_Golden Child_ by David Henry Hwang

I just finished reading _Golden Child_ by David Henry Hwang... the last words of the play are Andrew's and it goes as follows:
"I watch your mother sleeping, knowing you are growing inside of her. And suddenly the room is filled with spirits -- so many faces, looking down on me. And on each face, a story, some I have been told, some I can only imagine, and some I will never know at all. But many of them, people not so different from myself, who struggled with what to keep, and want to change --for the next generation. And I realize my face too will one day be born again. I feel the eyes of our ancestors upon us, all awaiting together the birth of you, my Golden Child."

It was so interesting to read DHH's exploration of how in Chinese families the people are woven together in a network. His exploration of how generations affect one another... even in the beyond invisible pieces of the fabric of the world. So many of the ideas are actually very similar to Judaism.

What amazes me is that the real truth lies in the percentages of all of these things.
Siu-Yong says (pp47-48 Theatre Communications Group ed) "What is family anyway, but a loose collection of people with nothing in common but blood? Does blood cause all people to think alike? To love, or even like, one another? Of course not! If we wandered wherever our emotions might take us, we would all have murdered each other ages ago. That is why blood is not sufficient for order. Blood must be reinforced --by discipline. And your precious honesty is the mortal enemy of discipline. ..."

Where there are holes in the legal exegesis for halacha... what matters is discipline. Just as Adam named the creations, giving their innate nature and purpose a raised consciousness -a realization-, so too when we act in a disciplined manner we give an awareness and realization to the commonality, to Hashem, to being alive/creation, to kedusha... the discipline raises the level of kedusha, but is the actual action of building so that a greater thing can be achieved.

One thing that DHH touches on, but doesn't necessarily comment on is that faith might be the a priori to that discipline. He poses it in the form of Christian faith. Siu-yong says that faith can be in anything. Ancient worship, becuase it is their tradition. Tieng-Bin says it should be in Jesus, because it allows them to explore their individuality.