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Gretel
meets Super Target
Several years later I returned again, this time from a
summer with
Youth Encounter, in Tanzania. Once home, I
accompanied my mom on errands to a Super Target store,
an expanded version of the typical store chain. When we
were ready to pay, I noticed that only two of the 32
registers were open. I had been back for several months
already, but my mind began reeling. I was trying to
calculate how much one register must cost, and how many
bags of rice that would purchase, when my field of
vision started going dark. I handed my purchases to my
mom, stumbled out of the store, and promptly threw up in
the garbage can.
Returning from Global Mission service is to become one
of the two Gretels—it is to find yourself without
breadcrumbs, without a map, without a GPS system for
finding your way back to the place you call home. It is
to find yourself in the midst of a reverse culture
shock, which hits without warning in the unlikeliest of
times and places. It leads you to wonder if you ever
really knew your dearest friends. It makes you feel lost
in your own community.
Gretel
returns to herself
But returning from Global Mission service is also to become
the other one of the two Gretels—it is to return home by
going forward, because you simply can’t imagine the way
back. It is to understand your own culture in new ways,
through different lenses. It is to discern more fully
who you are as a child of God, and to discover new ways
of living faithfully and authentically in the world. It
is to re-discover kindred spirits who were there all
along.
I’m relieved
to say that every time I’m faced with the paradox of
returning home from an intense, inter-cultural
experience, it gets a little easier. I don’t expect home
to be the same, and my friends and family have stopped
sending up flares. I no longer expect to return
unchanged, and my friends and family no longer expect to
remain unchanged themselves.
And this,
perhaps, is the key: just as reverse culture shock
affects the returning missionary and everyone around
them, so does Global Mission service itself. The Holy
Spirit blows in and through these experiences and
relationships, changing everyone involved, but only if
we let her in; only if we expect to be changed.
As the
community of God’s people, we can’t go looking for
breadcrumbs, and we can’t keep sending up flares. All we
can do is go forward, because we simply can’t imagine
the way back.
The Rev.
Andrea Roske-Metcalfe serves as Country Coordinator for
the Young Adults in Global Mission (YAGM) program in
Mexico. Her own re-entry experiences contributed to the
publication, Welcome Forward: A Field Guide for
Global Travelers. The idea for this particular
article came from an open letter she wrote to the
friends and families of returning YAGM volunteers, which
includes a Top Ten list of suggestions for helping
people return from mission service. The letter can be
found on her
blog.
Listen to the stories
three women in the military
share about transitioning home after
service. |
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Visit the study page
for ideas for discussion and further reflection.
We
belong because of the waters of baptism
There is an aboriginal tribe in Australia that doesn’t ask the
question “Where are you from?” when they meet a new person. Instead
they say, “Tell of the waters you come from.” In other words, what
has been your source of sustenance? This way of framing the question
of home and identity is not hard for me. I know the waters I come
from. Yes, I could talk about the Indian or Pacific Oceans, about
the Gulf of Mexico, or about the Chicago River. Each has had a role
in shaping my life. But before and beyond all of that, I come from
the waters of a baptismal font, from a promise that I belong, from a
sacrament that made me now and forever a citizen of the kingdom of
God.
Throughout my life, although the location and cast of
characters has changed frequently, there has always been a font in
my “family room”—that is, in the sanctuary where I meet others who
come from or are drawn to those waters. I am from the waters of
baptism. I belong to a community that draws its identity from a
wandering group of Arameans. From that source, I can go to wherever
God calls me, without losing my home.
In a way, all people of faith are wandering not from home, but
toward it. Wherever we live, we are citizens of the kingdom of God,
and are ambassadors of it. The people of God are, and have always
been, culturally out of place everywhere—because God’s kingdom is
not like the kingdoms of this world. It does not have borders or
immigration laws. In God’s kingdom, all of creation is healed and
whole, and all people are treated with respect and honor. In God’s
kingdom, there is always enough to eat, meaningful work to do, and
companionship.
The kingdom of God is not a destination we must seek out. The
kingdom of God is the Church. Wherever we find ourselves, we are
called “welcome home” with all the world that God so loves. We may
think we are journeying toward the Promised Land. But really we are,
as people from the waters of baptism, a mobile home—a portable
refuge—for every wanderer on the way. And we can rest in the
assurance that God goes with us in every possible direction. In
the kingdom of God, in which, toward which, and with whom we wander, all
will find a home.
The Rev. Susan Schneider presently serves as the interim pastor of
United in Faith Lutheran Church in Chicago, Ill.
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