We have several new families with young children at church. Families with six, five children, it’s so beautiful, it brings me to tears. But what I want to talk about is something different.
One of the new girls at church is the daughter of Ukrainian parents. Klara and this girl glomped on to each other like nothing I’ve ever seen. Klara doesn’t grant her friendship easily and takes a long time to warm up to people. She’s extremely choosy in her attachments. But with this girl the attraction was instant and intense. By culture, these girls are completely American. Neither speaks a word of Ukrainian or has much interest in her parents’ origins. They love pizza and cheeseburgers, play with labubus, recite American play rhymes, and can spend hours debating the origins of the 6-7 routine. But there is something that goes deeper than culture. It’s genetics, the call of the blood. Human beings are not solely made out of words. We are physical beings before we are anything else. These two girls fixated on each other because they have a shared biological link.
I experience something similar with my Ukrainian Fulbrighter. Politically, we are the polar opposites of each other. My Ukrainian is weaker than my English or Spanish, so speaking to her requires an effort. We belong to different generations, and our life experience is radically different. Still, the way I feel around her is unlike anything I feel around colleagues with whom I have much more in common in pretty much every way.
Ethnic enclaves are not a good idea, is what I’m saying. It’s not about intentions or conscious decisions. There are powerful biological forces inside of each of us. It flatters our egos to pretend that this is not the case and that we are entirely the product of our own desire. But there are many things in all of us that we cannot control. God created the universe with Logos. But we are not God. We don’t create ourselves, or at least not entirely.
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