Posted on 08/22/2003 12:10:00 PM PDT by sanchmo
The Privilege of Struggle
How Rice understands suffering and prayer.
mong the many gifts Condoleezza Rice's dad gave her was his own example of persevering in sorrow while clinging to the God he loved. "Even in his sickbed, he was still the spiritual leader," says Gregory Bailey, Rice's stepbrother. Bailey recalls a Thanksgiving gathering in which the family had assembled around Pastor Rice, whose condition required 24-hour nursing care and had rendered him barely able to speak.
"I was getting ready to lead the prayer. Right before I spoke, John said, in the clearest, most commanding voice, 'Our Father in heaven,' and he basically said a beautiful, eloquent prayer in the clearest, most resonate tone. It was almost like he was in the pulpit, and at the end everyone clapped and cheered and was in tears."
Rice's own approach to struggle combines the godly influences of her family members with her own deeply rooted faith. Not long after becoming provost at Stanford, Rice preached at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church on "The Privilege of Struggle."
Struggle and sorrow, she said, "are not license to give way to self-doubt, to self-pity, and to defeat," but are "an opportunity to find a renewed spirit and a renewed strength to carry on." How else but through struggle, she said, "are we to get to know the full measure of the Lord's capacity for intervention in our lives? If there are no burdens, how can we know that he can be there to lift them?
"The affirmation of that paradox of the human condition, a belief in the privilege of struggle, is heard in the words of a Negro spiritual. In the most horrendous of conditions, when it must have seemed that there was no way out, nowhere to go, slaves raised their voices in 'Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen.' Glory, Hallelujah."
As Rice spoke of how she had found the strength to go on after the death of her mother, her father sat near the back row and choked back his tears. She said, "I understood, for the first time in my life, the peace that passeth all understanding."
On September 11, 2001, when terrorists slammed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and killed more than 3,000 people, Rice was prepared spiritually. She approached 9/11 the same way she had approached her previous trials—with prayer and an earnestness to learn and to grow.
"Terror and tragedy have made us more aware of our vulnerabilities and mortality," Rice said at the National Prayer Breakfast this February. "We're living through a time of testing and consequence, and pray that our wisdom and will are equal to the work before us."
Music too has carried Rice through hard times. At Camp David on the weekend after September 11, Bush and his top advisers met to discuss the administration's response. After the meeting, Attorney General John Ashcroft sat at a piano and played "Amazing Grace" and "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" while Rice sang.
In asking God to guide her decisions, Rice told Newsweek, "It's not as if you ask God, 'Should we try to take down the Taliban?' " Rather, when Rice kneels at night, she often asks that God help her to "walk in your way and not my own."
As the President's special envoy to the Middle East, Condoleezza Rice has taken the lead role in helping to implement the U.S.-backed "road map," demonstrating again her ever-increasing role in articulating the Bush administration's foreign policy.
But critics wonder whether Rice is willing or experienced enough on Middle East policy to assure that Israel—one of the United States' strongest allies—meets its obligations under the comprehensive peace initiative.
"Can America stand tall on the issue of Palestine and speak justice?" asks Fahed Abu-Akel, a Palestinian American Christian and Presbyterian minister in Atlanta. His family fled their home and became refugees during the 1948 War. "Right now the U.S. government's foreign policy vis-à-vis the issue of Palestine is bankrupt." The internationally supported peace plan seeks to end years of violence in the region and establish an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip within three years. Skeptics say the plan is doomed to fail unless Israel ends its occupation and withdraws from all settlements in the West Bank and Gaza as outlined in the road map. That withdrawal, Israel says, will depend on how successfully the Palestinian Authority can curb terrorism and crack down on militants.
Many of Rice's critics see the road map as little more than another attempt by the United States to assert its hegemony over the Middle East. Rice's comments to an Israeli newspaper that she has "a deep affinity with Israel" only deepened their concerns.
"I have always admired the history of the State of Israel and the hardness and determination of the people that founded it," Rice told Israel's daily Yediot Aharonot in May. "Israel was a state who in the beginning was not given a chance to survive. She survived mainly because of the hardness of the Israelis and their readiness to sacrifice their lives for the state."
Rice added that growing up listening to her Presbyterian minister father's stories about the Holy Land made her first visit to Israel in August 2000 a "deep emotional experience." The comments provoked the left-wing political website Counterpunch to publish an essay called "The Hardness of Condoleezza Rice: Huckstress of Israeli Myths."
The perception that the administration's close ties to Israel have already compromised the peace plan is particularly strong among Arabs. Rice's defenders, however, say that she has already shown backbone with Israel. They cite a temporary cease-fire by Palestinian militants, the beginning of an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and her criticism of the 1,000-kilometer security wall Israel is building to separate its territory from the West Bank.
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Pretty amazing coming from someone who doesn't even support waging the war it takes to prevent another one.
Still needs work. As with all of us.
Her judges, like Bush's (who's fairly weak on abortion personally), wouldn't be though and that's all that matters.
Nation-building in Liberia, no? Doing what it takes to keep oil from being $500 barrel (and, therefore, the Dow at 500 and 50% unemployed, etc.)? Yes.
Needless to say that Condi is my hero. Hopefully she will be the next Sec. of State under W's second term.
I worship her...I'd drink her bathwater...I'd crawl a mile on my hands and knees over broken glass just to catch a glimpse of the truck that takes her laundry to the cleaners.
Not a worshipper. Just a practical-minded conservative. If someone other than Hillary runs in 2008, I don't think Condoleezza should be the nominee. If Hillary runs in 2008 (she wins the nomination easily), there ain't another prominent Republican, currently, that has a prayer of winning.
Conde the Warrior Princess ping!
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