mormor is now with the Lord since 1 1/2 hour.  all went well. beautiful!

Mormor (Swedish for mother’s mother) is the affectionate name we called Anne-Marie Magnusson (1926-2012), Katarina’s beloved mother.  She finally lost her year-long battle with cancer on 31 October 2012.  Anne-Marie  died surrounded by her husband Rune and three of her four adult children ( Katarina, Jonas, and Anne-Lena).  She left behind 15 grand children, and 4 great grand children… and dozens of friends and admirers.   To know her was to lover her.

Anne-Marie’s funeral on 15 November was a celebration of a life well lived.  Her kindness, wisdom, diligence, faithfulness, and sense of humor earned her great respect.   I knew her as my mother-in-law for 28 years and she was the best.  She didn’t think much of my mother-in-law jokes but she was the most amazing mother-in-law a man could ever ask for.    Anne-Marie visited us often (but not too often) when we lived overseas for 25 years.  :-)

She was kind-hearted and hard working.  Anne-Marie was a master crafts woman on the loom and with needle point not to mention she made the best bullar (Swedish cinnamon roles) ever.  I will greatly miss you dearest mormor!  Thank you for a life well lived.  You are an example to all of us.  Your son, Scott

The enormous difficulties

What is enough to get the job done?  Of course, no one really knows and I am wary of those who think they do.   But certainly we need to think longer-term than we do currently.  The whole system of ‘aid work’ seems to play against itself.  Consider that a 12-month employment contract is considered a long-term contract in most of the humanitarian aid sector. One study showed that the average MSF and International Red Cross aid contracts were less than 12 months.   But how can aid workers engage in dialog, learn culture, learn language, understand the complexities of poverty, and develop friendships with victims and program beneficiaries with such  short-term employment contracts?

But the broken ‘system’ may be a reflection of our broken ‘self’ as much as anything else.    There is a saying (probably Celtic) that that resonates with me:  ”Changed people change people”

I wonder if before we sit down to solve the world’s poverty problems that each of us would take concrete steps to resolve each of our personal relationship problems.    Now that would really change the world!  After all, did not Jesus urge his followers to forgive those who wronged them and to make every effort to reconcile with those they had wronged (see Matthew 5:23-26 and 6:14-15) .   Jesus’ 12 disciples made this a foundation to their work and they seemed to have made quite an impact on the world.   They learned from Jesus to both forgive those who wronged them and to pursue peace with those they had wronged, like two sides of the same coin.    It means doing everything in our power to pursue peace with one another.   When I began to make pursuing peace a key life-time priority it changed me and continues to change me.

I am convinced that broken relationships are the most fundamental root of poverty and misery in our world.   If that is true, than it follows that doing everything in our power to mend/reconcile our personal relationships is the most fundamental thing we can do to change our world.  It then gives us a ‘credential’ in being a peace maker in the lives of others.  Changed people change people.

Dear Simon & Johanna,

May ‘sacred joy’ be the daily experience of your lives and the abiding mark of your marriage.  It is not only possible … it is the inevitable consequence of true love.

One who knows,

Dad

Why is the child sick with diarrhea?

Doctor: “My patient is sick because of bacteria.”

Public health officer: “The child is sick because our village does not have a good water system or use latrines.”

Teacher: “The child is sick because his parents are uneducated.”

Social reformer: “The child is sick because of soical injustice and unfair distrubiton of weatlth.”

Father: “My child is sick because I don’t earn enough money to feed her well.”

Who is right?  Are not all at least partly right and offering important insight into the problem?  Are there not more partially right voices that are not represented in this cartoon.  But to me, this cartoon illustrates the absolute necessity of why we still need to listen to others even after we are confident we have arrived at a correct understanding.    It implies that if we listen to others our already partially correct opinions will become more correct.  But I see a problem if we think of understanding as a destination rather than a journey.  Isn’t it inevitable that we will stop truly listening once we think we have arrived at a correct opinion?  Therefore, isn’t it also inevitable that those who conceptualize ‘understanding’ as a journey  have the potential for greater ‘understanding’ than those who conceptualize it as a destination?  Such a world view would likely promote  life-long learning and greater felt need for partnership, collaboration, and community.  Sounds a little like humility.  Hmmm… I wonder if this is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” ?

Why is this child sick?  There are many reasons.  But the more important question is, “Why isn’t this child well yet?”  ANSWER: Because we don’t have the humility to listen to each other… YET.

They had no time to carry the children into the adjacent ten-bed ICU where there were normally 2-3 working light bulbs to help them see in the dim tent.  Neither the ‘special’ tent nor the ICU had any monitoring or life support equipment, but the advantage of the ICU was a few working light bulbs and a bit more privacy.  That being said, the electric generator had been broken all week anyway and privacy was a luxury Frida and Nina had learned to live without.  A few minutes earlier the two expatriate medical professionals had been making their early morning rounds together when Umaru, a 4 year old malnourished boy, had stopped breathing.  His condition was probably a result of herbal intoxication although it was impossible to say for sure.

Mothers regularly brought their children to the TFC only after the herbal treatments of the local shamans (traditional folk medicine practitioners) failed to deliver the promised results.  The shamans typically prescribed (and sold) strong herbs to treat severe malnutrition.  Attempts by TFC personnel to negotiate new practices with the shamans in the area had been unfruitful.

Often by the time the child was brought to the TFC it was already too late.  Frida and Nina’s perspectives of the shamans were, in a way, on different ends of the spectrum.  One was a little belligerent towards the shamans while the other maintained hope that the shamans would one day cooperate with the TFC.  But they never did.  Interesting enough, many developing countries have integrated traditional folk medicine into modern medical practices (WHO 1978; Xiao 1991), but such a merger has yet to occur in most of Sierra Leone (Lebbie & Guries, 1995).

Fortunately Umaru still had a pulse.   Frida and Nina had worked to resuscitate Umaru for about five minutes when a mother, encamped next to her child’s hospital bed, cried out that her three-year old daughter had stopped breathing.  Nina left Umaru with Frida and dashed off to assess the second child.  Two minutes later each of them was working independently on a different patient.  Distressed, Umaru’s teenage sister began to wail remorsefully, apparently less hopeful than the medical professionals that her listless brother would recover from this latest setback.  But Frida and Nina reckoned that both kids still had a chance to survive… if but a small one.  Even though less than 20% of the malnourished children who went into respiratory arrest came back; Frida and Nina were not ready to give up.  It took two hands to operate an ambu-bag.  One to pump the air and the other to keep the mask sealed around the child’s nose and mouth.  Frida monitored Umaru with her eyes…stopping the resuscitation every 2 to 3 minutes to check for a pulse.  They were prepared to keep at it for twenty to thirty minutes…and barely ten minutes had passed so far.

The distance separating them and the noise in the ward made it impractical to communicate with each other verbally.  Even at this early hour the TFC was buzzing with activity.  Besides the patients and relatives, the local nurse-aids and staff employed by the project were busy with their own duties on the ward. From time to time Frida and Nina would make a quick glance to each other across the tent to check the status and offer a look or nod for mutual support and encouragement.

In spite of the medical intervention and feeding therapy at the TFC, children died every day.  One dark week last month seven children had died in a single day.  Over the past few months the TFC had grown from a 60 bed to a 190 bed therapeutic feeding center in response to the famine created by the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone and neighboring Liberia.  And no matter how many times Frida witnessed a child’s death it was always hard.  She never got use to it (and she hoped she never would).  She found some comfort in knowing that hundreds of children, who would otherwise die from malnutrition, were being saved because of the TFC where she and Nina played integral roles.  This certain knowledge served like a salve on the daily heart ache…but now was not the time for personal reflection… Umaru needed her full attention.

Frida and Nina were both serving six-month assignments as medical volunteers with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF or Doctors Without Borders) the Nobel Peace Prize winning international humanitarian organization.  Frida is a 27 year-old Swedish intensive care (ICU) nurse with five years of experience working in Swedish hospitals.  In order to join the Swedish branch of MSF she was required to take leave from work so she could attend a 3-month university program on tropical medicine.  As a child Frida lived in the Congo and Zaire for six years where her parents had done church work.  She speaks fluent French and English in addition to Swedish.  Before Frida left Sweden, she received different information packets from MSF about her project assignment.  She found the discussions of project history, culture, policy, etc. very useful.  On her way to her assignment Frida made stops at the MSF international headquarters in Brussels and then at the MSF country office in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.  At both locations she received 5-10 hours worth of briefings about organizational protocol and project issues.  She arrived at her project location four months ago, the same week as Nina, a 31 year-old Dutch family physician, to start her assignment.  Frida benefited from the fact that she arrived one week before the Australian nurse she was replacing returned to Sydney.  But none the less, it was still like being thrown in the deep end of a swimming pool…success was not to drown, but often Frida felt she was drowning.  Upon arrival, Frida learned that she was responsible to supervise nearly 80 local employees at the TFC, including cooks, security guards, maintenance and cleaning staff, administrators, and nurse-aids.  She was called to deal with everything from conflicts among the kitchen staff, demands for higher wages, and employees who didn’t show up for their shifts.  She had never supervised staff in Sweden nor realized the extent she was to do so at the TFC.  Her learning curve was long (five and a half months by her own reckoning) and full of frustration and stress.  On the bright side, Frida and Nina worked well together and a strong sense of professional camaraderie developed between them and the two other expatriate medical professionals on the project.

This morning Frida and Nina were the only expatriates in the crowded TFC.  And now Frida was working alone to resuscitate Umaru, in a struggle between life and death.  The local nurse-aids were also trained to use the ambu-bags, but because resuscitation took so long and they were needed to attend all the other critically ill patients on the ward, the job of resuscitation usually fell to the expatriate medical staff.  Now, sometimes a situation can go from bad to worse…and that seemed to be happening.  Just then a nearby nurse-aid signaled for Frida.  The nurse-aid was signaling another code blue in the adjacent ICU tent.  Hawa, an emaciated 5 year-old girl had stopped breathing.  Hawa had been brought to the TCF by her grandmother several hours earlier.  There were three children needing resuscitation and only two available people (and two functional ambu-bags).  Frida tried to make eye contact with Nina, but her line of sight was now obstructed by a cluster of relatives standing by the bedside of another patient.  The thought “Only in Africa!?” flashed through Frida’s mind.  But there was no time to lose; a critical decision had to be made and fast.  So Frida made it…

…  two months later…

Frida didn’t realize that a long line of people were waiting near the 1994 Toyota pick-up to see her off.   Her most intensive work/life experience had now come to a close.  She would be driven to Freetown where she would catch her flight to Dubai and then on to Stockholm, where after a month holiday she would resume her nursing job in Sweden.  As she emerged from the tent that had been her home for the past six months African drums began to beat and scores of women began to dance and make a high pitched clucking sound from their throats to honor their esteemed nurse who had supervised them for the past six months.  Hugs, tears, kisses, gifts, and other expressions of affection were bestowed upon the departing nurse.  Frida looked at the crowed of TFC staff which in time she had grown to love and appreciate.  Her eyes swollen with tears, she thought, “Only in Africa.”

[Note: I collected most of the details for this story from two 90 minute interviews with my niece, Frida Aronsson,  shortly after her return from Sierra Leone.  All other names used in the story are pseudonym of real people.  Frida's story is extraordinary but not extra ordinary for those serving in the humanitarian aid sector.  I wrote it as a narrative case study. ]

At the seminar, I spoke about how our world view affects how we lead people and what people expect from leadership.  I promoted a leadership model that was participatory and developmental and contrasted it against what academics sometimes call the “Great Man” theory.  Great Man theory is based on the belief that leaders are exceptional people, born with innate qualities and endowed with unquestioned authority.  The term ‘man’ is intentional since according to this world view leadership is thought of as primarily male.  While most Scandinavians flatly reject most of the presumptions behind “Great Man” theory, in my opinion, it still represents the predominate beliefs about leadership in almost all the countries where Operation Mercy is active.  Regrettably, it is also the world view that influenced my own assumptions about leadership when I was a young man.  Today, I see things very differently and have become a practitioner and advocate of leadership that is participatory and developmental.  An approach that Robert Greenleaf (1977) descibes as Servant Leadership.

In Operation Mercy, we try to integrate participatory and developmental concepts into all our project ideas.  These are normally received like a breath of fresh air to our project participants (male and female).  We get excited when we see women successfully learning to embrace new leadership roles in their work places, homes, and communities.   In our projects (and thru our staff) we try to model  a style of leadership that is participatory and developmental.  We get excited when women learn to see themselves as valuable, unique, essential, and enabled.  These four themes are a common thread in Operation Mercy projects… and I trust are reflected by Operation Mercy leaders (male and female) world wide.  So while we always try to be culturally appropriate we embrace a world view on leadership that is often counter-cultural.

Here are a few of the quotes that I underlined while I was reading:

“As he saw all things dramatically, so he himself was always dramatic.  We have to assume throughout, needless to say, that he [St. Francis] was a poet, and can only be understood as a poet.  But he had one poetic privilege denied to most poets.  In that respect indeed he might be called the one happy poet among all the unhappy poets of the world.  He was a poet whose whole life was a poem.” Pg 70

“A man satisfied with small things, or even in love with small things, he yet never felt quite as we do about the disproportion between small things and large.  He never saw things to scale in our sense, but with dizzy disproportion which makes the mind reel… He was quite capable of facing fifty emperors to intercede for the lives of certain little birds.” Pg 85

“It shows that the Saints were sometimes great men when the Popes were small men.  But it also shows that great men are sometimes wrong when small men are right.” Pg 122

It is perhaps the chief suggestion of this book that Saint Francis walked the world like the Pardon of God.  I mean that his appearance marked the moment when men could be reconciled not only to God but to nature and, most difficult of all, to themselves.” Pg 124

That’s all for now.  I hope it wets your appetite for more.

I coined the word brinked  in 2008 when I was doing graduate studies at the University of Edinburgh.  As a prerequisite to entering the dissertation phase of our research studies, we were required to write five 4,000 word papers and receive a B or better on each of the papers.  If we received a C on a paper we had only one chance to resubmit one paper.  I received a C on my first paper and rewrote and resubmitted it for a B.  But I was now  brinked!  If I received another C on any of my next four papers I was out of the program.  I was “safe” as long as I didn’t get another C.  As it turned out, I did better on the next four papers.  Being brinked was uncomfortable (I battled with the fear of failure) but it helped bring out the best in me.

Another example comes to mind.  One evening, I was fishing for pike in Dalsland, Sweden.  I was using light tackle and spinners in shallow waters full of lily pads, fallen trees, and other obstructions.  After two hours and no fish I was down to my last spinner (the others had been lost on snags) and ready to call it a day. Suddenly, I started catching one fish after another.  It was then that I realized that I had been brinked… I was down to my last spinner.  It wasn’t until the fish started to bite that I truly appreciated my one remaining lure. I was brinked.  I had no backup but I had no deficit… I still had one spinner.   It made me come ‘alive’ in a way I wasn’t before.  I both hated it and loved it.

Isn’t this a common experience?  If so, why do so many of us (myself included) spend so much time and energy trying to avoid the experience of being brinked?   I guess we all like to live with a buffer and extra margin to protect us from error or the unpredictable.  After all, isn’t there much wisdom in having a safety net and backup plan for the unexpected?  I think so…yet, at the same time, there can be something deeply ‘human’ and therefore deeply spiritual about being brinked.  It can be a wonderful time of reflection, refocus, and revitalization.  It can free us from our anxiety of pursuing and securing stuff.

It seems to me that Jesus asked his disciples to brink themselves in Matthew 10:9 and Luke 9:3-5 when Jesus sent his twelve disciples out on a task and told them not to take any stuff with them.  The Twelve were instructed to leave their food, money, extra clothes, etc. behind.  In effect, Jesus brinked his disciples.  I think he did this because he wanted them to experience what he promised them in Matthew 6:33, i.e. if they seek first the Kingdom of God all their needs would be provided for.  Later (see Luke 22:35-36), once his disciples learned this lesson, Jesus encourages them to take stuff like extra food and clothing with them.  This implies that it is not the stuff itself that is an obstacle to faith but our attitude or preoccupation with pursing and securing stuff.  It seems to me that followers of Jesus need to learn to trust in Jesus not in their stuff.  I think stuff may include more than just material possessions but also things like our education, status, experience, skills, etc. 

St. Francis of Assisi (and those that joined his company) took this concept to a new level.  They made a conscious decision to take on a lifestyle that was  ‘brinked’ of earthly possessions.  This choice seemed to be a practical expression of their love affair with Jesus.  They seemed to be a merry society of people who pursued a life dedicated to the joyful celebration of God.  They considered living ‘brinked’ as an asset to their pursuit of God.  I have much to learn.

When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow. Deuteronomy 24:19-21

This law has been practiced in various ways and among different communities throughout history and has become popularly known as the “gleaning principle.”  Amy Sherman, in her book Sharing God’s Heart for the Poor, points out the two-fold responsibility of the gleaning principle:

1. Resource owners (in this case, farmers) have a responsibility to eschew greed and make available to others the opportunity for them to meet their needs. They are to be generous with what produce they have.
2. The poor (if able-bodied) have a responsibility to take some initiative and work to meet their own needs. This avoids the cultivation of a dependency mindset and offers the needy person the dignity of earning his sustenance instead of passively receiving a handout. Gleaning gives the poor the opportunity to meet their own needs through their own application of labor.

Social work and international development studies have rediscovered the two-fold responsibilities outlined in the gleaning principle. Today these concepts are being integrated in the program designs of Operation Mercy and many other international humanitarian organizations doing relief and development among the poor and needy.  The principle highlights the responsibility of resource owners to be generous and of the responsibility of the poor to participate actively in meeting their own needs (when they can). 

One historical example of how the ‘gleaning principle’ was creatively applied comes from the 1800s.  Between 1820 and 1870 the industrial revolution, wars, and mass urbanization created waves of immigrants in New York City.  In that 50 year period New York City’s population increased seven fold, half of whom were foreign born.  Public and private service systems were overwhelmed, riots were frequent, crime was rampant and child cruelty and exploitation was common. Churches, synagogues, and civic groups opened shelters and soup kitchens in the city to try to meet some of the basic needs of these poor.  One private shelter was housing 250 people a day and feeding many more. The operators of this shelter decided to require all able-bodied users of the shelter/soup kitchen to cut a certain amount of wood to earn a ticket for a bed and/or a meal. Since wood and coal were used for heating, it was common for buildings to have a small lot for cutting wood and coal. The shelter provided the wood, axes, and saws. Interestingly, the amount of applicants asking for help from this shelter was considerably reduced within a week. 

 As a 24 year old working for a large international management consulting firm in downtown Washington D.C., I applied the gleaning principle in another way. I made an agreement with the company who operated the parking garage under our office building near the White House, where I (or anyone in my firm) could offer a job ‘on-the-spot’ to any street person we encountered in Washington D.C. to sweep trash up in the underground parking lots for an hourly wage. We financed it from our own salaries. However, very few ever accepted the job.

During my 30s and 40s I lived in Istanbul, a city teaming with people and a different type of poor. There I had my own business and regularly had beggars coming to my office. I also had neighbors and other acquaintances that were unemployed or marginally employed.  In Istanbul I applied the gleaning principle a little differently. From the profits of my own business, I prepared products for people to sell or manufacture. Whenever someone was in need of a job I had something to offer them. I have a variety of products depending on their need and my relationship with them. I had a few odd jobs around my own office that I felt it was safe for strangers and/or unskilled people to do. I also made arrangements with several different small businessmen to temporarily employ people I might bring to them. One of the most important lessons from these years was witnessing how consistently “interpersonal conflict” (i.e. broken relationships) contributed to personal poverty. I’ll write more about this in another article.

After I shed a tear or two for my own troubles,  I realized how much harder it must be for all the dear Somalis, Iraqi, Kurds, and other less Europeanized immigrants who are trying to integrate (not just immigrate) into Swedish society.   Not all immigrants in Sweden come with a predisposition to integrate.  For those that do, not all have equal capacity nor equal resilience to endure the long and stressful journey integration requires.  Attitude and capacity are critical, but the greater the discrepancy between the newcomer’s norms/values and the norms of the host society the greater the stress.  In addition, unless the newcomer continues to believe the rewards for integration outweigh the costs he will give up.  In this context, resilience is the quality that keeps a newcomer on the journey toward integration despite the costs.  

Individual resilience is a psychological concept.  The Association of Traumatic Stress Specialists (ATSS) defines it as a “person’s ability to maintain a level of functioning that adapts to a situation of extreme stress including exposure to trauma.”   Research points to  three key variables that influence a person’s resiliency: 

1. personality
2. family
3. the availability of support systems

“Stress-resilient” people appear to be less vulnerable in extreme situations.   According to the ATSS, studies show that resilient people tend to have the following traits:

• High sociability
• Faith
• A strong perception of their ability to control their destiny (confidence)
• Determination
• The capacity to preserve social connections
• The capacity to preserve their judgment, moral values and sense of meaning
• A high degree of responsibility for the protection of others as well as themselves, avoiding unnecessary risks
• The ability to accept fear in themselves and others but are prepared for danger as well as they can be
• An avoidance of isolation

It seems that resilience is a key to successful integration.  In my own case, I must continue to believe the reward of obtaining a Swedish driver’s licence is worth the stress.  It will require that my own driving norms are supplemented (or replaced) with the norms embraced by the driving inspectors of the Swedish Traffic Authority.  Integration into Swedish society is a long road… longer for some than for others.  Lord, grant me the resilience I need.