The Patriots of Patriots

            Patriot.  How often is that word thrown around every single day in America?  It hardly has the meaning that it deserves or that justifies its definition: a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion.

            The first time I learned the true meaning of the word ‘Patriot’ was during the time around Christmas that I spent in India.  Our host had decided to take my missions partner and myself to the India/Pakistan border.  There were literally thousands of people packed into a small plaza with vendors selling food, drinks, cd’s, t-shirts, etc.  Suddenly, massive gates at one end of the plaza opened up and we all walked through a maze surrounded by gates on either side.  Border patrol, by far the largest Indian men I had seen to this point, stood every few feet with their guns displayed proudly as a warning to anybody threatening to disturb the peace or trying to cross over the fences into Pakistan.  We had a chance to look through the gates to see Pakistan.  There were flowers growing close enough to the fence that we could catch their smell, but not close enough to touch them.  They smelled sweet and were a stark contrast in every way, shape, and form to their surroundings.  By this point in our trip, we were used to smelling nothing but trash and bodies that had not had a bath (unless you call a river polluted with trash and feces of every kind a bath) in days or months…even years. 

            We all piled into an outdoor arena with cement bleachers set up.  There was music playing over loud speakers and there were people shouting patriotic Indian chants.  Looking across the fence, there was another set of cement bleachers and they were packed with Pakistani people who were doing the very same thing.  The chants grew louder and louder from either side, and it was clear that each group of people was trying to outdo the other.  I sat in my seat growing ever smaller and increasingly numb.  The noise pounded in my ears and in my chest. I felt a part of something scarily larger and more aggressive than I had ever been a part of before.  The aggression was masked by laughs and songs and smiling faces, but the pain and hurt of the people was undeniable.  There were people trying to go to the fence to yell at their family members across the border, only to be ushered back to their seats by the patrol. 

            The soldiers and Border Patrol on the Indian side had a ceremony in which they would go and shake hands with the Pakistani patrol and then return to their respective country line and then take down the flags.  As soon as this was finished, the ceremony was over.  People filed out of the arena.  The crowds grew silent as they left.  I walked with my group: Two Americans and three Indians.  We had become family over the last weeks.  For the first time since our arrival, we were silent as we walked to the car.  The power of the night was still strong in our bones and we all felt weighed down by the amount of emotion that had been gradually building for the last two hours and then suddenly dropped.

            This ceremony happens every day.  Every single day.  Thousands of people gather in a cramped arena to shout their praises for their country with devotion that I have yet to see on a single Fourth of July in America.  Only this wasn’t even a holiday!  It was just other day in Northern India:  a country ridden with the most intense poverty that I have ever experienced.  In America we would never dream of seeing trash piled two to six feet on every inch of the ground, minus the main streets.  We would never dream of more than two or three people who are homeless:  Well what about millions of people without a home?  Without a job?  Without hope of things getting better?  Yet this does not taint their passion for their country and their cause.  It does not taint their faith in the hundreds of gods whom they praise all moments of their day.

            Oh to have that kind of faith.  Oh to be that kind of patriot.