratitude (or even Thanksgiving Day), because everyone involved has something a little different to contribute to the experience. It begins, of course, with an idea. Next come the wires and the generator and the battery… all those pieces of the scientific puzzle that need to be solved, but in the end it just requires the simple (but magical) fact of able and willing legs. Short stubby ones or long skinny ones, young ones that move with lightning speed, or seasoned ones that pump slow and steady. When one pair grows tired, another pair takes over. And with each donation of effort, the light burns brighter.
I can see in my mind’s eye the scene at the Fort Wayne Christmas tree, not unlike a million scenes across the nation this Thanksgiving day. Family and friends gathered around, some full of laughter and energy to share, others weary from the work of pie-making, or turkey basting, or maybe just life. There is much pedaling and much resting and when the rolls are warm and the table is set and everyone sits down at the table, there it is… electricity.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING. Go ahead, bask in the light. It’s yours to share.
Race Relations and an African American President
November 17, 2008 by Julia King · Leave a Comment
Since Barack Obama’s presidential win, I have been thinking a lot about a woman I used to know. I haven’t seen or spoken with her in years, but we were both members of a racially diverse steering committee for a project called Study Circles on Race Relations (the national organization has since changed its name, but its mission still involves encouraging small group discussions around difficult social issues).
It was an intense years-long experience, one that drains me to recall in too much detail. There was genuine friendship within the group, but also some genuine strife. A handful of us met regularly for long lunches to hammer out recruitment plans and explore funding possibilities; and to try — to the best of our abilities — to confront our groups’ own inter-personal challenges, some that were a result of personality differences, and others that no doubt stemmed from race. We presided over workshops and discussions together, sometimes gracefully and sometimes clumsily. However imperfect, we were a team.
During those years I witnessed moments of uncommon interracial dialogue, moments that included accusations, defensiveness, tears, apologies. But there were just as many moments in which everyone stayed well within the carefully constructed boundaries of polite society. Either way, as a discussion facilitator, I usually went home with a headache.
The incident I’ve been thinking of since Obama’s election, however, wasn’t from a formal discussion session; it was at a steering committee lunch meeting that happened just a day or two after a racially motivated murder occurred in town. The tragic coincidence was that one of our members knew the victim. Not only did she know him, he was on his way to her house on the evening he was shot and killed. The details are fuzzy in my mind; it’s possible I’m remembering things incorrectly; but what I do remember clearly was this woman’s grief, the way it hung on her face and her shoulders.
At some point during lunch, she began telling us a story about a man (black) who knew another man (also black) who worked for a white man who seemed like a wonderful guy. It was the sort of story where the black man and the white man ran through fields together giggling and catching butterflies.
Then one day the black man was looking for a roll of tape (or paper clip) in the white man’s desk drawer, when he discovered the truth. There it was, plain as day… a Klansman’s mask.
I doubted the story at the time (as I still do today), but didn’t say so. This woman clearly not only believed it, but needed to tell it, needed to give shape to what she was feeling – that all white people, no matter how kind or cooperative or sincere they might appear – have a Klansman’s mask hidden in their desk. It was not an unreasonable thing for her to believe on that day, but it hurt to hear her speak it.
And so she has been on my mind, this woman who lost trust, who lost hope.
Grandmother Births Granddaughters after Eating Wild Mushrooms (or Receiving Fertility Treatments)
November 15, 2008 by Julia King · Leave a Comment
Imagine a world in which a woman gives birth to her own triplet granddaughters. I know. Run-of-the-mill already. Wake me up when a man gives birth to his triplet grandparents. That’s a real story.
Oh, the complexity.
What drives a family to such … I don’t know… exertion? What makes three presumably sane people grab nature and twist it into intractable knots?
15 years ago my body birthed one child and mysteriously halted production. I have a beautiful spitfire of a daughter who loves egg sandwiches and hiking in the woods and has an unnatural aversion to the sound of harmonicas. There was a time when I ached to have another just like her; but looking into her gold-specked eyes I know I’d have to be greedy to require more than one miracle.
All of us together in the child-production-and-rearing years, my sisters wanted me to “do” something, to take up arms in the War for Babies. Because in America we’re always supposed to be “doing” something about everything… weight loss, face-lift, lawn replacement, breast enlargement.
“Just do something little,” they said (so loaning me their uteruses never actually came up). But I didn’t know what “little” meant. There was a line somewhere that I knew I shouldn’t cross but it was so fuzzy it was almost impossible to see. And on the way to that line were a million stops, a million places to rationalize away convictions.
A strong proponent of population control, my social worker sister bent her rules regarding fertility medicine because she loves me. But I was unwilling to bend mine.
There are still moments in the dark-blue hours past midnight when I think far into my daughter’s future, the one where I no longer exist, and wonder if I should have tried harder, longer – not for me, but for her.
But in the light of day things are clearer: Life offers few guarantees, and there is even something to be gained (wisdom to name it) from deprivation or loss. I know, too, that even under the best circumstances fertility is fleeting; every woman must eventually bid it farewell. My time just came sooner than most.
