Morning Land Meditations 2004-2012 Lewis R. Scudder, Jr. Table of Contents August 2004 Letter from the Middle East .......................................... 4 September 2004 Walls … and Other Walls ....................................... 10 September 2004 War and the World ................................................ 13 November 2004 The Power of the Irrational Idea ........................... 18 December 2004 Straightening the Highway .................................... 21 January 2005 The Virginal Conception ............................................ 26 February 2005 Celebration in Crisis Land ........................................ 31 March 2005 Being Civil About Democracy ........................................ 37 April 2005 Women and the New Shape of Islam .............................. 42 May 2005 Charity Begins… .............................................................. 46 June 2005 Alien Being ..................................................................... 51 July 2005 On a Different Tack ......................................................... 54 August 2005 To See Ourselves ........................................................ 59 September 2005 Shalom or Sham ................................................... 63 November 2005 A Name’s Just a Name ........................................... 67 January 2006 Dîwâniyyah ............................................................... 71 February 2006 Bite the Hand ........................................................... 76 March 2006 Talking…Just Talking ................................................... 83 April 2006 Dubai Ports World .......................................................... 88 May 2006 Language Again…the Confusion of Tongues .................... 95 June 2006 Accounts Outstanding .................................................. 100 July 2006 Patriotism and Piety … and Morality .............................. 106 August 2006 Those Who Try .......................................................... 110 August 2006 supplement Beyond Colonialism toward Belonging ... 114 2 September 2006 What’s the ‘Emperor’ Wearing? .......................... 122 October 2006 Movers and Shakers ................................................ 126 November-December 2006 The Violence-Faith Disconnect ............ 130 April 2007 Back to Horse Sense … God Willing! ............................. 134 May 2007 The Citizen’s Day … Dawning? ....................................... 138 June 2007 Only Let There Be … ..................................................... 142 June version 0.2 2007 The Separation of Powers .......................... 146 June version 0.3 2007 The Rainbow Covenant .............................. 150 July 4, 2007 God Mend Thine Every Flaw ....................................... 154 August 2007 Profoundly … Trivial ................................................. 158 November 2007 Getting Culture Right ........................................... 161 January 2008 Muddling Through the Muddle ................................. 165 April 2008 Spring Forward! ........................................................... 168 May-June 2008 Swatting Beelzebub .............................................. 172 July 2008 Liberty for All ................................................................ 177 August 2008 The Old Tree Still Lives ............................................. 180 September 2008 Poets .................................................................. 184 October 2008 Hurricane Season .................................................... 189 November 2008 Thanks for the Giving .......................................... 193 December 2008 Teaching … ‘Gloria’! ............................................. 197 January 2009 In With the New! ..................................................... 201 January sub. 2 2009 The Soil of Everyman .................................... 205 January sub. 3, 2009 Myth … God Help Us! .................................... 209 February 2009 Waiting .................................................................. 213 April 2009 A Good Legacy .............................................................. 217 May-June 2009 Patience and the Courage to Change .................... 221 pre-4th of July, 2009 Prepositions … and the Goldmann Enigma ... 224 3 August 2009 Happiness Pursued ................................................... 229 September 2009 Viva! Vida and Ida! ............................................. 232 October 2009 Jaton Dushtu! .......................................................... 237 November 2009 ‘Haideralizing’ Thanksgiving .............................. 241 December 2009 Ayia Sophia .......................................................... 245 Latter December 2009 Christmas 2009 … Liberation ..................... 248 January 2010 Palindromitis ........................................................... 251 February 2010 Unskewing Skewed Logic ....................................... 255 March 2010 Harmonics .................................................................. 261 April 2010 Badr … Let the Light Through! ...................................... 264 May 2010 Barbarians ..................................................................... 268 June 2010 Slaver and Slave … Old and New .................................. 272 July 2010 Anti-Venom ................................................................... 276 November 2010 The Fit of Thanksgiving........................................ 280 January 2011 Reclaim the New Year ............................................. 284 March 2011 An Ideal World? We Could Do a Whole Lot Worse ...... 288 May 2011 Tolerance? Tasâmmuh? ................................................. 292 December 2011 Caliphate .............................................................. 295 February 2012 The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas and Other Political Travesties ...................................................................................... 300 August 2004 Letter from the Middle East John Hubers, a good friend, has been urging me to embark on a regular series of compositions more or less on the model of Alistair Cooke's unique weekly event on BBC radio entitled, 'Letter From America'. (Mine, of course, will be 'Letter from the Middle East', and I imagine that makes at least one ocean and a whole sea of difference.) Cooke, an expatriate Englishman who adopted America, did a magnificent job during a career spanning well over fifty years. There were those of us who would set aside other 4 engagements simply to hear his dry voice wheeze out another of his droll rambles replete with pithy aphorisms, observations on history, home-grown wisdom and personal anecdotes. It was, perhaps, to be his last poetic exclamation that, within days of his swansong broadcast, he died. He was, when all is said, a brilliant journalist. More to the point, he was a sensitive and insightful human being, and he loved his subject — America. For all the times I heartily disagreed with him, he was my image of that archaic species of individual we once knew as a 'Christian gentleman'. America never had a more credible, eloquent, persuasive and committed ambassador, even though our government, to my knowledge, never paid him a red cent for it. He was a bridge person in an age of barrier building and deceptions with smoke and mirrors. We shall all miss him now that he is wheezing out his good advice before the Throne of Grace. I make no pretense of matching Cooke. But I do have a few credentials. I am, for instance, an expatriate American who has adopted the Middle East. Or perhaps it was that the Middle East adopted me. I do not know. But I do love it, and those who know me know I've some stories to tell. So, with some trepidation, here goes! Translation I set my hand to the first of these letters, perched as I am on the Island of Cyprus, in many ways the ideal overlook toward all things middle eastern. Our little foothill village is friendly and quiet, barring the occasional testosterone-afflicted teen-ager testing out his new motorbike. The sun is bright; the skies are clear; the breezes fresh; Nancy's little craft group chatters under our over-loaded grape arbor; our two yard cats — Lucy and Chuckie — prowl about with miffed expressions lifting their whiskers, having lost their lounging spots in the shade to the ladies. But I digress. Over this past month or so son, Tom, and I (in that order of burden and precedence) have been laboring on the next issue of the Middle East Council of Churches' English magazine, the NewsReport. (Don't ask why 'NewsReport' is all one word. It just happened that way one day, and stuck. Logic doesn't enter.) 5 My main job these days, in my lowly role as contributing editor, is translation. And it can be a blinding undertaking. Most annoying are the pieces that come in by fax. All the characters on the page have that vague and far-off look. If you have a fax machine like ours, there's always that stripe down the page where parts of words or words in their entirety completely vanish, and my eyes (plagued with minor cataracts, they tell me) are certainly not what they once were. Then there are those pieces where the writer is predisposed to eloquence. And Arabic can be a marvelous language for eloquence. That's where my poor old Hans Wehr dictionary gets further dog-eared. (It has already lost the cover for its spine, and the two cover boards relate to the main body of the volume only in the most tenuous manner. It must be