It’s good advice. But
some of us try anyways.
In the liminal walkway between places, the “Wood Between the
Worlds”[ii],
the place that is neither here nor there, we try to pitch our tents.
I used to have both feet firmly rooted in one place. The tan, sandy soils of decomposed limestone
flavored with sage and old oaks gave me a solid place to stand, all in one,
small, somehow comprehensible world.
Now I look back over my shoulder and see dusty footprints
leading back miles and miles away from where I once was to where I now am.
I knew when I married my husband that I was not only
marrying him, I was marrying the Alur culture, his extended family, his social
network in Uganda, and the unique cultural context that created the spectacular
being that is my husband.
He knew when he married me that he was not only marrying me,
but marrying the complicated red, white, and blue mess that is my American
background and history, my messy family of origin, my social network sprawled
across the concrete rivers of Los Angeles, and the unique cultural context that
somehow forged me into being.
But neither of us really knew what we were marrying
into.
It is impossible to walk through the fires of culture shock
completely unscourged. When uprooted and
unanchored from all the myriad of relationships, symbols, and places that made
you into who you are as a person and violently submerged into an alien world,
one’s sense of self must be changed. It
has to. And there is no way to predict
who will come out of the other end.
Our combined experiences taught us how to be Ugandan and how
to be American. Neither of our combined
experiences prepared us for being Ugandan in America.
It’s not the same thing…and my cultural context prefers
Ugandans to stay in Uganda.
Our marriage lashed two worlds together, but our nest making
has added two more. And we have both
experienced the never ending, continually reoccurring cycles of culture shock.
As the emotions ebb
and flow, I am reminded again and again how similar the stages of culture shock
are to the stages of grief-the denial, the anger, the grief, the depression,
the small adjustments that can be made to accommodate one’s new reality.
In a lot of ways, culture shock is a grief. It’s learning to mourn for the loss of one’s
world-physical and social, and the loss of one’s place in the world. It’s learning to grieve that one’s natal identity
and the deep, internal sense of self that has been buried in one’s native soil,
to be reincarnated as something new and somehow both familiar and foreign. That person who once was is no longer and
will never fully be again. They’ve been
unworlded, unmade, untethered, uprooted, and cast adrift on the transnational
reality that never quite feels like reality.
“A
bird may love a fish, but where will they live?”
It’s not enough. The bird
also needs scuba gear. And their
children will need to be ducks or flying fish-creatures capable of traversing
worlds and changing their identities with the same flurry of a two year old
changing clothes.
But those are the ones who understand bridge-building-those
who live it out on a daily basis. They
are intimately acquainted with the challenges of forging distinct elements into
steel in the high heated pressure of daily life.[iv] The end result is stronger than the original
materials, but only after passing through the inferno. And nobody likes to be burned and
melted.
Where would the world be without bridges? They unite peoples and create vulnerable
spaces for attack. They are dangerous
and they are powerful, as all liminal stages[v]
and things are.
It’s learning to live between worlds, belonging neither here
nor there, and yet everywhere. It’s
trying to build one’s house on a bridge.
And there’s not a lot of other houses there.
I would not exchange my small, comprehensible, hand-held
world for this expanded, shattered, byzantine version. Sometimes, brokenness is a gift.
“Blessed are the peacemakers,for they will be called children of God.” Matthew 5:9
The bridge builders between God and people, people and each other, those who actively seek “shalom” or God’s full, holistic, all-encompassing kind of peace-these ones will always have a place of belonging. They are blessed even in their isolation from their worlds and when they make people crazy in their cries for the dissolution of injustice and conflict. They are claimed by God as His own. I find that comforting.
God knew a lot about bridges…and pitching of tents[vi] between worlds and peoples and the challenges of being both/and.
Sometimes, I look over the edge of the bridge on which I
dwell and wonder what it would be like if I still lived in one place, with my
sandaled feet all on one side. Yet, here
on my bridge, I can look out and see the waters beneath me glisten and reflect
the sun’s golden rays in their turquoise depths. My eyes can look to either side and show me
the paths my footprints have taken me and the incredible views that can only be
seen by someone who has decided to build a house on a bridge.
So, I close my eyes, inhale deeply, and thank God again for
the liminal space He’s currently called me to pitch my tent, with my feet stretched worlds.
[ii]
C.S. Lewis, the Magician’s Nephew
[iii]
Lines from the movie Ever After-scene where “Cinderella” and Leonardo Da Vinci
are discussing bringing her to the ball to meet the prince.
[iv]
Thanks to the Novo prophetic prayer team for the concept of bridges and steel
and peacemaking. It resonated.
[v] The
concept of liminality comes from anthropologist Victor Turner in his brilliant
work on stages of ritual.
[vi][vi]
Incarnation-“taking on flesh” or “pitched his tent and dwelt among us”-the word
choice is seen throughout the Bible.
