Sunday March 6, 2022
The last two weeks, I’ve tried to keep up with the changing scene in Ukraine, and our reactions to it. First, Russian forces were merely threatening to invade Ukraine. Then they invaded, but ostensibly to enable two eastern regions to breakaway from the rest of Ukraine. Then they clearly invaded all of Ukraine, from the north, east and south.
Unconfirmed video footage shows massive devastation in all the major cities.
Unprecedented millions of Ukrainian refugees flee across borders into Europe.
The biggest nuclear power station in the country has been bombed, raising fears of another Chernobyl. Or worse.
I’m shocked. Appalled. Disgusted with Vladimir Putin.
Let me be clear -- I am 100% opposed to the Russian invasion.
I’m less confident about the effectiveness of the western deterrents.
Casting out
The Ukrainian government has ordered all males 18-60 to stay home and fight. We in the west have sent weapons that most of those men don’t know how to use. We’ve held protest rallies. And prayer vigils. We’re funnelling aid through the UN High Commission on Refugees.
But other than that, we seem to believe that social pressure will cause Czar Vladimir to change his mind.
Deputy Prime Minister Christia Freeland spoke of making Putin “an international pariah.”
A number of sport organizations – ice skating, skiing, basketball, track, tennis, soccer and hockey – have barred Russia from competitions. A headline declared, “No one wants to play with Russia.”
Does that, perchance, take you back to your childhood, when an in-group told an outsider, “Go away! We don’t want to you to play with us”?
It’s a game that religious churches have played for years. Amish and Mennonite communities, for example, practice “shunning” as a means of bringing malcontents back into the fold. Jehovah’s Witnesses call it “dis-fellowshipping.” Roman Catholics call it “excommunication” – with Henry VIII perhaps its most famous dissident.
Shunning has a biblical basis. When the Hebrew slaves broke rules on their flight from Egypt, they were banished from camp, sent away into the desert.
Modern tactics
In our time, NATO nations have chosen economic shunning as a means of bringing Vladimir Putin to heel.
The Biden administration started by sanctioning two Russian banks and 42 of their subsidiaries, five Russian-flagged cargo vessels, tankers and container ships, and three men in Putin’s inner circle and their family members.
The U.S. Treasury Department later scaled-up its actions, disrupting Russian banks’ access to other banks around the world. It announced “expansive economic measures, in partnership with allies and partners, that target … all of Russia’s largest financial institutions and … that bar Russia from the global financial system.
“The actions also target nearly 80 percent of all banking assets in Russia and will have a deep and long-lasting effect on the Russian economy and financial system.”
SWIFT (Security for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, representing 11,000 banks in 200 counties) shut down Russia’s ability to transfer funds.
Germany pulled the plug on a pipeline for Russian natural gas.
Most of Europe cancelled landing rights for Russian airlines. The U.S. closed its entire airspace to Russian aircraft.
Canada dropped Russia and Belarus off its “most favoured nation” tariff list. And froze the bank accounts of Putin’s cronies.
Maybe… Maybe not…
But will all this shunning work?
It can, sometimes. Over the years, I’ve talked with several people who yielded to pressure. “I’d rather live a lie than live alone,” one man said.
Others have found new communities to belong to, instead. My friend Ralph Milton has described the United Church of Canada as “a refugee church -- people escaping from oppressive denominations come to us because they have nowhere else to go.”
But “refugees” don’t necessarily migrate towards more liberal churches. Some cluster with even more rigorous defectors. When I lived in Prince Rupert, I recall, a city of 12,000 had ten Baptist churches, each having split from a parent body over some doctrinal detail.
Shunning doesn’t always work.
We’ve tried it before. We boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
World competitions banned Russian athletes over the Russian doping scandal.
The western nations pulled diplomats from the winter Olympics in Beijing.
Did anyone notice?
Jesus told his disciples that when they left an unfriendly village, they should “shake the dust off their sandals.” Do you really think the villagers cared?
After 60 years of trade embargoes, Cuba has not come crawling for re-admissions to U.S. favour. And Henry VIII laughed all the way to Canterbury Cathedral.
So I doubt if shunning will have any effect on Vladimir Putin. Shunning works only if the shun-ee really wants to belong. To be included.
Putin’s face on TV doesn’t suggest to me that he wants to buddy-buddy with anyone. Especially anyone who has tried to humiliate him.
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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn
Most of the mail resulting from last week’s column came as messages of sympathy over losing my dog Pippin. I’ll include a small sampling of those letters.
Vera Gottlieb, from Switzerland: “It always hurts to lose a faithful companion. I much prefer to be in the company of a dog than some of the humans on this planet.”
Randy Hall: “It sounds, like you said, that Pippin had a short circuit in her wiring that even the Dog Whisperer couldn't repair. Sometimes people have that, too. Russia may have one as President.”
Jim Henderschedt: “I was taken back to that afternoon when I, sitting on the floor in our Vet’s treatment room, holding Pepper’s head on my lap and marveled at how swift and peacefully his life slipped away. That took place about six years ago. That space is still empty. Those feelings of loss have never gone away.”
Laurna Tallman: “The photos of Ukrainians fleeing war that struck me most were those trying to carry a dog or a cat with them.”
Tom Watson: “I have lived alone for the past four years and people have asked me if I would be interested in getting a dog. Part of the reason I haven't is that I don't want to endure the parting that my experience assures me will come.”
Cliff Boldt: “My people came from what was then part of Russia, now is Ukraine. The current fighting is close to the land they farmed. They came to Canada and made a good life for themselves and their families. That doesn’t really make the current conflict as personal as it does to my Ukrainian friends. But it feels personal because I and my family could be seriously affected by this war.
“Your story today is a good lesson in context, especially at a personal level. I appreciated it. I bet it wasn’t easy to write.”
JT: No, it wasn’t easy to write. But writing is a form of therapy for me. And it’s easier to write about than to talk about.
Janet Cawley: “Pippin's death moved me to tears, because my cat Yoho was euthanized that same day, Two days later his brother Simi also had to be let go. And you're absolutely right: I was aware of the tragedy in Ukraine and watched the news, but what shattered my heart was the silent emptiness of my apartment.”
Kim MacMillan: “I know, and could see, what a joy Pippin was to you. I’m particularly sorry to see this grief piled upon the other one that was in the process of healing.”
Sheila Carey: “I’ve outlived three dogs and about 20 cats that have shared my home in my 75 years. Somehow losing them seems to get harder as I get older.
“And you are so right that the personal trumps the general every time. I have been watching/reading about Ukraine with great concern, but the news from there has not brought me to tears like your news about Pippin.”
Some comments continued to come in about the previous column, on mentoring.
This from Norma Wible: “Thank you again for giving me a new perspective on why events touch people in different ways. Having been a dog owner all my life, of course I was moved to tears by your story; being the daughter of an immigrant from Slovenia, I feel for the Ukrainian people more so than many. But your personal story especially touched me because you’ve been a mentor of sorts, and your pain is personal to us as well.”
Fran Ota also had a mentor story to share: “The year that Rev. Lee Sang-Chul was elected Moderator; he and I were waiting for the elevator. He almost wailed ‘And now even my dearest mentor is gone.’ He was referring to the Korean Quaker peace activist, Ham Seok-Heon, who had spent years in jail in South Korea for his activism.
“I replied ‘And now it’s your turn.’
“Rev. Lee stared for a moment and said ‘But I’m not ready for that!’”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns