Enemies: Feeding Them, Loving Them, Working with Them

I have spent much of my life living in the land of enemies, working with enemies (who turn out to be friends), and learning the languages of enemies. I have been reminded of this quite vividly during the month of June and especially this past month.

Our deck is quiet now. A week ago Saturday, however, it was home to running children and feasting parents. Visiting from one of our out-of-town branches was a colleague who is moving on to a new job and with whom I have had a wonderful working relationship these past two years. It wasn't always that way, though. My relationship with Walsh began in a very adversarial way. We served on the same committee related to providing a specific service to a group of clients. The clients were mine; the service was his division's. Unfortunately, I disagreed with some aspects of the way in which the service was provided and conducted some research on the effectiveness of the service. That research showed that the service was ineffective, but Walsh did not want to accept that and kept pushing his personal experience as the deciding factor in how things were to be done. I actually had greater experience than he did, but he did not know it, and I felt awkward about pointing that out either publicly or personally. I thought that the research results should speak for themselves. Ultimately, I talked to Walsh's supervisor and got the changes made that I felt were needed. Two years later, new research showed that the changes had produced much better results than had the initial service. Obviously, this was not the best way to win friends and influence people, as the saying goes.

Walsh ultimately moved on from that division, and life became calmer. Then, I learned we were being assigned a new project and, surprise!, the contact person with whom we had to work was in our Washington office, with the program being headed by Walsh, who had transferred there recently. Ulp! This was a very visible project and it had to go well. I decided to approach Walsh from the view that the old position and work was in the past and not related to the current work so we were "new" colleagues in this new endeavor. It worked. He had responsibility for weekly reports, and, while I initially had been reporting directly to the CEO on this project, once Walsh became the nominal head, I began filtering all my reports directly to him, and he would combine them with his own input. It was easier for the CEO that way. Everything worked smoothly. He let bygones remain in the past, as did I, and, perhaps not surprisingly, over time, we became very supportive colleagues, especially after we had taken a few trips together associated with this project to a few troubled areas of the world (e.g., the Middle East).

Walsh retired at the end of June and came back to his earlier haunts to say good-bye to old friends. I invited him to a BBQ at our house. At the end of the BBQ, he told me, with some barely restrained emotion, that he had truly enjoyed working with me on this project and was hoping our paths would cross again. Who says enemies cannot become friends?

This scene reminded me of a similar one two decades ago. Right after the fall of the Soviet Union, I traveled to the Humanities University in Minsk, Belarus to work with the academicians from the Belarus Academy of Sciences. While there, the president and vice president of the university took me to dinner. The VP, it turns out, was an officer in the Red Army, a specialist in American order of battle, at the same time that I was an officer in the US army, a specialist in Soviet order of battle. Counterparts! It left him speechless and attentive. At the farewell party thrown in my honor, he was unusually attentive, complimentary, and social, in contradiction to his typical introversion. Someone asked me what I had done to him. I said, "I did nothing to him, but he took an enemy to dinner." (The whole story, along with some other "enemy" stories, can be found here: Three Vignettes and One Thought about Enemies.

When I defended my dissertation years ago in Moscow, I ended the defense, as expected, with personal words. The words I used, though, were not expected, and I have heard that people who were there still cite them today. This was just weeks after the fall of the Soviet Union; most of my time in the USSR was spent there during the Cold War. (I can truly say that I am a veteran of the Cold War.) What I said was: "Twenty years ago, I came to this country to look upon the face on the enemy. However, in twenty years, I have found only friends."

My favorite movie of all time is probably not nearly as well known as many other sci-fi movies, but it is indeed a good one. The name is Enemy Mine. In it, Dennis Quaid plays an Earther in a dogfight with a Drak who crashes together with his enemy on a remote, inhospitable, marginally inhabited planet. They learn each other's language, work together to survive, and when the Drak, a hermaphrodite, dies in childbirth, Quaid raises the child. It is a very touching movie. If you have not seen it, I recommend renting it.

7 Quick Takes Friday #61

See more 7 Quick Takes Friday contributions at Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary.

I have not posted for quite some time to the 7 Quick Takes Friday -- for a month, give or take a week or so, it would seem. So, this week I figured I would pull out the most salient of the experiences of the past weeks.

1. Burying Biseh. The little cat who purred like a trible (for those familiar with Star Trek, the original series) and whom we brought back from Jordan five years ago for our grandson Nathaniel was hit by a car recently. Biseh, which means "cat" in Arabic, had wandered around our campus in Amman as a feral cat for some time when I found students kicking her, so Donnie and I adopted her. Bringing her back was quite easy. Surprisingly, for a feral cat, she slept peacefully all the way home under my plane seat. Nathaniel quickly bonded with her and loved the way that she became overexcited when she was petted and began to make high-pitched rumbling sounds (just like the tribles on the Star Trek episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles"), so he was quite distraught, so our son Shane let Nathaniel decide what we should do with Biseh's body. Since Shane and family live in a rented house, Nathaniel decided he would like to bury her under our tree and come visit her often. So, that is what we did, and that is what he does.

2. Meeting little tigers at a birthday party. Noelle and her roommate (who moved in after Ray died) recently adopted two tiger-striped kittens (orange tabbies, one each). One is named Angel, and I forget the name of the other one. (No, it is not Devil!) Not long after Ray, Noelle's husband of ten years, died, her cat, Prince Shadow, died. It was definitely not a good year for her last year. So, it is good to see that she has found a diversion and a way to love again, even if it is one of the smaller of God's creatures.

3. Old Mission stuff. Once a year Old Mission has a fiesta to raise money for various projects and needs. The Mahlou family is always one of the cleaning crews. We were the first crew this year because I had quite a surprise for that day. A few days earlier I got a call from a mutual friend who told me that the woman, Lida, with whom I had often stayed when I was doing consults in Uzbekistan in the 1990s, was in town, her first visit ever to the USA. She and her granddaughter and local relatives came to the fiesta, so for once I only worked for one shift and then enjoyed a very special day with a very special friend. (For more details, see my earlier blog about this: Our Amazing Modern World.) The following Sunday (last Sunday) was confirmation for the 16 kids who were in my catechism class last year. As is traditional, the bishop came for the confirmation, and the kids in my current class, hosted the cake and strawberries that were served in the mission gardens after Mass.

4. A threatening visit. Our office had quite a threatening visit from headquarters last week. An inspection team came for the purpose of deciding which of our branches/programs would be closed because of lack of money. (Yes, the economy is hurting us, too.) We all prepared assiduously, rehearsed our presentations multiple times with the CEO coming around and murder-boarding all of us senior leaders. We showcased our products and our people and opened the door to all our activities. Following our wonderful CEO's non-defensive attitude, we welcomed the team hospitably, and even held a very nice formal reception upon their arrival at the CEO's home. Well, by the end of the week, they said our programs were all super and they would look elsewhere for budget cutting. Yes!

5. Picnic with an enemy. I invited one of the people in our Washington office to a BBQ at our new home while he was visiting here with his family. We have had to coordinate closely over the past 18 months. Prior to that, he had worked here locally (about three years ago), and he and I were not on good terms. Actually, I was on okay terms. However, he and his supervisor did not like me much because I always "seemed to get [my] own way" when we disagreed on how things should be done. Essentially, I was simply concerned that my trainees got the best possible training, and I did know more about that particular kind of training than the two of them did -- but they were unwilling to admit that, did not have particularly good ideas for the training, but felt the need to "win" at all costs. In leaving the BBQ, my colleague noted, emotionally, how wonderful it had been to work together the past 18 months! I love it when enemies become friends -- and breaking bread together never hurts!

6. On Monday, I went up against our CEO's new staff action coordinator. I need to replace my assistant who is leaving on Tuesday, and the new SAC was unwilling to replace him. I would need to jump over him and go to the CEO if he did not budge, but first I had to deal with him. He spent an hour demeaning me, arrogantly making comments about what I do or do not need (he has not been introduced to any of my programs; he cannot possibly know what I need and do not need), pointing out that I was a poor leader because I had not replaced my assistant (but he is the one standing in the way of my replacing him; I pointed out that he was being disingenous, calling me out for not replacing him when he would not let me replace him; he stopped the berating for a minute at that, mainly, I think, because he did not know the meaning of disingenous), and otherwise trying to demonstrate that he was the #1 person for making decisions about what goes on in our organization (i.e. trying to wear his boss's position -- not the first time I was to encounter that this week). I really wanted to deck him, but fortunately there was a table between us! The bottom line is that I won, and the paperwork for my assistant has been submitted to headquarters -- but I am still trying to determine at what cost. At a formal ceremony yesterday, the SAC deliberately snubbed me. Not that I care, but it will be a long two years (the length of his appointment here) if we cannot work this out. While I would like to take aim at him, I guess I am going to have to do what I tell my junior managers to do: learn to love him since he, too, is God's child. Yeah, really, somewhere inside is that God-seed. I wonder how long it will be before I can remember this without deliberately reminding myself. I guess this requires more loving impossible people!

7. Insubordinate subordinates. Usually, I have no problem with subordinates, but this week something went really, truly awry, and I spent most of the past two days trying to bring peace back to my small part of the world. First, my budget manager submitted the budget changes for the remainder of the year without consulting with me; in doing so, he made some major decisions about expenditures and priorities that differ from what my philosophy is and decisions would have been. I had to pull the budget back, which, of course, embarrassed him. I also had to counsel him about not putting himself into my position, i.e. not wearing my hat. He argued for the decisions he had made, but I ultimately had to tell him that my opinion is the one that had final sway. He pouted but made the changes. Later, he wrote me a note of apology and promised to "stay in [his] lane" in the future. I hope this is a watershed experience because he has, at times, intimidated some of my senior managers by implying that he is speaking for me when he is not. Second, likewise, one of the center directors who works for one of the senior managers who works for me often intimidates his employees by referring to a personal friendship between him and me, implying that if they are not happy with his leadership, that is just too bad because no matter what I will be supporting him because of our personal friendship. I have counseled him on this before, noting that one must earn respect on one's own authority and that his orientation is very different from the servant leadership approach that I advocate. (Managers who are not familiar with servant leadership concepts might like to read some of the literature on the topic. This link contains a list of a number of helpful books: servant leadership books on Amazon.) The most blatant recent (yesterday) thing he did was to move, without asking, into the office beside me even before my deputy had finished packing out. He talked my deputy into letting him move in because his office was being remodeled. However, there is an office in another part of the building where his employees are located, but he prefers to rub elbows with the senior managers, which he is not, and that creates more problems between him and his employees. I had to tell him to move out, to move into the office with his employees, and, on Tuesday, the person will be serving temporarily as my deputy will move into that office. Meanwhile, yesterday his employees posted a sign on their office door that said, "la bastille." Obviously, he has created a hostile working environment, so now next week I am going to have to gather them all together along with the center director's supervisor (who works directly for me) and see if I can restore a reasonable working atmosphere. Sheesh!

And to make matters worst, at the end of a week that started not all that well (with my accidentally bringing a small, fliptop can of cat food [instead of tuna] for lunch and ended not all that well (with employees fleeing "la bastille" by none of those in that center showing up for work today), I picked up some fruit at our local grocery store this evening, and the bill came to $6.66. Not that I am superstitious!

Wishing you all a great weekend, including the upcoming Fourth of July holiday for those living in the USA.

Monday Morning Meditation #41: They Drew Up in Battle Formation

I barely stumbled past one additional chapter in I Chronicles this week before coming to sudden rest at a passage that speaks so much to the world situation today. The battle line described in chapter 19, verses 1-9 is not unlike the one I find myself constantly straddling in my work around the world, especially in my two previous jobs. In this passage, Nahash, King of the Ammonites, died and was succeeded by his son, Hanun. King David, to whom Nahash had shown kindness while alive, wanted to honor Nahash. So, he sent a delegation of men to Hanun to express condolences. Hanun, however, was suspicious, accused the men of being spies, dishonored them, and sent them back to Israeli territory. Thus, the Ammonites became a "stench in David's nostrils." Soon, both sides had drawn up in battle formation.



Reading: I Chronicles 19: 1-9.



Meditation: Oh, how well I understand the kind of misunderstanding that the Hanun and the Ammonites exhibited and the resultant dismay of David! I have felt this kind of dismay "on my hide," to use a Russian expression, which in this case is quite apropros.



Let's go back to the year 1984. At that time, the world was frozen into a state of Cold War between two super powers: the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Neither side trusted the other. On the USA side, we spoke of balance of power -- and we worked on ways of spying from the outside: from space. On the USSR, they spoke of parity -- and they worked on ways of spying from the inside: through seeding informants into American society. Battle lines were formed in spite of the rhetoric of peace and parity.



Most Americans are not aware that the Russians were as much concerned about America attacking it as Americans were about Russian attacks. I had the unique opportunity to be in Russia during the Cold War (multiple times and for long periods of time). I heard a Red Army general espouse the concepts of parity. I interacted with various peace committees; the vice president of one, Pyotr Volkovich, became a professional colleague and personal friend, and together we established one of the very first student exchanges and the very first one between Belarus and an American school district, in this case, Portland, Oregon. These were positive, learning experiences for me.



I also had a negative experience, one that immediately came to mind when I came across this Scripture reading. In the early 1980s, I was one of only a handful of American scholars allowed into the USSR for research and study. As Fulbright and IREX scholars, we were allowed foreign language classes. While I had already achieved an easy fluency in Russian, I was eager to take advantage of this wonderful benefit, especially since the University of Moscow language classes are some of the most effective in the world. The Department of Russian As a Foreign Language welcomed me and set me up for a placement test. Part of that test was a written essay on any topic of our choosing. Since my research project was Siberian dialects of Russian, about which I had already done as much research as possible in the USA, I decided to write about that. I quickly sketched out the relationship between the main dialectal groups and linguistic theories underlying dialect development, maturation, and deviation from the standard language over time. As I dashed off this information, the proctor's face took on a stormy expression that grew darker the more I wrote. As I approached the middle of the page, she suddenly grabbed the paper and ripped it away from me. To this day, I vividly remember the scratch my pen made across the rest of the paper as the paper flew out from under my hand. "A vy shto," she demanded to know, "shpionka?" (What are you, a spy?) While I considered the comment to be a compliment to my language skills, the reaction reflected the thinking of the times: any American totally fluent in Russian must be a spy. (We had similar concerns about Russians.) And there I sat looking at a battle line being drawn up and being very innocent of anything of which I might be accused. I was no more guilty than were David's men.



In my travels and jobs, I have lived primarily among America's so-called enemies. It was not always easy for me to see them as such. When I completed my dissertation defense in Moscow, I said something that people who were present have remembered to this day: "Ya snachala priekhala v Soyuz, chtoby posmotret' na litso vraga, no v techenie 20 let, ya ne nashla ni odnogo vraga, tol'ko druzej." (I first came to the Soviet Union to look upon the face of the enemy, but in 20 years I have not found one enemy, only friends.) That people would remember those words tells me how eager they were to be friends, not enemies.



One of my favorite memories from Russia (post-Soviet days) was dinner with the vice president of one university in Belarus. In the course of the dinner, we discovered that we had been counterparts during the Cold War. I had worked in the US Army as an officer specializing in USSR Order of Battle, and he had worked in the Red Army as an officer specializing in USA Order of Battle. Startled, he gasped, "You were my enemy," to which I replied, "and you were mine." He demurred, saying that he had been no one's enemy, to which I pointed out that neither had been I. (I have related the story, along with a couple similar ones, in greater detail here: Three Vignettes and One Thought about an Enemy.)



After the Cold War, I began to spend time in the "hot war" countries of the Middle East. Very quickly, the presence of similar misunderstandings became obvious. Our societies' structure, values, and expectations are so different that not having misunderstandings would be unusual. Add misunderstanding to distrust, and suddenly we have just what the situation is today: countries drawn up in battle formation.



These experiences -- those from today and the ones from the Old Testament -- point to the fact that our entire world needs to learn to trust. That trust is not going to spring up at the international level, however, unless it is cultivated at the interpersonal level, within families, within social organizations, even within our churches. In all of these places, one can find an astonishing lack of trust among people who are relatives, colleagues, and/or friends. If we cannot cultivate trust at the friend/colleague/relative level, how on earth are nations supposed to cultivate it at the foreigner/stranger level.



That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I must retire to private prayer to thank God for holding our world together for so long in spite of our attempts to pull it apart, to praise Him for all the examples of trust, mistrust, and love He has given us through His Word -- and His words of guidance to us, to repent for those times that I may have contributed to the development of mistrust on any level, and to ask Him to lead all of us into a world where people trust people and no battle lines are to be found. Now I retire to spend as much time as I can in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.



I will leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.



For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Monday Morning Meditation #28: I Have Met My Enemy, and He Is My Friend

This week I finished I Samuel and read all of II Samuel. I have no idea why I just kept reading, with nothing touching me as a possible topic for meditation. Then, I realized that the two books taken together, with the stories of Saul chasing after David hither and yon, most usually for the purpose of trying to kill him, and David chasing hither and yon after women, with frequent time taken out for battle, provided a rich sujet for pondering.



Reading: I & II Samuel



Meditation: My first reaction after reading all the battles of Saul and all the battles of David, of the killing, of the deception was "what a bloody time that was" and "thank God I live in the 21st century. Then the image of all the wars going on today came to mind: the wars in which the US involved, the civil wars going on, and even the personal enmities that appear among supposed friends and in families. We are not far from David's time at all.



Then my mind wandered back to the Cold War. At that time, I was serving in the military, first as a soldier, then later, having received a direct commission, as an officer. The propaganda machine on both sides of the Atlantic churned out hatred day and night -- Americans of Russians and Russians of Americans. Hatred, fear, misunderstanding, cultural loathing, and all manner of ill along the very lines related in the books of Samuel. So how far have we truly come in the development of humanity?



Two incidents come to mind when I ask that question and when I think of war. One was a story from WWII in Belarus that was related to me by a decendent of the woman who experienced the incident. The other happened to me personally. I related both a while back on Mahlou Musings but will repeat them in full here although they are a bit long.



(1) Belarus. During WWII, advancing German troops would burn down entire Belarusan communities. To escape detection, the citizens of the towns would flee to the surrounding swamps as the Germans approached. In one small village, a mother of many grabbed her children and fled, only to discover to her horror upon reaching the wooded swamp that she had inadvertently left her infant in his crib. She wanted to go back after him, but it was too late. The Germans were already at the edge of town, and the townspeople made the mother stay in the swamp for fear of her giving away their position to the German enemy. The mother wept for her lost infant for three days. When the Germans vacated, the townspeople returned to their razed town, hoping to rebuild it. The mother walked along with them, in the blackest of grief. As the townspeople reached the outskirts, they saw one house still standing, the house that contained the crib of the infant who had been left behind. The mother, hardly breathing as a result of overlapping waves of fear and hope that crushed the breath from her, rushed into the house. There in his crib was her infant, well fed and happy. A bottle was beside the baby, and next to the crib on a rocking chair, which had obviously been used to feed and comfort the infant, was a German soldier’s warm winter shawl. To the shawl was pinned a note: “To the mother of this beautiful child.”



(2) Mahlou. In a most fascinating way, I once came face to face with the so-called enemy. That meeting remains one of my favorite memories. It occurred in a restaurant in Minsk in 1993. I was helping Academicians from the Belarus Academy of Sciences bring knowledge of individual differences in approaches to learning to the new textbooks being prepared in the Belarus language for K-12 students in a variety of subjects following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the nationalization of curricula. The Humanities University gave us a place to work, and the president and vice-president took me and several other guests to dinner soon after my arrival. I sat catty-corner from Anatoly, the vice-president. For some reason, Anatoly and I began comparing our biographies and were stunned to learn that during the Cold War, I was an officer in the US Army and he an officer in the Red Army; we had both had the same specialty and held the same rank. For a brief moment, we stared at each other, then Tolya (after such a discovery, it was only natural that I would begin to use the nickname for Anatoly) exclaimed, “You were my enemy!”



“And you were mine,” I responded.



We marveled about this discovery until long after dinner had ended. How could it be that two people who seemed to understand each other s poluslova (from half a word), as the Russians say, had been directly targeted against each other in an earlier time? Both veterans of the Cold War, we found we had even more in common than our scholarship. Thereafter, every day Tolya would bring me candies or cookies for our break, and we would sit and marvel again at how strangely fate had wrapped our lives together — and that we had found it out. We shared no military secrets; there were really none of any value by then, anyway. What we shared was a new understanding of the word, enemy.



When it came time for me to leave, the Belarusans, as is typical of their culture, threw a parting party for me. Tolya kept jumping up with a toast and running over to hug or kiss me. This is not exceptionally unusual behavior except that Tolya was known to be an extreme introvert and rarely took part in toasting.



"What did you do to Tolya?" one faculty member asked me.



"I did nothing," I replied. "He took an enemy to dinner."



With the recent cooling off of relations between the USA and Belarus, Tolya has become locked away from me for now, perhaps even forever. Who knows when winds of politics will shift again? But now I know what lies behind the old Iron Curtain that is being drawn again between me and a land and people I came to know affectionately a decade ago. And for one bright and shining moment, I stood side by side in friendship with my enemy.



And that is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to repent for those times that I have thought of others, any others, as enemies, to thank God for giving me the unusual opportunity to meet my enemy in flesh and blood and find him to be a friend, and to give praise for the way in which He teaches His children. After that, I will spend time in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.



I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:



Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.



For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Thankful Thursday #4

This week has been full of high drama, trauma, and, of course, stress. As we move forward rapidly at work to fill the 100 new positions (yes! in this economy, this is great!) created in fields where it is very difficult to find people with the rare skills needed for somewhat esoteric positions, my boss, in very uncharacteristic fashion, has been attempting a level of micromanagement that I have never seen from him before. The most difficult part is that he will make a decision, step in and do the work, and then we will have to re-do it appropriately because he does not know all the needed details and makes mistakes that would put egg on his face if we did not quietly smooth out the wrinkles. He also took one of my subordinate supervisors to task for a relatively small error in judgment. I stepped in, told my subordinate not to respond, and then finessed the situation with my boss and afterward calmed the anxiety of my subordinate. I understand my boss's need for a sense of control right now: in the last five working days, we have had three videoconferences about the new, high-profile projects with our headquarters in Washington. Whether we succeed or fail, the international fallout will be significant. I prefer, of course, to succeed, and I feel confident that my folks can manage things if we are allowed the breathing space to get done what we need to do. At least, I thought that until I found out this morning that two key players had gone on leave without pushing through the hiring papers for people who need to begin work on January 4, leaving only a new semi-senior manager without the know-how to finish them up. I had no alternative: I called them both in off leave. Yep, drama, trauma, and stress!

God has blessed me with a great deputy and great senior managers -- people who are both competent and with whom I can speak freely and share both my emotional state and my spiritual dependence on God. I told my deputy this morning that sometimes these days the only way I make it through the day with my sanity, compassion (most of the time), and humor intact is through constant prayer. "Unceasing prayer," he responded. "Me, too."

That is precisely what I am grateful for this week: the people God has put into my life. Not only do I have competent people at work to whom I can delegate work and with whom I can defuse stress, not add to it, but also people who love and obey God and with whom, even in a secular work environment, I can talk about spiritual matters. They all are just fine with God coming to work with us -- and God does. I/we otherwise would not be able to accomplish what I/we do.

Beyond work, there are many wonderful people in my life who help God to keep me focused on the important things, including you, my blogger friends. Among the "locals" in my life are the members of my Monday night prayer group at the mission. The founder of the prayer group retired from directing it last year and asked me to take it over. Not feeling sufficiently competent to do so, I approached a friend who is a spiritual director to co-direct. I manage the logistics for which my extroversion is useful in organizing people, motivating them, and keeping them involved. He handles the content, and I learn from him just as much as everyone else does.

Then there is my life itself, for which I am highly grateful to God (even for the "messy" stuff like the horrific abuse during my early years for all that made me what I am today and developed an attitude of fortitude that I needed for the years I spent providing consultation in 23 countries to ministries of education, institutions, and organizations, for all the advocacy I had to do for my own children and the others, such as Shura, who came into my life, and for adequately supporting my subordinates in times like these when they are treated less kindly than one would like by nervous leaders in our organization.) The film, Joyex noel (highly recommended for Christmas season watching), which our prayer group, having gathered at my house for potluck, prayer, and a movie, watched this past Monday made me realize how God has filled my life with wonderfully special moments. In the movie, soldiers from three warring countries, who are dug into trenches a few hundred yards from each other, call a truce in order to celebrate Christmas with songs, mass (conducted by the Scottish chaplain), and burial of their dead. Sworn to be enemies by their governments, they become friends.

Likewise, years ago, during the Cold War, of which my daughter Lizzie and I are veterans, I contributed one drop in the river of peace that we now somewhat tentatively enjoy, or so I would like to think. At the time, being an American Army officer, I was the sworn enemy of the USSR. Over time, I came to know the Russians well and ultimately completed my PhD in Moscow. Ironically, it was the Russians, not the Americans, who enabled me to finish my education. So, sitting at a table with the vice-president of the Humanities University in Minsk, Belarus in 1993, I was flabbergasted to meet an enemy. Yes, truly, an enemy. You see, the vice-president had been an officer in the Red Army during the Cold War and, as such, was my sworn enemy. After the shock wore off, just like the soldiers in the film, Joyeux noel, the vice-president and I became friends. (A fuller version of the story is here on my Mahlou Musings blog.) To be allowed that encounter was extraordinary. The two of us found ourselves in one of those moments that can only be described as "larger than life." God has a way of moving us beyond the narrow confines of our daily routines, giving us a glimpse of His humanity untouched by the taint of human selfishness, governments' focus on self-continuation, or the silly-but-destructive hatred borne from fear of people who are not like us ethnically, racially, or religiously. For a brief moment in 1993, God let the two of us sense something beyond limited human existence; he let us see a bit of the divine in each other, that little God-seed that Meister Eckhart says is within each of us. That is something we both will remember forever and for which we will be eternally grateful.

More information about the Thankful Thursday meme can be found at the website of Grace Alone.