It was easy in the beginning.
There were flowers everywhere,
and bees singing as they spread their bounty
across the Lilly fields of my life.
Cloistered so far back on the American continent,
that the 60s wouldn't arrive until well into the 70s,
and the war would become real to me only
as it crept into its closing days.
Memories, for me, didn't include the protests and songs.
They included the Vietnamese families, 12-15 strong,
women, men, children, grandparents, cousins,
their indecipherable language and ways,
the color of their skin, their short stature...
so odd in this white Scandinavian community.
The church ladies, bringing over the food,
Scandinavian food with a Montanan accent.
The church men, lending hammers and saws
to extend sleeping quarters into the garage.
How odd that must have been for a people
accustomed to scant meals of rice and greens and fish
to stand next to those who moved as giants among them.
That was how I experienced the war..
through those Vietnamese families
all piled up in their small homes,
a midst a sea of white people.
Did we require they go to my father's church?
That I don't remember. But now, looking back,
I think how odd it would have been...to expect a
people steeped in wisdom and teachings of Buddhism
to attend a rural, Montanan church of the Protestant faith.
Did we expect that of them in return
for our beneficent acts of hospitality?
Did we feel called to save them from
their own ignorant and savage ways?
Or did we find in them a people wise
from the study of their own faith traditions
and seasoned from the trauma of war?
Did we see them as allies and companions
in a world gone awry, or as notches
for our branch of giving and good deeds?
I was so young then,
climbing trees and playing kickball.
After the banquet honoring their arrival,
their condition passed quickly from my mind.
It never occurred to me that they might have
lived through hell, lost family, lost everything.
It never occurred to me that Americans were
the cause of their loss.
I was just playing kickball and climbing trees.
Yet, do the sins of the father pass to the children?
Do I carry the responsibility for the lives torn asunder
by the acts of this nation?
What responsibility do we, the most wealthy nation on earth,
have to our fellow beings in countries across this vast world
who have suffered at the hand of our need for more or war?
There were flowers everywhere,
and bees singing as they spread their bounty
across the Lilly fields of my life.
Cloistered so far back on the American continent,
that the 60s wouldn't arrive until well into the 70s,
and the war would become real to me only
as it crept into its closing days.
Memories, for me, didn't include the protests and songs.
They included the Vietnamese families, 12-15 strong,
women, men, children, grandparents, cousins,
their indecipherable language and ways,
the color of their skin, their short stature...
so odd in this white Scandinavian community.
The church ladies, bringing over the food,
Scandinavian food with a Montanan accent.
The church men, lending hammers and saws
to extend sleeping quarters into the garage.
How odd that must have been for a people
accustomed to scant meals of rice and greens and fish
to stand next to those who moved as giants among them.
That was how I experienced the war..
through those Vietnamese families
all piled up in their small homes,
a midst a sea of white people.
Did we require they go to my father's church?
That I don't remember. But now, looking back,
I think how odd it would have been...to expect a
people steeped in wisdom and teachings of Buddhism
to attend a rural, Montanan church of the Protestant faith.
Did we expect that of them in return
for our beneficent acts of hospitality?
Did we feel called to save them from
their own ignorant and savage ways?
Or did we find in them a people wise
from the study of their own faith traditions
and seasoned from the trauma of war?
Did we see them as allies and companions
in a world gone awry, or as notches
for our branch of giving and good deeds?
I was so young then,
climbing trees and playing kickball.
After the banquet honoring their arrival,
their condition passed quickly from my mind.
It never occurred to me that they might have
lived through hell, lost family, lost everything.
It never occurred to me that Americans were
the cause of their loss.
I was just playing kickball and climbing trees.
Yet, do the sins of the father pass to the children?
Do I carry the responsibility for the lives torn asunder
by the acts of this nation?
What responsibility do we, the most wealthy nation on earth,
have to our fellow beings in countries across this vast world
who have suffered at the hand of our need for more or war?
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