Monthly Archives: September 2013

Jizya and The Ugly Americans

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I first heard of Jizya when I was studying history with my children. The caliphates of the near east would levy a tax on non-Muslim citizens.

It was couched as a brilliant stroke of evangelism and diplomacy–the tax encouraged conversion by presumably making space for other religions.

The present iteration of Jizya emerging from places like Egypt and Syria is brutal. Survivors report demands for cash combined with murder. Coming out of countries where we are shaping policies?

The United States is simply responsible if we push the agenda of, provide monetary support for, or look the other way when any foreign entity extorts and murders on our watch.

The Jizya stories have so far been confined to the margins of journalism about Syria and Egypt.

Ask yourself these questions–

Who are the “good guys” in these countries?

Who are we supporting?

And if you, like me, read a lot of news and still don’t see those things spelled out by our government and media…

Why?

Why don’t we know?

The Heroic Dog, Bad Babysitter…and you

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Don’t get me wrong…I think the dog who saved the baby is a hero. And I think it was smart and canny of the owners/parents to register the canine’s distress and believe the dog.

And yet…

My own experience as a very noisy advocate for abused and neglected children has been the opposite of the dog’s.

When I barked out my story people distanced themselves or shut down…they sometimes told me just shut up.

I am 43 and can take the discomfort. But how about all the child victims? Shouldn’t they get the same support and protection as the baby in the story.

I guess what I am saying is this–don’t mindlessly forward a story about a heroic dog if you are not willing to be a heroic person.

All it takes is a little time to growl at the bad guys, let someone know. Listen to anyone who makes a cry for help.

All our children deserve a defender like that.

And…in my experience, a person who would slap a baby is capable of hurting the dog too. We all have a right to live free from abuse.

RAD Memories

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I had a dream a few nights ago. I had no money, no means of buying things. I had been given the task of engaging my adopted daughter (who has disowned me) in a conversation.

Because it is a dream, I choose to discuss an array of roasted and cooked chicken that is behind a butcher’s counter.

I try to keep the conversation very neutral, very chicken-focused.

Because when your kid is RAD that is how you learn to roll…even in your subconscious.

I am going to start laying out my memories of life with my adopted children. Like an old woman pulling sweaters from the attic. I need to organize this thing….the life we lived together.

The first thing you should know is the last thing that happened–she cut me off because she suspected I had reported her brother….suspected him of child abuse.

Ironically, as with so many things before, she unleashed her anger on the alleged reporter instead of facing the crime.

The terrible crime.

Richard Dawkins and “mild pedophilia”

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Richard Dawkins says a lot of crazy things. My favorite was when he told Ben Stein that our world was seeded by aliens.

My least favorite is from an interview in which he says that not only were he and his fellow students systematically preyed upon by a teacher, it was “mild pedophilia” and “did no lasting harm.”

Desensitizing a grown man to the concept of child rape is harm enough. I wonder whether his fellow students would agree?

I do not know any other victims of child sexual abuse who would pass it off as harmless.

It is not harmless. It is rape.

But here is the thing–so often Dawkins is most instructive when he fails to see the obvious–what he is really saying is that the children of his generation were taught to be quiet and deal with a terrible injustice.

And for Dawkins, at least, that was not a good thing. For him to draw a distinction among various kinds of egregious injuries to children is to show a grave gap in his thinking, his logic, his philosophy, and his grasp of the law.

If he is wrong about this, what else is he missing? What else is he getting so very wrong?

Surviving RAD–so far

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I don’t mind saying it–some of my biggest heroes are the fostering and adopting parents of attachment disorder kids.

RAD is the nightmare consequence of leaving a baby without physical and emotional nurture. It is a scary mix of pathological thinking and behavior.

It deserves to be a household word, but it is not.

RAD is preventable–babies need the security of physical and emotional caregiving. They need to know that when they cry someone will respond to their needs. They need to know love.

If they do not get that love and security their brain functions and emotional wiring gets pretty messed up.

Scary messed up.
Impossibly tangled.

Recently Reuters and other news sources have focused on the rise of an informal networks developed to help adoptive parents with disrupted adoptions–many because of RAD.

I have read the installments with a grim empathy…for the parents…

As the adoptive mother of two RAD kids, I know exactly what drives well-intentioned parents to abandon fheir kids.

After reading this article I am deeply grateful we all survived.

So far…

Tiny Brides, Big Problems

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It is funny how very kid-indifferent organizations will truck out the welfare of minors for political leverage.

Do you care about the rights of children in Yemen? Afghanistan? Cleveland?

If you do then you will do something for them–to speak and advocate for them, even if it costs you. Even if it actually puts you back personally, socially, or politically.

Yesterday I heard someone quote a politician who said they were looking for a “principled not political” vote on Syria.

Yep, me too. I figure that I might find it lurking in the same corner of the multiverse as the Yeti, the Loch Ness monster, and the Tooth Fairy.

And you? How about you?

The laws guarding the rights and safety of children in this country are on the brink of being vestigial. What chance do the little ones married off to pedophiles actually have?

Here, or anywhere else…

Talking about the “Tooth Fairy”

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Imagine you were five.

And everyone else had a tooth fairy.

But when your teeth come out your mother and father congratulate you. Keep it. Celebrate. But no magical reward.

You might ask some questions.

Tooth fairies are good, right? The Tooth Fairy is good, right?

Not in our family.

In our family the tooth fairy is absent. My son asks why? I tell him the truth. It happened like this…

Sometimes grownups do bad things, say bad things. They get angry at the victim of a crime instead of the person who commits the crime.

In those cases, when a grownup gets angry at a little kid for something that was not her fault… well, he might not say it was because of the crime done to her, because he was shamed by it’s proximity to him.

He might say it was because she did not eat all of her veggies.

But the strength of his anger would let you know. Let you know he was not safe.

So we don’t see him anymore.
Because we don’t want him to hurt you–any of you–again.

This is the part I am sure of–he would do it again.

And every child deserves to have a safe tooth fairy.

Or the truth, and none at all.

Final Words for Ariel Castro

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It is easy to rejoice in the death of a monster. It is easy to see Ariel Castro’s suicide as the final word on the life of an evil man.

But is that enough?

I don’t think so.

I think I must grieve.

Grieve for his countless victims.
Grieve for the irreparable harm of his years of sin.
Grieve for broken justice, in this case blind for too long.

Grieve because he was once a baby whose life, like all small humans, was once so full of potential…

Grieve because all he did to hurt, disfigure, and destroy was his choice.

And he could have chosen light instead.

Kyle the Valedictorian Glurge

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I admit I am a little fascinated by glurges, mostly because we humans often do not live up to them. (And that some of them attend Georgetown.)

We tell stories about pastors disguised as homeless dudes or nerdy kids who become shining orators. But in real life we scuttle the other way at most signs of social disorder.

We long for a good glurge.

The Good News is that Jesus is one. He really does befriend the weak, disguise himself as a homeless man, and save the losers.

Losers like me.

Then in a stroke of sheer genius he teaches us to be like him.

The real love stories are so often the quiet, painful ones that escape our attention.