This morning I read "Lives: Jumbo Buffet: An American (Vietnamese, Jewish, Catholic, Pennsylvania) Story" from The New York Times Magazine, July 4, 2010. The author, Susan Silver Cohen describes her relationship with a Vietnamese refugee, Phuoc Nguyen.
Susan met Phuoc (pronounced fook) when he was an employee of a house painting company in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, painting her house. Susan and her husband shared cups of cold water with Phuoc, and conversation in which he told of his escape from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975, eventually arriving in our state.
As I read the story, I frequently stopped to laugh, to cry and to weep. Susan speaks with a frankness that I love and I find myself thinking about the amazing beauty of sitting at table, sharing one another's food and holy days with those who don't appear to belong together.
Until that happens, are we not all displaced persons?
Susan met Phuoc (pronounced fook) when he was an employee of a house painting company in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, painting her house. Susan and her husband shared cups of cold water with Phuoc, and conversation in which he told of his escape from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975, eventually arriving in our state.
As I read the story, I frequently stopped to laugh, to cry and to weep. Susan speaks with a frankness that I love and I find myself thinking about the amazing beauty of sitting at table, sharing one another's food and holy days with those who don't appear to belong together.
Until that happens, are we not all displaced persons?
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