Robbed Again!

Padre Julio, about whom I have blogged previously, Skyped me from Colombia this morning. He had been robbed again -- the second time in three months that someone broke into his car and took everything. This time the thief took both Fr. Julio's personal computer and the computer that belongs to the organization he founded, Por Amor a Los Ninos de Colombia (For Love of the Children of Colombia). It had recently happened, and I guess when he Skpyed me, he was at an Internet cafe, trying to figure out his next step and wondering where and when the good from this would come about!

I suppose I am a fairly appropriate person with whom to share this kind of news. After all, in addition to my regular muggings, I have been robbed on a few occasions. The first time washed away any sentimental affiliation with things. We had moved from Montana to South Carolina, where I was undergoing my initial military training, and had then gone on to California, where I was to be permanently stationed. (Of course, in the military one must realize that a "permanent change of station" is anywhere in length from six months to three years -- so much for permanence.) While I was in South Carolina, we had left many of our possessions, including my wedding ring (long story), in storage in Montana. After the move to California, I asked for annual leave, and we made a difficult and long trip back to Montana through the snowed-in Sawtooth Mountains, over which we had to creep with our tires in chains, only to find out that everything had been stolen. There was absolutely nothing left. Bit by bit, we replaced everything, except the wedding ring. I do not wear one to this day, but most people know immediately that I am married. There have been other times, each with its own special characteristics, but the most recent was finding upon return from two years in Jordan that our RV, in which we had been living in an isolated area on a mountain river in rural California and which we had left in the possession of a neighbor, had been broken into and everything stolen, including the door from the refrigerator, the air conditioning (leaving a hole in the roof), and all the wiring. The neighbor, it turned out, was wanted for kidnapping (her own child, in a divorced situation) in Louisiana and had been forced to return there. And then there was the house that we lost. We had rented out our primary residence when we moved from Pennsylvania to Washington, DC years ago. For years, the tenants paid the rent, taking out any money they needed for repairs, and renting out a second apartment that was part of the house and keeping the rent in exchange for taking care of the property. It was a great arrangement until they suddenly went incommunicado and stopped paying rent. Our attorney learned that the father, the sole breadwinner, had lost his job and was on welfare but had not conveyed that to us (perhaps we could have worked something out). When the attorney told the tenants to pay the back taxes or leave, they left, taking everything they could, including things that belonged to us. Then, to make sure that there was nothing left, they took an axe and broke every window and chopped down all the stairs. Oh, well, it was only a house.

Any time I might consider that I have problems, I recall the life of my best friend from college. Coping with a bubble baby (no immune system) and a child recently diagnosed with diabetes, together with a husband dying from cancer for whom doctors held little hope, she locked her house and left for her home city where the doctors were better able to treat her husband and her mother could help with her two children. Six months later, she returned with her husband in remission, planning to continue on with her not-so-easy life and found her house ransacked. Nothing of any value, including sentimental value, had been left. (The whole story is rather long and has an amusing, well, at least, a lighter, outcome; I have posted it on Mahlou Musings.)

I think the moral to these stories is that life is too short and too complicated to worry about possessions. Possessions, in the long run, do not really matter. (I don't think that is just the Franciscan me speaking. I think it is really true.) In the long run, we may never recover our possessions, but, in my experience, God will somehow turn these experiences into something that is good or something that gives good: good from bad, the story of my life and of the lives of many people I know.

Our earthly goods may be taken from us, in my case over and over. But that is not important. Our soul cannot be taken from us; we have to give it away of our own free will. Our hope cannot be taken from us; we have to give up on our own for God will always hold out to us a branch of hope. Our happiness cannot be taken from us for while we may not be able to control what is done to us, we can control how we react to it (as the aphorism goes).

Sure, I have been robbed, but I choose to let those things go, forgotten in past days that I am not going to relive, anyway. I choose happiness. Always. My happiness does not lie in having good things. It does not even lie in having good news. Rather, my happiness lies in the fact that the universe is bigger than I, that God is greater than I, and that, as we are told, all things will work together for our good. That does not mean that my life has no sorrow. Certainly, it does. Considerably much of it, truth be told. However, sorrow does not preclude happiness, just as happiness does not preclude sorrow.

The robberies I experienced gave me a very different outlook on life -- a more positive one and one less burdened with the need for things (now I can use more of my money to help others because I no longer feel a need to "buy" fine surroundings). The robbery my friend experienced led her, too, through the intervention that she sought, to the ability to cope with three difficult medical situations, and today both children have outgrown their medical problems and are married adults with families and her husband is still in remission from cancer. Good in the long term is something to be anticipated for Padre Julio as well. In the short term, however, please pray for him and the children of Palomar.

Muggable Me

Some people are huggable, but me, well, I am muggable. I've been mugged in some of the supposedly safest places in the world: Moscow (Russia), Urbana (Illinois), and Amman (Jordan).



In Moscow, it happened at Kropotkinskaya Metro Station. I was on my way to see a friend and stopped to don my coat as I exited the frosty metro station that had been warmed by a massive blanket of bodies that moved in flowing ripples out of the train, up the long, rapid escalator, and out into the cold Russian fall. I just put my purse down for a moment, a bad habit born in the days of the crime-free Soviet Union, and there went my exposed wallet. I did not even see who took it. So, there I was, with all the money I had in the world at the moment gone.

I met my friend outside, and we walked together to the nearby militia station. There I presented my passport, and one of the two militia on duty at the time tried to copy the information onto the document needed to record the crime. However, he could not read the English. "Would you like me to help?" I asked.

He agreed to the help and gave me a table to work at. After filling out the document, I was instructed that I had to write out the details in an open-form "zhaloba podpolkovniku militsii" (letter of complaint to the lieutenant colonel of the police force). So, I wrote. As I wrote, the militiaman who had been reading over my shoulder looked over at his partner across the room. "Akh," he said, "kak gramotno ona pishet" (Oh, how educated her writing is!)

I had to try very hard not to laugh. There is a Russian joke about why the militia always works in groups of three (one certainly does see this grouping frequently): one can write, one can read, and the third likes to be among educated folks. Here we were, a living example of that joke: I could write, the militaman looking over my shoulder could read, and the third apparently liked to be among educated people!

After we left the militia station, my friend loaned me ten rubles to make it through a day or two. Soon, others heard what happened, and they, too, stepped forward with a few rubles here and there -- plenty enough for me for the duration of my stay. None of them had much money, but they liberally shared what they had. Americans stepped forward, too. I was in town with several colleagues, all senior professionals in our field, where at the time I was junior, to attend an international conference. One of them opened his wallet and said, "Take whatever you need; your credit is good with me." I took nothing; I had enough rubles. I did thank him -- more for his trust than the offer of money. However, when we were at the airport on our way back, one of the Americans slipped a $20 bill into my pocket and said, "No arguments; you will need American money as soon as you reach New York. Pay it back when you get home." It was almost worth being ripped off to learn a part of the culture (how the militia works) that I would never otherwise have seen and, more important, to learn what compassionate friends I had!

Meanwhile, the lieutenant colonel from the police force came to my hotel room and berated me, telling me that I had been in Russia often enough to be considered a "resident" and should have known better than to look away from my wallet. Well, yes, in Russia perhaps, but it was only 1990 and I was still used to the Soviet Union. His words, though, confirmed another widely held belief by my Russian friends: the Soviet government knows everything about everyone. Amazingly, I got my wallet back with credit cards minus, of course, the money, further supporting the notion of the efficiency of the police and of reputation of Moscow as a safe city. This was in the days before cell phones, so I had sent a telegram to Donnie, my husband, to report my credit cards stolen. As with my previous experiences with telegrams sent to/from the Soviet Union, I arrived home in time to intercept the message when it appeared two days later.


The second mugging happened 13 years later in quiet Urbana, Illinois. It was the evening before the Lake Homan wedding of Lizzie, my daughter, and Blaine, the young man who had come to live with us 12 years earlier. As I walked alone across a parking lot to join the others who were already in the restaurant for dinner, I felt everything around me go pale blue and pleasantly warm. It took me a minute to realize what had happened. I had been tazered by a thief who had grabbed my purse, and by the time I realized this, was half-way across the parking lot and moving at a full run. No way to catch him.

The Urbana police were less interested and less thorough than their counterparts in Moscow and never caught the thief. A bank south of Urbana helped me out. A branch of my own bank, they were able to get my signature faxed to them and let me write a counter check for travel funds. So, I had money, but I still had a problem: I had to fly to NY for a short meeting with a UN committee and then back to California, and I had no ID. A quick survey of my memories brought to mind an organization I worked for in Washington DC that kept a photocopy of my passport on file in order to get me visas when they needed to send me abroad. I called them, and they faxed a copy to the hotel. That photocopy and the police report allowed me to travel and allowed a bank and an organization the chance to show compassion. The mugging had no bad effect on the next-day wedding, and I was even able to add a line about the mugging to a comical poem I had written as as a toast at the reception.


The last mugging took place four years ago in Amman, Jordan. It was an early evening during the month of Ramadan, right after nightfall, and I was walking with Donnie on back roads to the campus of the university where I worked as academic dean at the time. During Ramadan, we held evening classes after iftar, the meal that occurred after the sun set, the breaking of the day-long fast that Islam requires of all healthy Muslims and other people living and working in a Muslim country. A car drove by slowly, and the driver put his head out of the window, as if to ask for directions. When I approached to see what he needed, he grabbed my purse from my shoulder and sped off.

So, once again I found myself at a police station in a foreign country to report a crime. Unfortunately, my Arabic is not as good as my Russian, and I ended up calling the university for help. "Don't worry," I was told, "Adel is on the way there to translate for you." How interesting! Adel did not speak English. However, he turned out to be the perfect "translator" since he was able to interpret from shrty-Arabic (police-Arabic) to Beth-Arabic. Our having worked together for two years, he as head of security and I as head of academics, had created the ability to communicate in more than just rudimentary ways. Another advantage? He had been the chief of police in Cairo, Egypt and knew exactly what the police should be doing -- and made sure that they did everything possible for "Doktora Beth."

While being mugged is a far cry from a pleasant experience -- one feels violated in some sense -- the memories are not entirely negative because of the compassion that flowed from it in each location. I suppose some might ask why God did not prevent the muggings to begin with. My view of that (I admit my limited understanding of how God works) is that if free will has been put in place, then God cannot and should not always intervene. If we are protected from every possible negative, i.e. if our life is always under control, then when do we get to have free will? When do we get to experience the rich chaos and drama of life? When do we get to see any of the miracles of daily life when God does intervene. (Again, I don't presume to understand why those instances happen, either.) There is an awe that comes from being a part of situations where God turns individual bad into widespread good; where God shows us the good in the bad; where God lets us be us and learn about each other, about the best and the worst of life, and about the Divine, from our experiences; in short, when God trusts us to understand, at least a little.