Sally and I stood at the bottom of the steps leading into the East Jerusalem Post Office located on the Palestinian side of the city. On the top step, encouraging the Palestinian people to vote and then to support the outcome, was President Jimmy Carter. It was January 2006 and we had just moved to Jerusalem to begin a work there that was intended to give support to the Palestinian Christian Community.
President Carter could have cared less about the religion of the people he was there to support, and we soon moved into the same place. It wasn’t long after that pivotal election that Carter wrote the controversial book “Palestine, Peace not Apartheid.” He was far ahead of his time, a prophet then scorned by media and politicians and even the Christian community because he declared the Palestinian people worthy of the most basic of human rights — the right to exist!
So today we mourn and celebrate the life of a brave man, a champion for marginalized people. There are not many of us who put ourselves in the crosshairs of the staunch and blind supporters of Zionism, the perverted ideology that weaponizes the Bible to prioritize one people group over another. President Carter did, and he was vilified for it. His opponents painted him as a loser, a failed president, and in so doing they pushed him into the margins along with the people he seemed to identify with most easily.
Sally and I loved him, as did the Palestinian people. Carter was accused of being antisemitic, and as is so often the case with this label, his prophetic pronouncement was distilled and then dismissed. But today, almost 20 years later, apartheid is the descriptive term being used to accurately assess the situation in the West Bank and Gaza.
For a fuller take on the life and work of President Jimmy Carter go to Heather Cox Richardson.
A Lesser Light; But No Less Bright
My Aunt Elaine died on Christmas Day. The above photo is of small town NW Iowa newspaper clippings. We were nine years different in age. She was the big sister I didn’t have, someone I have looked up to my entire life. My mother, AuntE’s older sister, saved these and had them on the same page of a photo album. As you can plainly see, AuntE and I have the distinction of being the good looking members of our extended family. She and I agreed on that! (I know you have nothing of the rest of the family to compare us to, but take my word for it — we are the best looking in the family!)
AuntE was raised in a loving home by Grandma Grace and Grandpa Ray. It was a conservative upbringing in a conservative part of the country — still is today. And she was grateful for all of it, even though she chaffed under some of the rigidity in the Christianity of the 50s and 60s.
AuntE was a ground breaking woman and I can’t find adequate words to describe the irony in where she was raised and where she went from there. She embraced her past, was proud of her home life, loved her parents and her siblings, and was in many ways a very traditional person.
And yet — she married a Lutheran. You're thinking — no big deal! No, it was a big deal! Uncle Marlo was an outsider, from Minnesota no less. And to add insult to injury, Uncle was a Lutheran preacher — not Dutch, not of the Reformed Christian family, but God help us, Lutheran! Grandpa had to be talked into going to the wedding. I was there. It was awesome.
AuntE started career life as a nurse. Nursing was an approved profession for a woman in the 50s and 60s. She later obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree with Highest Honors in Nursing from the University of Connecticut. Then she earned a Master’s Degree, and then a PhD. And as she did, she birthed and raised three daughters.
A Woman For Women
All her life, AuntE defied the odds. She stubbornly stood up for the right of women to thrive. And I can’t find adequate words to describe how beautifully stubborn she was.
Here’s how her daughters describe their mother: “Elaine instilled in her daughters a love of Christ, a thirst for knowledge, the power of feminism and female leadership, the ferocity of love, the necessity to give to others in need and to live with gratitude.”
It’s then no surprise that AuntE made arrangements for her body to be donated for future doctors and nurses to learn on. And donations are to go to the Malala Fund which works for a world in which every girl can learn and lead.
AuntE was no Jimmy Carter. And yet, these two had much in common. Most of us reading this will never reach the status of President Carter. We do not have the means or the influence to do the great things he did.
But like my beloved AuntE, we can do what is ours to do. We can be brave, kind, curious, tough-minded, stubborn and fiercely in love with life and the people in our lives. And like both my heroes, we can champion the causes that lift up those most needing a boost.