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Posted by: Marrton Dormish
Last night, my wife and I happened to navigate to Hulu.com to watch the latest episode of “Friday Night Lights” about one minute before President Obama announced live on Hulu (and other networks) that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan. My wife noticed the headline first. I wasn’t looking at the computer screen, so I didn’t believe her at first. But when we reread the headline, we postponed our virtual visit to Dillon, Texas (the setting for Friday Night Lights), to watch the president’s speech.
I can only speak for myself, but I felt conflicted by the news. Perhaps that’s because I remember all too clearly my angry and almost bloodthirsty personal response to the 9-11 attacks. I regret to say, I wanted blood.
Only later, did I ask myself some uncomfortable questions about my reaction, and I’m still asking myself those questions. As a follower of Christ, as someone who tries to minister to people in need, as a father, as a human being, how should I react when someone who is a self-proclaimed enemy of mine is killed? Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount came to my mind last night, “You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you…”
This morning, I got online again to satisfy my desire for more details of bin Laden’s demise, but just after I’d started playing a video about it on CNN, our three youngest kids, ages 4-6, walked into the room. (Our oldest, 8, was still cocooned in bed. If she’s already sleeping in now, what an adventure she will be to live with as a teenager!)
How do you explain all this stuff to your kids? We’d never talked about 9-11 before, and the words felt awkward coming out of my mouth. How do you communicate to your kids the pain of watching the Twin Towers fall, let alone of feeling a sense of closure because of the death of another person, let alone feeling a sense of sadness at the same time? Too bad there aren’t teleprompters for parents! Anyway, I should be thankful (I guess), that the kids listened to me talk for a few minutes, then said, “Can we eat breakfast now?”
Later in the morning, I read about the “celebrations” in New York City, Washington, D.C., and West Point and at the Philadelphia Phillies baseball game, where fans chanted “USA! USA!” While I certainly don’t begrudge fellow Americans spontaneously expressing their emotions, images of those celebrations seemed eerily similar to the ones that occurred in some places in the Middle East after 9-11.
I wonder whether the questions raised in the media since last night are the only ones we should be asking: How did the attack happen? How did our government get tipped off that bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan? Are we sure it was him?
Shouldn’t we also be asking, “What happened to the people at the compound taken into custody by the Pakistanis? Allegedly, they included a wife of bin Laden’s and some of his children. In our relief that an icon of international terrorism is dead at last, have we conflated the death of the woman bin Laden allegedly used as a human shield last night into his death? Was she really one of his wives? Rather than underline the despicable depths to which bin Laden allegedly descended at the end of his life, literally hiding behind the skirts of a woman, should we be lamenting his wife’s death instead? Was she trapped in that compound with no other options, nowhere to run? Or, even more disturbingly from our perspective, was she voluntarily throwing her body in front of his to protect him from being killed? What about the kids that were living at that compound? What must they be going through right now? Is their suffering “justified”?
Do I feel a sense of closure at the death of the man who was ultimately behind the 9-11 terrorist attacks? Yes, I do. But I don’t feel like partying. Maybe I would if one of my loved ones had been killed on 9-11, I don’t know. But I guess what I’m hoping for is that we can use this opportunity, as a nation and as individuals, for something constructive. We largely ignored the opportunity we had for self-examination after the devastation of 9-11, but perhaps in this small “victory” we can succeed where we failed before.
As for those of us who are people of faith (or aspire to live lives of faith), for those of us who want to live in a way that eases the suffering of others, even those who on the surface appear to deserve it least, perhaps we should be asking ourselves where the lines between our faith and our patriotism should begin and end.
Anyway, that’s my spur-of-the-moment commentary, written on a day when there’s been a lot of commentary. May God have mercy on us all and may God speed the day when the crooked places will be made straight and the lion will lay down with the lamb.
Posted by: Marrton Dormish
Have you ever wanted to kick yourself for not having a videocamera? I felt that way today at lunchtime when I drove by a group of 10 or so young women from a local high school holding a vigil outside the public library. They silently held signs directing the attention of passing cars to the plight of children in Northern Uganda. When I stopped to try to interview them, one of them handed me a tiny yellow and blue card. On the yellow side it says, “I am being silent for 25 hours to end 25 years of war.” On the blue side it says, “Find Out How: www.invisiblechildren.com“. Having already heard about Invisible Children and how it began, I knew the “backstory” behind the movement they were representing, but what really intrigued me was what made this group of students from Broomfield, Colo., decide to take such a public step. I don’t often run into demonstrators in my neighborhood. After visiting the Invisible Children website, I saw that the local group of girls is part of a national campaign to “Speak out by not speaking.” Pretty cool!
I’m hoping to get in touch soon with the local demonstrators I saw to hear more about their story. (Once their vigil of silence is over, of course.) I’ll keep you posted!
Posted by: Marrton Dormish
Last year, we profiled Joe and Mame Starke who are serving at a mission hospital in Galmi, Niger. They recently mailed us a story about 10-year-old Abdou that I’d like to pass along. Here it is in the Starkes’ own words: “Abdou…came to Galmi from his village after three weeks of illness. Only the sickest are brought, especially in a year like this when food is scarce and resources need to be conserved. Abdou had typhoid fever; a bacterial illness contracted from dirty water, which can in the worst cases lead to a perforation (hole) in the small intestine. He arrived close to death: dehydrated, septic, profoundly malnourished and anemic. Three surgeries and six weeks later he and his mother smiled and thanked us as we released them from the hospital. In our setting, 1 in 3 children like Abdou will die. Living in an open ward for more than a month, they had seen other young boys who slipped from life before their eyes. Life is not to be taken for granted anywhere, but especially in Niger…”
Posted by: Marrton Dormish
In case you haven’t heard, today marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. Ever since I found the entry on the “American Civil War” when I was a kid thumbing through my family’s set of grey World Book Encyclopedias, I’ve been hooked on “the Blue and the Grey.” I read somewhere that more books have been written about the Civil War than any other period in American history, so I guess I’m not alone in feeling drawn to it.
I’ve visited four Civil War battlefields and came away from each one moved by the sacrifices of ordinary people for a cause they believed in, and saddened that so much suffering could not have been avoided. The Civil War re-defined our identity as a nation, but it shattered so many lives in the process. Roughly one of every 50 Americans died during the war. That’s hard to believe, but it’s part of our story. It makes me hope and pray that the millions living in the midst of violent conflict in Africa and the Middle East — including in the Ivory Coast and Libya — will be spared the scourge of full-blown civil war.
Have you ever visited a Civil War battlefield? If you have a favorite or most poignant Civil War story, feel free to share it below.
Posted by: Marrton Dormish
If you’ve read “Powers,” our monthly serial, you’ll know the most recent episode describes a fictional scene in Juarez, Mexico. Sadly, the real-life city of Juarez is under seige. It’s a city with a beautiful culture that I’ve had the privilege of visiting several times, but from what I’ve heard from friends of friends, some Juarez residents fear to even leave the safety of their homes. What a tragic reality to live with!
Posted by: Marrton Dormish
My oldest son and I went to a “Keys to Volunteering” training session put on by our two local Habitat for Humanity branches on Saturday. He’s only six, but the session was interactive enough to keep him interested for almost three-and-a-half hours. The rest of the time he played his Leapster and ate donuts. 
Anyway, I highly recommend this training for anyone who wants a better picture of the story of need around them, even, and especially, in a relatively affluent area like ours. Click here more info from the St. Vrain Habitat.
Posted by: Nikki Vos
Last weekend, I attended a Social Justice workshop at a local church in Lafayette, Colo. I thought I’d share with you some of the things I learned.
Social justice is based on the idea of a society which gives individuals and groups fair treatment and a just share of the benefits of society. During the workshop I was challenged on many levels to wrestle with questions on issues relating to orphans, education, modern-day slavery, the cycle of poverty and oppressive governments. I was challenged to consider what God’s position is on the issue of Social Justice and why we are all inherently wired to care about these issues — because we are made in God’s image and He created justice. Social Justice may be a fad for us, but it is not a fad for God, it has always been His heartbeat to demonstrate His glory through redemption.
I was reminded that it’s all too easy to stand by and do nothing or convince ourselves that we can’t make a difference, but then we were reminded that “BIG DOORS OPEN ON SMALL HINGES.” We can all start somewhere and give something of ourselves, whether it be time, money or inspiring others and taking one step forward.
Here are some resources and organizations to consider diving deeper into this topic:
Posted by: Marrton Dormish
I think we’re a little ahead of schedule, but our family of six is in the process of doing some spring cleaning. I know it’s not even officially spring yet, but I always consider the first of March spring-time, even though when I was in high school it invariably seemed to snow around the first of March just when baseball season was getting under way.
But I digress. Almost as inevitable as the advent of springtime (and the final onslaught of winter), is a seasonal rearrangement of furniture and living quarters at the Dormish house. At this point it looks like our bedroom is going to get relocated to the upstairs, and the boys are going to get to share a room of their own. What does that have to do with Sharing Their Story, you might ask? Well, I think it goes to show that if you’re willing to live the life of a Story-Sharer, you never can get too comfortable with the way your life is at any given moment, because things can change before you can say, “My bedroom is now where my office used to be.” And that’s a good thing, even if it is inconvenient for a while.
Posted by: Marrton Dormish
It seems the dominos continue to fall in North Africa and the Middle East. Since our last post, Libyans have taken to (and taken over) the streets to protest the autocratic rule of Muammar Qaddafi, and protests have also begun in earnest in Bahrain. How amazing (and dangerous) would it be to see all these historic changes take place in person, like NPR’s Lourdes Garcia-Navarro or the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof!
Have you ever been present in person during an “historic” change of a similar caliber? If so, please share your experience below.
Posted by: Marrton Dormish
As people in the Middle East and North Africa continue to take to the streets in protest (the latest protests have occurred in Bahrain and Libya), I’ve grown more interested in how their protests began. The whole subject of popular movements intrigues me—how they start, how they maintain their momentum and how they change the status quo—and these definitely seem to be “organic,” from-the-ground-up movements.
It seems one of the very first sparks that led to these popular protests occurred in Tunisia, which has received relatively little attention in the Western press. Tunisians began taking to the streets in December after Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old street vendor in Sidi Bouzid, set himself on fire in protest for having his fruit and vending cart confiscated.
The sheer desperation that would drive a man to do that to himself is hard to imagine, but it did serve to ignite the simmering frustrations of the Tunisian people over unemployment and autocratic rule. In less than one month, the Tunisian president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, was forced to flee the country.
While I certainly don’t condone self-inflicted martyrdom, at least Bouazizi took out his despair on himself instead of seeking revenge with a machine gun or suicide bomb.
What would it take for you to set yourself on fire (figuratively speaking)? In light of Bouazizi’s example, the least we can do is ask ourselves the question.
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