Mark's Blog
Mistrust and Trust
It was the spring of 1970. The United States had just announced that it was expanding the war in Vietnam by authorizing bombing campaigns in Cambodia. Campuses across the country erupted in protest. On May 4, four protesting students at Kent State were shot and...
Challenges to Trusting the Process
Trust the process. This was a phrase I often heard when a strategy session or a problem-solving meeting bogged down. The group would get stuck, and in frustration someone would either suggest we scrap the whole enterprise, or would start accusing a participant of...
Time and Space Needed for Grief and Mourning
“In war, death interrupts nothing. Time doesn’t stop; it seems to accelerate.” So wrote David French, in a New York Times column on May 25, 2024. A veteran of the Iraq War, French goes on to say that in battle there is no time or space for mourning the loss of a...
Whose Land is It?
A couple of weeks ago, I came across this passage from my daily reading: “From the wilderness and the Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates,all the land of the Hittites, to the Great Sea in the west shall be your territory. No one will be able...
Dealing With Fear
Tornados of fear are swirling around the world, many of them invading our psyches. Wars in Ukraine and Gaza, not to mention Sudan and Myanmar; escalating climate change; unrelenting gun violence; immigration crises. To my mind, the storms of fear are particularly...
The Different Layers of Campus Anger
I lived a block away from a campus protest that erupted in November, 1974. I was a teaching fellow at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, and the campus was about to be shut down in opposition to Gerald Ford’s visit to the city, the first time an American President...
Campus Protests: What We Bring to What We See
In the past week I have had several conversations with friends about our respective opinions on what is happening on college campuses across the country, as students have set up encampments to protest the war in Gaza and insist that their university divest any...
Passover and the Importance of Remembering and Honoring Pain
I write this post on the first day of Passover, an annual commemoration of the Exodus story, when the Israelites escaped their slavery in Egypt, traveled through the parted waters of the Red Sea, spent forty years in the Sinai wilderness, and crossed the Jordan River...
Cherry Blossoms and the Denial of Death
While Spring is officially on the calendar, it is still inching into southern New Hampshire, where I live. Some daffodils are emerging, taking their time after a surprise snowstorm earlier this month. This long wait for spring calls to mind my two-year sojourn in...