Considering Christian History and Culture at Christmastime

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Alienation and Attraction

It's practically guaranteed that if I had grown up Christian instead of Jewish, I'd have believed unflinchingly in Jesus as the Son of God. That's how I am as a Jew -- unquestioning of monotheism. I'm a loyal person to whatever I'm affiliated with; it's the best way I can explain it.

Growing up, I was taught to be wary of Christians, even as they were my neighbors and friends, because of the:

• Grand Commission, which compelled a number of Christians to proselytize, which always felt disrespectful, even though unwittingly, to my family, faith and me
• Crusades, Spanish Inquisition and Holocaust, not to mention the many other Christianity-affiliated (I wouldn't call them truly Christian) rulers who had ultimately exiled and/or killed Jews throughout history.

I've grown up ashamed that my parents weren't able to be more forgiving, or at a minimum, less suspicious, and also ashamed that their frame of reference informed mine, and at how hard it has been to let it go...and how I may never fully.

What bad timing and even poor taste to bring up any charged feelings about Christian history so near to Christmas! Here's what made me think of it:

• Pat recently described Christmastime to one of our Christian friends as the most alienating time of the year for Jews in this country, since it is not our holiday, but it is the holiday of a majority of the rest of the U.S., and her stark assessment resonated with me, so I needed to blog about my associations with Christian history and culture to clarify for myself how to deal with my alienation
• On Facebook, Sue Sena and I just connected. Sue is the head of a marvelous gay-straight alliance called Swish and before I saw her profile, which includes a quote from St. Theresa and a thumbs-up for the Gospel group, Mary Mary, who I *love*, I did not know of Sue's religious affiliation, "Protesting Catholic", and Christian in any case; it's Mary Mary's "Walking" that I love especially:
• Yesterday, Pat and I went to a Christian rock concert by accident, and it was mostly wonderful -- we didn't love *every* song, but not because of the theme, but just because not all were stellar; Pat ordered tickets for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO) in September, not considering that December would be a Christmas show and boy, was it! (It was also our first-ever hard rock/heavy metal concert):

Sue Sena and Trans-Siberian Orchestra are doing good in the world. Sue is helping further human rights and TSO gives a dollar of every ticket sold to a relatively local charity, every time they tour. Yesterday, they gave a check for more than $21,000 to a metro-NY children's hospital. At their best, religious people of every religion, I'm confident, do good in the world.

I fear that I sound like I'm trying to convince myself. Maybe it's because the chip on my shoulder has been there for 47 years, and still moves me compulsively to express suspicion periodically. For example, I was speaking with a couple of new colleagues by phone last week and one, who had a Christian-sounding name, mentioned that he had been in the U.S. Navy, in submarines, during Vietnam. I told him that my dad (z"l) had been in the U.S. Navy during WWII.

"I'm a bit of a World War II buff," he said. My knee-jerk thought was, Creepy! How can anyone who's not a Nazi-lover refer to himself as a "buff" in association with World War II?

Accordingly, I responded, "I'm a bit of a Holocaust buff, unfortunately," I said, "Being Jewish. I took a graduate-level course in it and have done tons of reading."

"Yes, what a terrible time in history," he said, and I regained rationality and felt like a kill-joy, as I realized then that he was likely thinking of the heroism of our military, having been in the military during a war himself. I guess that's the way I'm wired....

For the rest of this blog-post, I'd like to catalog more of what I've loved from Christian culture, in addition to Mary Mary and TSO because it doesn't feel good to feel alienated and because it reminds me that life, belief, faith and I are all complex. And I want to affiliate with what I love from it while not feeling paranoid that a proselytizer will pounce on me and try to show me how close I am to accepting Jesus. There's that shoulder-chip again!

"Some of My Best Friends/Memories/Literary Experiences Are..."

• Many friends, including Didi, Helene, Honeybee (aka Barbara), Mirja, Lisa, Jen, Rob, Clay, Stan, Jack, another Jack, Bernard, Stacy, Donna, Mia, Deb, Linda, Rahel, Esther, Joy, Pam, Suzanne, Jim, Chitra, Elizabeth, Paul, Tim, Rita, Jan, Donna and Lorraine are devoted Christians and whether we were friends especially in childhood, high school, college, when I lived in Chicago or through meeting at work, I'm fond of all of them and have enjoyed exchanges about our religions with each of them, though not having revealed -- before now -- to all of them my historical (and sometimes lingering) paranoia around the Grand Commission
• Being an angel among my nursery-school classmates, and each of us getting to pin an aluminum-foil-covered cardboard star to the stage-curtain during the school's Christmas pageant (before my parents switched me to a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school for 1st-8th grades); it was thrilling to add my star and to be in that winged angel costume, complete with halo, and I don't recall participating in as magical a pageant of any sort since
• Christmas mornings at Didi's and Helene's -- When I was a little kid, our neighbors graciously let me come over first thing to celebrate with them and I felt the specialness and totally included, and my parents were fine with my going there because when Didi came home from Catholic school and asked her mom, "How come the Jews killed Jesus?" her mom said, "Don't believe everything you hear," and so my mom trusted her forever based on her telling my mom the story and her response
• C.S. Lewis and Madeline L'Engle were two of my favorite authors since childhood; they had the best brand of magic -- and I never knew the New Testament metaphor of C.S. Lewis' series till adulthood, and then I read a number of his adult works that were explicitly religious and they comforted me hugely
• Falling in love with the writing of Flannery O'Connor and Thomas Merton in college; my favorite teacher in high school, Mr. McWilliams, introduced us to Flannery O'Connor and I included her "Good Country People" about a hypocritical and criminal Bible salesman in my senior thesis, and found Thomas Merton in an East-West comparative religion course
• Most recently, discovering Tonéx, a gay Gospel star who was rejected by the Church when he came out, especially this hit, which re-inspires me every time I hear it and makes me believe that God and I believe in my abilities. He sings, "There is no failure":

Please, God, release me from my Christian-wariness bias and let me purely enjoy the parts that appeal to me without feeling anxious that I'm betraying my own religion, or that I'm doing anything but finding new avenues for connections with more of humanity. Amen.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it!

Israel

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

For Israeli Family Photos, See Prior Blog Entry

Everyone on our tour, regardless of gender and sexual orientation, it seemed, including Pat and I, had a crush on the beautiful, brilliant, funny Odelia Shabi, our tour guide (above), who was proudly Yemenite. Abel Pann, one of Israel's premier 20th-century artists, used Yemenite models among others in his art, for example, this image above (see a larger version). If there were an Olympics for country tour guides, Odelia would take the Gold Medal for Israel. How much can I express Pat's and my adoration as fans before embarrassing ourselves, let alone Odelia?

Pat snapped this photo of me (above) looking happy and lovingly at her on our first evening in Jerusalem, when Shabbat was on the way shortly. I couldn't believe we were actually there, together finally. As I wrote in a prior blog-entry, during all of my previous stays in Israel, from 15 onward, I pursued romance with boys and girls and then men and women who might have loved Israel, but who did not love me. In this case, I was finally with someone who loved me back, if not yet who loved Israel. Perhaps for Pat, Israel would be like golf was for me; we always played together because I knew how enormously happy it made her to be on a golf course, but golf was not natively beloved to me.

These two photos (above) depicted Pat & me on our final night in Jerusalem and our fourth day in Israel, under nearly a full moon. If this was for Pat just like a round of golf was for me, then it was an atypical round, where we played the most beautiful, uncrowded course and where I had a hugely successful game and was buoyed by it...because that's how Pat seemed by then -- extraordinarily happy and sated. Or maybe Pat was still mostly loving that I loved Israel, and her extra selflessness released endorphins. I'm not sure which it was, and it didn't seem to matter, since both of us felt ultra-relaxed and pleased for whatever reason, even beyond how we feel, say, on a summer evening when we're rocking in our double rocker on the back-deck of our house.

Our first night in Jerusalem, which was our very first night in Israel together, we ate dinner at Cinematech, which was also the cool place to go in 1985-86, when I was a Hebrew University student for the year. It seemed out of reach to me then, as the place where kids with money went on dates, and I didn't have much of either back then. What a triumph to be having a romantic dinner with my wife Pat, ordering whatever I wanted on the menu and paying with our collective money. And then afterward, we caught a cab to the Kotel (Wall), to watch the dancing there (above). Since Pat & I are both women, unlike opposite-gender couples, we were able to approach the Wall together and touch it side-by-side, and to kiss the same spot of it. As we moved back from it, Pat snapped photos of gorgeous female Israeli soldiers dancing.

So much shame scattered to the winds, thank God; last time I was there at night, I was a 20 year old who felt the way I did in a Women's locker room, forcing myself to look at the ground while in the Women's section, and then who also felt impossibly awkward in the open plaza behind the prayer sections, where other young men and women stood together -- but not too closely, of course -- becoming acquainted.

Our friend Eleanor Horowitz (above, left) lives in Herzliya and is a lawyer and artist. Like me, she was a Freshman and Sophomore at the University of Michigan and also studied at Hebrew University during her Junior year. Unlike me, she stayed in Israel for her Senior year and graduated from Hebrew University, and made aliyah, also graduating from Hebrew U.'s Law school as well as studying at Bezalel, Israel's premier art school. She always seemed heroic to me -- one of the brave ones who flirted with aliyah during her Junior year abroad and then who actually made it.

Both of these books (above) are at the Mt. Scopus campus of Hebrew University, in the library where I hung out a lot as a student, and which I took Pat to visit during our one afternoon that we had free from the tour. The book with the cover in Hebrew is also by Flannery O'Connor; it's the collection of short stories, *A Good Man Is Hard to Find*, translated into Hebrew, and it has the story I chose to include in my Comparative Literature thesis upon my return to Ann Arbor, "Good Country People". I don't remember seeing that book when I found the peacock-covered one in 1986. Both could actually be from that time, since the covers of both have been reinforced with extra cardboard.

Flannery O'Connor was like a friend in Israel back then. "Good Country People" particularly gave me what I needed, a theme that mirrored my life at the time: My emphasis was on objects of desire, rather than on finding real love (and healthy desire) with a similarly-intentioned woman. The desires of Flannery O'Connor's protagonist, along with those of all of the women I compared among the four short stories of my thesis, were thwarted and ultimately damned. Cheery.

Imagine my gratification at returning with my wife Pat to the very place where everything seemed so unsettled and unsettling romantically and being able to stamp it with a happy ending. Here we are a couple of days later at the Dead Sea (above), being photographed by a lovely guy from the tour group, Ishaan.

Pat and I were fortunate to swim in six very different bodies of water during our time in Israel. On the Dead Sea, we floated like cork rafts amid heat of 40 degrees Celcius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit -- that was the *air* temperature and the water felt around the same. I need to update My Swimming Autobiography, but meanwhile, I'll mention the Kibbutz Lavi pool here (above). Prior to our arrival at Lavi, we had been hiking and sweating in Beit She'an, which is in a hotter part of the north. Picture our relief at entering this pool, which was indoors, but which had glass doors and giant windows all open to criss-crossing breezes. Other than a pool in a mountainous Madrid suburb, where I was lucky to swim during a business trip half a decade ago, it was the nicest pool I'd ever enjoyed.

Just as I commented to my American first cousin Sari, I keep thinking about accidents of birth: My mom's friend Chaya (above) is probably 90 years old and her parents and she were born in Israel; my mother will be 87 in November and she says that Chaya is a few years older than she.

Our friends Noga and Hilla (left and right, above) also were born in Israel. Hilla's parents came from Tunisia and then took the family to Canada for eight years, but then ultimately returned to Israel. And Noga's parents were from Poland and the Sudan. I need to resist idealizing Noga and Hilla and trying to turn them into symbols of an ideal Israeli couple. They are just another couple in the world, albeit an especially lovely one, trying to take care of their family and each other, just like Pat and I are trying to do...speaking of which, it's time to feed Phoebe and Toonces, our cats.

Nothing like children to bring me back to the present. Phoebe and Toonces are our feline daughters and this photo (above) is from the day we returned from Israel, after Pat cut a bunch of gladioli that had bloomed in our garden while we were away.

Purpose-filled Purpose

The postings on this site ares my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

My Own in the World

What I need to write about feels much more personal than revealing that one of my family just had a brush with cancer (which I did in recent postings); it's about continually searching for my purpose in the world.

I'm still searching for my ideal role. I do feel closer and closer to it, and I do feel that IBM has enabled me tremendous freedom in charting my contribution to the company and its clients and colleagues, yet the problem with vacations is that they provide extra time for reflection.

I'm coming off of a peak experience in terms of the leadership development mission I just advanced while in India, and I hope it's understandable that inevitably, I'd be wondering, How can I top that? How can I be my most useful and also my most creative in my next mission, which hasn't yet been announced, and so I cannot write about it.

It's fun, but daunting, to daydream about my purpose. Last April, one of my mentors suggested that I write my vision -- all in the present tense in service to the power of suggestion, in cases where I haven't yet achieved the item -- and here are excerpts from it:

• I am moved to laugh routinely and often, and to help others laugh
  
• I am spiritually connected to people, including people who seem different from me initially
  
• I transform these connections into art through writing that is appreciated worldwide, by thousands, or even millions
  
• My writing helps others and me, particularly to feel less lonely in our experience
  
• I have work that enables me to:
  
  
  
  • Meet interesting, kind people
    
  • Write reflectively
    
  • Lead
    
  • Be part of a profound mission
    
  • See the world
    
  • Give charity to causes I value
    
  • Afford more experiences and things that are high-quality, stylish and stimulating
    
  
  
• Along with physical exertion and self-expression...I become refreshed/recharged by appreciating as well as producing:
  
  
  
  • Visual art
    
  • Music
    
  • Reading.
    
  
  

Earlier today, I read an article on Flannery O'Connor from a past issue of "The New York Times" that I had left on my night-table prior to our departure for India, and it reminded me of an author's advice in her careers for creative people book; she suggested, for inspiration, also thinking of "a creator" whose creativity I admire. I love Flannery O'Connor! How can her creativity inform my future creativity?