pushing the borders ...

Mr. Lapushin is not confused. He knows whom to follow.

2012-01-01T17:55:00.003-05:00

What if nothing has changed? Photo by Rajmund Dabrowski

Just as we were about to engage in celebrationsseeing the annus horribilis of 2011 departing from our sight and experience, a piece of news came from theislands of Samoa in the Pacific Ocean. The island nations, located between Hawaiiand New Zealand, usually make the news as nations destined by their datelinedesignation to be first to light their fireworks.

The passage of 2011 into 2012 made someof the Samoan citizens celebrate calendar newness with trepidation. On December29, the islands of Samoa and Tokelaurepositioned the international dateline on - as was planned - reallocating thedays of the week so that the seventh day of the week would fall on Sundayinstead of Saturday as usual. For Seventh-day Adventists and for Jews it meantthat Sunday was to become their religiously held Sabbath.

This in itself caused a dilemma for Seventh-dayAdventist believers. All of a sudden ceasing to be distinct from otherChristians? News reports indicated that not all believers on Samoan islands arein sync with each other. Whilst some congregations accepted Sunday as their newSabbath, Seventh-day Adventists in American Samoa said: No. They would not tampercontinuity of their day of worship.

As many - including believers from far, far distant lands - began arguing who is right, what iswrong, which calendar option was more correct, and that it all bids not too wellfor the future of theological correctness, another item caught my attention. While many believers are eagerly awaiting what the official stance would be on the issue, a report in JTA, a Global News service for the Jewish People, see: http://bit.ly/v94w2f, sounded a concernregarding the jump “straight from Thursday to Saturday,” forfeiting the lastFriday of 2011.

The report featured a resident Samoan Jew, MaxLapushin, concerned about a 49-hour Sabbath in Apia, the Samoan capital. “Lapushin,a 25-year-old American citizen, lives in Apia and has called the Pacific islandnation home for nearly four years. A Jewish day school graduate from Atlanta,Lapushin first arrived in Samoa as a Peace Corps volunteer in October 2007 toteach computer classes. He was on the ground when the devastating 2009earthquake and tsunami hit, killing more that 180 people. Lapushin recentlyreturned to Samoa after a few months overseas to work as a computer consultant.”

The JTA report continued that, Lapushin only knowsof two other Samoan Jews -- both Peace Corps volunteers -- who were on vacationthe pre-New Year week. But, “If he's correct, it would make him the onlyJew present on the Samoan mainland when the island nation turned the clockforward.”

With some indication – correctly or not – that Sunday-Sabbath couldbe an OK for some Seventh-day Adventist Samoans, Mr. Lapuskin reportedly saidthat, he “will follow their lead and light Shabbos candles on Saturday night.”

“When youtalk about being Jewish," Lapushin explained, "people say, 'Oh,you're Seventh Day Adventist!'”

Whether or not Seventh-day Adventists will everresolve their identity distinctiveness from their fellow Mormon or JehovahWitness believers (see my previous blog text), they can safely rest their casewhen identity confusion connects them with their Jewish pedigree. Sabbath-candlesnotwithstanding, and theologically-speaking of course.

Adventist present [media] truth—a vision to be realized

2011-12-14T22:42:00.000-05:00

John Hunt is a recognized author andadvertising guru.* His claim to fame is being a co-creator of a partner companywith the TBWA advertising agency whose international success is driven by themantra, “Life’s to short to be mediocre.” What he has to say seems at oncepoignant and challenging to many a Seventh-day Adventist church member, leaderand communicator (in that order): “We don’t know what we don't know until we do what we don’t usually do.” (1)

Mr.Hunt’s comment brings me to an unrealized vision from more than a decade ago, fromwhich some of us are yet to wake up. The vision has to do with an intentional focus(one would hope and assume) on improving the public perception of our church.

Thiswas rekindled in my mind by the current Mormon public image perceptioncampaign. The thoughts I wish to share are aimed at creating a teaser for aconversation. What may emerge will hopefully assist in self-assessment as tohow to approach a need to be seen and experienced as a people who are worthgetting to know. The result—the Good News about Jesus Christ will be betterknown.

Are weactually in the marketplace?

Seventh-dayAdventists may not be as rich as the Mormons, but we seem to be doing rather wellin our splendid isolation, seeing some growth in mission, while resorting tomoaning about our poor public perception.

Don’tyou cringe when someone mixes your religious affiliation with that of someoneelse?

Adventistsare nearly absent where others are present in engaging the public with theircauses. To start with, by clinging largely on to a view and the urgency thatthis world will soon end, we are equally timid at considering “shouting fromthe rooftops.”

Asmembers of society, all of us have similar communication tools at our disposal.These methods are actually neither sacred nor secular. The content and whatpropels our communication is different. For Seventh-day Adventists, theapocalyptic in its varied expressions, we argue, is the coin to spend. Yet ourcommunication efforts and the attractive and persuasive messaging required arerelegated to the all too often “tried and true” methods that worked before, butare effective no longer. The world and its marketplace continue to move on and oldways of communication are left behind. But how ready is the church to jump intoa required notoriety created by contemporary media?

Youand I are participants (or at least observers) in the era of new communicationand its technological advancement. Religious words that once were carefullyconsidered, and the name of God, which was held in reverence, now seem to be atbest—ignored. The church, when it speaks, is hardly listened to. Religiousverbiage is not understood and the fact that one uses many religious words doesnot mean one is held in awe. Religious media is craving to be relevant, yet,today’s audience says it simply—show me what you believe,but don’t overwhelm me with your talk.

Whatis actually needed is to step forward, forsaking timidity and engage withcontent development with a clear identity and messaging focused on the future.The media is already there. In the marketplace. He who is not present, aproverb says, is not right.

Now, aMormon story.

TheMormons support their missionary efforts with ample investment in communicationand branding. A recent Mormon communication approach was presented in awell-researched article in the New York Times.(2) The articleexplained the focus and intentionality of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-daySaints in launching a media campaign, which connects to the current U.S.Presidential race with two Republican candidates, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsmanwho are also well-respected members of the LDS Church.

Unlikewith Adventists, for the LDS Church it’s not the second coming of Jesus that isat stake here. There may be varied outcomes they are aiming at, among them aneed to be known as an OK religious group —“nothing to be afraid of”—but alsoto be recognized for “whom” they wish to be recognized as.

Iam in support of their campaign. Perhaps at last my church will not be mistakenfor being a community of Latter-day Saints!

Goingback a few decades, I recall a meeting in the office of an ambassador whosewindows were overlooking St. Peter’s Square. At some point in our conversationhe pointed to a difference between the Catholics and the Adventists. He said“Catholics are largely steeped in the past, and with a predictable presenceenhanced by the ‘communication Pope.’ But, I see you as a contemporaryChristian community with a message the world is searching for. We are alldealing with issues of living safer, better, healthier lives, and we all needhope.”

Thenhe added, “But, you are timid about it. Why?”

Suchwas his opinion about a people of hope, which we are claiming to be. Hisvalues, which Seventh-day Adventists hold as true and lasting. Among thelessons from that conversation was also that we might just have a problem withour own identity. Moreover, what we have we are largely keeping to ourselves.

Ouridentity is increasinly beyond Millerite.

DesignatingAdventism as a homemade variety of Christianity in America, Paul K. Conkin,professor of history at Vanderbilt University recognizes a tension in knowingwho we are. He writes rather favorably about the church’s growth and mission.Writing about our beliefs, he states that Seventh-day Adventists “seem veryclose to the Christians Paul addressed in Thessalonica in the early days ofChristianity, and close to the apocalyptic expectations of Jesus and hisdisciples.” (3) But, in his well-researched thesis, American Originals, he describesstruggles of the church’s founders to establish Seventh-day Adventism’sdistinct identity. He writes, “One tension that has been most basic andenduring involves Seventh-day Adventist identity” (4).

Farfrom being conclusive about one’s evaluations, this very issue seems quiteenduring for Adventist communicators. Many a church functionary is more eagerto connect our identity with what was before us—the Millerites. They do this atthe cost of defining us today. In dealing with such questions as “Who are you?”many a communicator will roll out a list of comparisons or differences withother religious groups, thus giving a license to declare that in this or thatwe are special, unique or distinct. Somehow this distinctiveness has yet torelease dividends in image clarity or more interest.

Itis hardly useful to generalize. There are many examples of individuals andcommunities making a difference, creating change, and responding well to themission objectives of Adventism. In the area of name recognition and publicrelations, there are parts of our globe where Seventh-day Adventists go aboutimproving the church’s public perception and they seem to know how it works.

In Australia, we know how to enter the PRgame and we begin by engaging with communication experts, as well as byidentifying our audience for specific communication. It can be explained thatif communication is taken seriously, image building will become an asset to allelse we do, like in Poland in the 1980s, when the public-interest issues ofsocial pathologies were taken on board and executed with a communication intentionality required to make these approaches viable and outcome-rich.

Justa few years ago in Romania, the church took a topic of a rather poor Bibleawareness in this Christian country and used the traffic-heavy streets toinvite citizens to discover what the Holy Bible is. Ads were everywhere.

Asomewhat different story comes from Jamaica. There, the church is challenged bythe national media to be on top of the game (read: PR game) of being prominent.A known newspaper publisher-editor stated that Seventh-day Adventists graduatedfrom a minority to the largest faith group on the island. “What are you goingto do about it?” he asked. “You are now in the driver’s seat and we will belooking toward you to be a leading moral voice,” he added.

Apartfrom stressing the apocalyptic themes throughout our history, Conkin noted: “Itis worth noting that no other American-based denomination has ever attempted totransform itself so fully into a worldwide fellowship. No other American-baseddenomination has turned so fully to modern communication technology, includingthe use of the Internet.” (5)

One thingis to recognize our own importance ourselves, another, when others offer theirappraisal of how they see us.

Onthe eve of a 100^th anniversary of Seventh-day Adventistcorporate communication, it may be well, in my view, to recall Ellen G. White’sforceful communication counsel. She seemed to opt for newness in the way thechurch goes about its communication efforts. She commented that, “the character andimportance of our work are judged by the efforts made to bring it before thepublic. When these efforts are so limited, the impression is given thatthe message we present is not worthy of notice.” (6)

Thisfounding leader of the church stressed the relevance and importance of how weshould care about what we say, how we say it, and how we listen to the world.“We should remember that the world will judge us by what we appear to be.” (7)

Ourbrand may be clear, however, our communication is timid, resulting in part fromour lack of clarity over our identity. Our message lacks public relevance dueto a preoccupation with communication that primarily focuses on discussing thepast, and messaging geared mostly at addressing ourselves rather the generalpublic.

Ellen White also wrote:

Truthwill be made so prominent that he who runs may read. Means will be devised toreach hearts. Some of the methods used in this work will be differentfrom the methods used in the work in the past; but let no one, because of this,block the way by criticism (8).

Inone of his books, Paul Arden of the Saatchi & Saatchi fame, wrote: “Yourvision of where or who you want to be is the greatest asset you have.” (9) Totranslate his comment into Adventist mission, we could simply say—Adventism isthe opportunity we already have.

InArden’s parlance, “When it can’t be done, do it. If you don’t do it, it doesn’texist.” Today’s generation knows it. This generation is not bashful toarticulate it. Just join or check what is on display in Facebook, Twitter orYouTube, those relational social communities. Those who “live” there also seemto be saying: If your present is expressed in the past, it will not be found inyour future.

Whethera new communication strategy for the Adventist world church will replace thecurrent one (11), there will continue to be a need to try out new creativeapproaches to improving church awareness in society, globally and locally. Thevision statement the world church agreed on in 1995 seems to continue to offera useful point of reference for any branding efforts or for relevant communicationprograms of our church: Seventh-day Adventists will communicate hope by focusingon the quality of life that is complete in Jesus Christ.

Our brand—hope.

Principlesof the Adventist faith notwithstanding, is there a present in Adventist identity? Or, is it locked in a formula, whichperhaps was never intended to last forever?

In the words of Peter Gabriel - "As always, the rest is up to you."

*This essay was also published on the Spectrum Magazine blog. See: http://bit.ly/uX8rSd

(1) John Hunt, The Art of the Idea, and How it Can Change Your Life, 2009; p. 115.

(2) “Mormon’s Ad Campaign May PlayOut on the ’12 Campaign Trail” by Laurie Goodstein,November 17, 2011.

(3) Paul K. Conkin, American Originals, HomemadeVarieties of Christianity, 1997; p. 145.

(4) Ibid, p. 138.

(5) Ibid, p. 144.

(6) Evangelism, p. 128.

(7) Testimonies, vol. 6, p. 397.

(8) Evangelism, pp. 129, 130.

(9) Paul Arden, It’s Not How Good You Are,It’s How Good You Want to Be, 2003; p. 4

(10) Ibid, p. 46

(11) “Seventh-dayAdventist World Communication Strategy—Report” was adopted at 1995General Conference Session, Utrecht, Netherlands. Implementation of what wasto be known as the Hope Strategy, it identified tasks for the church on all levelsand through institutions.

A leader should take you forward

2011-11-03T16:32:00.003-04:00

Jan Paulsen, author of Where Are We Going?

There is an anecdote Jan Paulsen, author of a newlypublished book, Where Are We Going?*,sometimes shares about Odd Jordal, a fellow Norwegian, church leader, and a missionary fromdecades ago. In a conversation about a challenge with preparation of so manynew sermons, week after week, Pastor Jordal quipped, that after one preachedthe sermon for the third time to the same congregation, that the full benefitwould be obtained.

OddJordal’s comment came to mind as I read, underlined, and paused to re-read manya statement in Where Are We Going?

JanPaulsen, until last year the world leader of the Seventh-day Adventist Church,has written a 127-page volume of reflections and lessons from his lifetime ofleadership of service.

Withbook reviews still in the works, mine is a set of thoughts that resonate withme on my own, personal level. Having watched, read and heard Jan Paulsen overmany years, I was wondering if the book would include some of his earliermemorable statements and concepts - some of which would have perhaps matured astime went by - that would be worth revisiting. I wasn’t disappointed.

Inshort, the book is a timely and concise reminder of things on record, expanded,and continuously relevant.

Ablunt assertion could be made that in a faith community such as Seventh-dayAdventists, softer, well-rehearsed topics are preferred, and as such arecomfortably repeated again and again. There is safety and comfort in a quietsameness. So, it is resolved to better not to touch uncomfortable issues. Animage is created of a forbidden truth to be kept at bay and best untouched.

However,Where Are We Going? is laced withthemes that should never leave the leadership menu of Adventism. For many areader, the book will be a welcome thought-stimuli. A book such as his getsattention even simply because it is authored by a world ecclesiastical leader.When leaders speak, we usually respond with some interest.

Immediatelyafter his election as the world church leader, Paulsen identified three mainaudiences for his particular attention – the youth and women (“two majoritiesoften treated like minorities”), as well as church leadership. In his book,Paulsen spells out his concerns as to how the church nurtures these individualsand groups, how it responds to their particular needs and interests, and whatcourse needs to be pursued. You will not find a “them” and “us” language in Where Are We Going? whether the authoris dealing with the church members in their internal church setting, when inconversation with young people, or with adherents to other religions.

Inthe realm of social media, Paulsen’s volume is a book of quotes suitablydestined to populate the Facebook pages. Here is a sample: “Adventist ministersand leaders don’t have mysterious powers to assign people to heaven or hell”(p. 31). Again about leaders: “Outstanding Adventist leaders realize that theyare not always right,” (p. 35).

Another,“True communication takes place only in the absence of fear. Do our colleaguesfeel safe when they are talking to us?” (page 32). On the same page: “God willsave people, not statements.”

Speaking about “The Church and ‘Other People’,” theauthor writes: “Contamination is not a significant threat if we’re sure aboutwho we are and who walks with us,” (p. 55).

Thebook offers a metaphorical mirror into which we look and hopefully review thestate each of us, and particularly church leaders. What do you see?
Paulsenuses plain language when he speaks about a frequently recurring attitude of “Iknow it all.” Many a leader has fallen on such a self-sharpened sword. Hewrites, “I’d hate to spend my time surrounded only by people who think theyhave everything worked out just right. They become arrogant, clinical, andjudgmental of those who still have a lot of growing to do.” (p. 107).

Throughoutthe book, there are many what I would call as “Paulsenesque” phrases, with manya sentence understated - a manner of speaking one recognizes as his trademark.As one ponders on a context to each of those statements one glides into adeeper meaning.

WhereAre We Going? is a book ofquestions. Countless questions. Simply start with the book’s title. It opens witha question, and is an invitation to a conversation.

Askingquestions is an effective method for a teacher, whose interest is to make hisstudents think and think for themselves. Paulsen invites the reader to considera language of openness, “communication without fear,” as he puts it. He callsfor more listening when relating to each other, with a language of civility andacts of generosity. As “our words matter,” what’s needed is that we “reallylisten,” he writes.

Ina chapter entitled “Living in Tension,” Paulsen challenges with a comment, “Wetend not to like those who ask difficult questions. … Questions lead to adialogue, which in turn contributes to the bonding between God’s people. Andquestions keep us alert.” And he continues, that “As an Adventist leader, don’tbe afraid of questions. Instead, fear silence, for apathy is far more hazardousto the body of Christ than is critical thinking” (p. 110).

It’squite expected that many readers will appreciate what the book presents. Somemay perhaps study it. Others will have mixed, even negative feeling about it.In any case, such is a destiny for all endeavors when thoughts are put intowords, and are made public. Paulsen will smile and simply quip, that if therewas no criticism, the author has failed.

Indeed,in an ecclesiastical world of sameness and predictable, lofty declarations,some readers will find the author’s invitation to a healthy, civilizeddiscourse about the church’s future as threatening. As I see it, the author isunapologetic when pointing at the values stated, and re-stated by Scripture,and the reality that “we have not arrived yet.”

Consideringthe unfinished journey of a Christian pilgrim, one knows exactly what Paulsenmeans when he reminds himself, that “it’s impossible to walk backwards into thefuture with eyes fixed on how things used to be,” (p. 34). The book makes numerous assertions that for a Christian church,there is only a future to be considered. As one expected, page after page,Paulsen re-states a firm belief that the church’s mission is yet to beaccomplished.

Neitheris God finished with me, he comments.

Thoughoffering plenty to chew on, the Where AreWe Going? leaves one with wanting more.

Untilwe hear again from Jan Paulsen, there is already plenty to reflect, reclaim,and … change.

*Jan Paulsen, WhereAre We Going?, Pacific Press Publishing Association, 2011.

Building the future through listening: Jan Paulsen in conversation with young people in New York City during one of 25 televised live, unscripted and unedited Let's Talk events.

Revisiting Christianity: The new is saying No! to the old and stale

2011-10-25T16:49:00.000-04:00

Exterior door sculpture at the Church of the Gracious Mother of God. Warsaw, Poland

Dave Thomas, Dean of the School of Theology at Walla Walla University, asks a question: "What would the world be like if the followers of Jesus were known as people who are kind?"*
Thomas' fine essay actually says that if the Bible is their guide, wouldn't they give attention to what religion-by-example calls for. He is aiming his comments at the Seventh-day Adventist Christians in particular. But his thoughts are just as appropriate to all followers of Jesus. One lesson from the essay is that "living by the Truth" should be seen in more than doctrinal correctness.

His commentary resonates with what the recent-past Adventist world church leader asks - how attractive is the church for those it should ... attract? In his recent thought-provoking book, Where Are We Going?, Jan Paulsen challenges church leadership to address the climate in the congregations.

"For unbelievers, our churches are meant to be places of healing and renewal, where they will be drawn in and find caring human relationships. ... For believers, our churches are meant to be places to feel free, safe, and at home. They are meant to be cities of refuge, not battlefields."**

The recent parliamentary election in Poland has again awoken a debate about anintersection of religion and national politics, but also what qualities shouldthe Catholic Church be known for. In what is recognized as a predominantlyCatholic nation, one of the unexpected winners in Poland on October 9 was ananticlerical centrist, Janusz Palikot.

Outof obscurity of populist antics, happenings, and slogans, a master of notorietyin politics, Mr. Palikot launched a successful campaign challenging theCatholic establishment, including what is referred to as it's backward andreactionary craving for dominance in national politics. Named after itscreator, the Palikot Movement party came third with over 10 percent of votes.

Hisslogans to reclaim the country from the shackles of enslaving religiosityappealed to the young generation. The largely postmodern generation is tired ofdogmatic Catholicism and its influence on their freedoms in public life. Theyvoted for change and spoke against tampering with contemporary solutions tolife problems of today's Poland.

Notthat the topic is new, but like a perennial plant comes up with clock-likeregularity. The new is saying No! to the old and stale.

Myrecent encounter with the Polish election as reported in the media parked myattention on an editorial comment by Rev. Adam Boniecki, editor of Tygodnik Powszechny, a respectedindependent Catholic weekly. His editorial published next day, recognized Mr.Palikot's electoral win as "an anticlerical's expected success."**

Bonieckiwrote that the "less than serious Palikot has turned out to beserious." In what is regarded as secular Europe, Poland is often perceivedas a “haven of faith.” The Catholic commentator refers to many harsh reactionsagainst Mr. Palikot's charges leveled at the Catholic establishment, and hisattempts to make Poland secular. Hethen asks a few questions, which the Catholic microcosm would do well torecognize, in his opinion.

Inhis words, "listening to the often unjust charges, intently listening tothe often one-sided and biased antichurch views, it is worth to ask a question,with which Paul VI reacted when charges against the church were reported tohim: 'What if they have some credence, too?'"

Whatcomes next is also a perennial issue that pops-up among many conscientiousChristians, as they are challenged by those who watch them and ... wonder.

Ifpeople are reacting angrily, unjustly or with an indifference, would we echoafter Boniecki, "as believers, what face of the Gospel are we showing tothe world?"

Thereis more. "Would the unbelievers who are watching us, say, like the'pagans' remarked about the early Christians: 'Look, how they love each other?'Are we the witnesses of evangelical poverty? Unselfishness? Love? Caring forthe helpless? Can a poor man knock on our door with confidence? What about asinner, a blasphemer, a Satanist? Are we more caring about the institution, orabout a human person? In our parishes, is the Sunday Mass a joyous experiencefor the [faith] community?" the editor asks.

Ishare a similar sentiment. You may be a Protestant Christian, but you may beequally arrogant and judgmental - theology aside - toward those who represent adifferent worldview, even an extreme one.

Bonieckicontinues with more questions. "Will we leave the 99 sheep and seek outthe one which is lost? Is the one that was found taken into our arms, ordeluged with reproach ("where on earth did you go?") and demandedsigns of remorse and acts of recompense?"

Finally,the editor asks: "Considering the success of the Palikot Movement, it'sworth doing a conscientious and serious evaluation: Those who are watching ourdeeds, would they for sure be praising the Father who is in heaven?"

Yearsago, I read a personal ad in an Adventist church magazine. A church memberwondered if she had a chance to get married again, and with a fellow believer.She wrote: “I am ugly, fat, a single mother, and I am looking for love.” Someenquiries revealed that though she came to church regularly and was active inher witness, she was hungry for love. Of course, she wanted also to get marriedagain. She simply did not experience inclusiveness within her faith community.

Simplyput, many churches, though professing to be purveyors of the good news of theGospel, are not “walking the talk.”

Allof these issues have their validity throughout Christianity. But, I ask myself,is my own Christian witness known for acts of justice, kindness, and for anassortment of virtues, and among them, gratitude and generosity?

Whateveris the answer, whatever needs to change, our lives matter when they arereflected in the lives of others.

That'smy soapbox for today.

*Spectrum Magazine blog, October 14, 2011, http://spectrummagazine.org

**Jan Paulsen, Where Are We Going?, Pacific PressPublishing Association, 2011, p. 106.

***Ks. Adam Boniecki, “Antyklerykalasukces spodziewany” [Anticlerical’s expected success],Tygodnik Powszechny, Oct. 11, 2011. After this blog was published, Rev. Boniecki was ordered not to speak publicly and in the media by his ecclesiastical superiors, the Marian Order. His comments are viewed as not being representative of the Catholic Church. [Added on Nov. 3, 2011]

A makeshift wooden cross was erected in front of the Presidential Palace in Warsaw after the Polish president and 100 dignitaries died in an air crash on April 10, 2010. It's public placement and refusal to be moved elsewhere became an object of bitter political arm wrestling.

On repairing our everydayness

2011-10-12T13:36:00.001-04:00

A brief marketing encounter a few days ago with the Sligo Adventist Schoolin Takoma Park, Maryland, a grade school operated by a congregation I worshipin, gave me an opportunity to listen to parents of kids whose lives are beingimpacted by caring teachers. Their stories zeroed-in on such concepts as values and virtues which properly classified thepedagogues of the school.

Thesestories reminded me of Janusz Korczak, a pedagogue, and a guardian of thehomeless, neglected, and often abandoned children.

Korczak’sstory is rich and compelling. It was Summer of 1942. He refused to leave the Warsaw Ghetto becauseof his adopted children, and met his fate in the gas chambers of Treblinkaconcentration camp. His forte was “ethical sensitivity” in education, and abelief that one should place physical development of a child on the same levelas his or her culture of feelings and emotional life.

Inhis journal he wrote this little memoirabout sparrows:

During the summer the windows were usuallyopen and they would come into the room and sit on a flowerpot. If I was alsositting still, they were not afraid. But once, when I entered the roomunexpectedly, a sparrow flew away and being scared off, it could not find a wayout and hit the window glass. It was stunned. Maybe hurt, even. Later, before Ientered my room, I would knock on the door.

Butnow, it’s wintertime and I have once again asked the glass-fitter to come andcut out a small [corner] piece of the window, so that sparrows could come inand eat. It would be warmer for them inside.

Thislittle gem of a story reveals the secret of Korczak’s educational success. Whenfrom time to time he received psychologically crippled children into his newhomes for orphans, he treated them the same way he would treat the sparrows.All he wanted was that the boys and girls would not be afraid anymore.

Reminders.What would we do if they ceased to propel us into repairing our everydayness,helping someone by being present in their lives, perhaps just by keeping themcompany and simply casting the fear away.

Lavender, bell heathers and the celestial bliss

2011-10-05T15:42:00.000-04:00

French lavender. Annecy, France

Itwas a daydream. It catapulted me into this piece because of a ratherunexpectedly poor and cold weather. Having a deep connection with the nature Iam enchanted by the seasons that unveil the nature’s beauty.

So,I was imagining a permanent year morphing all four seasons into each other.

Whatif, the purple lavender of the summer in Provence seamlessly shared the colorsand the scent of the purple autumn bell heathers in Hampshire’s heathlands in England.Being born in the month of September, it’s the heathers that attract my sensorypleasure.

Then,my daydream morphs seamlessly the colors of the golden autumn in Poland, Canadaand New England, giving themselves up for the wintery whiteness and abundanceof snow in front of our house in Laurel, Maryland. Grazyna would thenpermanently enjoy frolicking in it and giggling like a small girl. She wouldwave her arms creating an angel imprint in a snow mountain on a day when thehazard of driving would keep her away from … school.

Soonthe snow would join the warming sunrays of spring, with an array of green hopecovering the flora.

Suchdaydreaming is a reaction to what one experiences in a loss of what oncewas predictable, the golden yesteryear. Now, there remains the predictabilityof the effects of global warming, and with it the decaying nature and beauty of our Mother Earth.

In A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway describessadness “of losing a season out of your life” when unseasonal changes in theweather destroyed the expected warmth of the coming spring. “When the coldrains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had diedfor no reason. In those days, though, the spring always came finally; but itwas frightening that it had nearly failed,” he wrote about his Paris days inthe 1920s.

AsI recall what it was like in the “good old days” of my distant past, gone arethe farmers gazing at an evening sky and knowing for certain what would come inthe morning.

Whatseems to be left now is a daydream.

What followed one night was a dream. While I daydream in full color, my night dreamsare checkered with some color, but all too often with black-and-white scenes -these scary nightmares with vivid experiences of fear. I seem to beusually running, escaping, in those bouts of night-imagination.

That night, what I saw were the images of heaven. The images were definitely inspired by the imagination evoked when reading Scriptural narratives. Whether I wasthere, or not I cannot tell for certain. What I saw there etched itself in a memory and recalled later again and again.

Peoplewere walking on the heavenly boulevards. It seemed like an uncounted multitudeof them. All was bathed in sunshine forming a display of a palette ofrainbow colors.

Oncloser scrutiny, I recognized some faces. Ha, I heard myself utter, did theydeserve to be there? I would not have expected to see some of them enjoying thecelestial bliss. Oh, really?

WhenI woke up, it was obvious that hardly anything is as simple and true in life asone assumes and is convinced about it.

Whetheryou dream at night or daydream in the afternoon about a better reality, all youcan do is look after your own rights or wrongs.

The rest – actually everything- belongs to the Life Giver.

Human palette of rainbow colors. Chirala, India

Such sweet and intoxicating scent of ego

2011-10-03T15:16:00.000-04:00

Lenin's Mausoleum, Red Square, Moscow, Russia

If you are a writer, you know when a storywill write itself.

Such a moment came after reading a passage from Tom Rachman'sfascinating true-to-life novel about predicaments of the newspaper industry, The Imperfectionists. I noted at oncethat a story is being written in my head and would be put to paper with myfavorite Faber-Castel pencil.

So this is how it goes... A reporter is sent to interview a oncewell-known author. His assignment is to prepare an obituary about her as she isgetting on with age and the facts about her life are sparse. Reflecting on herown encounter with death knocking-in, she thinks aloud describing the absurdityof ambition, and yet remaining in its thrall.

"It's like being a slave all your life, then learning one daythat you never had a master, and returning to work all the same. Can youimagine a force in the universe greater than this? Not in my universe. Youknow, even from the earliest childhood it dominated me. I longed for achievements,to be influential - that, in particular. To sway people. This has been myreligion: the belief that I deserve attention, that they are wrong not tolisten, that those who dispute me are fools. Yet, no matter what I achieve, theworld lives on, impertinent, indifferent - I know all this, but I can't get itthrough my head. It is why, I suppose, I agreed to talk to you. To this day,I'll pursue any folly to make the rest of you shut up and listen to me, as youshould have from the start!"

And she continues, "Here is a fact: nothing in all civilizationhas been as productive as ludicrous ambition. Whatever it's ills, nothing hascreated more. Cathedrals, sonatas, encyclopedias: love of God was not behindthem, nor love of life. But the love of man to be worshipped by man."

What she describes can be viewed as a slice of our common folly. Myfolly certainly fits into this picture.

My boss had an uncanny way of bringing me back to earth from myinflated opinion of myself. A few years ago there was an encounter thatregistered itself among the experiences of life, but needed to be recalledback, reclaimed.

Mychest was bursting as I shared with him what happened, and how elated I was tobe recognized.

"Aren'twe wonderful," he said, and walked away.

Itwas a moment to forget, I thought in an instant.

A treasure throve of life's experiencesgave birth to that memory as I read the words - "... I deserveattention."

Frankly,I admit to creating lots of madness in my own life, as I pursued ambition andpraise. So, from time to time a lesson comes, and is also often forgotten inthe fog of pursuing fleeting praise.

Bob Edwards, once an NPR radio host, remarked that what he did onthe radio was not about him. He satisfies his ego by the very fact that he ison the radio already, he commented in conversation with another radiopersonality, Diane Rehm.

"I'm a minimalist. And in the show, you know, especially"Morning Edition," doing NPR news, it wasn't about me, it was aboutmy guests," he told Rehm. "My guests were super so I wanted to hearmore of them. You know, I had enough ego satisfaction just to be hosting theprogram. That did it for me. I didn't need to talk."

Thewisdom others teach you, I reflected, as I listened to Edwards.

It's never easy to sober up from intoxication with one's ego. Aquestion lingers on: How can one remain on an auto-pilot firmly set to beinguseful for the sake of goodness and for the sake of others? Just be, do good,and the meaning of it all will be with those who encounter your life?

Thispost stopped writing itself three days ago. Then, true to my enjoyment of twists and turns in life, I began writing its closing sentences. I got stuck in theprocess.

Thenat one bend I took, a thought appeared. Stop! - it shouted at me. Let the piecewrite itself.

Inan avalanche of verbiage, it is much useful to acknowledge those people in yourlife who disagreed with you. They are saying that you don't have all theanswers. You are just as well not having them, either.

Amasterpiece in life is decided in the encounter with others. They will tell youwhen they see it.

Inthe words of the Bible, “Don’t indulge your ego at theexpense of your soul.” – 1 Peter 2:11 The Message

Strasbourg Cathedral, France

We are together, she wrote.

2011-09-25T13:23:00.000-04:00

Marta in 2010: Portrait of a girl wondering which crow to feed.

Two messages came through my world over the weekend. First came from the Facebook confessions of my friends.

In his wall-post one of my friends wrote: conversation with my daughter this morning about her future: "You should be a pastor." Her reply: "No way, they don't make any money." She is a young child, and children talk with no apprehension, and express themselves how they see it – sweet and straight.

It made me wonder – what is it that she is picking up from the milieu she observes that already at her young age she is so resolute and focused. Her father, a pastor, is obviously wondering, too. What is he feeding her, I wondered? Or is she another victim of being exposed to mind-bending diatribe served daily from the politicians?

Perhaps, if all she is hearing and internalizing about the rich paying less in taxes, for example, she constructs a vision for her life to consider wealth as a better option. I get it. Her father’s pastoral salary does not allow her to get what she wants, nor that she should get all her young eyes desire. Perhaps she wants to be like, say, Paris Hilton, and have more than less in life.

With years of upbringing his child still ahead, my friends joy will be to explain and model other options that would undergird her life choices. He will watch her progress and relish the sight of her growth and beauty.

The other piece of news was about our niece, Marta, when Grazyna’s sister, Lidia, and Jarek, our brother-in-law, told us that Marta announced that she has a boyfriend. When I spoke with Jarek, he was excited. Of course, I will have a “man-to-man” talk with her as any father would, he said, but I know what she received from us. We are not worried about her.

Marta’s dad was traveling. And having been caught by her aunt with her boyfriend-to-be, Marta wrote an SMS to her dad: “we are together.” He thought it was a message of affirmation to her traveling parent, and that the message was about him.

Later, he realized it was not about him, but about the other man who appeared in Marta’s life. “I thought – how sweet my girl is, remembering her tired father. Then I learned that she is serious about a friend she was dating.”

With plenty of laughter, our conversation moved into a topic of trust. Marta is trusted as she is very close to them, and also trusting toward her parents.

Lidia and Jarek are still to meet Marta’s boyfriend, but what they saw on a photo, and heard about him does not create a fog of distrust toward their daughter. They have given her examples of kindness, honesty, compassion and moral standards. As a family, they share hope, love and faith, which she, now an adult, is taking into her everydayness, and her own choices and decision-making.

A reminder from the past came to mind when at years ago Grazyna and I had a conversation with Michal, as we expressed a concern – in many and varied ways – about late evening arrivals home from his escapades with friends. Natural worry about living in a crime-ridden metropolitan area of Washington DC, made us sensitive about his well-being.

No, I am not doing what you think I could be doing, he stated one evening. You have given me the moral values, and what I need to be trusted with, so don’t worry about me, he continued.

It was reassuring. Yet, we still didn’t stop worrying. Even now – many years later - as he is on his own.

So, what did we give him? What did Jarek and Lidia have been sharing with Marta? What is my Facebook friend’s daughter getting?

What matters in my book is that, to be is far more valuable and lasting than what is to have.

A family quartet: Lidia, Grazyna, Jarek and Marta visiting Warsaw's Lazienki Park.

Strange bedfellows unite in a landscape after battle

2011-09-11T08:08:00.000-04:00

A tranquil fishing village in Pulutan Region on Sulawesi, Indonesia

It was March 30, 2005, and just aftermidnight in Manado, Indonesia. Believe me, I wasn’t expecting my sleep beinginterrupted with the 11^th floor hotel walls swaying due to anearthquake under the Malakan Sea near the island of Sulawesi (Celebes). Wondering what to do, I got out of bed, andsupported myself by the touching a wall, as a bathroom door swung.

A hotel receptionist told me later, as I went to breakfast, that it was nothingto worry about, it was an aftershock (5.7 magnitude) of a major earthquake in aregion that is prone to such moments of horror, an event that occurred twonights earlier near the island of Nias, in Northern Sumatra, which took 1,346lives. It measured 8.7 on the Richter scale and was third most powerful earthquakesince 1965 in Indonesia.

ComeAugust 23, 2011, and we are on vacation in Europe. Several text messages fromWashington, DC, broke a seeming “tranquility” of our vacation with informationthat an earthquake shook the capital of the United States with a moment oftrauma, at 1:51 PM and with a magnitude of 5.8.

Onetext message, however, offered no consolation. I came to check your condo, and there is nothing to worry about, wewere told. Natalie [see her first photo below], who was looking after our flowers and all the other wellbeingof our dwelling, explained that the earthquake redecorated my study. It moved afew dozen books off their shelves, and a few artifacts were floored, with somedamage. When you come home, you willdetermine if it was significant, we were reassured.

Notknowing exactly what happened, we wondered if the in-coming earthquake’spartner, Hurricane Irene, would complete the onslaught on the condo, and weknew that at least Maia, The Cat, was in good hands of a cat-loving friend,with food and other supplies placed in her carrier should a quick escape wasneeded.

OnSeptember 8 all was revealed, as we were back in our dwelling. And what did wesee? For starters, it offered a lesson in symbolism. What we saw was not meantto mean anything else, except an earthquake’s aftermath. Yet …

Europe (by Norman Davies) was flat onits belly, with Buddha’s head resting on the carpet next to it. An Indianelephant (actually, a carving) was hiding under a footstool, with an Indianhorse resting on a bunch of displaced, selected books resting on my favoritearmchair.

Arather bewildering sight was offered by two wooden 5.5-inch chess pawns, separatedfrom each other. One was resting on the carpet; the other, after a fall fromthe top of the bookshelf, must have been catapulted to the lower section of thebookcase.

Obviously,the earthquake was considerate for my two boxed chess sets which were still ontop of a bookshelf, as if in a balancing act – “to fall, or not to fall?” They madeGrazyna imagine that the sight might have been improved if the kings andqueens, and the ordinary pawns entertained a bit of egalitarianism afterjointly hitting the floor.

Nothingdoing. Several volumes of the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, were movedan inch or two toward a potential downfall, all next to a slightly displaced gypsumbust of an Albanian communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, smuggled out of Albania inearly 1991.

Atour de force accent of my study wasa sight to encounter. There it was – a mélange of art and craft objectsperforming a “Landscape After Battle” scene with several skinny Ivory Coastcolonials partly fallen, but the Embrujando prophet-like mini sculpture by aMexican artist Sergio Bustamante, and a Hopi Indian artist Quotskuyva’s kachinadoll “Corn Maiden” standing tall, proud and seemingly victorious.

Severalof my Polish-language books were given a breathing space, moved a couple ofinches toward a shelves’ edge, with a miniature painting of a Jewish Quarter ofKazimierz in Cracow, handing for its life by a convenient squeeze of two books.

Twoimages struck my imagination. It was poignant to see the Bustamante prophet’simage of a “time is at hand” expression, and President Clinton (My Life) with his wife, Hilary (Living History), still smiling fromtheir book spines, not quite off the shelf, as if saying: As a people, we liveon the edge, but we are not defeated.

Eightpoint seven, or five point eight notwithstanding, we are standing tall, andfacing the future with hope.

An unchartered territory of aging

2011-09-05T14:19:00.004-04:00

This time a reflection on dealing with aging.

It goes like this: After we grow up, marry and establish our own homes, we build a natural distance, a valley that requires a bridge to cross back to our maternal/paternal homes. Years of growing up on our own, adulthood, and creation of our own domain adds to the length of a bridge to cross later on. Our own children come along and then they themselves fly away.

Obviously, such is my own, Western perspective on aging and family relations. As over the years I was able to observe diverse cultures, their reverence for the family elders and respect for the ancestors, I marveled at continuity of family ties. It was fascinating to watch and learn how members of direct and extended families live together under the same roof, and amazingly stay happy forever and together.

Last week, I heard a story about seven siblings living in a two-bedroom dwelling, cheerful as ever and happily dreaming of better times with more space to enjoy together. Brothers and sisters were living in the same bedroom, sharing oversized beds and good-for-nothing room partitions. Imagination takes over wher considering their adolescent inquisitiveness and challengin innoscence and privacy. From the next room-cum-kitchen mom and dad were managing their family's everydayness.

This blog reflection is perhaps not very inventive and fresh, but none-the-less, it is mine. I ask myself, how would I manage such a livelihood today?

In a minefield of my predictable dilemmas, I pause to reflect on what type of a bridge I must build between my "today," and that of my own parents. Their aging moved them on and brought them to the largely unchartered autumn days of their lives. Decades ago we left our maternal and paternal homes and moved to a far away land. To have a meaningful, direct contact, we meet perhaps once a year only. All else is a virtual, mediated and proxy-like communication at best.

Yet, whenever we meet them, our elderly parents remind us that we are still their kids. To add, they remind us that we need their counsel and corrective advice. The fact that my dad is nearly 87 does not make him less of a concerned parent, though hardly conversant with the culture and the mindset of "my generation."

A recent visit with our aging parents, brought a few new reflections. Point one, we still have our parents. They are alive and as loving as ever. You still have living parents, my friend David told me. Enjoy them.

And yet ...

A distance measured in thousands of miles apart does not contribute to effective bridge-building one requires between generations, who seem also far apart through cultural divide and generational challenges. Being members of same faith helps, but also discribes plenty of diverse options as to how to read it's practices, norms and forms. For we are apart, in many and diverse ways. Family ties and relationships notwithstanding, we have grown to accept polarized views and choices.

A few more points.

We are stuck in a resolve that all is possible, they are expecting their encroaching finality.

We crave new opportunities, they are parked in their traditional, predictable way of living.

We speak of healthy living, they are suspicious about our recommendations, and talk about surviving numerous health challenges as seen through their doctors and medications.

We talk about new worlds to conquer, they reminisce about trips they took in the 80+ years of their lives.

We seek a new golden age, theirs is a nostalgia for the golden years they seemingly had.

For Grazyna and me, our joint bridge-building with our parents still in progress, a few days in August and September gave us an opportunity to consider their challenges now, and our challenges to be met in the future.

What an amazingly rich journey for the six of us. But as we could ask questions, and listen, our parents were challenged to provide us with their answers and desires. Honestly, the best we could offer is listening and a conversation expected of the adults.

But, whose journey is easier, I ask?

Who cares how difficult is the journey ahead? For both sets of parents in their 80s and for the two of us. All such journeys, we resolve, will require to be nourished with love.

Loving, caring, expecting the unexpected - that's what actually matters most for both of us.

Moving people from poverty to a different level

2011-08-08T13:01:00.010-04:00

Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA de Maryland

in conversation with Sharon Ford, a Health

Action Co-chair at Sligo Adventist Church

Meeting Gustavo Torres is a well-spent occasion. Last Saturday afternoon I had a few moments to talk to him for a story I was doing about my local church’s mega healthcare event in Langley Park, just a stone’s throw away from Takoma Park, Maryland, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.

Gustavo Torres is executive director of CASA de Maryland, a community organization responding to the human needs of the thousands of mainly Central Americans arriving in the Washington, D.C. area after fleeing wars and strife in their countries of origin. He came to take a look and said it delighted him what he saw.

What he witnessed was what it seemed a long-awaited free healthcare event* with doctors, nurses, dentists and their assistants who were joined by social workers, community activists, puppeteers, face-painters, site guides, volunteers serving watermelon slices and other fresh fruit or pretzels, and the Steel Band from Sligo Church.

The man is an institution, and his passion for the drastically underserved, uninsured, legal and undocumented immigrants recently gave him a cover story in a July 17 issue of the Washington Post Magazine. His face is publicly recognized. Now, I can add him to my claim-to-fame collection of cool people I’ve met.

I liked what I heard. Together with his team they are building community, as he said, aiming “to move people from poverty to a different level.” And then, he gave me a few facts the real and acute needs in this multicultural community. Such partnership, as witnessed at the Health Fair was “extraordinary,” he said. It was “very essential, because 80 percent of the Latino and immigrant communities … have no access to healthcare, and now they are going to have an opportunity to receive it.”

The issues experienced by the community were expressed by a girl, perhaps ten or twelve, plumpish and feisty, who was not afraid to ask a policeman who was enjoying a healthy snack from a fruit and granola bars stand, what was he doing at the fair. “Did you come to arrest us? Are you going to arrest those men sitting on the wall ledge over there?” she asked. The officer, who represented a pedestrian safety unit, was happy to engage in a friendly exchange to appease her inquisitive mind.

Out of the community: Taking an opportunity to receive

health check-up.

Tensions and feelings of suspicion run high in this predominantly immigrant community about the unsolved immigration issues in the United States. Leaders at CASA de Maryland continue to push for resolution of the issue. Gustavo Torres commented on the efforts undertaken by his organization and community leaders to push for a positive social and legislative change for thousands of immigrants. For years the community has engaged in building a positive relationship with the local law enforcement, he said.

As he was observing dozens of activity areas at the Health Fair, Mr. Torres referred to members of the community as being under duress since many of them are being affected by the current anti-immigration rhetoric, decisions and actions. Citing the federal Secure Communities Program that deputizes the police to arrest immigrants who are undocumented, he calls it “a mistake.” The community he looks after is “very scared. They are very afraid of the police,” he comments. “We believe that this is a tremendous mistake from the administration. People are super scared.”

Puppets were in the groove with the steel band playing.

It helped them to put fun into health tips for children.

As I talked with others, one doctor told me that she is willing to step in on a regular basis to provide assistance to members of the community. Others concluded that it was a learning experience and that as a faith community “we need to get out of our own bubble, and do it often.”

As I got in the stride of things at the CASA de Maryland Multicultural Center on August 6, though I involved myself with a small reporters’ task, it turned into a rich experience with life-changing observations.

* The event several Adventist partners – Washington Adventist Hospital, Washington Adventist University and members of the Sligo Adventist Church. Its venue was a newly renovated McCormick-Goodhart Mansion, which is the headquarters home of the CASA de Maryland Multicultural Center in Langley Park.

Fluttering on the outskirts of religion

2011-07-21T14:34:00.005-04:00

A mime performing his art in front of St. John's Cathedral, Warsaw, Poland.

Imagine a man, in his forties, dressed as a butterfly dancing playfully in a Corpus Christi procession just a few hundred meters from a cathedral in his hometown of Lodz in Poland. When the procession was passing by his house, he joined in, weaving in and out of it. As reported in Gazeta Wyborcza daily on July 21, he recollected that children found him as a pleasant surprise.

The priests did not see it as being funny and tried to catch him. After a few minutes he “gamboled” back inside the building. Someone called the police, they came, told him not to do it again and he thought that it was that.

Not so. A couple of weeks later Rev. Ireneusz Kulesza, reported Pawel Hajncel, a local artist and filmmaker, to a prosecutor’s office stating that he “hurt of religious feelings” of the procession participants.

It will depend what motivated the culprit to do such a happening, and was he intending to disrupt the procession, the prosecutor explained as he is reviewing the complaint.

The artist says that he was not aiming to disrupt anything, and “his” butterfly was an artistic happening. It meant to bring attention to a serious problem of the church’s omnipresence.

Priests and politicians have annexed public sphere. I tried to reclaim a portion of it, he was quoted in the daily. He wanted to show that he could walk or “gambol,” actually, dressed as a butterfly and just like other faithful manifest his religious ties, he explained.

The story reminded me of an encounter in Warsaw, Poland, several decades ago. A group of us - teenagers - heard words of admonition as we were hanging out in the church courtyard, that we should be found in worship, and not on the “outskirts of religion.” A church elder explained that religion is a serious matter and we should not be laughing and having fun whilst others, including our parents, were worshiping inside.

Perhaps to many who witness Mr. Hajncel he was fluttering on the outskirts of religious tradition. Yet, like a jester he pointed to an issue which disturbs him and many others in a pluralistic society.

In the words of Elizabeth-Anne Stewart, an American Catholic theologian, “It is infinitely safer to watch the clowns in the circus ring than to put on a clown's costume and all the license it represents. ... Though Jesus was a breaker of rules and taboos, an agent of chaos, his intent transcended the desire to be a catalyst of laughter and his behavior never degenerated into lewdness or cruelty."

In my view, if my religious life does not lead me to deal with my own sanctimonious hypocrisy, disrespect for those who are different than me, as well as pride and greed, consider the artist, the jester, the holy fool, a man dressed as a butterfly. They will point at you from the outskirts of your religion. If it happens in public, it is free and for all to observe.

For Mr. Hajncel, and many others, claims of religious exclusiveness in the public sphere deserve a human butterfly treatment. It has less to do with dignity of a religious tradition, and more to do with encroachment on a public sphere, where everyone must be regarded as equal, and valued.

Link to the article and photos in Człowiek przebrany za motyla a chrześcijańska godność

Corpus Christi is a traditionally festive event

on Plaza de Armas in Cusco, Peru,

is a mixture of religious devotion, pagan customs,

displays of art, and an abundance of merriment.

Wearing a mask. For five minutes.

2011-07-18T12:11:00.004-04:00

You had your five minutes, my mother told me over the phone. Now, others will have their five minutes also, and life will go on.

This was easy for her to say, as she is a 24/7 woman who is stronger and wiser than youngsters like me, I thought. [What a generous comment about my own age!] My mom is right.

On reflection, I had many five-minute-years of being accomplished in what I was doing. Now, those minutes are gone, and I find myself in a desert of bewilderment. So, someone’s decision took away a mask of my importance, and now I talk to my mom asking whether wearing a mask is important, even for five minutes?

What my mom was actually saying was positive. It was her way to welcome me into a life of ordinary people. You probably forgot how important we are, we the ordinary people, she was saying. Your job lasted five minutes. And probably you did well. Now, welcome back and let others enjoy their own five minutes. They will succeed or fail, loose of find, and their own five minutes will be quickly over, too.

Enter Darren Clarke, the now celebrated winner of the golf’s 2011 British Open Championship. As they say, watching golf is like watching the paint dry. My own cynicism about golf was given a conversion jolt as Mr. Clarke freely distributed abundant smiles, even when he just miscalculated a shot. He smiled with a permanent grin. If a heart has a set of bright teeth, Mr. Clarke owns one. His was a grin of joy. He entered into his five minutes of attention.

In a post-victory interview he selflessly admitted being an ordinary guy. But what ordinariness he presented. I tried 19 times before, but I never stopped trying. Now I did it. But I am an ordinary guy, he simply claimed.

Darren Clarke’s accomplishment was a bright moment in a week of the usual bad news on TV (the Rupert Murdoch’s media empire’s slow but riveting demise topping the bill). Some of us still love the media when it is honest, moral, and when it goes for and reports the character building news. So, here was Mr. Clarke, a winner finally, and if he was wearing a mask, it was one of authenticity. That’s how I feel.

So, I am dealing with my own bewilderment by re-entering a world of ordinary people where authenticity, integrity, compassion and generosity are lived with gusto! A tear got lost in my eye when I was watching Darren Clarke’s joy. He shared it with all of us and he wore it on his face.

It wasn’t a smile No. 17C with a spin.

Photographs: (top) Masked Women at Corpus Christi Festival

in Cuzco, Peru; (Middle & bottom) Mannequins

in Singapore's Chinatown.

Stilts of Abstraction: A Few Photographic Musings About Absence and Presence. And More.

2011-06-10T10:46:00.004-04:00

A whiff of lavender. Annecy, France.

I am drawn to moments when the blurred images are so inviting and attractive in their presence. I guess, as a theologian Eugene Peterson would put it - It’s the Absence giving way to the Presence. He refers to faith “with its classic and never yet improved upon definition,” “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Letter to Hebrews, 11:1).

This brings me to nostalgia. We just saw a fascinating treatment of the Absence-Presence reality in the current Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” film. The film depicts a writer on his return visit to Paris, who dreams of escaping from being a hired hand in scriptwriting, and sets his sights on writing a real novel like Hemingway or Fitzgerald.

Driving through the City of Light. Paris, France.

This is a clever, and well-written screenplay by Woody Allen through which he is inviting us into a desire to push our own borders - a perfect novel, perhaps? We are invited to the City of Light depicted from dawn to darkness in which Gil, the writer, travels into his idealized past, rejects fake intellectualism, and celebrates what Paris can give him in culture, art and life. He is so set on the attraction of Paris that he keeps repeating that the city is great even when it rains.

Without attempting to write a film review here, I identified myself with a personal fascination with a back and forth journey in which past is idealized and becomes meaningful as the present and the future tickles one’s eagerness to complete the Absence with arriving at fulfilling Presence.

Basically, the film spoke to me in its depiction of nostalgia – a world of comparing the now with the then.

In essence, was one being invited into a permanent quest for a journey of faith, which has its evidence in what already was?

My favorite Gospel illustration comes from a story of a disciple of Jesus who was invited to join Him – Matthew. His belief, it seems, was born in an instant. How this happened, I don’t have a clue. But what happened to him later gave the answer. His choice was not placed on stilts of abstraction.

Great things always come in concrete reality, hope and grace including. Such wonderful arrivals at Absence-Presence can be witnessed among those who have been described by the song Amazing Grace. Such arrivals are not visible among those who are just, who are perfect. Such people are usually too busy with their good works!

My preoccupation – even fixation - with nostalgia draws me to abstract images of life – when moments are captured in a movement. Then, my imagination kicks in.

Being nostalgic for stuff that matters? What an idea to consider.

A moving boat. Lake Titicaca, Puno, Peru.

Walking and talking. Hong Kong.

Stain glass window. Burtonsville, Maryland,

United States.

Blue eyes. Heidelberg, Germany.

Taking tea. Insa-dong, Seoul, Korea.

A rhapsody in silk. Insa-dong, Seoul, Korea.

Turquoise moment. Hong Kong.

Life as a mannequin. Heidelberg, Germany.

Identity. More on a moving target. (2)

2011-06-01T07:06:00.007-04:00

[NOTE: In part one, a pursuit of who I am considered influences of the maternal-side of the family. Now, it’s time for contributors to my DNA from my father’s side.]

River Dojnicia in Bojarka, Ukraine, is a memorial to

the Polish families who suffered the purges and atrocities

of WWII.

My father’s family also supplied many of the genetic bricks that have affected who I am. My other grandfather, Jan Dabrowski, was a soldier. I never met him. His claim to fame was that he was in General Jozef Heller’s army fighting with the Bolsheviks on the Polish-Ukrainian frontline in the 1918-1919s. Military victories in those days awarded the troops with plots of land where the victors settled. In the village of Bojarka, near Dubno, my father Stanislaw and three of his siblings, Luba, Ludwik and Waclaw, were born.

Piotr Zubko, my father's cousin introduced us to his traditionally

decorated home. "We live how we always

lived in this village," he commented when we visited them in 2000.

The early successes of settling and establishing their homestead in a Polish enclave of Western Ukraine were met with Ukrainian nationalistic resistance, ethnic cleansing, and the German invasion. The Polish families were intimidated and ruthlessly driven out, or exterminated. Among others, my dad recalls two distinct images from his childhood – a body of his uncle, Antoni, in a village brook, Dojnicia, with nails sticking out of his head, and that of a crying mother, against a background of a burning house and barn as he, and his older brother Ludwik, were escaping the German invaders on a balmy day in August 1943, hiding in a straw-high horse-cart.

House no more: "This is where our house stood.

It was burning when I last saw it," my father recalled.

A courtyard well in a house where the Antoni Dabrowski family lived.

"He was a blacksmith. This crank he made is still working."

My father’s brush with spirituality was naturally impacted by the cultural orthodoxy of his mother Maria, and the interests in the Baptist faith explored and pursued by his father. I heard him recalling how my grandfather read his Bible, something his Orthodox neighbors did not do. There is a Baptist church in the village, which my dad pointed to when we visited Bojarka a few years ago. “Your grandfather was interested in understanding the Bible, something he was missing in both his Catholic tradition and in the Orthodox rituals,” he explained.

The Bojarka village Orthodox church. "We used to sit

on the wooden benches, boys and girls,

and watched who came to church," my father reminisced.

My father often recollected stories of being a farmhand in East Germany, being a survivor of a labor camp in Pöllvitz, near Zeulenroda, and how the American army liberated the camp in May 1945.

"Stasiu Dabrowski, da?" Though not meeting him for

60 years, the now blind neighbor recognized my father's voice,

as we walked on the unpaved road through Bojarka.

It was barely after the war, in the city of Lodz where my mom, who was studying at a dental school, met my dad. “It was in 1946 on the 6^th of March when I met your father. Your grandma introduced me to him at a warehouse where she was buying stock for her shop. He was an accountant there. Obviously he liked me and tried to invite me to see a play or a movie, or go to a café. Instead, I invited him to church, and the rest is history.”

My father continued his interests in economics, became an accountant, then studied to become a Seventh-day Adventist minister, and finally spent eventful post-war years as a church leader in Poland. My parents and the church life I experienced – together with my younger siblings, Izabella and Jan Henryk - turned into embroidery of values to be lived-by, intertwined with experiments of boldness, risk, creativity and imagination. Even after her retirement from forty years as a dental technician, my mother joined her trade union’s social action activities.

Barely 14, I recall an event within a couple of weeks of successfully enrolling in Jan Zamoyski Liceum, a well-known and historic public high school at 30 Smolna Street. The school had nearly 900 students and was located just across from our home and the Seventh-day Adventist church in central Warsaw, where my father worked. On one September Monday morning I was called-out to stand in front of a class of 35, to questioned about my absence in school on Saturday. Answering respectfully, I repeated my convictions about Sabbath observance. The teacher called for Jan Gad, the school principal, to come.

Mr. Gad, who I later found out, lived in an apartment building next to where I lived, was a tall, stocky man and his larger-than-life presence commanded respect - and for us, youngsters, exuded fear. Later, a school chronicle would refer to him as an “excellent principal,” who said that a “school is like an orchestra. You need a good conductor, good team and a good music score. A melody will then sound beautifully.” He exercised his conducting skills on me, and for the benefit of others.

Even today, I well recall being slapped across my face. The hot tears - a reaction to this sudden and public humiliation… experiencing first-hand an act of violence by someone in authority. It is etched firmly in my memory.

Among raised shouting, I still recall something said about atheism and that my unpatriotic behavior would not be tolerated.

My parents were summoned and I was expelled.

Thus ended my enrollment in Warsaw’s premier high school. I was kicked out of school but for a good, and – in my opinion – positive reason. My parents negotiated a move to a different high school, just a few hundred yards further, and still within a walking distance. My new lease on student life began at the Jaroslaw Dabrowski high school on 1 Swietokrzyska Street. Little did I know, but just a couple of hundred yards away was the Holy Cross Church where Michal Belina Czechowski, a trailblazer of international church mission, was ordained in 1843. His life story became a research project during my university days.

Church of the Holy Cross on Warsaw's

Krakowskie Przedmiescie Boulevard

On reflection, the Jan Zamoyski Liceum event was my first lesson in human rights and nonconformity. My Adventist culture no doubt influenced my decision to make a stand that day. My DNA, however, is rich with the building blocks of those who for generations before me chose not to conform – to be authentic at whatever the cost.

Reflections on my past also include numerous aunts and uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces, and dozens of friends and coworkers. To all them I am indebted for their influence and for including me when being carefree mixed with being serious and reflective. All of this, and more, adds daily bricks of faith and hope, which are also a part of who I am.

Identity. A Moving target. (1)

2011-05-27T10:02:00.008-04:00

A few months ago Michal poked my stubborn resistance to writing our family history.* He insisted - Mom and you have so many stories. I need to learn more about who I am.

Wolborka River in Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland,

is a flowing metaphor of my life.

A couple of assignments to consider my own spiritual geography added pressure. What follows is a somewhat random exercise in probing into my identity.

Recently, inspiration also came from Reinder Bruinsma, a fellow European, a thinker-writer-theologian, a colleague and a friend. A few definitions he listed included a thought, that one’s identity is a work in progress.

In his lecture on “Adventist Identity in a Postmodern World,” at Australia’s Avondale College, Reinder referred to a view expressed by a social scientist, Vivienne Jabri, that “the identity of an individual is not static, but is a developing framework,” based on an invisible, so to speak, discourse between the individual and his or her social milieu.**

So, I looked back. Identity, but when? I pondered. Actually, I thought I already knew who Rajmund Dabrowski was/is. I reject the tabula rasa concept. There is more that effects who I am than my perceived and experienced reality.

Reviewing my past, I needed to consider what has contributed to my make-up as a human being, a cosmopolitan man, who enjoys life and engages in the cultural milieu? How does my pedigree, those who were before me, contribute to who I am? I have never met them, but they, I believe, are in me and have contributed to who I am now.

In essence, my DNA features expressive humanness and non-conformity. It includes religious conviction, a need for a fulfilling spirituality and authenticity, as well as “pushing the borders” in life.

A search for the genetic “bricks” of my identity led me to Jozef von Czajkowski, my great grandfather on my mother’s side. He was a landowner, including several flourmills, in Southern Poland near Czestochowa and Lubartow. There were nobility claims murmured as part of our family lore. However, he was also a rabble-rouser. A bigger than life story is told in my family, that he did not refrain from drink and fistfights, and once, he rode a horse inside a local tavern. His notoriety was well known, my mom recalled. It was said that the police arrested him quite often, but would not dare to keep him locked up for long. Apparently his status helped.

My grandmother, Janina, pictured in 1976,

was a presence of hope in my life.

My grandmother, Janina Jedrzejak, was the youngest of Rozalia and Jozef’s seven children. For me, she was the “Mother of All Housewives.” But there was more. I was fortunate to have a grandmother who connected me with two things at once – her faith, and her care for people. I spent hours listening to her, though one had to drag out from her memories of herself and her wisdom. She would tell stories about people that entered her life, but less, much less about herself.

Like many Poles who lived through WWII, my grandparents, Jan & Janina, met violence and suffering head on. Irrespective of the consequences, Janina turned their home in the central Polish industrial town of Tomaszow Mazowiecki, into a shelter for a Jewish family during the Nazi purges of the 2^nd World War. My uncle Alfred and aunt Bonia told me that overnight, their family was enlarged by four Jews: a mother, a father and their two boys, who were kept in a courtyard shed just outside their apartment house for months…

My parents - Stanislaw and Alina Dabrowski.

Pictured in 2007 on my mother's 80th birthday.

Such heroic acts - though not considered to be such by those who did them - could have cost their own lives. My mom, Alina, recalls her own risky responses to non-conformity. When she was only 12 years of age, she bought bread for a Jewish laborer who would not be served in a local shop, guarded by German soldier. “I did it,” she quipped, because it was right to do. I didn’t understand why this man could not buy bread in a baker’s shop he was renovating.” She remembered him saying, that “when the war is over, I will repay you by painting your own home.”

A home for three generations, Tekli [now Barlickiego] Street 8,

was a birthplace for my mother and me.

My grandfather, Jan Jedrzejak, was an actor, and traveled for seven years entertaining audiences in the region with musicals, vaudeville, and comedy acts. He later owned an Odeon cinema. My mother recalls watching the silent movies from a projection booth. I was mesmerized and excited to see all these film stars, she reminisced. Jan ultimately became a foreman and a unionist, who for me, as I connected the dots, defined what solidarity of the working-class meant. Around 1927 or 1928 he was selected to represent the region in parliamentary elections as a National Democratic Party candidate. Apparently it was not yet time for an actor to succeed in politics… He was not elected.

Unexpected street encounter: My mother, Alina, in conversation

in October, 2001, with her old neighbors from Tekli 8 Street,

Mr. and Mrs. Hendler.

My grandparents became Seventh-day Adventist in 1932. They abandoned some of their Roman Catholic beliefs, and their attention was turned toward building a congregation of like-believers in their town, and granddad became a church elder. The only faint recollection I have is going for walks, and in being held in Jan’s arms in their garden plot on the outskirts of Tomaszow Mazowiecki.

* First part of several reflections on personal and our family life journey.

**Discourses on violence: conflict analysis reconsidered, Manchester 1996, in: Adventist Identity in a Postmodern World, Reinder Bruinsma, Avondale College, January 16-18, 2011 [manuscript].

In part 2 - Genetic bricks from my father’s side of the family, and more

Thyme in Culpeper is a time of quality cuisine

2011-05-15T16:17:00.007-04:00

From where we live, first you go: West. Then, at your destination, in Culpeper, Virginia, at the Thyme Market you will likely meet Connie East. And she will treat you as someone who enjoys the finer things in life!

Connie East, Ms Hospitality at the Thyme Market.

For Grazyna and me, Culpeper had been a destination where we enjoy quality of life’s culture, its food and all. We consider the Thyme Market, on 134 East Davis Street, established in 2007, as a very special place for us. Here we are able to experience a European-style establishment with an Old World ambiance and approach to cuisine that matters. So, consider a selection of hard-to-find culinary treats, marinades, seasonings and locally grown produce. Take a selection home, or get smoked with the roasted meats and a wood fired pizza with your own selection of toppings (mine always includes gorgonzola and basil!), and enjoy it on the outside veranda.

Better Cheddar spread is home made and a must at

the Thyme Market.

The added value to our visit to the Thyme-themed home-away-from-home Culpeper cuisine is a personal contact with Connie, the rotisserie-patisserie manageress, and John Yarnall, the owner. We talk and we soon become a part of their family activities and dreams. Grazyna's gardening and nutrition interests take a note of the Thyme's cuisine ingredients - many of which are grown on the Yarnall estate. Soon, you feel like missing out on the adventures of their last vacationing on St. Maarten. They also express their interest in what’s ahead of us, my ever continuing job search, as we exchange numerous family stories.

Our rendezvous with Culpeper goes back to a Washington Post informative write-up in November 30, 2005, Food Section review of a Civil War town, some 70 miles from Washington D.C. The reading itself hit the spot already that day, and four days later we tried the recommended chic dining in a town undergoing it’s welcomed Renaissance.

Gathering of facts reveals that the town’s name comes after Lord Thomas Culpeper, Colonial Governor of Virginia, was first named as Town of Fairfax, and was surveyed in 1749 by a 17-years old George Washington. The area was hotly contested during the Civil War. The town’s historic district, built between 1880 and 1920 saw subsequent decay and neglect with front show windows boarded up. In addition, the town’s claim to fame sport an exciting fact that if you are standing in front of the Visitors Center now, General George Armstrong Custer had his horse shot out from under him on this very spot during the Civil War.

From another corner: It's About Thyme, Thyme Market, Thyme Inn,

and The Copper Fish.

So, we tried the Hazel River Inn Restaurant, on 195 East Davis Street, whose Chef and owner, Peter Stochbuchner of the White House Residence fame, serves Austrian cuisine.

We then proceeded for a much-needed Neuhaus Belgian chocolate sampling at The Frenchman’s Corner store of everything you need for your kitchen, plus a counter with the locally made and European cheeses. Located opposite to the Market, the store is owned by a Paris native Marc Ast, the ever evolving and expanding store, the Corner is now also a destination. Marc soon became a confidant whose Polish roots were immediately explored and evolved into family-style conversations of three Europeans meeting together. These days, we continue where we left at the previous visit.

The first visit also included a stop at the Cameleer store of International Giftware and Aboriginal Handcrafts – a world of native simplicity offering an escape from the usual made in China products. It was on one of the first visits when we stepped into a European-style market called Food for Thought, which offered an outlet to a locally produced grass-fed meats, a stock of local cheeses, pies, and other homemade products. Today, the market is no more. Its then presence was now to be experienced by John and Connie’s Thyme Market.

A few weeks later, we “parked” at the It’s About Thyme, the first in the Thyme cuisine empire in Culpeper, opened in 1995, for a serving of ravioli and other fine foods. During the subsequent visits, we learned about what drives John Yarnall, his two daughters – Joclyn, now a Head Chef trained at Cordon Bleu in Paris, pictured with President Bill Clinton when he visited the spot in 2008, and Jodi, a Penn State graduate, now House Manager – and of course, Connie. As we met, Connie was ever so eager to take us through the stages of the Thyme establishments, including when a Thyme Inn was being added in a renovated space above the Market, adding an up-scale B&B space.

An obvious conclusion: It's like being in Europe.

Last-November, the Yarnalls extended their business by opening an adjacent to the Market, The Copper Fish Seafood Market and Raw Bar, co-owned with Dave Young. Connie insists, and we agree, that during our next visit we will be teased by a culinary experience with quality fish.

After we meet our friends, and enjoy the Virginia hospitality at the Thyme Market, we also take away a trinity of smells, tastes and creativity, all merged into an unforgettable moment that will carry us until the next Thyme in Culpeper experience, as they refer to an encounter with their town on http://www.thymeinfo.com.

Web sites to consider:www.visitculpeperva.com, www.frenchmancorner.com, www.cameleer.com, www.hazelriverinn.com.

Code Name Geronimo, and my Native American Nostalgia

2011-05-08T15:19:00.006-04:00

This is a weeklong story, but it seems that details of what happened will continue to be revealed, and corrected, and many of us will grow tired of the disclaimers, protected sources, and all the political interpretations. Even before the May 1 event in Abbottabad, Pakistan, I wouldn’t have imagined to be writing about the world’s most celebrated terrorist, and let alone about his demise. In a sense, I didn’t even feel like writing out his name in full!

What poked my attention was a now-iconic transmission from Abbottabad, Pakistan: “Geronimo EKIA,” or “Geronimo, Enemy Killed in Action.”

[Photo from Collection of the Library of Congress.]

Why Geronimo? I asked myself. Was this a reference to a Chiricahua Apache tribe, or to some other meaning given to that name? Was this a reference to an exclamation of parachuters’ – “Geronimo! - when they jump from planes? Whatever - was this about the Indian who – to the Apaches - was a symbol of their values, aggressiveness, or courage in the face of difficulty, or all of the above and more? Yes, a freedom fighter to some, and a villain to others.

What assisted me were the reports in Washington Post and Huffington Post (May 5, 2011) pointedly referring to a choice of a code name for bin Laden – Geronimo – as being insensitive, offensive, painful and… insulting.

The events of May 1 that took out the “apostle of hatred,” as Jim Wallis referred on his blog in Sojourners - http://blog.sojo.net - to Al Qaeda leader, reactions and reflections abounded in their speed and variety, some instant and base, some reaching deeper into what could be learned from this latest chapter of human history.

The media immediately exploited the clandestine raid that ended the life of a notorious and ruthless jihadist terrorist, and a mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. While most entertainment-news media concentrated on reporting the eruption of euphoria that bin Laden was killed, a few pointed to the moral underpinning of joy when a human being is killed. What is Christian at being glad at taking a human life, any life?

As the 9/11 tragedy claimed nearly 3,000 lives in America, many in the Middle East took to the streets with jubilation. On May 1 similar public expressions were replicated throughout America. References to “eye for an eye” cried to high heavens.

Pastor Jim Wallis’ moral compass pointed out that “it is never a Christian response to celebrate the death of any human being, even one so given to the face of evil.” Dalai Lama reflected that bin Laden was a human being who may have deserved compassion and even forgiveness. Yet, the evil deeds of Al Qaeda and its founder came with responsibility and needed to be opposed. Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. But would the May 1 outcome push the world community toward nonviolent conflict solving?

Now, coming back to Geronimo, it was the Native Americans themselves who said, Wait a minute? Geronimo – was he also a terrorist? Was the choice of such designation a seeming continuation of two-three hundred years of disdain towards those who would not be subjugated? What was the American officialdom thinking? Was there anyone who would challenge such a decision?

The Indian Country Today commented about the code name’s choice. Lise Balk King wrote, that “embedded within it is a message that an Indian warrior, a symbol of Native American survival in the face of racial annihilation, is associated with modern terrorism and the attacks on 9/11.”

“It equates being Native American with being hated, an enemy to the world, and someone to be hunted down and killed, and re-casts one of their heroes into a villainous role,” she stated.

There is what I would call a Native American nostalgia in our home. Every so often it recollects as sense of innocent nonconformity in the late 1950s and early 1960s when Grazyna and I, though growing up in different cities, would hide under the covers, turn on flashlights and way past midnight swallow the books of Karl May. We grew up on the fictitious adventures and ethos of Winnetou and the Old Shatterhand. In those days I imagined siding with the Apaches and dreaming of having a haircut like one of the illustrated warriors. Though Karl May never traveled to the Wild West, he described the Indian predicament as being on the losing side in the ruthless territorial expansion of the frontiersmen settlers, supported by the U.S. Army. But they were my heroes. A Karl May’s call to peaceful living and embrace of freedom is enshrined in my own worldview.

Later, in 1970, it was Geronimo who became a hero of mine when I supported the vision of Radio Geronimo, an independent broadcaster in London whose claim to fame was “jamming of the BBC.” It happened at the BBC Broadcasting House corporate headquarters in Portland Place with literal strawberry jam – jars and plastic bags of it with spoons to aid! These were the days of Radio London and Radio Caroline, the nonconformist precursors of broadcasting deregulation in Britain. Radio Geronimo offered an alternative music choice, transmitted on weekends from Monte Carlo - 205 Meters MW, midnight onward. The station was nonconformist, a warrior for the liberation of broadcasting, the Apaches of the airways.

In 1971 it was the Dan Brown’s Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee that added to my fascination with the culture, history and fate of the indigenous tribes of America. I was offered to write a book review for Insight Magazine. I considered it an honor to do.

Geronimo’s story – his quest to preserve the tribe’s identity, freedom and integrity – etched itself in my own attitudes. The “here I stand” symbol of survival in the face of ethnic (racial) annihilation could hardly be compared with modern terrorism and the underpinning evil of the attacks in 2001.

The Abbottabad reference by a Navy Seal to Geronimo, also reminded me of a visit to the Pamunkey Reservation in Virginia, the land of a tribe famed for King Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas. Then came a crowning moment to my fascination with Geronimo and the Apaches - a visit in 1984 to Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona. Hosted by the USIA, the visit aimed at an introduction to the present-day lifestyle and continued challenges for the contemporary Apaches.

After arriving at a motel, a sound of screeching tires woke me to attention when an assistant of the Apache Tribe President arrived to summon me for a visit at the tribe headquarters. “I heard that a member of the Lech Walesa nation is visiting our territory,” said the Apache chief. “I wanted to pay my respects to the Polish people.”

Then and even today, I am inclined to compare the Solidarity warriors of Gdansk to the “here I stand” of Geronimo and his band of freedom fighters.

In my estimate, the choice of Geronimo’s name for bin Laden may not have been considered with needed sensitivity, and with respect for the First Nations of America. Geronimo’s story was decidedly different to that of the Al Qaeda chief, though both were hunted. And a difference is indicated in Geronimo’s own comment: “I was living peaceably when people began to speak bad of me.”

Now, to the memory of Geronimo himself, again in his own words: “I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures.”

Shadow Becomes You

2011-04-27T11:27:00.014-04:00

Frankly, we see shadows everywhere, and they are just fine. In actuality, shadows would not be with us if it weren’t for a perspective they are created with. A photographer should know.

Visiting favorite spots has advantages if you stop for a moment and look again. Often you surprise yourself with new things staring at you. Including your own shadow.

A favorite spot for us is Maryland’s St. Michaels at one of the Chesapeake Bay inlets. At lunchtime Grazyna and I enjoy making Ava’s Pizzeria our destination, with a gourmet cuisine of locally produced fresh ingredients, and where, as they state, “we use the finest cold press extra virgin olive oil, cook our potato chips to order, and make our own dough and fresh mozzarella. Everything is made in house…”

What caught my attention the other day was a wall art of sorts on Ava’s patio. I was looking at a graffiti of a man – a cook, perhaps - carrying a dish, who was on his way (it appeared) toward a kitchen door. Honestly, you sit down, you order, you look around, and then you see something about yourself in a detail on the wall.

No, I am not crazy. Not that way, anyway. There is this man whose eyes were staring at you, and he appeared to be followed by his own shadow. On a surface of things, there was nothing spectacular I was looking at. But the shadow supplied me with a haunting thought as I internalized the image and gave it a required retrospection.

The restaurant owner and chef, Chris Agharabi, must have noted my “moment” with the image on the wall, as he was playing with his daughter, Ava, near-by. He remarked about the graffiti to be painted over, as it was… scary-looking. Then I went for my camera with intent to immortalize a “cook with his own shadow.”

As I was waiting for my fennel and arugula salad with goat cheese, and with lemon oil vinaigrette, my retrospection kicked-in. It gave me a moment with my own, personal shadows. Are they easily painted over and made bygone? My thoughts didn’t stop there. The proverbial skeletons in the cupboard appeared out of nowhere.

My sub-conscience was calling for answers. This time it was the arrival of fennel and arugula that saved me from adding yet more shadows and spinning myself into a realm of ever-present denials.

A few Big Words come up - authenticity, transparency, honesty, walking the talk. If there were a moral MRI scan available, would it prompt one to deal with required life-course corrections?

Honestly, all too often I give myself a frequent and automated political treatment when it comes to words and actions; when it comes to authenticity and pretense. Many years of involvement with a corporate milieu etched in me a grid to evaluate the "private" and the "public" when engaging in communication. Nothing’s wrong with some stuff being private, and some being public. But come to think of it – how often I was told to be like… someone else? If I didn’t follow the instructions, I felt guilty and undesirable. From time to time – I admit – even now I resort to a guilt-ridden way out with: What will others think?

Be yourself! I remind myself in the morning, only to discover that my afternoons receive an auto “public” treatment.

This piece of personal reflection will not end with a moral to this story, or a resolution, and perhaps opting for another promise to change my life. I will end it with a plain reminder to be... who I am, and not worry what others will say. Period. That’s all I am required to be - myself. I think.

The shadow and the cook will be painted over, I was told. But the image will remain. I took a picture of it, and after I shared it with Chris Agharabi, he wrote to me that he likes it better. “Your photos are actually better art that the art itself!" What an attitude! That’s why I like the pizza they prepare at Ava’s. It’s made with the freshest ingredients possible. There is no shadow of a doubt there. I think.

Will another graffiti need to leave us forever?

Putting a Smile on Human Dignity.

2011-02-11T13:01:00.007-05:00

The stamina, and a victorious resolve of the people of Egypt brings back memories. For some of us, who experienced the 1980 Solidarity protests, and the ultimate collapse of the regime in Poland, smiles and tears painted our faces when the announcement was made that the Egypt's strongman, Hosni Mubarak, has stepped down. The message, the sounds and the images coming from Cairo, as then they did from Gdansk, meant simply - a victory for human freedom, rights and dignity.

It was the late Summer of 1980, when the Poles took to the streets, Lech Walesa become an icon of human solidarity, and with scores of brave citizens marched and did not give-up, until the changes were ushered in. There was plenty of tear gas and the hundreds of security thugs attacking the crowds. It was similar and at once different in scope in Poland, and in Egypt. The stamina of the Egyptian women, men and children to be resolute and peaceful - a dignified movement of saying 'No!' - will be the image we will remember. A social movement cum national movement put a smiling face on human dignity once again. In Egypt, the use of social media undergirded the intensity of the protest. It brought thoughts of nostalgia when it was the leaflets and monitored phone calls that aided the Gdansk and Warsaw solidarity movement. New technology for human rights, I said to myself. It works and will expand our opportunities to speak the message of freedom. Instantly, and everywhere.

Remembering the demonstrations in Warsaw, we were there, too. Our two-year old Michal got a taste of a tear gas cloud as we run, and carried him out of danger while we joined in a moment of history. He will not remember this, but as we later recalled our stories, he smiled with pride.

Not easy to gather coherent thoughts while still watching a TV set pregnant with human tears and jubilation in Tahrir Square. What transpires is a reaffirmation about our human destiny - life in freedom. This freedom is to be cherished and continue propel all of us to etch a life of respect and love.

For the people of faith, it all underscores that we flourish when we are free to express ourselves and practice our beliefs without undue restrictions and intimidation. In the days ahead, the Egyptians will be tested by how freedom will shake its hands with responsibility. Will their daily practice of full respect for the freedom of conscience be an example in the Middle East? The nation will flourish if conditions of social harmony are created and defended. Our brothers and sisters in Egypt should also expect the world-wide humanity will step forward to embrace them.

The Egyptian people - in their social, cultural and religious diversity - took a historical turn on their national road. They are reclaiming their everydayness in a newly found freedom in Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez. Though there will be hard days to experience in the future, the peaceful social revolution of the Tahrir Square bids well for the future of the country. You did it, Egyptians!

Capturing Spiritual Moments. Digitally.*

2011-02-01T08:19:00.009-05:00

Cespedes, Cuba: "Yes!" for Christianity in Cuba.

Adventist believer exuberant after church dedication.

Spirituality. Is it the “aaah, haaa” moment you get that helps you recognize something out of the ordinary in yourself and the way you perceive life, behave, act?

In one definition, spirituality, and the meaning of it, touches that part of us that is not dependent on material things or physical comforts.

As a photographer, I express my own spirituality in the way I perceive, stop and listen, and act through the images I see with the lens of my camera. I meet people and stop to frame their presence in a way that is consistent with my feelings and convictions. While looking for angles, I thrive in recognizing the details, shapes, and emotions. And I recognize stories in each photograph – my own and those of the subjects I consider.

Fomento, Cuba: Faces to remember. An elderly couple posing.

In my spiritual journey the images themselves offer a window into who Rajmund Dabrowski is. Yet I don’t ask if my images have the proverbial 1,000 words. Some of them do. When you see a meaning, you know, and others recognize it, too. In a sense, the images are as honest as the reality they capture. And you know when they … take you away.

Havana, Cuba: Hope has no barriers.

My life’s geography as a photographer is also explained in the influence or affirmation of my own values, hopes and personal vulnerabilities. My authenticity-driven imagination and creativity goes into fifth gear and is on display. Each image is given an attire of a story. It is laced with mystery.

The Johannesburg-Cape Town flight was like any other. I put a newly-purchased photo album of Bob Gossani’s “Tauza” people, and a couple of new South African CDs on the seat next to me. A gentleman was seated by the window. He turned to me and started a conversation, expressing interest in my music choices and in the art photography.

Stellenbosch, South Africa: Professor Victor Honey (above)

and An Engen petrol station moment (below).

A friendship developed instantly. Victor Honey was a university professor of art, and I was invited to visit him and his wife, Hester, when I came to South Africa next. Two years later, on yet another visit I was offered a treat. Victor said: “Let me show you the real Stellenbosch, not the one for tourists.” He took me to a township within the city, a rather impoverished part, where for years he was conducting after-hours classes for children when it was not permitted to do so during the ugly days of Apartheid. He showed me a building, where every week he continues to teach art to children, and said: “This place is my mission in life.”

His words resonate with the way I am and what I encounter. My own story becomes richer when I become present to the moment I am in.

Henry David Thoreau said aptly, “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” This resonates with another, closer-to-home reminder, and in God’s words: “Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? There it is …” [Isaiah 43: 19-20 The Message.]

My best work happens when I seize the moment. My eye, the lens, and being present to what I see and hear, align. Such alignment moves me into “listening” to what I am seeing. In being alert and attentive, I discover newness, hope, and perhaps the reaffirmation of things that matter and continue to make me who I am.

In the words of Leo Tolstoy, “In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.” And take a picture of it. It will be a reminder of the things to come. But for now, it may even create a monster of a change for a better world, a world where values of your faith are expressed through love.

Chirala, India: Children in a movement of prayer.

*Published in Spectrum, Volume 39, Issue 1, Winter 2011. Spiritual Journeys. Editor: Bonnie Dwyer. Designer: Laura Lamar. www.spectrummagazine.org

Abidjan’s Golf Hotel: Fragile State of Tranquility

2011-01-06T14:25:00.008-05:00

While visiting Abidjan in late June of 2006, I wrote a message to Grazyna – “I am staying at the Golf Hotel and I am well protected. A barbwire fence fortifies every yard of the perimeter and a unit of a UN Peacekeepers makes us feel safe. “ Later, I explained that the soldiers waved and smiled every time we came and left the compound, and the pictures showed the hotel being located on the lagoon which stunning scenery at sunrise.

Indeed, this particular UN unit came from Togo, and protected the hotel guests, but their duties did not protect them from engaging in heated discussions with the guests about the fate of African teams competing in the World Cup.

"This will assure Patricia," said John Banks, posing with Togolese soldiers.

Naturally, my colleague, John Banks, had to assure his wife, Patricia, that he was safe. So, we took pictures of ourselves with the soldiers and chatted about … the weather! She was glad to receive the email with attached assurances.

These days, the Golf Hotel is much more tense and will have received a lasting notoriety because of the recent political developments in the aftermath of Ivory Coast’s elections. About 800 UN troops are securing the hotel today as it serves as makeshift headquarters to Ivory Coast’s alternative government led by the internationally recognized winner of the elections, Alassane Quattara.

In 2006, and on two other previous occasions, the guests came in an out of the hotel with relative ease. But now, in January 2011, the situation is tense and on the verge of yet another civil war. The security forces loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo, who insists he won the presidential election, are denying access to the hotel. Since the crisis over the results began several weeks ago, few journalists have had access to the hotel premises.

Across the Ébrié Lagoon: Panorama of Abidjan.

Without getting into the current details of the crisis - covered by the international media - what remains from my 2006 visit are memories and images of a tranquil, even serene atmosphere of the hotel’s garden. The soldiers did not make one feel uneasy, and the Ébrié Lagoon’s quiet waters restored calm after a day’s hectic activities. But now, what also goes through one’s mind is a wish that the people of Ivory Coast, not only the politicians, will manage a way out of the impasse.

Tranquility at sunrise: Fishing for crabs in the Ébrié Lagoon.

A few images that follow are from that 2006 visit to Abidjan – the Cocody district, and a trip to a craft village on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea.

Wooden weapons for tourists: Would you put it in your luggage? Below: The Colonials.

Faces of Ivory Coast: Effervescence at the Cocody Adventist Church, above.

Below: Souvenir craft vendor from Abidjan.

Is the door really gone? As symbolic as you can have it - catching an Ivorian bus of expectancy.

"God is My Hope."

Eyes, Mouth and a Castle Head

2010-12-10T12:01:00.004-05:00

Several years ago, after returning from a visit to Krakow and it's Wawel Kings Castle, I hung on my office wall a replica of an encased head sculpture by Sebastian Tauerbach. It was a woman’s head with a piece of cloth, or scarf, covering her mouth. It gave an appearance as if she was muzzled.

Woman With a Scarf on Her Mouth. Replica. Wawel Castle, Krakow, Poland

Tauerbach, and his partner craftsman, Hans Snycerz, created 194 masterly crafted and realistic linden tree, in polychrome Wawel Heads, depicting people who lived in the early XVI century, and were the subjects of King Sigismund I the Old. It is not known why nor who was immortalized in this creative manner. Some commentators believe the Wawel Heads bear features of the courtiers of King Sigismund and his Italian wife Bona Sforza. Thus their faces, eyes and lips, offer expressions of a symbolic poignancy.

For me, he head of a "silenced woman" expresses a treatment of an intentionally stalled communication - a ‘no-no’ for someone to speak. Soon enough, I was on a search for a possible explanation to this Renaissance treatment of the freedom of expression, or it's denial. When I purchased the replica at the Sukiennice Cloth Hall crafts stall, I was offered one of the explanations of what I was holding in my hand.

What could be behind this symbolic creation, I asked? A shopkeeper said, that among the many legends was a story that the King Sigismund II August upon hearing that a woman was caught eavesdropping on a conversation between the monarch and his advisors, he opted to award a gag on her. Rather than having her imprisoned, she was to bear a testimony for posterity that not everything is for public consumption, and heaven forbid, become a fodder for gossip. A crafty king, he was, I concluded. The explanation was consistent with the king’s experimental policies with civil rights and freedoms, including religious tolerance.

There is another legend associated with the head of the "silenced" or "muzzled" woman. Today, 30 heads, each encased, are a part of a decorated ceiling in the Envoy's Hall of the Wawel Castle, the very room where the king would meet with foreign diplomats, hold audiences and issue judgments.

The king was known for procrastination, having a fancy to leave decisions for the next day. However, one day, being bored with executing judgments, and pushing the envelope quickly, he made an unjust pronouncement. It was at that very time when one of the coffered ceiling heads spoke: "Rex Auguste, iudica iuste" (King August, judge with justice). In his anger, he asked the court craftsman to add a gag on the demanding justice, taking head's mouth.

Created around 1540, the Wawel Heads depict people of different social standing and gender - kings, soldiers, courtiers, and the townspeople. As for this particular female talking head, the art history experts agree that the piece of cloth or scarf covering her mouth is consistent with the attire of townswomen, typical of the Renaissance period. Such a covering could have been used as a neck or mouth wrap. Often women did that as an expression of mourning. Perhaps, the woman was a widow, it is being speculated.

Such a gesture could be interpreted in a symbolic way, we are told. The reign of the two Polish Kings, Sigismund I the Elder, and his son Sigismund II August, was, as it turned out, the closure of the Jagiellonian dynasty, a time which is also remembered for curbing the bourgeoise political rights for the benefit of the only ruling class, the nobility.

Reflecting on the topic of our day, was the talking head a precursor of the Wikileaks syndrome? The 16th century approach to justice and human rights is not the best example of how to silence our contemporary talking heads. Gagging can only serve temporary needs of someone who has something to hide. In the Internet world, when everyone can be a publisher, we serve our interests best when we are open, honest and transparent.

Privacy requires guardianship. If you are sloppy with guarding your parlor, don't be upset when we all become observers of your actions. This applies to both the personal affairs, and the way we run society, its organizations and communities. The realm of religion is not excluded. And there is more...

Notwithstanding the proverbial washing of dirty clothes in public, and attempts to kill the messenger, the common good, whether we like it or not, requires public exposure and scrutiny of motives and actions. When the secret deals are cut and the laws circumvented, and when the common benefits are tampered with, watch out ... You will be found out.

Consider a wise poetic comment of Cyprian Kamil Norwid. An animator of the literary Age of Romanticism, he wrote about freedom and responsibility. His comment that it's not the bird that fouls the nest, but the one that forbids talking about it, seems to be on target.

Above: Havana Lips. Below: Nairobi Mouth.

A photographer's eye focuses on details. I looked up, and saw a muted head encased in a coffered ceiling of the Envoy’s Hall. What was behind this creative expression, I asked then. I keep wondering what stories and lessons is behind the graffiti on many a city wall? As I shoot the images of … eyes and mouths, perhaps they speak a message, that it's not only what you see that matters, but consider that somebody may be watching you, too.

Above: Cuba Eye. Below: Kaunas Eye.

Honest, Authentic Encounters. Enriching Our Own Stories. Part Four

2010-11-25T11:49:00.008-05:00

Our vacation in Poland was laced with encounters that warmed up the November aura, and included a few Golden Autumn moments with still plenty of color and fragrance. In Part Four, and final one of the series, a few musings about a TV producer and journalist, Dorota Jaslowska, and Jarek Wajk, a singer, lyricist/composer.

We go back to the early 1980s, Dorota Jaslowska and I. This alone suggests that we are past our thirties! She, and Piotr, her recently departed husband, can be described a solid pillars of friendships. We’ve covered the trauma of the post-Solidarity Poland, traveled to Pakistan and its Peshawar and Queta regions during the Mujahideen days of Afghanistan, went on vacations together, but also shared each other’s homes, and just generally being for each other. We also saw our children, Monika and Michal, grow up, each giving us a joy and a drama of parenting when they made their choices for life.

Piotr left an empty nest in the early days of January after a battle with a malicious brain tumor, and created a void for Dorota and for many of us. He left a “time and space” dedicated to a traditional Polish culture in which friendship, hospitality and values of being for each other, ruled. Dorota was quick to also say that there is an empty space in their once full of activity and entertainment home.

This place is far too big for me. Now, it’s only me, Fruzia [a mini-schnauzer], and two young cats, Dyzio [a Maine Coon], and Kacper [a roofer]. It’s actually their home, Dorota muses. When I come home after work, I see that they are using the space to their advantage. A mess? Demolition? What mess? It’s their place and they can do anything they want. The place looks like it’s lived-in, she adds.

Looking around, Grazyna and I, once again saw walls of the Jaslowski home oozing with nationally recognized works of art. Above all, one could not fail to admit, we were visiting a home of friends. That’s all that mattered.

We tried to remember when it was, but concluded that it must have been between 1987 and 1989, when she worked as the ongoing “Panorama” news review producer, when we partnered in producing a documentary entitled, “Poorest of the Poor.” It was a film about three girls from a local tribe in the Sind Desert, not far from Karachi, whose main job was to go to a water spring, fill-up goatskins, and carry them for several miles up the mountain to their sticks-and-mud desert village. It was in that setting where Dorota, a cameraman, Jerzy Ernst, and I looked into the very eye of poverty. Three girls, several kilometers of an uphill journey, hot, scorching sun, - carrying hope for the whole village – a day-in, a day-out. After our own trek back to the hotel, we talked about what is important in our lives.

Together with Dorota, a seasoned television journalist, and Jurek, as Jerzy is known, whose claim to fame was being a cameramen to then President Lech Walesa, we concluded that there is no other way but to stand by the side of the voiceless and speak for them. Dorota did her own report for TV, and together we produced a documentary on Christian responsibility and the way the Karachi Adventist Hospital responds to the needs of the poorest of the poor. Since then, Dorota went through a rollercoaster of her professional life, and now is the managing editor of Goracy Temat (Hot Topic), a news interview program of the Polish TVP2.

A visit with Dorota brought back a few memories about Jurek Ernst. He had his own “hot” experience in Iraq, working with Waldemar Milewicz, a war correspondent of Polish television. Wikipedia’s entry describes how on May 7, 2004, “the Polish TV crew's car, clearly marked as a press vehicle, was returning from an interview with the Iraqi insurgents in Baghdad to the Polish base Camp Babilon at Najaf. It was followed by a group of armed men in another car. The attackers caught up with them and opened fire from behind, riddling the journalists' car with bullets. [Waldemar] Milewicz was hit first and died instantly. Another member of his crew, Mounir Bouamrane (a Polish-Algerian editor and translator who had been working for TVP for about 15 years) was killed on site after he had left the vehicle. The crew's cameraman Jerzy Ernst, who was in the car while trying to remove the body of Milewicz, was wounded in the arm by the second volley of gunfire, while their Iraqi driver and guide Assir Kamel al Kazzaz escaped the attack unharmed.” I am yet to see Jurek again, after his traumatic Iraq experience. One of those encounters I am eager to have in the near future.

Today, Dorota’s presence in our lives has etched itself as that of a sister who welcomes you home no matter when and why, but also shares a feline bond – our Maia still to discover Dyzio and Kacper, her Polish siblings. Whether here or there, the cats teach us patience and forgiveness. And our memory of Piotr is reminding us about values that matter – being present to friendship without restraints – and caring about the finer things in life. And such is the essence of meeting a friend, and meeting her again, and again.

To Grazyna and me, Jarek Wajk is a very special person. He is our brother in law. But just if this was not enough, he is a singer, lyricist, composer and a social activist. I recall how his wife, Lidia, was anxious about all the groupies arriving at the entrance to their apartment building and all these people calling them in the middle of the night. He belonged to their world, it seemed. Then, he listened to her wife, and his love for her put him in touch with her worldview.

Even these days, Jarek's image as a frontman singer of Oddzial Zamkniety (Restricted Ward) lingers on. He is a recognized face. To his fans, he is someone that will be remembered by the energy of his performances in concert halls, in stadiums, and on several CDs. But, after reshaping his life to embrace a new worldview and a new life style, today he is recognized as a symbol of an anti-drug message. You will find him perform in a high school or in a church circuit. He describes how students come to listen to someone who used to be a role-figure for decadence and nonconformity, but now they “get a message about a better option: a clean life without drugs and distant from hedonism.”

We sat at their table in a small two-bedroom apartment in one of the well-known Warsaw residential district, Jelonki. There they were – Marta, their daughter who is studying psychology, Lidia and Jarek. The main feature of the visit was an abundance of their table – the pickled wild forest porcini, pickled farmer cheese, heirloom tomatoes, dark whole-meal breads… You name it.

But it was the conversation that mattered also. After all, we see each other infrequently. Visiting a home of someone who believes in changing the world, and who cares how God is perceived and experienced in today’s secular Polish milieu, awards one with an atmosphere of awe. Art is a way to communicate the values God offers to everyone, he believes. To illustrate, Jarek describes his currently evolving project. He calls it "S.U.W." Simply, it’s a trio composed of the country’s recognized instrumentalists: Ryszard Sygitowicz, Jan Urny and Jarek Wajk. They are currently on the road, playing gigs in schools and clubs. “We are three musicians with a message,” he explains. Their names draw attention, their craft speaks of excellence, and their passion adds a flavor often absent in today’s entertainment.

Jarek got excited when explaining last week he hinted on making a CD of church hymns, and then floating it through the mainstream music industry. “Why not doing something that has a meaning and offers a resonance in our religious community, and making it available to everyone,” he sounded like a convinced salesman. “My colleagues are for it,” he adds.

He is passionate about being present among those who are traditionally kept … outside the walls of safety the church has created for itself. “It’s time to demolish walls of isolation. Let’s feed the hungry. Let’s show warmth to the orphans and widows. Let’s meet the homeless drug addicts at the Central Station and bring them to church.” And that’s what he does. He invites them. The come. The effects of such invitations turn into intersections where the world of needs meets grace.

Jarek Wajk is known as an inventor. A while ago, a report in the Adventist News Network described that the Wajk’s new public debut included an integrated group, Bogu [For God], a mostly vocal ensemble composed of a choir of the hearing impaired. They have traveled throughout the country, sung before the nation's leaders, joined the finest classical musicians in benefit concerts, and brought a new dimension to musical and artistic expression, while becoming part of the country's musical and spiritual culture. Media reviews and interviews were shared throughout Poland.

If not on tour, one can meet Jarek worshipping in the Warsaw Central Church. "One day a thought hit me when I saw a group of my brothers and sisters sitting in the front of our congregation. The worship service was translated to them through sign language. So I thought, let me join them. And I did. The rest is history," he reminisces.

Wajk invited himself to learn sign language and made an effort to understand the "life of silence of my fellow believers." The next thing was easy, he recalls smiling. "No, it was not that easy to enter into a world of silence and bring out a sound that would give meaning and that it would bring these people out of isolation of their church's corner, and bring them into the mainstream of the church's Sabbath service," Wajk continues. "The easy part was to make a decision to be inclusive and to make music that would bring meaning to thousands of listeners. I included them in my musical group. The words that two or three of us sing, they interpret it through sign language and do it all in unison. But of course there is more, there is more sound."

The lyrics of an acclaimed signature song, is also entitled "Bogu."

You think silence is my home

You say that I don't know music

Look, I am singing a psalm today

My voice ascending heavenward

Ascending to the stars.

The Bogu phenomenon includes two components of making their appearances popular. "It's the message of Scripture delivered with professionalism of the form we use," Wajk explains.

How do you make music out of silence, I ask myself even now? Being a well-known music personality in the country Jarek’s successes as a rock singer made him an icon among the "where next? generation," as he put it. "Today, I give myself wholly to God and He does wonders. All that I am today comes from Him and there is nothing else I must do except to allow myself to be used by Him."

Jarek and Lidia, who is a psycho-therapist at the Warsaw’s Institute of Psychiatry, are serious about who they are as a people of faith. As we were stuffing ourselves with a genuine Polish home cuisine par excellence, both of them competed in explaining how they struggled one day to be serious and regular worshippers – week after week. “So, I told him: OK. Don’t go to church,” said Lidia. “But before you fix yourself in your resolve, read this text …”

So, she gave him a Bible reference, and left the house. “I took my Bible and looked up what it says. I concluded that if going to church as “it was his custom” was good enough for Jesus, it must be ‘a way to go’ for me, too,” he concludes. A few minutes later, they met in a church pew.

It’s a moment to remember when you meet someone who challenges your “business as usual” approach to religion. We come to church. We meet the usual friends. We have little to describe who they are, as long as they look like us. Besides the fact that we are … family, meeting The Wajk Family means a lot more. It means also being present to the world of needs, and repairing it in God’s name.

Vacation encounters. Honest, enriching, authentic. Fulfilling.

Honest, Authentic Encounters. Enriching Your Own Stories. Part Three.

2010-11-21T13:55:00.004-05:00

It was on November 5 when Grazyna and I met with Dr. Marek Wronski. He and I were waiting at the entrance to a shopping mall, and only connected after considering that waiting at an entrance may mean a few yards difference – inside the mall, or outside. Here is Part Three and another fascinating meeting with a medical doctor, journalist and a defender of Poland’s academic ethics, Dr. Marek Wronski.

Whatever you do, don’t get on Dr. Marek Wronski’s wrong side. Wronski is a medical doctor and a journalist, who after returning from 18 years of medical research work in the United States, nine years ago turned into a defender of academic ethics, and had become Poland’s top expert in hunting down, researching and exposing scientific fraudsters who lace their academic research with someone’s original work. “Plagiarism and scientific misconduct are to be hunted down and gotten rid of,” he told me as we sat down in one of the cafés at Warsaw’s Zlote Tarasy (Golden Terraces). As we were winding down our conversation, Grazyna arrived, and he said to me, "You did not say that you would come with your daughter." For a moment I wondered if I actually like him!

Wronski doesn't care where these fraudsters are from, and who may be behind them, he told me. An award-winning writer-historian and reporter of Forum Akademickie (Academic Forum), a monthly magazine that ends on the desks of all university professors in Poland, Wronski does not reveal how many academics, including university presidents, had their doctorates rescinded and be removed (or resign) from their academic posts because of his research. He takes his job as a Research Integrity Officer of Warsaw’s Medical University seriously, and that his interests reach into other corners of Poland’s academia.

He takes one case after another and feels legally obligated not to sweep fraudulent and unethical behavior under the proverbial carpet. He has little time to play games with academics who twist the facts, spin the truth and hide behind “old boys networks,” when the artificial smoke-screens prove to be a useful, but inadequate defense. In a recent article in a weekly popular magazine “Polityka,” Wronski explained that “plagiarism is a phenomenon similar to corruption and only a small number of them comes to light.” But those who generate the formal, and public exposure serve as a warning to members of the academia and the students.

The day we met will be remembered by many people by a removal of a Wroclaw Medical Academy president, Dr. Ryszard Andrzejczak for his act of plagiarism. The case was all over the media. As we talked, Wronski expressed his added concern that academic dishonesty referred to also as scientific perjury, adds a different flavor if discovered among religious academics or in theological doctoral dissertations. His current case involves a charge exposing a sizable academic misconduct with a majority of doctoral thesis text “borrowed” from authors of a historical symposium from 1976, whose research was later published in a book.

The case of Dr. Bernard Kozirog, principal of the Adventist Church’s College of Theology and Humanities was investigated by the Christian Theological Academy, and verification passed on in the early November for future decisions to state office that verifies academic degrees and title. It goes without saying that no-one wants any publicity that this case is generating, and the involved parties are interested in clearing the good name of the Church and its leaders. While the case continues, Wronski moves on with lobbying the government to establish a state agency that would monitor academic integrity in a similar manner to different countries.

After Wronski exposed the case in June, I checked the issue for myself. I knew about the topic Dr. Kozirog covered in his doctoral thesis which appeared also in a book he published a couple of years later. I wanted to look at the details with my own eyes. I didn’t need to wait for the Academy to do its investigation and render its verdict, and wondered why his employer was “waiting for Godot”? Wronski was right in his evaluation. As an author of my own original research into the topic covered by Kozirog, I was disappointed to see my own, and others’ words, research and references published under a different name. The case awaits a conclusion, and I suspect, the moral resonance of it will continue to haunt those involved for years to come.*

Meeting Dr. Wronski was like opening a window into the virtue of honesty in what one says and does. It was also a sharp reminder that if you cut corners, one day you will over-shoot one of them, details notwithstanding.

* Since posting this blog entry, the case was reviewed by the state Central Commission for Academic Degrees and Titles on November 29, with a decision to reopen Kozirog's doctoral process to be sent to his Alma Mater, the Christian Theological Academy. According to Wronski, the Kozirog's case is second such case in the country.

Next - Part Four: Dorota Jaslowska and Jarek Wajk

Honest, Authentic Encounters. Enriching Our Own Stories. Part Two.

2010-11-20T22:50:00.002-05:00

Among all of the fascinations of our vacation in the late October and early November was meeting old friends and geting to meet new people. Here is about meeting a painter, Joanna Majchrowska, and a journalist, Jan Kot.

Joanna Majchrowska is a painter and an art lecturer at the University of South Australia in Adelaide. We go back to the 1980s when she was studying at the Academy of Art in Warsaw and I was able to persuade her to illustrate for the magazines and books at the publishing house I was managing. We kept in touch but living on different continents obscured our direct contacts. A few years before deciding to study in Warsaw, together with her parents and two sisters, she emigrated from to Australia in her teens.

What a surprise it was to see Joanna again, and actually by chance. Someone said she was in town and we connected. On December 7 Joanna opens her exhibit of 11 oils at Galeria Sztuk Pieknych vW in Warsaw. Entitled “Fragmented” the paintings are based on a set of black and white photographs her father took about their emigration to Australia.

“I thought that it would be nice to do a set of paintings of what was a part of my childhood,” she commented as we ate lunch at “Zgoda,” one of our favorite “Polish Home Cuisine” restaurants in Warsaw. We will miss her exhibit, but it was between a herring in sour cream, and a sauerkraut pierogi (dumplings), we managed to cover a territory of our personal intersections over the last few years when we only briefly met and … casually commented on who was doing what in our diverse, yet intertwined social fabric.

In her unassuming demeanor, Joanna talked about such mundane things as her sister’s moving to another house somewhere in Australia, and how much we owe to our parents and their interest that we live lives of virtue, or that the windows in her rented apartment in Warsaw could not block a fight between lovers on the street below, and all under a street light. Her casual rhetoric about ordinary things was actually confirming how detailed she is in her art when everything matters, but much of it is not important, really. It just is to be absorbed and enjoyed.

Joanna is a fashionista. She knows where to dress, and where the cool cafés are. When in Joanna’s presence, one’s pretense gives-in to more lofty areas of existence, viewing the world with imagination and realism, and all at once.

Whenever I meet with Jan Kot, I am reminded that Polish Protestant journalism is in good hands. On top of this, he is passionate about what he does, and still interested in conquering the world! A well-trained and established as a television producer and writer, Jan is currently assisting the Adventist Church as a chief editor of the Voice of Hope Media Center. He frequently talks about “seizing the moment” and using the media “because that’s where we all see each other every day.” For a decade, a co-author and producer of a weekly show in TVP1, Case for a Reporter, among his other accomplishments, Jan Kot is well acquainted with what hurts in today’s society. In his earlier television work, he dealt with the topics which many viewers, including many confessed-Christians would only talk about privately, choosing (for whatever reason) non-involvement and not to get their hands dirty. I was reminded of my own days as a journalist in Poland of the pre-Solidarity years when it was not easy, but necessary to step-in and assist those who were in need.

Jan, whose family is a well-recognized name in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Poland, continues the passion and interest to be present with the “good news” and a helping hand. Contemporary, professional media journalism is his craft. Having an intuitive awareness in what new media can do for society, he is interested in making a contribution to build on values of better relationships, based on fundamental Christian ethic, “but without fanatical overtones and aggressive proselytism,” he comments.

On a number of occasions, we exchanged views about ways to be professional and intentional in church communication, especially when the church needs to be seen and heard is a secularized milieu. Is there any other way but be just that, he kept asking? The market place of ideas demands it. There are other Adventist Web sites, but easily, if you need information about what is happening in the Polish Adventist Church, you will find it on a freshly updated and rich in a multi-platform media Web site of his local church. One gets a feeling that one is looking through a window, where you are informed, inspired and motivated for mission. This is where you need to be, I reckon. [For the Polish-speaking public, see: http://www.adwentysci.waw.pl/]

Frankly, access to information and transparency offers a staple of our everydayness. And frankly-speaking, for a Christian faith community, it wins the day when people are offered hope, honesty and convictions, and the church's mission reaches its objectives.

Jan’s passion and professionalism is an asset to have and to enjoy!

Next - Part Three: Dr. Marek Wronski