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Of pandas, Nixon, and home

I know I express the feelings of thousands in Washington and Atlanta today, and many more around the country, whose hearts are heavy as our giant Chinese friends Tai Shan and Mei Lan head homewards in a special Fedex charter as I write. Few creatures of God are as peaceful and innocently playful as these black-and-white bears. The truest gentle giants, my father aptly called them.

Like thousands of others with real and virtual eyes, I remembered the birth of these panda cubs like it was yesterday and saw them grow up through the panda cams. Their childish antics were a source of calm and amusement in times of stress and agony. On a larger level, they represented- as do their parents and cousins at the National, Memphis, and San Diego zoos- an unbroken sliver of goodwill between two great nations (God Bless Richard Milhous Nixon for that stroke of genius).

Yet, home is home I suppose; the place where you belong in an instinctive way that can only be expressed by poets far wiser than I. Tai Shan and Mei Lan may not have ever seen the mountains of Sichuan, but they’ll feel at home there at once, I am sure. Some beings don’t have a home; I don’t mean that in the physical sense of having a nice, comfortable dwelling. Rather, these unfortunate souls may have wonderful abodes and yet know deep within that they don’t have a home. These are the perpetual refugees.

So, as I feel utter sadness in saying goodbye to my friends Tai Shan and Mei Lan, there is comfort in knowing that they know where home is and they are going home. Simone Weil well said , 'To be rooted … is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul'. It could have been said equally well of pandas.
 
Good luck and Godspeed my friends!
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