A Prayer for Bahrain

Some things just do not make the news, yet they should. Much of what I find out about what is really going on in the world comes from friends living in those locations. Such is the case with Bahrain, which was in the news a number of months ago for the demonstrations at the Pearl Roundabout, a beautiful monument that was nonetheless torn down in a symbolic act by the government to put an end to dissent. That hope, however, was clhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifearly not realized, as ongoing disturbances prove.

I would like to share a letter I received from a friend two days ago and to ask for your prayers for Bahrain. Here is the letter:

"Bahrain is heading back toward another meltdown! Things must be getting bad again as for the first time since June the tanks have rolled back into town. Yesterday I witnessed the tanks trundling down the highway by my house, and one had parked itself right at the entrance of the village. The strategic placement of these monsters must be a sure sign that all is not well even though there has been no public news about it. (I think the country has managed to keep its’ internal news very much under wraps, especially given that anyone resembling a reporter has been stopped from entering the country.)

The weekend would have once again not looked out of place on a Hollywood war movie set. Friday the entire Budaiya area (and surrounding regions up to Seef mall- for those not familiar with Bahrain that would be a huge area coverage [from Falmouth to Truro at least]) was shut down due to a large funeral procession of someone who had died the night before in clashes. The air was thick with tear gas, chants, and anger. Riot police ran down from fly-over highways onto other mains roads, scattering the children and adults are they attempted to kidnap yet another roundabout. Shots fired into the air in an almost synchronized fashion, led by the uniformed sergeant who could have passed for an orchestra’s conductor. People young and old managed to block main highways/motorways; children put up barrier blockades and sat on roundabouts turning motorists back with aggressive waves of their arms, which were decorated with metal pipes. The unfortunates such as myself who were stuck in our cars on these roads were being frantically sent in all directions by police who were trying desperately to get us out of the areas, unfortunately often being sent in the direction of yet another blockade.

I see no hope, no change for the better. This is our Palestine.

Please do find some time to say a prayer for the conflicted (and, in some cases, frightened and other cases, angry) nation of Bahrain.

Subhan Allah!

Something special has occurred. Hence, the post title. Subhan Allah is an Arabic expression for praising God for unexpected mercies.

My prayer group and other friends, including some who read this blog, have been praying for Maha, a friend of mine in Bahrain who calls me "Mom" and whose teenage brother and a large number of his friends were dragged from their beds in the middle of the night in May 2008 and accused of a crime they did not commit (trumped up charges about an illegal action taken that night in May against someone who had actually died the previous fall -- oops, the police forgot to check out that detail thoroughly). They had been jailed ever since. I don't know about the other young men, but Maha's brother was beaten regularly almost to the point of losing his eyesight. It was called interrogation. Every trial date during the intervening months was postponed, followed by a new "interrogation." It seemed to be a matter of ruling Sunni intimidation of the larger Shia population. Outside international investigation, including an international justice specialist from the United Nations, did not help. Western embassies were reluctant to speak up.

Without divine intervention, the likely outcome would have been the one that has happened in the past: 15 years, life, or death. (The last such group was convicted in the late 1990s, and the sentence was capital punishment.) So, prayers were the only medium available. I personally know people who prayed for these young men regularly in Bahrain, Canada, Egypt, Lithuania, Morocco, and the United States.

Earlier this week the prayers were answered. Maha's brother and the other young men have been released! They were declared innocent by the court and also given a royal pardon. Maha tells me that in Bahrain people flocked to the mosque the night before the pardon to pray for the young men; they prayed until the crack of dawn. She also told me that nobody really expected the outcome that all of them would be declared innocent and freed. (My comment: Wait a minute here...if you pray, don't you expect an answer? I do!)

These young men are now considered heroes for not caving in to the government. Blessedly, they are getting their old jobs back. Their families are celebrating as Arabs know so well how to do!

Many thanks to everyone who prayed for these young men. Sometimes, in international matters, our first, last, and best hope is God.

Fishes and Loaves for Colombia

Almost two years ago, I met a young priest from Colombia, Padre (Fr.) Julio. Padre Julio substituted for our noon Spanish mass one Sunday and mesmerized the congregation. Shortly thereafter I came to know Padre better (1) as he traveled more than an hour to Stanford University Hospital to pray for my daughter Noelle who was having brain surgery, (2) after he accepted my offer as a volunteer tutor of English when his duties were changed from the Spanish mass to the English mass (a mutually beneficial activity -- as I helped him convert his homilies from Spanish to English, I learned a lot of theology from him and a little more Spanish, too), and (3) during web design working sessions with my family (which consists of graphic artists, computer programmers, web designers, and me, a writer and translator) as we constructed a website for the organization that he founded: Por Amor a los Ninos de Colombia (for love of the children of Colombia). Padre's dream was to help the children of his native Colombia, a beautiful, rural region, full of potential that was being replaced by violence. Padre describes the situation as follows:

In recent years, violence and illiteracy have affected the communities of the village of Palomar and surrounding hamlets. The distance between the school and the houses where the children live can be between one and six hours, making school attendance impossible.

Because their families live in poverty, these children cannot afford transport to nearby towns or cities either. This has resulted in young people between the ages of 12 and 18 having no other choice than to join guerrilla or paramilitary groups, commit petty crimes, work in the fields without the possibility of an education, or worse yet, becoming addicted to drugs.

The need to provide alternatives to solve the many problems this school-age population is facing is an urgent one. They have neither the economic nor the material means to do it themselves.

But let me step back just a bit in time. When I first became acquainted with Padre as a result of his describing Por Amor during mass, I wanted to donate a little something -- and "little" was the right label for any monetary amount I could hope to scrape together. Having come from an impoverished farm family and then spending most of a lifetime raising children with serious medical needs, even spare change was hard to find. I reasoned, however, that I could offer family skill in lieu of money, and Padre and I began a conversation about how the website would look. In the midst of this conversation, I ended up being sent to work in Bahrain for three weeks, just as Padre was beginning a push to raise the initial funds for Por Amor. Padre and I maintained a running e-mail conversation, he in Spanish and I in English, about the website plans, but somewhere in the back of my mind was the understanding that most of our work would be in vain if he could not get together a reasonable fund in a reasonable amount of time. I would have liked to help with that, too, but I am no fundraiser. So, on both counts -- giving money and raising money -- I was not much help to Padre until a marvelous thing happened.

As soon as I had arrived in Bahrain, a friend, who knew I was coming, showed up in my hotel room and dragged me to dinner, in good Arab fashion refusing to allow me to pay. But I had per diem for my meals, one thousand dollars, in fact, to cover the time I would be abroad. As I walked up to my room, an idea flew into my mind (from where?). There would certainly be another friend or two who would react in the same way over the next three weeks and the Ministry of Education would also likely host me for at least one meal, so I might have a hundred or even a little more than a hundred dollars left over from unspent per diem. I made a promise to God that whatever amount I did not spend on food in Bahrain, I would give to Padre for His children in Colombia. After that, friends and colleagues appeared out of the woodwork, and none would allow me to pay my own way (it does not fit with the culture there). In addition, the Ministry of Education had several socials and formal dinners which were also free to me. When I left Bahrain at the end of the three weeks, I had not had to purchase even one meal. When I reached the USA, I handed all $1000 of my per diem over to Padre for his children.

Bahrain might be little more than a desert to some, but it does have the famous tree of life that flourishes in sand. How symbolic for what had just happened! I was living in a philanthropic desert and yet out of that wasteland tumbled one thousand dollars for children in need half a world away. Would God re-create the fishes and loaves miracle today? You bet!

All God's Children

My last post got me to thinking about God's children. I am referring not to mankind as God's children, but to the little ones in our lives and our second generation regardless of age, the ones who call us Mom and Dad (or Ma and Pa, or Omy and Baba, etc.).

In this, I cannot imagine anyone with a greater sense of humor than God. I see that humor unfold in my life time and again. For example, I never particularly wanted children; I had a career lined up for myself (in my mind). Well, had that career happened as planned, it would not have been one iota as interesting as the career that unrolled, in zigs and zags, before me. And had that career not had to zig and zag around child after child, I would have missed the richest moments of my life.

In a display of great irony, the children that came into my life were not your everyday variety. Well, actually, those, too, ended up in my life, but as adults. My birth children, as well as those who came to live with Donnie and me as children and teenagers, were different: highly gifted, mentally and physically challenged, medically needy, discarded, bereft, foreign. First came my own birth children, one after the other, in spite of my best efforts not to get pregnant. (I hated being pregnant -- if I had a half hour of not being sick throughout all four pregnancies, I do not recall it. As best as I can figure, between all the kids, I have spent 26,298 hours vomiting or trying not to vomit.) On the other hand, once the children were born, all those maternal instincts took over and ran way ahead of me.

After my birth children along came Shura (a Siberian teenager with spina bifida),

All of these children I have talked about in various posts and books. The ones I have not mentioned are the ones that came later. They are the ones who need my help (and your prayers) today. Please meet Lana, Ibrahim, and Maha.

Leyla and Shem (not related to each other) are from Iraq. I met them in Jordan, where they worked for me as work-study students at the university where I was the chief academic officer.

Leyla would periodically come into my office and say, "Mum, may I cry in here?" It was usually because she had heard of a new bombing along Airport Road in Baghdad, where her family lived, or an attack on Baghdad University, where her father taught. Her family could not leave Iraq. She could not return, and communications, especially in 2003-2006 were very poor and, at times, totally lacking. Given a tendency to assume the worst, when she did not hear that her family was okay, she assumed that something bad had happened. And so, she started calling me "Mum" and looking to me for advice and moral support. I took to keeping an Islamic prayer rug in my office for her use, as needed, as well as provided guidance and hugs, as needed. Leyla recently ran into legal problems with an expired passport and the inability to return to Iraq to take care of that issue. I was in Jordan earlier this month for business purposes and called Leyla, worried because she has not responded to email for several weeks. Someone else answered her phone, and if my understanding of the Arabic conversation we had was accurate, that phone number no longer belongs to Leyla. I worry about her. She is as much my child now as my own children. I know that God will watch over her and take care of her until I find her again, but nonetheless I would welcome prayers from readers on her behalf.

Shem was my student as well as work-study assistant. An Iraqi Christian (a small and persecuted group), he thrived in school in spite of being separated from his family, graduating with a 4.0. He has done well also in graduate studies and in subsequent jobs. He, too, called me "Mom," although it did not seem like he needed another mother. Still, he was alone in Jordan and lonely. He emails and Skypes me regularly, and his first words are always, "I miss you sooooo much!" Seeing him in Jordan two weeks ago reminded me how families are families, whether blood or not and whether separated by physical distance or not. We spent hours together. It did not matter what we talked about. I do not even remember half of what we said and did. Rather, I savored the blessing of being able to be together, if only for one day and one night, in spite of living half a world apart in cultures that are rather alien to each other.

Maha's situation is much different. She lives in Bahrain, and she became my "daughter" when I was consulting extensively (over a period of 5 years) for the Ministry of Education there. Shia Muslims, her biological family became embroiled in political machinations over a year ago when her brother was arrested in the dead of the night on a trumped-up charge that has yet to have its day in court. The situation is personally emotionally difficult for me--and truly not understandable--for Donnie taught and I was academic dean for many university students from the ruling Sunni Muslim Al-Khalifa family. The Shia-Sunni hatred dates back to the struggle after the death of the Prophet Mohammed and the murder of Ali, a tragedy and travesty remembered to this day on the 10-day annual Ashara (the word ashara means ten) when Shias take leave from work and commemorate this piece of history, in part by flailing themselves with branches to the point of drawing blood. One would think that this hatred would have died out after 16 centuries, but emotions still run high. Emotions are part and parcel of the Arab world. And so, Maha's brother has been imprisoned for 14 months, during which time he has been beaten to the point of being almost blind. I tried my best to help, and a friend of a friend convinced a specialist in international human rights to go to Bahrain, but to no avail. The US Embassy did not want to get involved, nor did any other international body, and the Bahraini government repelled any appeal. So, we wait--and pray.

I am sure that I am not alone in having adult children who are experiencing difficulties that require assistance beyond what a normal parent like me can provide. If you are one of those "mothers" or "fathers", what have you done? How has God helped you out with these children?