Traveling in Place

Enjoying the Show

Taking my own advice (see last post), I headed up to the ‘daks on Friday. Through the morning, thick clouds hung low and muted the colors, but by early afternoon, the skies were deep blue in the Old Forge-Eagle’s Bay area. The colors are peaking this weekend. The new blog banner is the view of Fourth Lake from one of the outcrops below the summit of Rondaxe Mt.

The Glorious Ending

All around us, the process of photosynthesis is coming to an end.

During the months when daylight is plentiful, deciduous trees use chemical pigments like chlorophyll to convert solar energy into enough nutrients to last them through the winter. The trees use the sunlight to break down carbon dioxide into organic materials. In the process, they absorb the colors produced by the sun – except for green.

In the fall, when the amount of available sunlight decreases rapidly, trees lose their ability to convert light into nutrients, so they cease to absorb the colors. As the process breaks down, colors in the spectrum other than green begin to appear in the leaves. Since photosynthesis cannot be sustained, a layer of cells forms at the base of the lead stem, blocking the transfer of fluids to and from the trees. The veins in the leaves gradually close. Having served their purpose, the leaves die and fall to the ground.

At least, that’s one way to look at it.

As interesting as this scientific explanation is, it doesn’t quite capture the experience of beholding the magnificent colors of fall. Leave it to God to design a season of death so that it displays an almost indescribable glory.

Over the weekend, the “autumnal equinox” officially ushered in the fall season. For the next six months, the sun’s angle in our skies will be no higher than 45 degrees. The lower light adds richness to the color of the sky, the leaves, and the sun’s reflection off the clouds. But only for two to three weeks in any given location will the full panoply of colors splash across the landscape before fading into the ground. So autumn will be truly enjoyed by only the most observant.

In just the last couple of days, yellow and orange have begun to tint the outside of many trees. There are even patches of forest that are already bright with color. God’s Big Show is starting. Are you ready?

Copyright 2013 by J. Mark Lawson

Faith in the Face of Evil

The spate of bad news in the last few weeks – floods and mudslides in Colorado, the fires on the Jersey shore, and the mass shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington (the 20^th mass shooting in the U.S. in the last five years) – has prompted a lot of sobering public reflection.

While showing viewers pictures of the burning boardwalk in New Jersey, recently rebuilt after Hurricane Sandy, a reporter speculated that property owners there “must wonder whether there is a God.” Late in the day after the carnage in Washington, MedStar Hospital’s chief medical officer Dr. Janis Orlowski said at a news conference, “There’s something evil in our society that we as Americans have to try to work to eradicate…I’d like you to put my trauma center out of business. I really would. I would like not to be an expert on gunshots.”

Jeff Greenfield, the senior news correspondent whose insight is widely respected across the political spectrum, became downright philosophical in reflecting on the Navy Yard shooting. He spoke of the “human condition.” Sometimes terrible things happen that we cannot fix, he said. “I’m saying something that I know is contrary to the American notion that for every problem there is a solution, but what I’m saying quite bluntly is that some things like this are not susceptible [to] solutions.”

Pretty heavy words for heavy times. Natural disasters seem eerily frequent, as do rampages by either mentally ill or ideologically trained gunmen who open fire on athletes, government employees, moviegoers, and even little children. Nearly lost among these disasters is the report this week that poverty in America holds steady at 15% while national wealth has increased. That statistic is not as dramatic as scenes of bullet-riddled bodies or homes washed away by raging rivers, but it’s still tragic. What’s happening in Syria and Egypt is horrifying. But we Americans sort of expect bad things to happen “over there.” What’s happening to us here at home?

Hope in Syria?

You can take a cynical view – and I’m sure a lot of people do – but I prefer to see the events of the last week regarding the fate of Syria to be nothing short of remarkable.

Just two weeks ago, it seemed certain that President Obama was going to launch air strikes against the Syrian regime as retaliation for using internationally-banned chemical weapons against his own people. A week ago, the President announced he would seek approval from Congress before going forward with military action. As the debate unfolded, opposition to air strikes grew apace, though you cannot really say a consensus emerged. Representatives and Senators were raising objections for very different reasons. Some used the isolationist argument: “It’s not our problem, none of our business.” Others used a more pacifist argument: “The answer to violence is not more violence.” Some opposed the scope of the operation – either as “too narrow” or “too broad.” And then there were the political hacks who just opposed it because they seem programmed to oppose everything that comes from this president. Even those who supported a military strike against Syria did so reluctantly, at least in part because the nation is experiencing a serious case of war fatigue. When President Clinton called for very similar action against Kosovo in 1999, he had broad support in Congress and the backing of 60% of the public. But after eight years in Iraq and eleven years in Afghanistan, Americans in 2013 are sick of war.

From my perspective, the President’s resolution is fatally flawed because it is simply impossible to launch a military attack so surgically precise that it would do nothing more than destroy a weapons stockpile. No bombs are that smart. And the aftermath of dropping bombs is never good.

Despite growing opposition, however, the specter has continued to loom of some kind of military intervention and the possibility of another protracted entanglement in the Middle East. President Obama has refused to say that he would abandon his plans if Congress disapproved. But then, on Monday, Secretary of State Kerry, seemingly speaking off the cuff in answer to a reporter’s question, said Syria could avoid military strikes by speedily turning over all its chemical weapons to the international community. He then added that Syrian President Assad “wasn’t about to do it. It can’t be done.”

Or can it? Almost immediately, the Russians said, “Good idea,” and a chorus of

No Good Options in Syria

When President Obama surprised the world over the weekend by announcing that he would seek authorization from Congress before using force against the Syrian government, I wasn’t sure what to think. I’m convinced that President Bashar al-Assad has violated international law by using chemical weapons against his own people and needs to be held accountable, but I’m not yet convinced that deadly American air strikes are the right response. So I was relieved that the rush to action had been slowed. On the other hand, I groaned to think that the decision now fell to a Congress that is deeply mired in partisan squabbling and has shown itself to be utterly incapable of any effective deliberation.

So I was nearly dumbfounded on Tuesday when Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi emerged from the White House agreeing with each other about the need to support the President. Public statements by elected officials in Washington indicate that both the opposition to and support for air strikes against the Syrian regime have – at least temporarily – obliterated party lines. Among members of Congress, it appears that moral conscience is actually trumping petty partisanship for the first time in decades, so there is a reasonable chance that their debate will be substantive and thoughtful. (Dare we hope that this discovery of conscience might bring some needed sanity to future debates about immigration, voting rights, and the national debt?)

God knows the issue of using force against Syria requires serious, sober deliberation. Every bit of news about that nation, including our possible involvement there, is depressing. The U.N. reports that over 100,000 people have died in the Syrian civil war. Over two million have fled the country and suffer an appalling lack of food and shelter. In total, seven million Syrians have been displaced. Assad is a brutal dictator who shows no respect for the value of human life. Like other despots, he cares more for his own power than for the wellbeing of his subjects. I wish he were gone.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. In the Middle East, nothing ever is. The Syrian