| I was a diplomat with the US State Department for 34 years, involved with conflict resolution and peace-making. When that job came to an end, I gave my friend, the Viennese Ambassador, a call to see if there was any work going, and was asked to go to Croatia with OSCE [the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe] for a year. That was seven years ago.
I retired recently, and spent three months with my family in the US, before unexpectedly being asked to the OSCE in Kiev.
I draw energy from people, from the work I do, leading worship, and being with people who are seeking.
I’ve just received an award from the Croatian Helsinki Human Rights Organisation, the first non-Croatian ever to do so. The real honour is for those Croatians who have done their part in transforming their society. Mine is more the joy of having been a part of it all.
The Croatian people themselves made the changes, by institutionalising, internalising, and putting into practice a way of respecting each other and honouring the decency and dignity of their fellow human beings. My role was to encourage them, mentor them, and give them courage to stand up against groups and forces who sought to hold them down.
I’m not an expert in Croat, though I learned enough to understand and communicate, and that’s helping now in the Ukraine. A lot of business is done in English.
Croatia is not Nirvana, but it’s a step in the right direction. It’s hard to talk about a country in the collective, but the experience of Croatia in the last few years offers neighbouring countries something to learn from. The Prime Minister, Dr Ivo Sanader, has set an example of Christ-like forgiveness in welcoming back the Serbs, who were the enemies of the recent past.
For several years I have worked with a Croatian organisation, Renewing Our Minds. It has been very successful in reconciling former enemies in the Balkans by introducing the principles of Jesus to young leaders — believers, non-believers, Christians, and Muslims alike. It demonstrated to me in very practical and surprising ways the validity of Jesus’s message in the world today.
I have been away from our five children and grandchildren for nearly 17 years. I would like to be with them more, and I would like to do more teaching and mentoring a new generation dedicated to peace-making and conciliation.
You cannot help but be uplifted by the divine beauty and human achievements along the Balkan coast, and cast down by the broken interior, ravaged by a war of hatred and violence for which both sides are responsible.
I became a Reader while working in the Anglican chaplaincy in Bonn, Germany, in the late 1970s. I have been a Reader in Athens; in Zagreb for seven years; and now in the archdeaconry of the East, which stretches all the way to Vladivostok. Now that the Priest-in-Charge at Christ Church, Kiev, is absent, I will be helping out there, too.
St Joseph’s Chapel, Zagreb, is a mixture of English, Americans, Chinese, Welsh, Swedes, and Germans. Most are non-resident expatriates working in embassies or business or as advisers to the Croatian government. We have some English-Croatian resident families. It is lay-led, with active participation by everyone, young and older. Every one is present virtually every Sunday.
Books have been near the centre of my life for more than 60 years. Among Christian thinkers, C. S. Lewis stands out. I still use him today when preaching and teaching. Alan Paton was also important: his wonderful set of reflections on the prayer of St Francis, Instrument of Thy Peace.
As I was growing up, my nuclear family was at the centre of my life, and my parents were the most important formative figures for me. Travelling around the world has created a different type of extended family, however, made up of friends and colleagues from the many places in the world where my wife and I have lived.
I’d like to spend more time teaching and playing with my children and grandchildren, and working in the garden, growing veggies so I can cook with totally fresh produce.
The most important choice I made was to become active again in my life in the Church, following a fallow period from young adolescence to early adulthood. It was a gradual process, leading me into active participation in worship and leadership, and over time into a growing integration of the teachings and model of Jesus into my life and my work.
My biggest regrets are very trivial things, very human. Several times, I fell just short of setting a record, or winning an individual sporting event, or achieving an academic honour.
I’d like to be remembered for opening the first American Consulate General in the former Communist world, in Leipzig, after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Long ago, St Francis influenced me; now, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. And, because they all speak the voice of God to me, Mozart, Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, and many, many other composers.
In the Bible, my favourite parts are the Gospel of St John, Job, and Jonah — what a marvellously human prophet! I don’t agree with the Deuteronomist.
I last got angry with my computer. It crashed on me when I was just completing a long and complicated report.
It’s hard to say what causes me to feel God’s presence, but singing is often one of our most immediate forms of conversation.
I don’t know if I could name just one person I’d like to get locked in a church with. I would want a crowd.
Todd Becker was talking to Terence Handley MacMath.
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