Christine and the Shifting Corners of the World
While that last post and the affairs of my church are still bouncing around in my mind like a metal ball in an abandoned pinball machine. I had an idea for something that I might write about. Another church post, sort of. Enough so that I've brought back my pixel Santa (now more pixel-like than ever) this time with a rough rendition of my church in the foreground .
This post is about a set of small and offhand conversations I've had with the student, Christine Choy, from George Washington University who does chid care on Sundays; who watches the smaller children during the church service. She has been with us about a year. I've heard her say that she is first person in her family to go to college. As well that she is the only person in her family to be Christian. Her family emigrated to the United States from China when she was still fairly young. I don't know though, how young or for that matter what China. There is Hong Kong, Taiwan, 'mainland China'. Others might say there is only China. But China is large and varied and there would be the expectation from those these others address, that they continue more specifically. I haven't asked. Christine has said she doesn't like people talking about China (doesn't feel comfortable with it), and so generally she doesn't talk about herself. But who can keep that up for long? The reluctance to talk about where she came from may be due to a cultural indifference within this country that assigns asia the status of backwater. Denying a fine grain of detail to a whole hemisphere. I mentioned my brief familiarity with the Pacific rim from the brief tour the U S Navy took me on. The recent history of the Pacific rim, and the American interest in keeping a fleet there is a history of artificial divides: Korea, Vietnam, China. The city of Tsing'tao where the border was not drawn; where my father in his turn in the Navy spent a winter anchored as the city fell from nationalist to communist control. On to Hong Kong, where for a while a border stood and I saw it with my own eyes, and Taiwan where one still does. This was all generations ago as the great armies of the 1940's slowed and stopped distributing order of a kind and boundaries. Not unlike the middle east in the years following the first world war. All this, Christine allowed, represents a degree of power and presumption on somebody's part. allowed for my friend Tran's feeling that presumption surrounded her in Saigon. Presumption in the way of elites organizing the world for their own benefit dissolving benefit for others. For the west privileging the center, lives and narratives, over the periphery. What lesson does our army in Iraq give to the rest of the world? The President's message of will and perserverance through adversity, or the object lesson that we will stubbornly claim and take whatever we need.
What is behind our democracy our freedom and wealth? Why do we suppose people come here or why do we suppose anyone might listen to what we have to say. What is the opportunity offered. Do we still have a commitment to the just and right thing. To good and open government, to a commitment to the entire civis. Do people care about that? Or only that they can make money, and from there they will supply value of their own choosing. The corners of the world are shifting as they always will. The far east now the far west. Everything moves over accordingly. Wealth can be created anywhere, gold mountains beneath your footsteps, but beyond wealth what?
11:23:22 PM  ;;
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