What would Thomas Jefferson do?
Matt and I kept whispering that to ourselves during the Annual Spring Choral Concert.
Our kids (10 classes of 44 kids) were dressed up in matching outfits with makeup liberally applied to their beautiful Han cheeks. My favorite was Class 1's communism-green shirts with the red star staring at me in sort of a Christmas-gone-bad color scheme. Every class sang a song praising the Motherland. Fostering national idolatry in fertile young minds.
I guess it wasn't very different from the "Family Nights" of my youth. The week before school lets out when kids with freckles are singing patriotic songs on a sweaty May night in the Midwest. I guess if one of my Chinese friends came to our family nights they would ask themselves, "What Would Mao Do?"
Patriotism is a fickle thing. You adore what you are bred to adore. You fight for what you are taught to protect. You wear ugly green shirts with a red star because you are told to.
But one thing I have learned these 10 months out East - is that no matter your skin color, hair color, eye color, language, religion, ear lobe girth, upbringing, political roots, or boxer or brief preference - every human has a hungry soul, a stained heart, and a longing for relationships. Despite all those thorns and canyons, the same River runs through us all.
- m -
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