Notes from a Conversation with a U.S. Soldier

Flying back to D.C. in February, I sat next to a woman who looked about my age dressed in full military fatigues. I am always curious about the experiences of our soldiers, and this young sergeant was so open and honest that I didn't hesitate to ask her questions for our entire flight. She had worked as a mechanic building explosive devices, but was now an interpreter. She was fluent in five languages and was deploying to Afghanistan in a few days. Here are some things we talked about.

Note: Please understand that I simply wish to share her thoughts here, which I don't believe she would mind me doing. I would issue the disclaimer that these statements do not reflect my opinion or that of the U.S. military. These are the thoughts and opinions of a single soldier and should not be read as sweeping generalizations.

I asked for her opinion about the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell." She responded that she did not think completely ending the policy was a good idea, but perhaps changing it would be. She was much more concerned about ending the "don't ask" portion of the policy than "don't tell." She explained her feeling that "don't ask" protects gay and lesbian soldiers from beatings and harassment that she felt would take place if officers were able to demand that soldiers reveal their sexual orientation. She said that she knew many gay and lesbian soldiers and that their sexual orientation was common knowledge despite the policy, and they were not treated differently as a consequence. However, she felt that this would not be the case in basic training. In her opinion, the policy should be preserved for basic training to protect gay and lesbian soldiers, and then done away with once the soldiers had reached a certain level of proficiency and discipline.

I asked her opinion about women serving in the military. To my surprise, she said she felt that combat was too stressful for many women to endure, though there were exceptions like herself. She felt that there should be more restrictions on women serving.

I told her I had heard about the very high levels of violence towards women in the U.S. military, and asked if she felt safe. She told me (accurately, I later found) that the prevalence of rape in the U.S. military is comparable with that of college campuses, and that this is the result of men being placed in the extremely high-stress conditions of combat. It was clear to me she didn't feel much fear of being harassed or abused.

I asked her opinion of the outcome of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She said that though the situation in Iraq was much more stable than Afghanistan, both conflicts were going to take much more time to resolve than she felt the general public understands. She said she felt a general peace in both regions could (and would) be accomplished, but it will take many, many decades and may never be possible without a U.S. presence.

I asked her whether she felt supported as a soldier by the American public and civilians like me. She said she felt very discouraged by claims that the war in Iraq was a "mistake," that it was "wrong" or "unwise." She explained how a few months ago her best friend had been killed in the very area she herself was shipping out to in a few days, and it frustrated and angered her to think that someone would claim her friend had died in service of a "mistake." I offered that those who oppose the war have her well-being in mind; they do not wish to see her and her friends killed in service of something they do not believe in. This did not seem to comfort her. This was probably the most striking part of the whole conversation to me, because I realized (and this is my opinion here) that to her, there was no "disagree with the war but support the troops." She had to believe in the nobility of the mission. But if this is what is required for her to feel that the American public supports her, it precludes that the American public never disagree with the military actions of their government once they've begun—which in light of America's military history (Vietnam being the go-to example) is essentially an indefensible position. I think it would be pretty unwise, even scary if the American public never expressed dissent with any ongoing U.S. military action, even in the name of supporting our soldiers. Nevertheless if I heard someone calling a mission I believed in, risked my life for, and my best friend had died in service to a "mistake," I cannot imagine how angry, disheartened, frustrated, even disgusted I would feel. There is a terrible impasse here.

She told me she was going through her second divorce, and it pained me to consider how difficult it must be to maintain relationships as a member of the military. She was from Massachusetts, and we talked about Massachusetts politics, Scott Brown and Ted Kennedy. She had owned a restaurant before she joined the armed forces, and we talked about the ramifications of the recent health care legislation for small businesses. When I shook her hand, told her good luck, and we deboarded together (I now wish I had told her I would be praying for her, as I have), I was left with the feeling I always receive from speaking with a member of the military, one of respect and awe at the conviction, endurance, and courage they possess which I doubt I ever will.

Image: expertinfantry

And Now, a Word from Our Sponsors

Over the years I have considered putting ads on my blog, but have resisted because I felt I would be essentially making money off of my friends, which I have a strong aversion to.

However, recently a few friends who read my blog have encouraged me to throw some ads up, saying they wouldn't mind them at all. They were kind enough to say they thought my content was worth it.

So I went for it. If I don't earn more than a few bucks, I'll take the ads down after a while. If you have a problem with them in any way, please let me know (in the comments or using the email link in the sidebar). Thanks.

Last Thoughts on LOST

I was going to begin this post with an apology for writing something as shallow as a review of a television series. But then I realized who am I kidding—this is a blog, and blogs were made for this sort of thing.

I will practice good netiquette here and warn you that the following contains spoilers. If you've never seen LOST, don't read this post. It won't be any fun.

There are only two TV series for which I've watched every episode: Arrested Development and LOST. I resisted LOST when it debuted because I hate the idea of my life revolving around a TV schedule, but so many of my very dear friends loved the show that last July Erin and I put the DVDs in our Netflix queue.

The first two seasons of the show completely blew me away. I had been skeptical of my friends' gushing over the show before, but I can honestly say those two seasons were the best television I've ever experienced. Moments like the raft launch and "we're gonna have to take the boy" are etched in my memory. I don't think I'll soon forget the scene where Jack, reeling from a life filled with attempts to fix others which blew up in his face, furiously beats Charlie's chest in a desperate, seemingly hopeless attempt to revive him while the rain pours down, the mud covers them, and Kate screams and pleads with him to stop. I'm getting chills just typing this. As all my friends claimed, the characters on the show were like none other. I was mesmerized in particular by John Locke's story of pain and rejection which was redeemed on the island. "Walkabout" remains my favorite episode of the series. The conflict between reason and faith personified in Jack and Locke deeply intrigued me as well, even if it was a little less than subtle.

The show declined a bit in season three, and then hit rock bottom for me in seasons four and five. There are many, many reasons; I won't go into all of them here. I think all that would serve to do is dishearten people who love the show and stoke the anger of those who dislike it. I'll just say I'm one of those folks who thinks the show's writers made up too much of the story as they went along, and as a consequence piled on more mystery than they could handle, eschewing the elements of a good story. I found it kindof appropriate that they chose to name an episode "Deus Ex Machina" while cramming so many of them into their storyline. I remain unconvinced that they decided the nature of the smoke monster until very late in the game, possibly between seasons five and six.

But the real trouble is that LOST was primarily a mystery, not a drama, and though the characters were fascinating they did not compensate fully for the swiss cheese plot—especially when the unique, character-specific flashbacks were ended in season four. I've never been one of those people who expects a story like this to be all tied up in a neat bow in the end, with nothing left to the imagination. I didn't expect to ever find out why the statue has four toes, why there's a bird on the island that screams Hurley's name, or why Desmond winds up naked after the hatch explosion. But to craft a good story the authors owed it more resolution than they gave. It killed my faith in the show that big questions which entire seasons revolved around (What is the meaning of the numbers and the source of their curse? What is the nature of Jacob's power? How are people healed by the island? Why are women unable to have children on the island? Why is Walt special? What was the nature of Ben and Widmore's duel?) were never resolved. Endlessly replacing mysteries with new mysteries is not storytelling.

And so we arrive at the finale, or as one reviewer called it, "Touched by a Desmond." Throughout season six and most of the finale I loved the flash-sideways storyline. I was intrigued by it, and I was hoping very much that it would turn out to be a flash forward, the result of the characters finding some way to actually change the past and confirm Juliet's claim that "it worked." (In retrospect, that would have been too easy—what can I say, I'm a sucker for happy endings.) The flashbacks which occurred when the characters met each other and remembered their history hit me hard every time, particularly Jack's. Watching all the scenes where he rushed to save someone in rapid succession was such an emotional, inspiring moment. I briefly remembered why I had been so drawn to this series in the first place. When, a day after the finale, it hit me that Juliet unplugging and re-plugging the vending machine was a metaphor for Jack unplugging and re-plugging the island, I was downright giddy.

Unfortunately this emotional high was killed in the troubling final reveal that Jack is dead, and the sideways world is some type of purgatory invented by the characters for them to find each other and "let go." While this may have served as some conciliation to others, giving the audience the reunion they longed for by killing everyone off and letting them find each other in a pluralistic netherworld just didn't do it for me. Seeing Claire and Charlie marry or watching Sun and Jin experience their baby's first steps is not the same thing as seeing Jack and Kate hold hands and walk into the "great light." At best, this resolution was a poor attempt at spiritual depth which treated religion with the same disrespect that was shown to science in seasons four/five (with human "constants" and truth serums and hydrogen bombs which fit into backpacks). At worst, it was simply a cop-out. Throwing random bits of religion together in a post-mortem cast reunion does not make a show spiritual any more than naming its characters after philosophers makes it philosophical. I felt let down. I think many of us did.

So I'm inclined to just ignore the sideways story and focus entirely on the island timeline, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The battle between Jack and Esau, Jack and Kate's goodbye... even Lapidus' survival and the duct tape repair of a 747 were great moments. Matthew Fox sold the final scenes with better acting than he's displayed in any other episode. I have a lot of respect for the writers' decision to kill off four of its major protagonists, including its hero, in the last season. Not many television shows have that kind of bravery; I was fully expecting them to come back to life somehow. And no one can deny the beauty of Jack's story coming full circle in the end.

Yet, without the sideways world, the story of LOST is an incredible tragedy. Jack, Sayid, Sun, Jin, Juliet, Charlie, and Locke are killed without ever being able to be with the ones they love for any substantial period of time. And what did they die for? To save the island and its magic light hole—a ridiculous MacGuffin introduced two episodes before the end of the series. Why the writers think I give crap about the damn island and its light hole, I'll never understand. If LOST is truly the character-driven show that its fans claim it is, how can it sacrifice these beloved characters to a preposterous plot device? I fell in love with Jack and Locke's characters over six seasons; I want to see them live together somehow or failing that, at least not die alone in the name of a"light which is in all of us" that just showed up a few hours ago. Yes, the castaways were brought to the island for a purpose, but tragically that purpose had no meaning.

As another reviewer expertly pointed out, Jack turned out to be quite wrong when he said "all of this matters."

So the show ended on a sour note for me, the culmination of a three-season sour symphony. Still, I want it to be understood that I don't hate the show, and I would never tell anyone who loves it that their feelings are invalid. It's a very uncharitable thing to tell your friend that something he/she loves is dumb, and I think LOST was far from dumb. In every season's premier and finale (and a few times in between) the show soared. I laughed hard when Hurley tried to explain his adventures to his mom. I felt like someone kicked me in the stomach when Sun shrieked at the loss of her husband (employing some of the best acting I've ever seen on television). I remember my heart jumping when Jack turned to Kate and just flat-out told her he loved her. I remember so many exciting moments of surprise (the hatch's inhabitant reveal, the book club reveal, the Henry Gale reveal, the "we have to go back" reveal). Because I loved the show's stories, it does break my heart that so many of them were left unfinished—but that doesn't mean I didn't have a lot of fun watching, particularly in the first three seasons. There's no hate here, only disappointment, and honestly, a bit of relief to no longer have so much to be curious about.

In the end, it's just a TV show, and the fact that I just wrote 1,400 words about it proves it was extraordinary.

Images: Anthony Geoffrey

Joshua James – "Coal War"

Heard this song on a Paste sampler, and it served as the perfect anthem for a recent reunion roadtrip my brother Drew Norris and I took. Drew had heard it before in this awesome mix.

I confess, many times I do wish I could close my eyes 'til we all get to see.

Joshua James – "Coal War"

Quotes: Conservatives, the Constitution, and Having Two Feet

"The average person has less than two feet." Dr. Bryan Buckley, explaining the pitfalls of poor statistics

"The Constitution does not oblige government to avoid any public acknowledgment of religion's role in society." Justice Anthony Kennedy

"Intellectual conservatives aren't in politics, they're in business." Some guy on the internet

The Folks Behind the Things You Use

Since college I have designed electronics for two companies. When I arrived at my second company a year ago, I found they were using a product made by my first company. After a few months I started using this product to do some testing.

This was a somewhat surreal experience for me, because I knew this product. I had been in meetings about it. I had looked at its design documents; I knew exactly how it worked; I knew what all the parts were and where they were purchased; I knew how it was manufactured and tested. I knew the guy who designed it, the guy who purchased the parts for it, the gal who designed the label, the guy who assembled and tested it, the guy who put it in a box and shipped it. I knew everyone who had a hand in its creation.

Sitting at my desk thinking about this one day, I started looking around at all the things in my office and thinking about all the hundreds of people who were behind them. My phone, my computer, my calculator... Hundreds and hundreds of people like me, pouring over each element of their design, agonizing about how to solve their problems and make them better.

Ever wonder why early CD's were 74 minutes long? It's an odd number, don't you think? I always thought it was due to some technical reason, but the original playing time of a CD was 60 minutes. Sony vice-president Norio Ōga suggested extending the capacity to 74 minutes to accommodate Wilhelm Furtwängler's recording of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Symphony Number Nine" from the 1951 Bayreuth Festival. No joke.

Stories like this are everywhere. Bill Bryson recently published a book called At Home: A Short History of Private Life which contains several of them. The Guardian is currently publishing excerpts from the book every week, about everything from beds to toilets to the electric light. There are dramatic stories of hard work, struggle, failure, and success behind everything you use.

One such story is told below in one of my favorite comics from the beloved webcomic xkcd. Its author, Randall Munroe, always leaves a little comment which pops up when you hover over his comics with your mouse. The comment for this comic reads, "You can look at practically any part of anything man-made around you and think, 'some engineer was frustrated while designing this.' It's a little human connection."

Yes it is.

XKCD: Long Light

What Refugees Cannot Believe About America

I heard this on the radio last week and I have to share it here since I couldn't find an article about it anywhere.

The following is a list of things refugees from foreign countries heard about American life but simply could not believe until they came here and experienced it for themselves.

• Some people are more fat than you can imagine.
• Kissing and showing affection in public is normal.
• When people get old their children send them to nursing homes to live.
• When people go to the beach they dress up in swimsuits that look like underwear.
• People kiss their dogs.
• People decorate their houses with lots of lights and decorations at Christmastime.
• Men date other men.
• People don't follow soccer.
• People sleep in bed with their cats.
• Ordinary people who aren't police officers or soldiers go into stores, buy guns, and carry them around.
• People without homes sleep in parks and on the street. If you don't pay your rent you will be thrown out on the street too.

The Heroine in Haiti

I know I mentioned this a couple posts ago, but my sister Jessica is spending ten days in Haiti serving as a nurse. She's writing daily about her experiences on her blog here, and if you're interested in what it's like to experience the situation there first hand I think you would enjoy following along, even if you don't know her. Her posts are short and focus on simply recording what's happening. Processing what she's going through I'm sure will come later. My eyes have been glued to the screen reading them.

If you're a praying man or woman, I would ask you to pray for her, her team, and the people of Haiti. The hospital there is in desperate need of education, organization, and supplies.

Here is a picture of Jessica helping an earthquake victim:

Here is a picture of a young boy whose life Jessica helped save her first day:

One Degree of Hitler with Glenn Beck

I have a short list of crazy Glenn Beck video clips that I've been collecting for a post explaining how Beck's ideology represents everything that's wrong with the far right. But last night I saw this video, highlighting Beck's ever-present, reductio ad hitlerum arguments, which just sums it up perfectly. If ever this man's incoherent fear-mongering was perfectly and hilariously displayed, it is here:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black - Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

The Daily Show: Back in Black - Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's

Redemption Surrounds Us

Over the last few weeks a particular idea has been popping up in my day to day life in different places. It's the idea that as Christians, we are called to be a part of the current, ongoing redemption of the world which has been taking place since the resurrection. I've touched on it here before. Here are a few places it has shown up:

• This past week I contributed a post to a friend's blog about "bringing to the world the shape of the gospel" in your vocation, as discussed in N.T. Wright's The Challenge of Easter. The whole book (and from what I hear, much of Wright's work) centers around the idea of ongoing redemption.
• Last weekend I got to see my sister (the artist)'s senior project in interior design. She redesigned an abandoned cotton mill in Athens, Ga into an affordable housing community where folks would own their own apartment but share common areas including a kitchen, living room, library, study, workroom, laundry facility, TV/seating area, and dining area. Her vision was for this arrangement to foster a community of support for the folks who lived there, as they lived life together.
• My other sister (the heroine) is spending 10 days in Haiti serving as a nurse. Within hours of her arrival she helped perform emergency surgery on a two-year-old. 
• I recently found a 2009 study which suggests that world poverty is declining faster than we think, and predicts that barring a catastrophe, never again in the future history of the world will there be more than 1 billion people living in poverty. 
• A good friend shared an article from The Economist with me which shows that the proportion of the world's urban population living in slums has fallen dramatically over the last a decade.
• I read a convincing 1994 article from Wired Magazine which introduces researcher Julian Simon, nicknamed "the Doomslayer," who from the early 80's until his death in 1998 spent his life attacking commonly-believed prophesies of doom. His analysis concluded and accurately predicted that Malthusian predictions of unsustainable population growth and the consequential depletion and destruction of natural resources were just flat wrong.

I just can't shake this growing feeling that despite all our present darkness we have reason to hope.

Image: banksy

Top 5 Things Which Have Recently Blown My Mind

1. A 2009 study by economics researchers at MIT and Columbia University found that from 1970 to 2006, the percentage of people living on less than $1 a day (in 2000 dollars) fell by 64%. The study also found that inequality in the world distribution of income fell greatly over this period, and predicted that barring a catastrophe, never again in the future history of the world will there be more than 1 billion people living in poverty. The study contradicts findings by the World Bank and the United Nations.

2. From 2006 until last month, up to 140 registered sex offenders were forced to live under a bridge in Miami after being released from prison because of a law preventing sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of any location where children congregate, including schools, parks, or homeless shelters. The Florida Department of Corrections threatened to jail released offenders if they did not sleep under the bridge, and sent officers to make sure they did so. The Florida DMV issued driver's licenses to the released offenders listing the bridge as their address. The controversial 2,500 feet law was written and pushed through the legislature by a powerful lobbyist whose daughter was the victim of a sex crime.

3. William Dement, the retired dean of sleep studies at Stanford University, a co-discoverer of REM sleep, and co-founder of the Stanford Sleep Medicine Center has stated that after 50 years of research, as far as he knows,  "the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy." All birds and mammals sleep, but no one knows precisely why—sleep has been called "the greatest mistake evolution ever made." In a 2002 experiment, researchers kept lab rats awake by dumping them in tanks every time they fell asleep. All the rats that received this treatment died within two weeks, but after performing autopsies, researchers could find absolutely nothing wrong with them. Similarly, an extremely rare genetic disease in humans called Fatal Familial Insomnia slowly inhibits the sufferer's ability to sleep over the course of a year. As the name suggests, it always ends in death—but no one knows from what.

4. In 1799, a 21-year-old scientist named Humphry Davy published a paper regarding his discovery that laughing gas could be used as an anesthetic. His finding was ignored for 40 years because at the time doctors felt pain helped them polish their surgical skills (screaming being a prompt to cut fast and accurately), and believed pain was proof that the body was rebounding, fighting back and healing itself.

5. Much as they did to Centennial Olympic Park bombing suspect Robert Jewell, from 2001 to 2008 the media and the FBI destroyed the life of a man falsely accused of sending letters laced with anthrax to politicians.

I Love You, Mom

Happy Mother's Day, mom. I'm sorry I haven't written more here about what an incredible woman you are.

The Jesus Pitch

The most influential teaching I've ever received on the subject of evangelism came the first time I met a friend and former pastor of mine, Nathan Elmore. He had undertaken the task of hosting a conversation about evangelism at a leaders retreat I attended for my church. Nathan is a wonderful preacher, but his gifts really shine in a conversational setting.

He started by playing the following two clips from a little-known play turned film called The Big Kahuna. The three characters in the film are representatives for a company which sells industrial lubricants. They have been sent to a conference together. Before the clip below begins, the youngest of the reps, Bob, is sent out to talk to a CEO from one of their company's biggest accounts. When he returns, Bob announces that he and the CEO did not discuss lubricants, but instead Bob shared his faith with him.

No need to watch past 4:50 on this one.

I won't rehash what is said in the clip, but it's safe to say when Nathan shared this it had a profound impact on me. In the ensuing discussion, Nathan led me and my fellow leaders through a thoughtful conversation about how evangelism without love is a sales pitch, and that perhaps the call of the Christian is to love our neighbors, and let evangelism happen as those we love ask us about our spirituality, rather than us pushing it on them.

For the most part this is the type of evangelism I've been attempting to live out my whole life. I have rarely actively tried to "share my faith" with those who don't believe as I do, but rather tried to love them as best I can. I have fallen short many times.

Yet I must admit this method (if you want to call it a method) yields slow results (if you want to call them results). My sister the heroine has been on trips with the Christian college organization Campus Outreach during which she actively shared her faith with strangers on the beach. A few of those she talked to actually prayed with her to become Christians. If even one of those who did made their decision in earnest, my sister will possibly (even probably) have been a part of more people deciding to follow Christ than I have. It's hard to see how never actively sharing your faith could lead to more people finding Jesus than actively doing so.

This concern was echoed in an episode of This American Life I listened to back in November, when host Ira Glass (a self-professed staunch atheist) interviewed evangelical Jim Henderson, who advocates a brand of evangelism that reflects the ideas in The Big Kahuna—if you want to share your faith, love and serve your neighbor first. In the interview Glass expressed a lot of skepticism, calling Henderson's brand of evangelism "all bait and no switch." Ironically that seems more like a compliment than a criticism.

It's a hard question to answer, if actively sharing your faith is more effective than simply loving people. But as I am one of those Christians who bristles at the words "effective," "method," and "results" being applied to faith, I am inclined to continue my path towards what Henderson calls "doable evangelism"—loving my neighbor as best I can and hoping Christ chooses to me to come alongside them when questions about faith arise. I am still a little unsure if this is the best way to evangelize. But I am sure that it is the one that feels the most honest and the most loving to me.

Quotes: Reality, Wealth, and Letters from God

"We have an impulse to conform reality to theory." Marilynne Robinson via Winn

"I continually find it necessary to guard against that natural love of wealth and grandeur which prompts us always, when we come to apply our general doctrine to our own case, to claim an exception." William Wilberforce

"I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go
Others will punctually come for ever and ever." Walt Whitman via Amy

My Contribution to an Easter Conversation

As I mentioned here a few weeks ago, my dear friend Winn Collier is hosting an Easter conversation centered around N.T. Wright's The Challenge of Easter on his blog at blog.winncollier.com. He has invited different authors to comment on a chapter from the book each week. For some inexplicably gracious reason, Winn invited me to be one of them. My contribution on the final chapter of the book went live this morning. Funny enough, it relates to a topic I've written about here many times: the Search.

Here are the appropriate links:

Justin Scott – Ch 5, "Retaining and Forgiving Sins"
Miska Collier – Ch 4, "The Light of the World"
John Blase – Ch 3, "The Gospel Accounts"
Juli Kalbaugh – Ch 2, "Paul, the Resurrection, and the Messianic Movement"
Nathan Elmore – Ch 1, "The Question of Jesus' Resurrection"
Winn Collier – Introduction
Introduction to the contributors

I think Winn is planning to write a concluding post next week, so check back next Monday.

If you've missed out on the conversation so far, it's easy to catch up. You can buy the book on Amazon for a paltry six bucks. It's very short; you could read the whole thing in one sitting no problem. But whether you've read the book or not, I would encourage you to jump in the conversation taking place in the comments on the posts above.

(Oh and please pardon the mess here, I'm trying out Blogger's new template designer.)