This Black Musician Explains Why He is Friends With White Supremacists

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I wanted to understand why racists hated me. So I befriended Klansmen.

By Daryl Davis, Washington Post, September 29, 2017

Daryl Davis, author of “Klan-Destine Relationships,” and subject of the documentary “Accidental Courtesy,” is an award-winning musician, actor, lecturer and race relations expert.

One night in 1983, I found myself playing in a country band at a truck stop lounge. I was the only black person in the joint. Taking a break after the first set of music, I was headed to sit at a table with my bandmates when a white gentleman approached from behind and put his arm around my shoulders. “I really enjoy y’all’s music,” he said. I shook his hand and thanked him. “This is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis,” he continued.

I told him that Lewis was a friend of mine and that he had learned his style from watching and listening to black blues and boogie-woogie pianists. My new fan didn’t buy it, but he did want to buy me a drink. While we sipped, he clinked my glass and said, “This is the first time I ever sat down and had a drink with a black man.”

Why? “I’m a member of the Ku Klux Klan,” he said. I burst out laughing. Then he handed me his KKK membership card, and I recognized the Klan’s symbols. In that moment, I was overcome by a question: How could anybody hate me when they didn’t even know me?

I was no stranger to racism. Having grown up a black person in the ‘60s and ‘70s, I knew that prejudice was common. But I had never understood why. Sitting in that lounge with my new friend, I decided to figure it out in the only way that made sense: By getting to know those who felt hostility toward black people without ever having known any.

Several years later, I recruited that man, whose name was Frank James, to put me in contact with the grand dragon of the Maryland Klan. He tried to deter me, warning that the leader would kill me. But eventually, after I promised not to reveal how I’d gotten the grand dragon’s contact information, James gave it to me. (I reveal it now, because James has since died.)

By then, I had decided to travel around the country and interview KKK leaders and members from various chapters and factions to get the answer to my question: How can you hate someone you’ve never met? I was planning to write a book detailing my interviews, experiences and encounters with these Ku Klux Klan members. (The book, “Klan-Destine Relationships,” was published in 1998.)

I had my white secretary, who typically booked my band and assisted me with my music business, set up a meeting with the Maryland grand dragon, Roger Kelly, explaining that her boss was writing a book on the Klan and would like his input. Per my instructions, she did not reveal the color of my skin.

Kelly agreed to participate, and we secured a room at a Frederick, Md., motel, where my secretary filled an ice bucket with cans of soda so I could offer my guest a drink. Regardless of how and what he felt about me, if he entered my room after seeing the color of my skin, I was going to treat him with hospitality.

Punctual to the minute, there was a knock on the door. The grand nighthawk (the grand dragon’s bodyguard) entered first, and then the dragon himself. “Hello,” I began, “I’m Daryl Davis.” I offered my palm, and Kelly shook my hand as he and the nighthawk introduced themselves. He sat in the chair I had set out, and the nighthawk stood at attention beside him.

We were both apprehensive of the other, and the interview started haltingly. We discussed what he had hoped to achieve by joining the Klan; what his thoughts were on blacks, Asians, Jews and Hispanics; and whether he thought it would ever be possible for different races to get along. A little while later, we heard an inexplicable crackling noise and we both tensed. The dragon and I stared each other in the eye, silently asking, “What did you just do?” The nighthawk reached for his gun. Nobody spoke. I barely breathed.

Seated atop the dresser, my secretary realized what had happened: The ice in the bucket had started to melt, causing the soda cans to shift. It happened again, and we all began laughing. From there, the interview went on without a hitch.

It was a perfect illustration that ignorance breeds fear and possibly violence. An unknown noise in an ice bucket could’ve led to gunfire, had we not taken a moment to understand what we were encountering.

Even though Kelly had told me he knew that white people were superior to blacks, our dialogue continued over the years. He would visit me in my home, and I would eventually be a guest in his. We would share many meals together, even though he thought I was inferior. Within a couple of years, he rose to the rank of imperial wizard, the top national leadership position in the Klan.

Over the past 30 years, I have come to know hundreds of white supremacists, from KKK members, neo-Nazis and white nationalists to those who call themselves alt-right. Some were good people with wrong beliefs, and others were bad people hellbent on violence and the destruction of those who were non-Aryan.

There was Bob White, a grand dragon for Maryland who served four years in prison for conspiring to bomb a synagogue in Baltimore, where he had been a police officer. When he got out, he returned to the Klan and later went back to prison for three more years for assaulting two black men with a shotgun, evidently intent on murder. But after I reached out to him with a letter while he was in prison for the second time, Bob became a very good friend, renounced the Klan and attended my wedding.

Frank Ancona, who headed a Missouri Klan chapter, would also become a very close friend. When Ancona was killed this year (his wife and stepson have been charged with his murder), one of his Klan members, knowing how close we had been, called me and told me before notifying the police. I accepted the Klan’s invitation to participate in his funeral service.

Three weeks after this summer’s violent clash in Charlottesville, I was invited by the leaders of the Tennessee and Kentucky chapters of Ancona’s branch of the Klan to speak at their national Konvocation. I accepted, spoke and took audience questions after the lecture. Whether or not anyone there immediately changed their minds, we talked as people–and we all benefitted from that.

I am not so naive as to think everyone will change. There are certainly those who will go to their graves as hateful, violent racists. I never set out certain that I would convert anyone. I just wanted to have a conversation and ask, “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?” What I’ve learned is that whether or not I’ve changed minds, talking can still relieve tensions. I’ve seen firsthand that when two enemies are talking, they are not fighting. They may be yelling and beating their fists on the table, but at least they are talking. Violence happens only when talking has stopped.

And sometimes, people do change. One day in 1999, after having been in the Ku Klux Klan for about 20 years, Kelly, who had risen from grand dragon to imperial wizard, called me, said he was leaving the Klan and apologized for having been a member. He told me he could no longer hate people. I had not turned out to be what he had always thought of black people. He went on to become one of my best friends, and today I own his robe and hood–one set of many in my collection of garments donated to me by apostate Klansmen and Klanswomen, which is always growing. Accidental Courtesy

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The common mistake that puts runners in danger on the road

By Ben Opipari, Washington Post, September 27, 2017

It’s a showdown that plays out every day: Two runners approach each other on the shoulder, one running with traffic and the other against. Who is running in the correct direction?

If there’s a sidewalk, the law says that’s where they should be. But if the shoulder is the only option, laws in the District, Maryland and Virginia say they must run against traffic. Maryland law, like the others, is clear: “If there is no sidewalk, always walk on the side of the road facing traffic.” Although no federal laws mandate which side you should be on, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Transportation Department recommend running against traffic.

One study bears this out. Researchers in Finland looked at data from auto accidents from 2006 to 2010, covering about 2,000 miles and 258 pedestrian accidents. The researchers found that pedestrians walking against traffic have on average a 77 percent lower risk of being struck and injured by a car. “If no pavement or pedestrian lane is available,” they write, “facing traffic substantially improves pedestrian safety.”

The reason is simple–you can’t react to something you can’t see. Facing traffic, you can react quicker to a wayward–or distracted–driver. Jean Knaack, executive director of the Road Runners Club of America, encourages runners to go against traffic. “Running against traffic allows you to see incoming vehicles and to react to them,” she says. “If your back is to incoming traffic, you’re far less likely to react if a car is not giving you an adequate right of way.”

Dennis Barker is the head coach at Team USA Minnesota, where he has coached 24 national track champions and an Olympian. Seeing oncoming traffic is important, he says, so that the runner and the driver know what the other is doing. When he used to run on rural two-lane roads, he noticed that when cars approached and passed one another, they would move away from the center–and closer to the runner. Running against traffic allows you to notice this adjustment.

“As a driver, I appreciated others who walked or ran facing traffic because it helped me see them better when they adjusted their position as I approached,” Barker says. “I, in turn, adjusted my position. We both took responsibility for each other’s safety.”

Runners should practice “defensive running” in the same vein as defensive driving. Defensive runners always look for oncoming distracted drivers encroaching their space. “Staying aware provides crucial time to avoid a distracted driver who may not be taking a straight line,” Barker says. “A runner going with traffic is not aware of what’s coming and is at the mercy of the driver.”

Making eye contact with the oncoming driver allows you to see what’s going on behind the wheel. Unfortunately, you may not like what you see.

The U.S. Transportation Department said that in 2015 there were nearly 3,500 fatalities and 400,000 pedestrian injuries because of distracted driving, primarily from people manipulating handheld devices. “Never assume a driver sees you. Try to make eye contact with drivers as they approach you to make sure you are seen,” the agency recommends.

It’s easier to be seen if you wear clothing that’s a different color from your surroundings. Todd Straka, who publishes the Boulder Running website and is the race director for a popular Boulder 5k race series, says that runners should look more like bikers. “Bikers often have blinking lights, even during the day. I would suggest runners wear something like that so they can be seen from afar,” he says.

Some people who run with traffic believe that if they are hit, the impact will not be as severe since they are moving in the same direction as the car. But physics proves this false. Rebecca Metzler, associate professor of physics at Colgate University, is a runner. Her rural community is two-lane roads, so she always runs against traffic. Metzler says that while the impact might not be as great if you get hit running with traffic, “you’re probably going to get hurt either way. Your reaction time is far more important, and that smaller force is outweighed by the ability to get out of the way in the first place.”

Wade Gordon, a retired Air Force colonel and an orthopedic trauma surgeon with extensive experience in traumatic and high energy injuries, agrees. “The force of being struck by a vehicle is great enough that it will break stuff, whether you’re traveling with or against traffic,” he says.

It’s also not any safer to run in the direction of traffic on neighborhood roads, even though speeds might be slower. Todd Templeman, an emergency physician at Suburban Hospital, says that head injuries are especially common, and can even be fatal, at these low impacts. Templeman says that he runs only on sidewalks or running paths like the Capital Crescent Trail. “I never run on the road. Ever. There are too many safety issues. “

If you do choose the road, however, experts agree that you should never wear headphones because you can’t hear the cars. One study examining pedestrian deaths from 2004 to 2011 noted the dangers of headphones. Headphones also cause inattentional blindness, which is the inability to notice unexpected objects even when they might be right in front of you. The cognitive function that you use to listen to music takes away from the more important cognitive function of seeing cars approach.

There are two instances, however, where running against traffic can be unsafe: as you approach the crest of a steep hill and as you round a sharp turn. The runner and the driver may not see each other until it’s too late. If this happens, it’s best to cross the road far in advance of the hill or the turn and run with traffic until it’s safe to cross back over to the left side of the road.

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The Beautiful Side of Evil - Johanna Michaelsen

Dennis Edwards: Have you ever been attacked spiritually by evil forces? Have you ever felt evil forces surround you, engulf you, sadden you, frighten you? In The Beautiful Side of Evil Johanna Michaelsen shares her personal story with the dark-side. It's a compelling story and worth a read and could be especially helpful to open the eyes of those doubtful that such powers exist. God's word tells us, "that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils."[1] Paul also warns that in the last days "evil men shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived."[2] Jesus when answering his disciples concerning the end times and His return warned three times that deception would be rampant. He said, "Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many."[3] "And many false prophets would arise and deceive many."[4] "For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect."[5] Johanna believes deception is not isolated to her unusual experience but is alive and well in many aspects of our lives.

Listen to her speak here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU9A0ddzkeo
Watch her speak here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsev0CrPwqU

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Want to stay strong as you age? Find a purpose.

By Judith Graham, Washington Post, September 24, 2017

After making it through the maelstrom of middle age, many adults find themselves approaching older age wondering, “What will give purpose to my life” now that the kids have flown the nest and retirement is in the cards?

How they answer can have significant implications for their health.

Over the past two decades, dozens of studies have shown that seniors with a sense of purpose in life are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment, disabilities, heart attacks or strokes, and more likely to live longer than people without this kind of underlying motivation.

Now, a report in JAMA Psychiatry adds to this body of evidence by showing that older adults with a solid sense of purpose tend to retain strong hand grips and walking speeds–key indicators of how rapidly people are aging.

Why would a psychological construct (“I feel that I have goals and something to live for”) have this kind of impact? Seniors with a sense of purpose may be more physically active and take better care of their health, some research suggests. Also, they may be less susceptible to stress, which can fuel dangerous inflammation.

“Purposeful individuals tend to be less reactive to stressors and more engaged, generally, in their daily lives, which can promote cognitive and physical health,” said Patrick Hill, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, who wasn’t associated with the latest study.

But what is purpose, really? And how can it be cultivated?

Anne Newman, a 69-year-old who splits her time between Hartsdale, north of New York City, and Delray Beach, Fla., said she’s been asking herself this “on a minute-by-minute basis” since closing her psychotherapy practice late last year.

Building and maintaining a career became a primary driver in her life after Newman raised two daughters and went back to work at age 48. As a therapist, “I really loved helping people make changes in their lives that put them in a different, better position,” she said.

Things became difficult when Newman’s husband, Joseph, moved to Florida and she started commuting back and forth from New York. Over time, the travel took a toll, and Newman decided she didn’t want a long-distance marriage. So she began winding down her practice and thinking about her next chapter.

Experts advise that people seeking a sense of purpose consider spending more time on activities they enjoy or using work skills in a new way. Newman loves drawing and photography. She has investigated work and volunteer opportunities in Florida, but nothing has grabbed her just yet.

“Not knowing what’s going to take the place of work in my life–it feels horrible, like I’m floundering,” she admitted in a phone interview.

Many people go through a period of trial and error after retirement and don’t find what they’re looking for right away, said Dilip Jeste, senior associate dean for healthy aging and senior care at the University of California at San Diego. “This doesn’t happen overnight.”

“People don’t like to talk about their discomfort because they think it’s unusual. And yet everybody thinks about this existential question at this time of life: ‘What are we here for?’” he noted.

Newman’s focus has been on getting “involved in something other than personal satisfaction–something larger than myself.”

“I think people can get a sense of purpose from very simple things: from taking care of a pet, working in the garden or being kind to a neighbor,” said Patricia Boyle, a leading researcher in this field and a professor of behavioral sciences at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

“Even small goals can help motivate someone to keep going,” she continued. “Purpose can involve a larger goal, but it’s not a requirement.”

Older adults often discover a sense of purpose from taking care of grandchildren, volunteering or becoming involved in community service work or religion, she said. “A purpose in life can arise from learning a new thing, accomplishing a new goal, working together with other people or making new social connections when others are lost,” she said.

Tara Gruenewald’s research highlights how important it is for older adults to feel they play a valuable role in the lives of others.

“I think what we often lose as we age into older adulthood is not a desire to contribute meaningfully to others but the opportunity to do so,” said Gruenewald, chair of the department of psychology at California’s Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences at Chapman University. Her research has found that people who perceive themselves as being useful had a stronger feeling of well-being and were less likely to become disabled or to die during a seven-year follow-up period than those who didn’t see themselves this way.

“In midlife, we contribute to others partly because it’s demanded of us in work and in our social relationships,” Gruenewald said. “As we grow older, we have to seek out opportunities to contribute and give to others.”

After Barry Dym, 75, retired a year ago from a long career as an organizational consultant and a marriage and family therapist, he said, “I didn’t ask myself, ‘Did I have a larger purpose in life?’ I asked myself, ‘What gives meaning to my life?’”

Answering that question wasn’t difficult: Certain themes had defined choices he’d made throughout his life. “What gives meaning to me is helping people. Trying to have an impact. Working with people very closely and helping them become much better at what they do,” Dym said in a phone conversation from his home in Lexington, Mass.

In retirement, he’s carrying that forward by mentoring several people with whom he has a professional and personal relationship, bringing together groups of people to talk about aging, and starting a blog. Recently, he said, he wrote about discovering that he feels freer now to “explore who I am, where I came from and what meaning things have to me than at any other point of my life.”

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Charles Spurgeon on the true Israel of God!

Dennis Edwards

Charles Spurgeon wrote on the “Israel of God.” Spurgeon was very critical of Darby and the Dispensationalist’s view that there were two peoples of God. C.I. Scofield incorporated Darby’s view into his Biblical concordance, which became the reference Bible for nearly all seminary schools in America in the beginning of the 20th century. Scofield’s theology therefore became one of the most influential in the USA and later through Protestantism in the world as foreign Protestants followed American theology. However, let us read what Spurgeon wrote.

“Distinctions have been drawn by certain exceeding wise men (measured by their own estimate of themselves), between the people of God who lived before the coming of Christ, and those who lived afterwards. We have even heard it asserted that those who lived before the coming of Christ [the Fathers of Faith of Hebrews 11] do not belong to the church of God!"

Spurgeon is referring to Darby, or others like Darby of that day, who were coming in with new eschatology teaching. Spurgeon was a good friend of Benjamin W. Newton and George Muller. Muller and Newton were also good friends. Newton had had a falling out with Darby and the Plymouth Brethren over Darby's incorporating Pre-Tribulation doctrine into his eschatology. Newton had read the Church Fathers diligently and believed the Pre-Tribulation idea was contrary to Scripture and the understanding of the Church Fathers. Darby later became friends with Scofield who incorporated the Pre-Tribulation doctrine into his Reference Bible. Scofield's work was financed by his Jewish friends in America. His interpretation of Scripture divided some reference for the church and some for the Jewish people. Scofield's Bible which after 1909 began to be used throughout American seminary schools is the reason why American Evangelicals vehemently support Israel and believe that Israel in rebellion are still the people of God.

Spurgeon went to say, “We never know what we shall hear next, and perhaps it is a mercy that these absurdities are revealed at one time, in order that we may be able to endure their stupidity without dying of amazement. Why, every child of God in every place stands on the same footing; the Lord has not some children best beloved, some second-rate offspring, and others whom he hardly cares about."

Spurgeon is saying that all shall be saved by faith in Christ. Some looked forward, others look back. All must believe on the only begotten Son of the Father. The Jewish people are not worthy of God's blessings while still denying Christ the Messiah.

Spurgeon continues, “These who saw Christ’s day before it came, had a great difference as to what they knew, and perhaps in the same measure a difference as to what they enjoyed while on earth meditating upon Christ; but they were all washed in the same blood, all redeemed with the same ransom price, and made members of the same body.

“Israel in the covenant of grace is not natural Israel [not the nation of flesh and blood Israel], but all believers in all ages. Before the first advent, all the types and shadows all pointed one way – they pointed to Christ, and to him all the saints looked with hope. Those who lived before Christ were not saved with a different salvation to that which shall come to us. They exercised faith as we must; that faith struggled as ours struggles, and that faith obtained its reward as ours shall.”[1]

[1] Charles Spurgeon, Devotional Classics of C.H. Spurgeon,p.122 

Be careful of the Bible scholars that say that one prophecy is for the Jewish people and another one is for the Christians. Some prophecies may be specific to the flesh and blood nation of Israel, like those in Ezekiel 38-39 and Zechariah 12-14. Some prophecies are hard to decipher as some pertain to both believing Israel and the church. However, unrepented flesh and blood Israel have forfeited their right to the promises of the Abrahamic Covenant. They have broken their part of the agreement over and over again. God had said, "If you do such and such, I will do such and such." But they obeyed not.

Spiritual Israel, those who have come to faith in Jesus as the Messiah are the inheritors of God's promises through Jesus blood. A remnant of Jewish brethren will come to faith in Christ in the last days. Zechariah 13:8-9, 12:10-14. Until that time, Israel has lost her covenant position and can only gain it through repentance and turning to Jesus with all her heart and soul. Scriptures seem to indicate that Israel's repentance will not take place until the Rapture after the seven trumpet of tribulation and just prior to the vials or bowels of the Wrath of God.

A related article on Scofield can be found https://fightforyourfaith.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-little-history-cyrus-i-scofield-and.html

Another related post on Israel can be found here https://fightforyourfaith.blogspot.com/2020/09/apostle-pauls-understanding-and-vision.html

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Nabeel Qureshi passed away, be in peace.

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Start an orphanage in the Philippines at age 80? Of course!

When a man offered to sell Lois Prater his child, her shock turned to action. Refusing to let her age stop her, she founded King's Garden Children's Home.  LINK

By Gail Wood, Contributor APRIL 10, 2013


Courtesy of King's Garden Children's Home

It was the last place Lois Prater's children expected her to go – overseas to become a missionary.

At age 80, Ms. Prater, who had been a stay-at-home housewife all her married life, sold her Seattle-area home, her car, and other belongings to build an orphanage in the Philippines. She became the unlikely helping hand for hundreds of orphaned children over the years, many of whom were abused or abandoned.

“She sold everything,” says Bonnie Swinney, one of Prater's three daughters. “The only things she kept were the things she could use in the orphanage.”

In 1991, Prater, with her own money, bought 12 acres of land covered with mango and coconut trees near Orion, a small town in the Philippines. Three years later, the doors would open to King's Garden Children's Home, a 2,000-square-foot, white stucco building, giving orphaned children from infants to teens new hope.

“I can't imagine at my age going over there now,” says Ms. Swinney, who is 73. “What she did was amazing.”

For 13 years, Prater lived in the Philippines, enduring both physical and financial hardships. She had to overcome a number of challenging physical ailments along the way. And there was the difficult task of living in a foreign country, far from her family. Yet she refused to come home.

Finally, with a new manager in place, Prater retired and returned home to live with her daughter near Seattle just before her 90th birthday. She died in January at age 100.

“I didn't know anything about business, about building an orphanage,” Prater said several years ago when talking about her decision to open King's Garden. “All along, I've just trusted in God, and He's answered my prayers. I did what I could do, and God did the rest.”

Just a few years after King's Garden Children's Home opened, Prater invested in expansion. King's Garden tripled in size and started a school. Over the years, an average of about 60 children at a time have lived at the orphanage.

Prater's unlikely journey began six months after her husband, Galon Prater, died in 1988. While Lois Prater was watching a Christian TV program, Lora Lam, a missionary on the program, asked for people to join her on a three-week outreach trip to China. Prater, who had attended Bible school as a teenager and had earned her ministerial license, felt her childhood desire to become a missionary rising again.

“I said, 'Lord, I'm too old to go now,' ” Prater said.

But she went, making three trips, one to China and two to the Philippines, taking part in open-tent meetings. Inspired by her trip with Ms. Lam to China, Prater returned for a second trip several weeks later with 11 other women for a month-long stay in the Philippines. She later made a third visit to the Philippines alone and was speaking at a church when a poorly dressed man came up to her after the service and offered to sell his baby to her for 1,000 pesos, or about $40 at that time.

“That impacted my soul so deeply I knew I had to do something,” Prater said.

So, in 1990 she returned to the United States and sold her home for $65,000. She sold everything she had, determined to build an orphanage.

“It was a strange feeling to see her selling everything: her couches, her chairs, her China hutch, her washer and dryer, everything,” says Swinney, who made several visits to her mom's orphanage over the years. “But I had heard her stories about her wanting to build an orphanage all my life. This is something she had always wanted to do.”

Prater admitted selling her home wasn't easy.

"I struggled, but I knew that what I was trying to do was something much more important than hanging onto my faded couch," Prater said.

At 89, Prater had a physical setback and was forced to step down as the orphanage's director. She returned home, this time for good. But she made several short visits to her orphanage over the next few years.

The orphanage and school continues to do well today. Monica Jarvis assumed directorship of King's Garden Children's Home in 2005 and remains in that position with the support of the Assemblies of God World Missions.

“To think that my mom opened the orphanage at 80 and worked there until she was 89 absolutely blows me away,” says Swinney, who has adopted several children from King's Garden Children's Home. “My mom has the biggest heart.”

Each of the children brought to King's Garden Children's Home has a heartbreaking story. One of the first children, who had no name, was brought to Prater when he was just nine days old. Prater named him Albert. His alcoholic father was in jail and his mother moved into the jail with him because she had no other place to stay.

One-by-one, Prater took in each of that mother's four children, keeping them out of jail.

Another child, who Prater named Tommy, was brought to King's Garden Children's Home by the police when he was just one year old. Tommy's ear had been cut off by his father. Heidi, another child brought to Prater by the police, came to King's Garden with stomach worms and head lice. Many of the children who come to King's Garden are in need of medical treatment.

The mother and father of a girl named Jennifer died, and she moved into King's Garden when she was 10. Her step brother brought her to the orphanage because she had no other place to live.

“I feel I'm not talented enough to do any of this,” Prater said while she was still overseeing King's Garden. “But God enables me. My responsibility is to do what I can. He does the rest. My only regret is I didn't start when I was younger.”

Prater's story has been an inspiration to others, including her daughter, showing how it's never too late to live a life of serving others.

“My mom was such an amazing person,” Swinney says. “She had tremendous faith in God.”

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The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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What you learn about the United States after you leave it

By Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, September 11, 2017

In a recent excerpt from her new book, American journalist Suzy Hansen described her bemusement when a friend in Istanbul suggested to her that the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, had been somehow planned by the U.S. government.

“Come on, you don’t believe that,” said Hansen.

“Why not?” snapped back her friend, identified as Emre. “I do.”

“But it’s a conspiracy theory.”

Emre laughed and said: “Americans always dismiss these things as conspiracy theories. It’s the rest of the world who have had to deal with your conspiracies.”

This pronouncement prompted Hansen, an accomplished storyteller and reporter who has written powerfully about recent political events in Turkey, to reflect on what may underlie her friend’s animus. Her much-acclaimed new book, “Notes from a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World,” is a memoir of a young American who moves abroad and slowly grapples with how the rest of the world sees her nation–and how little her nation really sees the world.

She looks in particular at the extent to which U.S. foreign policy has shaped politics, societies and the fates of ordinary people elsewhere. In one anecdote, when Hansen asks an Iraqi man what his country “was like in the 1980s and 1990s, when he was growing up,” he replies: “I am always amazed when Americans ask me this. How is it that you know nothing about us when you had so much to do with what became of our lives?”

Sixteen years after al-Qaeda terrorists attacked the United States, we’re still living with the awful repercussions of that assault. American troops are still locked in battles in Afghanistan, where Islamist extremist groups still exist. American forces are still waging military campaigns in Iraq, where a 2003 U.S. invasion in the wake of 9/11 became one of the most destabilizing events in the Middle East for a generation.

“I began to wonder whether there was much difference between a foreigner’s paranoia that the Americans planned September 11,” Hansen mused, “and the Americans’ paranoia that the whole world should pay for September 11 with an endless global war on terror.”

The impact of American power on the global stage is, of course, complex and uneven. For all the profound harm the United States has caused over a century of military interventions and coup plots around the world, there is also the considerable prosperity guaranteed by decades of a de facto Pax Americana in East Asia and Western Europe.

But Hansen is more focused on the almost unthinking belief in American “exceptionalism” that she and myriad other Americans grew up with in the 1990s, an era of post-Cold War optimism and confidence in the superiority of the American project and in American identity itself.

“This was a kind of nationalism so insidious that I had not known to call it nationalism; this was a self-delusion so complete that I could not see where it began and ended, could not root it out, could not destroy it,” she wrote.

In an essay that ran in The Washington Post over the weekend, Hansen hones in on the depth of this “self-delusion”:

“Are ordinary people responsible for their governments’ foreign policy? It’s hard to blame the millions of Americans living in poverty, who have been just as victimized by the injustices of the 20th century as those abroad. But many other average Americans with dangerously naive ideas about themselves and their country grow up to become teachers, foreign correspondents, presidents. What they did not learn as children will not be cured by what they learn at elite universities, in self-regarding metropolitan centers or in graduate schools that for the most part tell them that the United States is the center of the planet and that they are the smartest on it,” she wrote. “This kind of American exceptionalism is a product of 200 years of disconnection from our country’s acts around the world–a geographic, intellectual and emotional isolation.”

The shortcomings of blind American self-belief, Hansen argues, have been brought into stark relief by the ascendance of President Trump. The current occupant of the White House, Hansen wrote in The Post, is “the crudest manifestation of some very American traits: recklessness, nationalism, contempt for history, an inability (if not utter disinclination) to inhabit a foreigner’s experience. Never before has it been so clear that Americans’ identities–their confidence and happiness–are tied to the supposedly exalted status of their nation, and of the man or woman who leads it.”

Of course, this comes at a time when the rest of the world is, more than ever, questioning the American commitment to the ideals and virtues Americans have long professed. “If only America were like Hansen: disquieted, self-analytic and imaginative,” wrote Libyan American author Hisham Matar. The vast majority, though, are not.

Hansen takes as her inspiration the Istanbul years of James Baldwin, the African American man of letters who spent about a decade living in Turkey in the 1960s. As my colleague Kareem Fahim wrote in February, Baldwin’s “overlooked sojourn was a period of prodigious creative production and collaboration with Turkish artists, in a place he came to regard as a sanctuary–despite Turkey’s own political turbulence–from the racism, homophobia and scarring civil rights struggle back home.”

Fahim goes on: “He could no longer work in the United States, he told his friend, the drama critic Zeynep Oral. ‘I can’t breathe,’ she quoted him as saying. ‘I have to look from outside.’”

“One sees it better, from a distance,” Baldwin said about the United States in a voice-over of a 1970 film about his time in Istanbul. “And you can make comparisons. From another place, from another country.” Hansen’s own work renews that call half a century later.

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