We made it to the top of that marvelous mountain, the Shilthorn. Almost as marvelous as nature, is the engineering that brings adventurers to the top. Once at the top, the views are mesmerizing. It was a clear day, and we could see Mount Blanc, the giant on the French, Italian border.
I'm a bit occupied with innovation. The imagination that can create such a dream. And the small things, not just the big things that have come about because of innovation. I look for and see it everywhere-- in the accessibility of recycling bins and how almost every citizen picking up groceries stops to insert their plastic or paper recyclables. How almost every house has a beautiful garden. How wood piles are stacked. How clean the trains, the streets, the buses of Switzerland are.
I think how my traveling companions, my cousins, are all innovative women. The homes and apartment buildings they design; the sewing they do; keeping an organ playing schedule; how they curate their family's experiences.
This is in part my Swiss heritage. Or is it?
My mom is innovative. She's a creator. She's not Swiss.
Perhaps this is one of the dangers of unwarranted nationalistic pride. It's one thing to be proud of your heritage and your ancestors: their hard work, their sacrifices, their innovation--another thing to think it runs in our blood--because--we are Dutch or African, or as history taught us so devastatingly well: German or Southern.
America is only as great as we are humble.
My heritage is part of a greater whole. It extends beyond the country my grandparents were born.
Our greater heritage is that we are inheritors from a great creator and the ultimate innovator. It's part of our DNA. It's the light of Christ that shines within every living soul.
***
I'm sitting on the train, assuming my windows are tinted. I am at liberty to watch, in secret, a young Korean couple walk the train platform. But she notices me. I think. She looks down. She looks up again. She looks right at me. And as she passes, she smiles.
It's a quick connection but affirms the greater truth of my thoughts.
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