America, get over thyself

I was out lunching with a former teaching colleague today and ran into another teacher at the school who is currently on paternity leave. He and another guy, clearly on paternity leave as well, were sitting at the table across from us with their baby sons. Apart from thinking for the umpteenth time how enjoyable it is to observe young dads spending time with their kids, it occurred to me that this scene, while I’ve grown used to it since moving to Europe, would be such a rarity in the United States (outside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn at least). The supposedly ‘greatest country in the world’…. 

Please misunderstand me correctly: I love the United States. While I’m perfectly content with being an ex-pat, I still love visiting the land of toilet seat covers and Trader Joe’s and mint chocolate chip ice cream. But please hear me when I say this: America is not the greatest country in the world. Despite its plethora of options and opportunity, it is an acutely dysfunctional society on a number of levels. As someone who’s been living abroad for nine years, I feel I can say with some authority that there is no such thing as THE greatest country in the world. There are many great countries, as well as many rubbish ones, and each place insinuates itself into your heart and psyche, for better or worse. 

For six years my paycheck has shown a 30% chunk of my salary going to the government. That’s a pretty big chunk. But I’ve also completed a Master’s degree without paying any tuition, I’ve received medical attention when I’ve needed it without having to sell my soul for cash to pay for it, and had I been born in Sweden, both my parents would’ve been able to spend a year at home with me without fear of losing their jobs. 

I love that in Sweden parents gets a full year of parental leave, during which they still receive a portion of their salary and are guaranteed the same job upon returning to work. Yes, this requires higher taxes to keep such a generous system afloat, but this is something I’m happy to pay taxes for, even though I may never have children myself. Society as a whole benefits from parents (and especially fathers) spending time with their young children, and since we’re all in this together it seems a worthy investment. Of course there are aspects about work culture in Sweden that I don’t like, but the parental leave thing is a serious win in my book. 

Selfishly, my biggest reason for not wanting to return to the States is the issue of vacation. Because I really love vacation, as does any well-adjusted human being. It is a European standard to provide employees with 30 days of paid holiday, because really, how much can you possibly get done in the relaxation department on only one week of vacation (or if you’re a really loyal employee maybe even two weeks)? It could take a person a full week to just stop thinking about work, let alone relax. I think this is nonsense. 

A more controversial aspect is the question of state-provided healthcare. I’ve not enjoyed my experiences of waiting for hours to see a doctor the few times I’ve been to the emergency room, but I’ve certainly appreciated being able to afford to see the doctor when I don’t know what’s going on in my body. I cannot adequately put into words how angry I get over health insurance providers refusing to cover medical expenses when it’s the sole reason health insurance providers exist. Yes, such companies should be allowed to make a profit in order to pay their employees, but in no world should they be an outlet for big business. 

Don’t even get me started on the right to bear arms. Most people outside of the United States think Americans are total fools with regards to this question, and I have a hard time defending my compatriots. If you want my opinion on guns, read previous blog post: http://annikagreco.blogspot.se/2016/01/am-i-my-brothers-keeper.html 

Also, Trump.

America is a country in which veterans are not properly honored (oh yes, we copiously honor them with our lips, but when it comes to dishing out in order to properly take care of them, we contract attention deficit disorder). America is a country in which mothers have to return to work just three months after pushing a human being through their vaginas, regardless of whether or not they’ve been able to physically and emotionally recover. America is a country in which fathers only get two weeks to be at home with their newborns. Two weeks!!! America is a country that stubbornly insists on bearing arms even though we haven’t fought an actual war on our soil since the mid-1800s. America is a country in which people die unnecessarily from treatable illnesses despite us having some of the most advanced medical technology in the world because they can’t afford to pay a year’s salary for the privilege of living. America is a country in which young adults are digging their own financial graves because they're told that college education is necessary to get a decent job. America is a country in which irresponsible banks get bailed out by the government while families lose their homes and life savings, a country in which the most despicable financial crooks avoid jail while a potentially innocent man gets shot because he’s black. 

The nation who values its privileges over its principles soon loses both (I believe that was Eisenhower?). Well America, that’s about to happen. If I have to listen to another politician wax poetic about American ‘freedom’ and ‘greatness’ I am going to seriously lose my sh*t. There are a lot of things that make our country great, ABSOLUTELY, but our self-congratulatory arrogance poorly masks our poverty of conviction and integrity, and it will soon be our downfall. Ironically we won’t be able to blame it on any terrorist organization or ISIS jihadist as it will be entirely of our own doing. 

The other side

I am 31 one years old, highly educated and well-traveled but currently unemployed and living with my parents….again. I suppose I just described your average millennial…sigh. My excuse is that I am ‘in transition’, currently living between three countries, my life packed up in boxes, impatiently waiting for the light to turn green. For now though, I’m seeing a lot of yellow. 

The difficulty of being in transition - I find - is that it’s hard to know what you don’t know. The other difficulty is no longer having an address. For example, I return to Sweden in a few days for a three-week visit. That’s what it is now: a visit. I suspect it will feel surreal - staying at a friend’s house because my apartment isn't mine anymore; going back to all things familiar yet feeling like a stranger. I’ll spend time with my friends, frequent my favorite restaurants and cafes, jog my usual route, catch up with my old students and teaching colleagues…and it should feel like home - except that I’m just a visitor now. 

Sweden is my past. It’s where I figured out who I was and experienced the best season of my life thus far. But it’s no longer my home. Spain is my present. Here I have a church, a familiar community, my parents… But this isn’t my home. Lebanon is my future. It’s where my (soon to be) job, apartment and tribe are. It will be my home. But I’m still waiting at a yellow light. 

I hate being in transition. It sucks in major ways. But I know there are so many good things waiting for me on the other side. However long this transition period lasts, the best is still to come. Beautiful sunsets are to be had no matter where I am. 

The sunsets of my:

Past

Present

Future

When "Love thy enemy" gets real

Imagine holding your ten month old son in your arms and your unborn daughter in your belly, a horizontal line of AK47s pointed at you, crying out to God to let you die before you see your family killed in front of your eyes. Imagine being plagued by nightmares for months and years afterwards, not being able to hear the enemy’s dialect of your own language without suffering an anxiety attack. Now imagine showing love to these same people as they flood back into your country only ten years after having left it. The woman whose story this is was literally seconds away from being executed by Syrian soldiers on the very last day of the Lebanese war. For six years she battled acute fear of anyone speaking Arabic with a Syrian accent. Now she serves among the refugee community living in Beirut, helping Syrian mothers access healthcare and register their kids in school, listening to their own stories of war trauma. She is loving her enemy - because Jesus told her to.

“I don’t like Syrians. If a Christian Lebanese tells you he likes Syrians, he is most likely lying.” The man who, very bluntly, said this to me grew up under Syrian occupation and, during his college years, took to the streets to protest the regime that had oppressed his countrymen for 15 years (and that’s not counting the 15 years of actual civil strife). Today he happens to be the director of one of the only organizations in Lebanon reaching out to Syrian youths who find themselves stuck indefinitely in a (to them) hostile country. He’s made it his personal mission to reach out to the 53% of Syrian youth who feel unsafe in Lebanon, to the 41% who feel suicidal, to the 94% percent who are not in school. He is loving his enemy - because Jesus told him to. 

Multiply these stories by a few thousand and you start to get an idea of what it’s like to be a follower of Christ in Lebanon. When Jesus said “Love thy enemy,” he wasn’t talking about the annoying neighbor across the street who lets his dog poop on your lawn. The divided, tribal nature of Middle Eastern culture is not one a westerner can begin to understand unless he/she visits the region. Western believers like to think, consciously or not, that we invented Christianity and that our sanitized interpretations of Jesus’ words are the right ones, forgetting that Jesus said those words here, in the Middle East. I, a white western woman, have no idea what it’s like to love my enemy, because I have never truly had an enemy. Would I be so exuberant in my love for Jesus if it meant serving the very people who were about to kill me and my family? The very people who played a significant hand in tearing my country to shreds?

“I’m so thankful God doesn’t answer all of my prayers, because with my little faith, I prayed to die before my family did. But God said, ‘No. I want to give you more than that.’’’ This woman knows what it is to love her enemy. She has lived the cost of following Jesus. 

Oh that I may someday have that same faith, grace and compassion. 

Letters from a tent community

The YFC staff do a monthly outreach to Syrian kids living in refugee tent communities in the Bekaa Valley. The kids get bussed in from the camps for a half day of games, and you can tell this is something they really look forward to. They've lived through trauma and God knows what manners of abuse, but these resilient kids find joy in simple things. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Beirut Diary - The issue of statelessness

How many nationalities do you have? I have two, and they allow me to live and work anywhere in the United States and the European Union. With these documents, I’ve been able to get into any country I’ve wanted. And not just that, I’ve been able to get a job, open a bank account, attend university, access healthcare and get a driver’s license in more than one country. Deciding which nationality to keep and which to discard is a choice I sincerely hope I never have to make. 

But what if I were stateless? I wouldn’t have been able to do any of these things. I’ve never properly thought about it before, but without citizenship, you don’t have the right to have rights. You can’t leave the country, you can’t register your marriage or the birth of your children, you can’t obtain legal employment, do banking, attend school, access healthcare, vote…. You are essentially invisible and voiceless. 

There are circa 15 million people who are stateless in the world today. Many of these are war refugees who lost their papers in the process of fleeing their homes. Others are whole ethnic groups who are rejected by their nations - for example the Rohingya of Burma whose recently elected liberal progressive president won’t even mention them by name - not to mention the Palestinians who continue to be stateless as long as a State of Palestine is not recognized by the international community. Still others are generationally stateless. Since many countries (27 to be exact, Lebanon included) do not allow the mother to pass on her citizenship to her kids, it’s up to the father to do so. But what happens when the father doesn’t have his documents in order? Or he is absent? Or dead? Stateless kids grow up to be stateless adults who have stateless children. 

Part of what makes this problem so frustrating and asinine is that technically, this is a question of paperwork. In a matter of weeks, nations could issue documents to all of its stateless members and clear up this mess. Also, as a new friend of mine recently pointed out, a really easy thing would be to add the words “and women” to a nation’s policy. This would allow mothers to pass on their citizenship to their children, thereby solving the problem for a huge number of people. This is so doable. But as long as there is a lack of political will, it won’t get done. 

I feel powerless to do anything. I’m not in a position to change national policy. But what we ‘regular folk’ can do is put pressure on our global leaders. There is an #ibelong campaign being forged by UNHCR. If you’re interested, you can sign the petition here: http://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/ . I hope I see the end of this dilemma in my lifetime. 

Climb every mountain

Upon reading the title of this post, did you immediately think of Mother Superior in The Sound of Music singing this song for a distraught Maria? Well, I am currently feeling in need of some holy Mother Superior exhortation. 

First, let me brag a little bit (and then you’ll see where I’m going with this). I’ve just recently finished a Master of Science complete with a 60-page thesis and a defense of said thesis, all of which I managed to survive just fine. I chose a risky topic to write about and I had no idea if I was going to be able to pull it off as it involved, among other things, a quick trip to Rome to maybe hopefully potentially converse with people I knew nothing about, based solely on a suggestion by a person I’d known for a grand total of two days. It also involved executing a case study on Ghana and interviewing locals without actually traveling to Ghana or knowing any locals. But since I’m busy living in the favor of God, I pulled the whole thing off in eight weeks. A challenge? Sure. 

…but a giant piece of cake compared to the seemingly insurmountable feat of obtaining a Swedish driver’s license. Hands down the most challenging mental exercise I’ve had to do in at least a decade, if ever (and I’m including the SATs in there). I’ve been doing these online practice tests to prep for the theory exam, and I’m to the point of having to sit with the blasted manual in my hand as I answer the questions because they’re just too freaking confusing - and I STILL get the answers wrong. My nerves are fraying. I am swearing trilingually. I am irritated. And discouraged. And stressed out. Because of course I decide to finally get my license when I only have a couple of months to get it done, time and money being very scarce. My fellow Americans reading this are probably wondering why in the world a couple of months is a short amount of time to get a driver’s license. Well let me tell you. 

In Sweden, getting your driver’s license is about as lengthy and expensive a process as getting a college degree. And not just any degree - I’m talking a triple major in Physics, Traffic Law and Environmental Sciences. I thought driving was about following the basic rule and making sure you don’t kill anybody. But now I have to know how to answer questions like “By how much is motive energy reduced, and therefore the braking distance, if you reduce your speed from 100 kph to 50 kph?” Also important is knowing how many wildlife are killed by automobiles every year. And which one out of the alternatives nitric oxide, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide causes respiratory problems. 

For someone who spent a week doing Driver’s Ed in high school before going to the DMV to do the theory test and spend 15 minutes driving around the block before paying max $20 to get the plastic card that signified freedom, it is ridiculous to me the number of hoops I am expected to jump through to prove that I am worthy of the same freedom on this side of the pond. I mean, I get that there is no international agreement between the U.S. and Sweden with regards to drivers' licenses, but who do Swedes think they are? (Apparently world leaders in traffic safety, but whatever.) 

For the simple reason that I prefer to spend €700 on a trip to somewhere fun rather than on a driver’s license I don’t urgently need, I’ve put it off year after year. But since I’m in a major life transition at the moment and don’t know where the next season will deposit me or what it will require, I’ve gritted my teeth and decided to just get it done. So here I am, trying to answer questions like “If you’re going at 90 kph, how many meters do you travel in one second?” and “If you reduce your speed by half, how much have you reduced your kinetic energy?” 

If Mother Superior were here now, I bet she’d say “Oh Annika, you can’t escape your problems - you have to face them. Get on it girl. Climb that mountain. Then maybe, just maybe, they’ll let you drive down it.”

"On parenting" revisited

As a fantastic and unexpected conclusion to my time here in Lidköping, I’ve been handed one last teaching stint to wrap up the final months of the school year. I love being back, I love seeing my old students (who are now graduating!!), and I love meeting and interacting with new ones. But man, I’m reminded of why teaching is so hard. Not because the work load is so heavy or because all of the demands placed on you are so stressful. It is and they are, but I find a way to deal with it and remain joyful. No, teaching is hard because it gives you a forecast of what the future is going to be like. Although there are a number of students who give me tremendous hope, there are even more who give me great cause for concern. These students don’t have delinquent tendencies or bad morals - in fact, they often come from good families with solid values. But for some reason, they are unable to cope. With expectations, with pressure, with life - I don’t even know. 

I feel like I sound like a really old person when I say this, but when I was in school, I don’t remember ever hearing of a fellow student getting out of performing a speech or making a presentation or handing in an assignment simply because they had anxiety or stress or whatever. When I was in school, we got the assignment done, even if it meant standing in front of the class feeling really nervous and afraid of totally bombing it. Because everybody had to do it. It was a part of life. 

A few years ago I wrote a post called “On parenting” (http://annikagreco.blogspot.se/2014/01/on-parenting.html) in which I decried the deplorable lack of discipline I was seeing in my students (I may have ranted just a bit…). A couple of years later this hasn't changed, but I've noticed the level of stress and anxiety among students has increased (at least in Sweden it has become a psychological phenomenon). 

Case in point: One of my groups was assigned a speech to perform in front of the whole class with today being the due date. Now I know it's scary and that some people have serious anxiety about getting up in front of a big group and delivering a speech. I get it. I’ve been that person. But it’s part of life! No matter what kind of job you have in the future or what kind of activities you engage in, you will at some point or other have to hold your own in front of other people. A classroom setting is a perfectly soft way to ease into it. But kids these days wig out, they buckle under pressure, they get anxiety attacks and can’t cope with the thought of not being absolutely perfect. God forbid they should fail to get the highest grade or have to display their nervousness for all to see. Of course I'm generalizing, but clearly there is something seriously wrong with the way kids are being raised these days. I am very concerned. 

Which makes me want to go on another rant: 

Parents. You have got. To toughen. Up. Your kids. And when I say “toughen up,” I don’t mean make them sleep out in the cold or beat them with a stick or send them to boot camp (though God knows that could be useful). I mean teach them to handle disappointment, to overcome their fears, to manage their time and prioritize. This is not the teacher’s job. This is your job. Teach them self worth and confidence. Encourage them to aim high and go big, but let them know that they will always be loved because of who they are and not what they accomplish. Even as I write this I feel like it sounds soooo cliché, but clearly there is a disconnect somewhere. Here I’ve got kids who have had six class periods to work on this speech (six!!!) and were given the deadline in good time. And still, several of them just couldn’t seem to get their act together and pleaded with me this morning to let them go next time when I’d already made it clear that because of time constraints we needed to have as many go today as possible. Now I will have to rearrange my schedule in order to give them a chance to give their speech outside of regular class time. I shake my head. 

Teaching is really hard because it gives you a forecast of what the future is going to be like. If we have a generation who can’t cope with pressure, what does that say about the future of our economic system? Of our politics? Of our social and moral fabric? Young people who can’t cope with pressure become insecure leaders who can’t cope with conflict. If you read the history books, you’ll see that an insecure leader is just about the most dangerous thing out there. Start connecting the dots. 

Am I my brother's keeper?

Maybe I’m just feeling fed up with corruption and evil and deception and greed and this is making me more sensitive than usual towards the absurd idiocy of several prominent (Republican) politicians, but I am about to throw a chair through a glass window. Which I know would not be a constructive use of my rage. So instead I’m going to take to the page and try to gather my thoughts. 

First, some disclosure: My political ideology leans towards the right and will probably always do so, even though I would rush to join a more moderate political party if such a one existed in the United States. I am staunchly pro-life. I am also a Christian. I don’t support gay marriage. I oppose abortion. I also disagree with the death penalty. And I hate guns. 

But what I hate even more than the things I just mentioned are inconsistency, injustice, corruption and preying on the vulnerable. 

I have friends, dear friends, who I know disagree with some of the views I’m about to lay out, and that’s okay. I’m not trying to pick a fight. I just really need to say this: Consistency matters. It matters a whole lot. Because without it, we lose our credibility. We lose our authority, we lose our conviction, and with that the ability to fight the evil we profess to hate. 

I am pro-life because I believe that life is a good thing. It is something that is given by God and it is up to us to steward the gift of life in the best way possible. The most basic human right is the right to live. You can argue that education and nutrition and healthcare and free speech and all the rest of it are also legitimate human rights (and I wouldn’t disagree with you), but none of these matter if you’re dead. Hence, life. 

This worldview informs all of my beliefs. And herein lies the importance of consistency. If I adopt a pro-life stance on the issue of abortion because I believe that taking the life of unborn children robs them of their chance at life, that’s admirable. But life certainly doesn’t end at birth. If we who are ‘pro-lifers’ care about not taking the life of an unborn child, then we should also care about not taking the life of a convicted criminal. Not because the criminal doesn’t deserve to die, but because it’s not our place to take away life. Truthfully, there are a number of individuals, and not just criminals, that I would very much like to send straight to hell right now if I could. But it wouldn’t be my place. For those who read the Bible, it says in Romans 12:19 “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.” Additionally, it behooves us to remember that all of us deserve to die; we’re all guilty of wrongdoing in some form or another, but God has chosen to give us life anyway. As long as there is life, there is the chance of redemption. It’s not up to us humans to decide who gets to live and who gets to die. Because I am aware of who I am in relation to my Creator, this is a line I dare not cross. Therefore my pro-life stance cannot support the idea of the death penalty. 

And now to what actually inspired this conniption fit: I applaud, loudly and fiercely, President Obama’s executive move to tighten gun control laws. He’s not taking away our right to bear arms. He’s not even changing any laws. He’s just trying to dust off the ones that already exist. And what makes me so irate to the point of wanting to cry, vomit, crawl under my bed and disappear, and throw chairs through glass windows is the fact that Republican politicians, including presidential candidates (of whom most are professing Christians and pro-lifers!!!!!!) are SO QUICK to point fingers and say that watch out, he’s trying to take away your freedom people! 

Obama wants to 1) require background checks for all gun sellers and get rid of current exemptions (which seems perfectly reasonable and is something most Americans are in favor of anyway), 2) states to provide information on people disqualified from buying guns due to mental illness or domestic violence (I feel safer already), 3) an increased FBI workforce to process background checks (an acceptable expense - and hey, that would even create more jobs and improve the economy!), 4) improve mental healthcare in the US (um yes, please and thank you), and 5) explore smart gun technology to improve gun safety (tell me, how does that decrease my freedoms?). 

So my question is, why all the outrage? How can this possibly be a bad thing? Why are Republicans crying foul? And more troubling to me, why are Christians complaining about losing their ‘freedom’? We have an idolatry problem!! And this idolatry problem has blinded us to the real, sinister enemy. Money and corruption are what’s managing this whole ‘right to bear arms’ debate. The gun lobby has the money, it has corrupted our politicians, and it has planted and fed the seed of rebellion in millions of minds and hearts. Why are we not outraged? 

I am absolutely convinced that corruption is the single biggest threat to life there is. Corruption impedes justice. It preys on the vulnerable. It destroys our credibility. It weakens our convictions. It cancels our authority. It short-circuits the mechanisms that were put in place to make sure people could live their lives well. Why are we not outraged? 

Personally, I would go further and ask why we have allowed fear to rule us? And now I’m speaking primarily to people who profess Christ, who are also some of the staunchest second amendment advocates I know. What has us thinking that the most moderate check on gun laws will inevitably lead to the federal government taking everyone’s guns away (or whatever the hell it is that we’re so afraid of)? That oh-so-holy amendment was written in a time when war was literally being fought in people’s back yards. The point then was to stand up to the tyrant that was England and each person essentially became a soldier in order to protect his or her land. That era ended. Like, a really long time ago. We haven’t had a legitimate war waged on our soil for over 150 years. We don’t need to be soldiers anymore. So how about some progress and adaptation? I really don’t see how we can justify swapping the tyrant that was England for a new tyrant that is the gun lobby and be perfectly okay with that. If we really are Christians, then what have we to fear? “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love and a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7) Could it be that we’ve lost power because of our inconsistency? Do we love enough to abstain from taking advantage of our ‘freedom’ when we see how much it hurts others? And whatever happened to our sound mind? 

At the very beginning of the human story is a pair of brothers, Cain and Abel. Cain got mad one day because he felt God wasn’t respecting his ‘freedom’ to offer whichever sacrifice he wanted, so he took his rage out on his brother and killed him. And when the Lord confronted him, he shrugged and said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” 

Well people, we have evidently not progressed at all since then. Because here we are, a hundred thousand something years later, asking the same question “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The answer is YES. We have always been our brother’s keeper. No man is an island. We are human beings together. And if circumstances show that a certain personal liberty is being abused over and over and over again to the detriment of society, then maybe we can have some generosity of spirit and say hey, maybe I can be willing to forego this freedom for a time in order to look out for my brother. This is what being pro-life is about, guys. It’s about life. 

On the nature of hope

2015 was a pretty crap year for the world. Terrorist attacks, unhinged migration, atrocious persecution of people groups, alarming climate-change forecasts, wars upon wars in the Middle East, Donald Trump…. 

Fortunately, 2015 was not nearly as mean to me, but it did give me cause to shed (quite a few) more tears than usual. There was pain, disappointment, confusion, constraint, elation, apprehension, optimism, gratefulness, amazement. One of my very favorite lines of poetry was written by Ghalib, a Turkish-Indian poet from the 19th century: “All my self-possession is self-delusion; what violent effort to maintain this nonchalance!” I totally get what he means. Historically I’ve preferred to deny the fact that I’m a very emotional person, but I’m in my thirties now. I just don’t have that kind of energy anymore. So I felt my way through all of it. 

Upon reflection, I think I can condense my entire emotional journey from this past year into one word: hope. 

Hope is a tricky concept. It’s framed as a positive thing, but in my experience, hope inherently implies being stuck in a holding pattern. It implies discontent. It implies restlessness. One of the biggest problems I have with hope is that it hurts. It keeps me impatient. And it keeps me vulnerable. The line separating hope from disappointment is a very fine one. The harder I hold on to the former, the more I risk experiencing the latter. This is not a comfortable place to be in. 

Hope is paradoxical. It is pain, risk, uncertainty. It is also the expectation of something better, which in turn produces joy. Great joy. Exuberantly great joy. In the middle of a shit storm, hope is what keeps me going more than anything else. It’s this expectation of something better that gets me to the other side. Just as great reward necessitates great risk, great expectation necessitates great hope.

Let hope be the defining word for 2016.