When in Rome...

There was some tension in Jerusalem last week. I mean, there’s always tension, but there’s not always a hostage/prisoner exchange coinciding with a U.S. Presidential inauguration. So we went to Rome on a whim. Well, it wasn’t really a whim. 

We used the airline credit from our canceled Thanksgiving trip. While we were eating pizza (naturally) at a restaurant on a rainy day (every day was a rainy day) I spotted a man at the table next to us with the same square jaw and John Travolta-esque chin cleft that was a notable feature of my college-best-friend’s husband… who, I remembered, was of Italian descent. So even though I haven’t talked to this friend more than 3 times in the past 5 years, I had to take a stealthy picture of the unsuspecting restaurant patron and send it to her to let her know that I was pretty sure I found a long-lost cousin. Being my college-best-friend, she took it totally in stride and confirmed that the relationship was a possibility. Then she asked me about the ceasefire that had just commenced. “The one in Gaza or the one in Israel?” I asked. Like many others who have reached out to me in the past several months, she admitted that the news isn’t covering much of what is really going on in Israel. So I thought I would endeavor to paint a little picture of our day-to-day existence for the past month.

On Christmas Eve I was wrapping presents to the sounds of interceptor rockets, courtesy of Yemen. What does that even mean? 

Ballistic missiles (big, nasty, 50-ft-long, rocket-propelled explosive projectiles) that come from Yemen (or from their provider, Iran) take a couple hours to arrive in central Israel. This means that there is time for the Israeli military to prepare and to track the missiles, and there is time for their multi-layered air defense systems (Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow) to mobilize and intercept the incoming projectiles. There are interceptor launchers located all over the country of Israel, though I’ve never seen them. Some are quite close to our home. (Interceptors launchers launch interceptor rockets whose purpose is to detonate rockets and missiles in their air before they strike their intended targets on the ground.) When there’s an incoming projectile, be it rocket, missile, or drone, there are sirens that will sound off in the neighborhoods where an impact is expected, and we usually have a minute or two to make it into a bunker or safe-room. Within seconds, the interceptors will launch, which we hear as deep, resonant booms. And so on Christmas Eve, I wrapped presents, and felt the reverberations of the boom of the interceptors in the distance. I did have one fleeting worry that Noemie would not get to see that I bought her an Arabic Ud for Christmas. 

But the missiles were, as usual, intercepted. And Noemie got her Ud.

The Israeli airforce responded with retaliatory strikes in Yemen two days later, hitting the airport (where the World Health Organization’s Director was getting ready to board a departing flight, as it so happens. That certainly wasn’t going to improve those relations.) The Houthi-controlled seaport and oil refineries were also targeted. The day following Israel’s aerial attacks, there was another missile, and a terror attack near Tel Aviv, as an 80-year-old woman, a Holocaust survivor, was stabbed outside her assisted-living facility by a Palestinian man who resided in Israel. We heard sirens in Jerusalem again on December 28 as interceptors took out another missile from Yemen and rockets from Gaza. How does Gaza still have rockets and launchers? Why does Gaza continue to ask for further destruction? A fourth missile was on its way from Yemen early on the morning of Dec 31-- a week still hadn’t passed since Christmas—this one was also intercepted but the shrapnel, the size of a small car, made impact with the roof of a house in Bet Shemesh, just beyond the valley where David fought Goliath.

(Photo from Times of Israel)

 It is truly a bewildering reality to live in this area where you can talk about modern day missile attacks and Biblical events in the same breath. We rang in the new year with more rockets from Gaza, and another missile from Yemen was inbound three days later, then another missile five days after that... Before we would leave for our respite in Rome, there would be 3 more missiles from Yemen, with their accompanying red alerts and booms, and another stabbing attack in Tel Aviv. 

So we went to Rome. When the garbage trucks would come through the narrow alleys of the Trastevere neighborhood in the middle of the night, we would wake but say with eyes half shut, no, we are in Rome. It’s not a missile. 

 

We saw Michaelangelo’s Moses, a Puccini opera, Trajan’s column, and the Colosseum. 

And then Danny put a damper on that by reminding us what the Colosseum was used for. 

 

 

I would have loved to see the Villa Borghese gardens but the weather wasn’t right for it. The weather wasn’t right for anything- it rained almost every moment of every day! 

  

Since it rained every day, and I only bought canvas shoes, I was forced... FORCED I tell you... to buy new Italian leather boots. 

The highlight would have been the Vatican but by the last day of our trip Gigi had a pretty high fever so I stayed behind with her while the rest went to the public spaces of the Vatican complex. 

So they got to see La Pietà (which was smaller than expected,) but not the Sistine Chapel. And in the end I’m probably ok with having missed it. Catholic Church history and wealth makes me moody and cynical. Rome had traded the abuses done against Christians for those done in the name of Christ. Peter would be mortified to know what they’ve done to “honor” him. But the buildings are extraordinary...

 /

As we look towards bidding this summer, I’m starting to get nervous about our options. I realized while I was in Rome that I don’t want to live in Europe. I don’t want to live in places that welcome millions of tourists a year (like us, I guess) to pay homage to Man and the vain works of his hands, with monuments that defy God with their commemorations of ruthless acquisition of treasure and power. I think that’s what I loved about Swaziland and now Israel- there’s very little of the humanism that corrupted the blossom of Western culture. But where else can we go?

 

On January 19, three very frightened Israeli women civilian hostages were handed over to the Red Cross in exchange for 100 Palestinian prisoners, and the Middle East did not blow up. In the U.S., Trump became President and the world did not blow up. A Moroccan tourist stabbed four people in Tel Aviv the next day... but I guess that's just the way things are. "Congratulations!" our kids' former piano teacher in Bolivia texted us to celebrate Israel's agreement to stop military operations in Gaza and to increase aid to the Strip. "The war is over!" he proclaimed.

"Is it really over?" I asked. There are still 80+ hostages being held in Gaza. Iran is still building its nuclear program so they can wipe Israel off the face of the planet. Netanyahu and Hamas are trading accusations of breaches of contract. Is the war over? I'll believe it when I see it.

Crow's Eye View

Crows Eye View: 

Thoughts on "Young Adult" books from atop the walls of Old Jerusalem

We interrupt our (already infrequent, sporadic) coverage of Israeli adventures and war time correspondence to discuss a work of “young adult fiction.”

Last summer, one of my older kids came to me asking for permission to read a book that had been recommended by friends from an online educational platform with a Christian foundation and missional intention. Recognizing that my oldest ones were a year away from college, I understood it was time to begin to have more adult conversations about discernment and about handing off the responsibility of gatekeeping. I have been accused by some of being overprotective in sheltering my kids, but I don’t believe that is true. I have never shied away from difficult topics and issues- whether it was a book discussion on Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto; explaining a news story about abortion; having a candid, compassionate conversation regarding mental disorders and illness; or having a preparatory briefing before going out to dinner with Danny’s homosexual co-worker and his significant other. I would rather they hear it from Danny and me, where we can point them to Scripture for answers rather than the world give them a humanistic, relativistic, or atheistic point of view of these encounters.

 

Proverbs 4:19 warns, “The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble.” How can a mother stand by with indifference while her children wander off behind the godless, leaving them to trip over stones and pits, to crush their wrists and twist their ankles, and mar their hands and knees with the scars of their missteps? I would rather tackle these difficult conversations with the light of Scripture, which illuminates their path “like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day” and teach them to do the same. So besides the usual pre-authorized library haul, the aforementioned child also brought home the aforementioned book and a few others like it-- Maze Runner, Hunger Games, Divergent, Six of Crows-- books of which I had no knowledge and nothing to commend them except for the opinion of some unknown youth from a home with what I hoped would have similar standards of guardianship. Some of these books were read, and my child was usually disappointed or unimpressed—shallow characters, childish syntax, disappointing story lines. And so it began, this sort of expectation that my oldest two were advancing another rung in the ladder of self-governance and independence, and that they were walking on the narrow but clear, well-lit paths we mapped out for them. And when we left the U.S. to come to Israel, the loss of library access made the question somewhat irrelevant. Until we made friends. Friends with books. 

All things work together for good… 

At home we started dealing with the tension of a new dynamic— we now had two high school seniors, and a high school freshman who began to regularly challenge the liberties given to his older siblings but still denied to him.    

How come they can stay up until 3 am?

Because even though they didn’t manage their time well, we’re paying for these college classes and their GPAs can make or break their scholarship eligibility.

How come they can have their own social media accounts? Their own phone?

Because they have proven themselves to be faithful in the little things and this big thing is required for them to be independent on the streets of Jerusalem.

I’m responsible. When can I search for memes at my leisure? Create my own Pandora station? Why can’t I… ?

How come? Why? Porque? Porquoi? Lama?

Last summer, Six of Crows had been returned to the library unfinished because time did not allow for it to be finished. So when the book was discovered in a reading pile at a friend’s house, the book came home with us. One child read it. The next child read it and then picked up its sequel. Then the third child said, “I want to read it!” After all, his siblings had read it, and his friends had read it, and he was tired of feeling left out. But the response from the other two was an emphatic no. [Insert raised eyebrows here]. 

And why not?
He needs a few years, they both said.
Hm.

I had a candid conversation with one of the older ones and asked to very clearly have his concerns explained to me. Ok, the main characters are criminals and some of them are prostitutes. “This better be redeemed…” I said. I was assured that this was more or less the case, at the end- their livelihoods were essential to the plot, not gratuitous, and the good guys win in the end. I thought about how the heroes in Les Miserables match these descriptions and Les Mis is one of my favorite books ever so I said I would trust his judgement and I let it go. Well the younger child was dismayed and pleaded with me.  
Ok, Younger Child, I trust you. You are responsible, and you are a high schooler. Go ahead. About 100 pages in, Older Children came to me and repeated with much concern, no, Younger Child cannot read it.
FINE. I’ll read it.

And so I read it. And boy was I angry. The story is about human traffickers exploiting human traffickers in a metaphorical river of human trafficking in an ocean of human trafficking in a world of human trafficking… sex trafficking, slave trafficking, drug trafficking… it’s dark. Most of those being trafficked are children and teens. And all sexuality is glossed over in an endless array of euphemisms so that when these children “make their livings on their backs” or are “bedded” and so on, the effect is numbing. We aren’t actually talking about sexual violence, right? It’s just a “sweaty romp” here and a tantalizing peep show there. It's not a dirty brothel, no, it’s is a “pleasure house.” When two of the main character (who spend half the book lusting after each other) find themselves freezing, it only makes sense that they should spoon naked together to stay warm. Naturally. Putting the gore aside (like the incident where the hero carves out the eye of a rival gang member with an oyster shucking knife); and the trope of the religious leaders being the cruelest of the villains; ignoring the elements of witchcraft and the hinted homosexuality of two main characters; even putting aside the scenes inciting prurient interest, the sanitization of child sex work was perhaps the most vile undercurrent of this book. And I was mad. Why did my older children not see this for what it was? I started to think about that question and that led me to thoughts concerning discernment. Discernment is a spiritual gift— it comes with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to all who give their lives to Jesus Christ. But as a spiritual gift, it is also given in greater measure to some than others. Perhaps this is a gift my kids are still working to develop. Another realization that I had is that Danny and I have had years of training to recognize grooming and child predation. And further, I studied marketing in college and have that extra edge in recognizing subliminal messaging. But most importantly, discernment is one of my gifts.

Guard your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.

Coincidentally, the day I finished the book, I also read a newspaper article about Elon Musk’s role in stirring up some controversy in the UK. (He’s always stirring it up somewhere.) He had been badgering UK’s leadership over a failure to administer justice to the more  than 1,400 girls who were sexually exploited in the town of Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. In these cases, girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators, with the majority of known perpetrators being of Pakistani heritage. Musk used his platform to highlight the failures of the British judiciary, constabulary, social services and politicians, alleging that these colluded in downplaying and/or dismissing the cases for fear being seen as racist or of upsetting the illusion of the peaceful assimilation of their immigrant communities. The article went on to describe some of the accusations in blunt, concrete, legal language, using terms like “gang rape” and assault. Now contrast these harsh words with the world created for Six of Crows where child sexual exploitation is sanitized to the point that one doesn’t shudder, but accepts it as par for the course… it is normalized. The difference is as stark as night and day. Why? Why would an author do this? I started to look into the author a little more. Her portrait on the back cover of her book is innocent enough but her website has a more updated image of a goth girl with black lipstick and bondage-style accessories… or is this a subtle allusion to sadomasochistic eroticism? Her next books are titled Hell Bent and Demon in the Wood. I sensed a theme. Satan is after our kids' minds. 

I sat down with my kids and read passages to them from the text. One squirmed. The other argued.
“The characters had to sleep naked like that! What else could they do to keep from freezing?”
“This is a work of fiction! The entire scene was a creation of the author’s imagination!” Sometimes the blinders get stuck. (Consider Common Sense Media’s positive ratings to see just how stuck they can get.)
It was a good conversation. A constructive conversation. There’s a sort of complacency home-schooled Christian kids can develop where a lack of ideological friction keeps them from exercising their critical thinking skills and from sharpening their tools of defense. They casually drop their magnifying glasses when they should be taking a closer look into the spiritual realities that are coursing through the petri dishes of our culture wars. We are in a spiritual war. We aren’t to forget that. 

 

So we interrupt our (infrequent, sporadic) coverage of Israeli adventures and geopolitical wartime correspondence to discuss a work of “young adult fiction,” except as you see, it’s not really an interruption at all because a worldview that denies divine order and moral absolutes and universal truths does not stay in its neat little box of YA reading options but seeps into the unsuspecting guileless minds of the next generation--  minds that will someday create policies that advance human trafficking, child exploitation, and racism in the name of good. Satan knows this. The leaders at the UN know this. The author of the Six of Crows knows this. Do we parents know this? And are we on guard?