For the last four weeks, I’ve let a revolution take over my
life.
My days and nights have been filled not by dumpling
dissertations – or many other more important pursuits – but by events on a
public plaza in an Eastern European city in the middle of its winter of the
weather but its spring of the spirit.
I’ve been constantly following the pro-democracy Euromaydan
Movement in Ukraine, my parents’ birthplace, as literally millions of
Ukrainians stand in the snow and sleet to sing “songs of freedom”, as Bob
Marley called them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFGgbT_VasI
Here in Australia, with friends and very patient family, I’ve been helping to organise “Kangaroo”
Maydans where we stand and sweat in the sun in some solidarity. (Our friend, Katya S., on the photo at a recent Melbourne event.)
I write this ep in a suburban shopping mall’s food court, eating
chicken mince pan-fried dumplings in triangle shapes. My neighbours are elderly
Chinese eating KFC, which has just rebranded green-and-gold to look more Aussie
for the cricket season.
And it makes me wonder where home is, and to realise that
it’s more in my attitude than in my longitude and latitude. When I
have my human rights in abundance, as I do in Australia, and I have the practical opportunity, as I do by God's grace, it’s a simple
responsibility to say something about someone else’s. No matter the colours on the flag or the stars I see in the sky.
And it makes me wonder about the ties that bind. Logically, there’s little probability in me –
a son of migrants to the US and a migrant yet again to Oz – making a
substantive difference for the people in Kyiv. And, yet, I sign the letters, I
lobby the pollies, I get outraged that the media doesn’t share my outrage at
kids getting beaten up by security forces... To do otherwise is to undo the emotional
glue of culture and family.
And it makes me wonder about a digital world that now lets
me and countless millions see matters unfold in Kyiv in live time. How in the
same instant the internet makes us feel both more connected to there, and more
disconnected from there. How, on the one hand, it deludes us into
self-importance through the lure of status posts and likes. How, on the other
hand, it humbles us as we can actually watch genuine heroism and faith in action – like the
priests standing at 2am between revved-up riot police and young protestors.
And it makes me wonder about the regular lives of the folks
out on the Maydan – which must truly be on hold for their worthy cause. I
think of the basics – of eating, sleeping, shitting, and showering as thousands
undertake the world’s biggest and coldest urban camping trip. How in moments
like Maydan – in the sacrifice they require from oneself for others – we show
the gracefulness of the human spirit conquering the messiness of the human
body. That there is God in each of us.
I recall the story of the quiet young woman with cerebral palsy from
Donetsk who has come to Kyiv to battle a corrupt regime while battling her own
body. (http://www.kyivpost.com/guide/people/volunteer-with-special-333558.html).
Her contribution to Maydan is to take the paper tags off the tea bags so they brew better. From her fragile hands for the warmth of the kids out on the plaza.
Her contribution to Maydan is to take the paper tags off the tea bags so they brew better. From her fragile hands for the warmth of the kids out on the plaza.
If she can be a revolutionary of peace and dignity, so I am
obliged to be too. In some tiny faraway way. That we should some day share some varenyky in a free country.