I discovered the poem by Robin Morgan at a coffee shop in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where I live and serve as an ELCA missionary. I was sitting with a good friend, flipping through Cries of the Spirit, a book of poetry. When I came across the “The Two Gretels,” I almost fell out of my chair.

“This is it,” I said to my friend. “This is what it’s like to go home.”

There's no place like home?
The notion of returning home from international mission service is a paradox. Although missionaries may return to the same physical locations from which they left, they have been so changed by their experiences that they can’t help but see everything through new eyes. This phenomenon is compounded by friends and family who often operate like Hansel by “sending up flares,” expecting them to find their way back to the very same place from which they set out. Often times, neither the returning missionary nor their friends or family recognize that this place no longer exists. This disconnect between Hansel and Gretel, between missionaries and the communities that sent them, makes any attempt to return home precarious, at best.

Gretel moves to a castle
My name is Andrea, and in returning from Global Mission service I became one of the two Gretels. My first returning experience came at age 15 when I spent a week of service in Juarez, Mexico. I helped build a one-room house for a family of five. The day after I got back to Minnesota, my own family of five moved into a much larger house than the one where I grew up. For the first time, I had my own bedroom and it had more square footage than the house we had just finished building in Juarez. My new home felt like an extravagant castle. I cried myself to sleep out of frustration and guilt. I didn’t know how to talk to my parents about my feelings without seeming ungrateful. (Continued on next page.)

* Copyright 1974 by Robin Morgan in her poetry collection Lady of the Beasts (Random House). Reprinted/posted here with permission of the author from Upstairs in the Garden: Poems Selected and New by Robin Morgan (WW Norton, 1999). All rights online and off reserved. Write info@RobinMorgan.us for further information.

As part of our exploration of the issues facing those who are returning home from service, we interviewed military personnel, returning from their deployment.

The Rev. Eric Olsen, a military chaplain serving in the Army, directed me to a reintregration event that helps soldiers and their families adjust once they are home. I asked our correspondent in the Lutheran Office at the UN, the Rev. Malte Lei, to interview soldiers at this reintregration event, held in upstate New York. You’ll hear about the challenges soldiers face and the tips they have for their families and other returning soldiers about transitioning back home.

Listen to three women we interviewed in Café's special podcast.

  Listen now (MP3)  |  Launch podcast in iTunes