Just as we grapple with ourselves and others when our behavior does not reflect our belief system or when we pledge our allegiance or align ourselves with organizations that exhibit inconsistencies, isn’t it a wee bit liberating to realize that we have not come upon something new in ourselves. Or in our world.

It is a part of the human condition. While we have ideals…. Ideologies. Aspirations. Hopes. Dreams. Fantasies. All of these! When history is written--our own history, even--it will be written. Not based on what we wanted or dreamed for. Nor on what we believed. The facts of history will be only what we actually did. About how we translated out our beliefs into action. Our courage will be measured by those who follow us, using standards and values that may be very different from what we hold today. Scary as that may seem.

While recently standing in line next to me, a lady expressed alarm at the book I was reading. It didn’t surprise me, after we began a congenial conversation because of the book cover, to discover that she was from a very fundamentalist church.

The title of the book was An Imperfect God by Henry Wiencek. If my new acquaintance had not been so focused on the title, she would have immediately noticed the picture and subtitle that clearly indicate the book to be about George Washington. Wiencek wasn’t writing about theology at all, but about the way Americans have been led to make the first President into something of a perfect god.

Truth is, Washington was plagued with a nagging internal conflict. Like all internal conflicts, it grew when he didn’t find a way to fully resolve it. It was played out, in fact, even after his death. By his heirs who conspired to go against their grandfather’s clearly written will that would set his slaves free.  Diminishing the estate, of course.

The conflict was between his role as a slave holder and the fact that he espoused “liberty for all.” Even as he held a position of influence in his church, so devoted to keeping the status quo that protected the institution of slavery!

Ironically, these paradoxical forces interfered greatly with this founding father’s pursuit of happiness.

Poverty and weakness are not virtues. Courage is. Of the three, only courage allows us to find real power, the kind that moves mountains and transforms lives, starting with our own.

For 2008, I’ve decided to set my goals less around projects to be accomplished and more around specific people with whom I want to connect. That’s a change for me, I confess.

No doubt the projects will align themselves around the people. There will definitely be some goals that will be project-oriented, like getting closets built in rooms where there never have been closets, in our house that will soon have it’s 100^th birthday. 

My tendency is to put off making connections with people until I get my projects in order. Perhaps I will make some progress in reversing that mode of operation this year. I hope so.

Jews are, first and foremost, a political entity. They are a convenient target. Just as “the weaker sex” and children are convenient targets of violence. Things get much more complicated when theological “reasons” are given to justify violence against a weaker group, especially when the aggressor considers it’s enemies to be much more than the ones they can so easily scapegoat.

I see such a strong parallel here to the fundamentalist Arabs who see themselves as people appointed by God to fight “the infidels.” A strong parallel, that is, with the ideological aggression that is coming from fundamentalist Christianity that sees the majority of the world as “infidels.” Both are deeply offensive and hold rigid beliefs. Beliefs that, ironically, are steeped in theologies that codify oppression--gender oppression, racial oppression, and often exhibit these in a frightening nationalism that seems blind to larger truths and scientific or educational processes that show respect for “the infidels.”

Power, in itself, is not evil. It is the misuse of power that is.

Individuals and institutions alike have power failure when that power is either abused or ignored. The former is a sin of commission. The latter a sin of omission.

When we run ourselves down or too easily accept that there is nothing we can do, that is as much power failure as the abuse of power.

Wisse says that there is a danger in accepting one’s state of powerlessness, as much as in resisting an oppressive power.  I would add that this is especially true if we see the powerlessness as permanent or inevitable when it is not.  All of these are forms of denial, just as much as denying trauma.

While resisting or protesting can have dire consequences that are obvious, withdrawing from the struggle and simply accepting “fate,” believing that there are no choices and underestimating one’s individual power, can also be self-destructive.

Adaptation, in itself, is a means of survival. Yet, ideally, it should not be a permanent way of life.

Survivors often blend in and adapt, on the surface appearing not to be phased by the past. Nor to be phased by the present stigmatization. Like Jews, it’s possible to even romanticize the state of powerlessness. While it’s okay to realize that life has been impacted and changed, sometimes even for the better, because of having faced the past, it is not okay to ignore the difficulty one has faced in getting there. To ignore or minimize the challenges is to put oneself at danger of not recognizing present threats to living life to its fullest.  The result can be a lot of new power outages because we fail to see the "faulty wiring" in our daily lives.

Jews have, through the centuries, been forced to adapt in places where they were rendered powerless. They did it by striking bargains with powerful leaders in order to maintain their way of life. Sort of a state of hibernation. Laying low and finding ways to keep their culture alive. This strategy made them often appear to be doing great, even as they lived under the thumb of oppression.

On the other hand, at times Jews have become the oppressors. Zionists certainly would not see it that way; but the news bears out  the many times when blatant aggression, especially in recent decades, has occurred.

Jews and Arabs aren’t different from the rest of humanity. All of us have a tendency to be very egocentric. We selectively focus on what’s in our best interest and are prone to ignore others’ needs. Rationalizing how we’ve been ignored by others or neglected. What’s powerfully obvious, however, as we examine the history in the Middle East, is that both groups evoke their perception of being uniquely blessed by God and abused by their enemies.

How does one argue with people who are so sure that they are selected as God’s most highly chosen? The power is one that is self-proclaimed, and the belief systems of both are amazingly contagious and intergenerational. As well as dangerous.

You may be asking what this has to do with survivors of sexual and domestic violence, especially in regard to collusion within the faith community. A lot! Please join me in thinking on these things.