Trail West Dispatch #11 November 22, 2025

“Investigate.  Figure things out for yourself.  Spend more time with long articles.  Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media.  Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you.  Learn about sites that investigate propaganda campaigns (some of which come from abroad).  Take responsibility for what you communicate with others.”                                   –Timothy Snyder

I’ve had my share of comeuppances for not doing enough investigation, at least by some other people’s standards.  One that comes to mind is the time when I reposted a meme that was supposedly a quote from the newly elected Pope Leo XIV.  I thought he sounded like an Anabaptist and I liked what he said, but he apparently never said the words that others attributed to him.  One of the people who pointed this out is a professor from a Mennonite college.  Our daughter-in-law is his first cousin, so I felt the rebuke somewhat personally.  He invoked “Thou shalt not bear false witness” as a justification for his position.  I acknowledged my error but said that I thought it represented his viewpoints accurately, and I would probably leave it in place for people to see the whole thread.  I saw it as needful transparency on my part, and an opportunity for others to wrestle with the matter itself (treatment of foreigners).  He didn’t think that was a good idea, and I eventually removed the post—under some inward protest. 

Recently the pope expressed publicly some of the same sentiments that appeared in the fake meme.  I may have felt a tiny bit vindicated for having spied a truthful sentiment early on, even though I got some of the details wrong.  I’m afraid this is the story of my life, at least in relation to missing too many details, and I am not proud of it.  

But Timothy Snyder says we should investigate.  I do a lot of it, too much, in some people’s minds, or the wrong kind, or for the wrong reasons, or with too little tact in relaying what I learn.  Considering the difficulties, why should I investigate, especially to the extent of ticking off every one of the subpoints under the main injunction—and in a different sense ticking off people around me in the process?  Because somebody’s gotta do it.   That’s my simplest take on the matter.

Snyder is saying that investigation is a means for resisting tyranny, which is something that all of us idealize.  Since we also idealize non-violence and the avoidance of deception, I personally think investigation is a good fit for people like us if we have the technical and critical thinking skills to do so, and if we are at a stage in life where we can invest the necessary time.  I see it as a stewardship decision, an opportunity to make the best use of the resources that God gives us.  Does that mean that all of us have an impossibly time-consuming obligation to investigate?  Does it mean that we will always get things exactly right?  No and no.  All of us must rely on people wiser than we are to do some of the investigating for us, and we stand to benefit a great deal from what they learn and share. 

I am particularly grateful for the people who acquire information by wading through a lot more muck than I could navigate with any sense of optimism intact.  We do it so you don’t have to are the words I sometimes hear from them.  Perhaps only people who get paid for it can afford this level of commitment to the task of investigation.

The important task that remains for all of us is to take what we learn and expose it to the light of truth as found in Scripture and then to ask What wilt thou have me to do?  Being as faithful to the facts as we know how to be and then being transparent before others are important as well.  I feel sure that, on some level at least, all of us can find a way to incorporate investigation into a life of faithful discipleship.           –Miriam Iwashige    

Trail West Dispatch #10 November 15, 2025

 “Believe in Truth.  To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.  If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis on which to do so.  If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.  The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”                                                          --Timothy Snyder

Unwillingness among Christians to face the facts has been one of my greatest personal disappointments in recent national events.  This is especially the case when “fact-blindness” is coupled with partisan political loyalties, political processes, and support for political figures.  As Snyder puts it, “You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you hear and what is actually the case.”

All of us have probably believed and even passed on something that proved later to be untrue.  When that has been the case, I hope that we have responded by making our acknowledgement of error as public as we have made our original falsehood—even if the original mistake has happened unwittingly. 

What is of far greater concern than unwitting errors, however, is conscience-compromising errors.  For example, when we have become invested in a certain false political narrative, we might fall into the trap of disbelieving everything that counters that narrative.  Then every “disbelieving” choice further erodes our conscience--until debasement of all kinds no longer triggers even a flicker of recognition or regret.

In national news, several major shifts took place during the past week.  The longest government shutdown in history ended, and a vote to compel the release of the Epstein files passed in the House of Representatives.  Without delving into the details of those news bits, two main takeaways are that many people’s food assistance and health care funding is taking a major hit, and that concerted efforts to conceal the leader’s past entanglements with a deeply immoral individual (Epstein) have taken a hit as well.  Many former supporters of the regime feel wronged because of their loss of benefits.  Others feel betrayed by the president failing to keep his campaign promise to release the Epstein files immediately after taking office. While it’s too early to tell, these events may signal a shift as well in partisan loyalties and voting. 

Next Sunday’s SS lesson is taken from Matthew 25:31-46 where Jesus gives us details about the final judgement.  I think of this judgement as the ultimate repudiation of falsehoods, and the occasion of facing ultimate consequences for believing lies instead of truth.  The passage also provides reassurance for those who embrace truth as revealed in Jesus.  This window into the certainty of judgement and the means for determining one’s eternal destiny seems like the most trustworthy basis possible for a critique of power.  Otherwise, the “blinding lights” will predominate and empty spectacle” will proliferate, and too many people will have consciences too blighted to recognize the black-and-white realities before them. 

One thing that has not shifted recently is that many “foreigners” still live in fear, regardless of their legal status.  Jesus sees the strangers (foreigners), the hungry and thirsty, and those who are imprisoned.  He tells us that how we treat them is a determiner of our fate in the final judgement. Matt. 25 quote below:

“³⁴Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶ I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.... ⁴¹Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. ⁴² For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, ⁴³ I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”                                                                                      --Miriam Iwashige

Trail West Dispatch #9 November 8, 2025

 “Be kind to our language.  Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does.  Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing that everyone is saying.  Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet.  Read books.”                                                                                           –Timothy Snyder

“She’s reading that James Herriot book again” my boys would tell each other when they saw me reading, and giggling unaccountably.  I haven’t read any of those books recently, but I have no trouble remembering the delight of the language in those books.  Herriot wasn’t just kind to the English language.  He made it sing and dance and erupt in paroxysms, always wrapped in a Yorkshire accent.  After Herriot had become a very successful writer, journalists in search of a story would sometimes look him up and ask him to introduce them to some local characters like the ones in his books. 

Herriot always replied, “I can’t.  There aren’t any.”  He went on to say that after the advent of radio, there was a great “flattening” in people’s lives.  Being exposed to the same broadcasts shaped everyone similarly.  No longer did the peculiarities of life in the family, farm, and village form people’s speech and character in colorful variations. If Snyder had observed what happened, he might have described it as everyone “pronouncing the phrases everyone else does” and no longer thinking up their “own way of speaking.” Perhaps we are in more danger of becoming like Englanders in the 1930s-1950s than we know.

Why is it important to be kind to our language in the context of standing against tyranny?  I think it’s likely that speaking and listening thoughtfully helps prevent the “flattening” of our own thinking.  If we hear something said a certain way often enough, we tend not to process it very well anymore.  How often have you heard the phrase “the enemy within?”  What does it mean to you?  Christians who aren’t very aware of current events might hear the phrase as a reminder that Christians have an “old man” within, one that wars against the new creation in Christ.   Or they might think of the phrase in the context of the end of the age, when the man who will deceive many will be revealed as the man of sin. 

As it was used publicly by top officials in the government in recent weeks, the phrase meant “people within US borders who are not supportive of the regime,” critics, in other words.    This is a major shift in meaning.  These people are predominately US citizens, and may include people like us.  In the past, many immigrants have been characterized as enemies (before that it was “criminal” immigrants), but the shift toward viewing law-abiding citizens the same way is new.  Now, all it takes to qualify as an “enemy within” is living in a city that usually votes Democratic--like Portland, OR, Los Angeles, CA, and Chicago, IL.  Someday the definition might be expanded to include Christians who are not the right kind of Christians—the MAGA kind, in other words.

Authoritarians-in-the-making make liberal use of catchy terms like “the enemy within,” and the phrases are increasingly weaponized, with ever-broader applications, till people usually remember only the specific way in which the regime uses the terms, instead of evaluating them for whether they are truthful, accurate, or justified. 

“Poisoning the blood of our country” has been used repeatedly by the president to describe what happens when the population of non-white immigrants increases.  Hitler used the phrase too, as an accusation against non-Aryans, primarily Jews, but others also.  We all know how Hitler’s rhetoric ended. “Poisoning the blood of our country” is flagrantly racist, and in our country right now it usually means anyone with  black or brown skin.  Be on the lookout for chances to counter this by expressing a Jesus-follower view of immigrants, people with non-white skin, or people of a certain political party.                –Miriam Iwashige

Trail West Dispatch #8 October 25, 2025

“Stand out.  Someone has to.  It is easy to follow along.  It can feel strange to do or say something different.  But without that unease, there is no freedom.  Remember Rosa Parks.  The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.”          --Timothy Snyder

Rosa Parks was an African American woman who simply stayed seated one day in 1955 when a white person boarded the bus, and the driver demanded that she give up her seat for him.  She said later that she was tired from a long day’s work. No doubt she was tired too of experiencing the demeaning racist customs and laws of the Deep South. Some saw this as nonviolent protest and others saw it as civil disobedience.   Parks was arrested and the Montgomery bus boycott ensued, continuing for more than a year, crippling the city’s bus system.  This act ignited further racial justice efforts to secure civil rights, and segregation on buses was struck down in the courts approximately a year later.

I don’t think people in our tribe know for sure what to think of actions like Rosa Parks’s,’ or is that just me?  The Quakers don’t seem to have this problem.  They see them as necessary acts of faith and moral courage.  Note: Parks attended an integrated Quaker school as a child, and Snyder has Quaker roots.

Snyder’s admonition seems counter-intuitive for us who are part of a group that in most ways reflexively avoids standing out.  I believe this tendency harks back to our heritage of persecution and martyrdom for our faith, and is best understood in that light.  By now, however, this way of showing up in the world or hiding from it is at least partly cultural.  Being “the quiet in the land” calls for examination.  Does it still express determination to follow Jesus with courage?  Does “fitting in” trump everything else—either within our tribe or within the wider world?  Can it be a fear-based response? These are some of the questions that seem to me to bear consideration, especially in light of the Quakers’ different practices.  Like us, they are deeply committed to the way of peace and they experienced persecution early on.

If I were writing to a general audience instead of to people from our tribe, I would feel compelled to add other questions that should be included in an examination of the “stand out” admonition.  For example:  Is standing out part of an effort to manipulate others or to amass power?  Is it motivated by pride, greed, or selfishness?  Does standing out involve lying, cruelty, hatred, or destructiveness?  I feel confident that a consensus exists within our tribe that we want no part of any of these.  Identifying these motivations when they are present requires vigilance and discernment.   They should consistently be rejected.

In the restricted space of this column, most of the questions will be left to discussions elsewhere.  I will zero in on only one of the questions listed above: “Can [avoidance of standing out] be a fear-based response?”  Based on my own experience as well as on my observations, I believe the answer is “yes.”  I concede that people may wish to fly under the radar for reasons other than fear.  Exercising appropriate caution to avoid encountering adverse consequences makes sense in some cases.  Nevertheless, we are called to consider what acting with Jesus-like courage might look like in these fraught times.  In our faith context and in the context of the current-events-and-issues landscape, how should we “stand out?”

One guaranteed-appropriate response is to ponder the many passages of Scripture that enjoin us to “fear not” or to “be of good courage.”  “I will be with you,” (a promise from God to his people) appears in various forms throughout Scripture.  We can always take to heart these injunctions and claim these promises if we act with Jesus-like courage and stand out for the right reasons.            –Miriam Iwashige

  

Trail West Dispatch #7 October 18, 2025

 

“Be reflective if you must be armed.  If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you.  But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things.  Be ready to say no.”                                             --Timothy Snyder

When our boys were growing up, I remember telling them that it is important to draw bright lines early and honor them throughout life in matters related to taking up weapons against other people.  I emphasized that every small early compromise would decrease the likelihood of their being able to do the right thing in a moment of extraordinary testing.  “Do the right thing at the very beginning” are the words I remember saying.  Using Snyder’s words might have sounded like “Be ready to say no” from the start.

I cannot help wondering about the messages that Doug Schroeder, the Mennonite law enforcement officer from Hesston, KS got in his childhood, long before he shot and killed the shooter at Excel Industries after he opened fire on employees in February, 2016.  Three people died and 14 were injured, some critically. 

While Chief of Police Schroeder seems to have operated in line with professional ethics for officers with his responsibilities, I cannot imagine that a Mennonite mother would have seen his career choice as being ideal—for the very reason that eventually materialized:  violent acts are part of a policeman’s job under certain conditions.  I can imagine that his mother might have felt as I did—that doing the right thing from the beginning would mean that you never take a job in which you must be armed, when doing the job carries the expectation that you will use a gun against people if necessary.  This is simple enough, right?

What Snyder warns against is slightly different, however, from Schroeder’s situation.  For anyone besides a nonresistant or pacifist person, Schroeder’s actions were “regular,” in line with typical measures taken by police officers in similar situations.  If policemen were to protect a perpetrator or attacker instead of protecting the victims, or if they harmed innocent people, they would be “doing irregular things.” 

Things get a bit more complicated in the military but the distinction between “regular” and “irregular” acts remains.  There, any lawful order must be obeyed, and any unlawful order may not be obeyed.  This principle was applied during the International Military Tribunal proceedings at Nuremburg--trials after WWII.  Then, people mounted the “I was just following orders” defense, but they were convicted of crimes anyway--for mass executions and other atrocities that were part of Hitler’s purges.  Some of those convicted were hanged and others served lengthy prison sentences.  In the US, any member of the military who commits crimes (“doing irregular things” in other words) can be tried for those crimes, even when they are obeying orders from a military superior.  In the Viet Nam war era, Lieutenant Calley, was a US military figure convicted and sentenced because of the My Lai massacre in which hundreds of unarmed villagers were killed in South Viet Nam by American soldiers.  He had committed “irregular” actions and was originally sentenced to life in prison because of it. 

Figuring out what constitutes an unlawful order gets messy, and trying to describe it is difficult.  Basically, every military enlistee takes an oath to defend the Constitution, not any specific individual or political authority.  Recent events have caused upheaval in American military circles.  The unrest is centered on what many perceive as a conflict between defending the Constitution and carrying out the wishes of the highest military officials in the country.  This plays out every time the military is employed domestically against the population within US borders, something that most military enlistees never expected to be asked to do.  The moral dilemma is real and some of them wonder if they should say no.                                                                         –Miriam Iwashige

Trail West Dispatch—Sabbath Edition, November 2, 2025

To allow myself some time to regroup, I’m taking a break this week from the usual TWD format and schedule.  This will be a personal newsletter instead of a column on current issues and events Going forward, I hope to observe a similar time away after every six weeks of weekly columns. 

I’m taking a cue from Heather Cox Richardson, who occasionally says something like “I’m too tired to write tonight.  I’ll see you again tomorrow.”  She does not operate on a cycle of “sevens,” to my knowledge—just as I failed to plan to do at the outset of writing the TWD.  One luxury of doing a job without pay is that you’ll get exactly the same amount of remuneration if you work hard or if you relax.

We’ve recently had our first hard freeze, and the rush to salvage all warm season garden crops before it came has required extra effort.  We’re grateful for the bounty, especially of winter squash in some new shapes and sizes and colors—with interesting names:  Green-striped Cushaw, North Georgia Candy Roaster, and Long Island Cheese. 

Mice have sought refuge indoors—too often inside the house—and we’re determined to return to life with only Hiromi and me and occasionally our dog Drover as the only living, breathing occupants.  Fortuitously, we have recently acquired two young cats, Simon loves to polish off whatever mice we bring him from our traps.  Emma turns up her nose at dead mice, but she is enamored with live ones, and plays with them a while before finishing them off.  The cats were named before we got them, courtesy of our granddaughters.

Two mornings a week I get to be a teacher again, with only grandchildren for students.  On December 26 Hiromi is retiring fully from his retirement job at Walmart.  He has worked there parttime for 15 years—long enough to earn a lifetime discount on anything purchased from the store.

For the past several years I have been involved at the Partridge Community Garden.  According to people who track things like this, Partridge is in a food desert, and Center township, which includes Partridge, is the poorest township in the county. All this paints a grim picture of the food insecurity that might be in store for our community if prices increase dramatically, if supply chains are interrupted, or if the economy contracts or collapses—to say nothing of financial supports disappearing (for health care, for example).  I would love to see some resilience baked into our local supply system before catastrophe strikes, and I’ve been leaning farther into helping people learn how to grow food. I dream of incorporating plant medicines into the mix and of working together to preserve food.  This is the kind of “resistance” that I feel good about joining.  People who feel seen and supported where they live are less likely to look to a strongman to save them.  Adequate rainfall during much of the past growing season made gratitude easy.  Seeing green fields instead of brown, and having gardens produce without slavish watering all summer long let our drought-stressed spirits relax a bit.  This is a good feeling.        

–Miriam Iwashige