Belonging: In the world and to myself

After reading a fantastic blog by the Head of Humanities at Messiah College, and the follow up comments, by world traveler and brilliant writer, the esteemed Miss Rodgers, I've been thinking about my own sense of belonging in the world. 

Higher education inevitably involves some degree of estrangement from the culture and the community in which a student began life. If a student truly engages liberal education, his horizons will widen and his capacity for comprehending and appreciating achievements outside his natal traditions will increase. Thus far I accept Nussbaum’s argument. But a good liberal-arts education involves a lot more than uprooting a student; showing him how limited and meager his life was before he walked into the classroom; and convincing him how much better he will be if he becomes a devotee of multiculturalism. Rather, a good liberal arts education brings a student back from that initial estrangement and gives him a tempered and deepened understanding of claims of citizenship—in a real nation, not in the figment of “world citizenship.”

In an almost terrifying way, I'm the only person in my immediate family touched by multiculturalism. The first to finish a degree, the only one with a liberal arts degree, the only one with a passport, and the only one who has left North America. 


In another way, my family is crawling with multiculturalism in the microcosm of South Jersey they inhabit. My Irish-American (with some Iroquois Indian thrown in for flair) Grandfather and his brothers joined different branches of the military way back when. 


When stationed in Japan during the Korean war, Joseph McBride stumbled upon an adorable village girl from outside Kobe, Myoko Kinoshita, and married her on his Navy ship before bringing her back to the USA. 


So my mom was born, the oldest of three mixed-race kids in suburban So Jo. Her best friend was the daughter of other migrants, this time from Russia. 


Tamara and Joann Hisako ended up marrying cousins... two German/English boys who'd spent their childhoods raising hell in the woods, lakes and streams of South Jersey, riding motorcycles and even flying planes. 


Here I am, growing up with grandparents who could speak a variety of languages, with all sorts of food on our tables and colors of skin around it. 


Everyone had come from different places to the same town surrounded by lakes and just an hour from the shore... and no one ever left. 


So my ivory tower experience in sub/rural Pennsylvania, did it make me question my background? Yes... for a while, it made me ashamed of it. Not of my heritage, but of the education level of my family. A working class family, I didn't grow up with the books and movies and museum experiences my class mates seemed to, but rather, learned to track animal trails in the forests and identify insects, etc. (which is super fun and cool, btw). 


I always felt inferior to the kids with soccer mom, book buying parents and the missionary, internationally traveled and multiple language speaking kids. I didn't value my experiences. 


During this time a lot of things were cropping up politically and the entire campus was involved in these Christian debates over the Republican and Democratic Parties... everything in my heart just said NO! There has to be a better way. I started to get "over" America... I wanted out. I wanted to see something, to go somewhere, to be something... I didn't realize that I already was someone. 


So after a year of teaching in So Jo, I packed my bags and headed off to London. I couldn't have even imagined what God had in store for me here in Europe. Learning how to navigate the social stigmas, the political systems, the financial issues, and the stereotypes has been a mad adventure. Just the things I've learned about how different cultures interact blows my mind to even think about. While it's been a big journey living here and struggling with my "Americanness," being both loved and hated and, honestly, both loving and hating it myself, has been a struggle, but I have come to see some beautiful things about my country, about who I am because of my country, and that I wouldn't trade for the world. 


And what am I doing with my new-found "pride" in my heritage? I'm galavanting around Europe... or rather, I'm working as an Ethnic Minority Achievement Coordinator, crudely defined as "helping those NOT white-British to achieve"... if you're child is other, if she doesn't speak English, if he wasn't born here, if English ways are odd, if you feel like you don't belong here... then you come see me, and I'll help you sort it out. 


A few years ago, I was reading through the Bible in One Year, and stumbled upon the passage in Matthew 25 "I was a stranger and you welcomed me..." and I just burst into tears. 


So often, I have felt a stranger in England, so often, though, I've felt a stranger in my entire life... reading books, not being sporty, not having highly educated parents, being part Japanese... things I LOVE about myself, but that always made me feel like I was somehow wrong. Now I spend my time helping children and families who are true strangers, some who have lived through wars and famines and true disasters, helping them belong and adjust. God's sense of irony brings a smile to my face. 





The oddest sensation is returning to So Jo each summer to the familiar roads, paths, shops and beaches I've always known and feeling so at home and so out of sorts. Staring into my parent's forest, my forest, listening to the insects in the trees, the humming birds buzz, the dogs chasing the pool cleaner, and I feel like I could just patch myself into the universe here and never leave. 


Yet a tug on my heart always seems to pull me back across the Atlantic, I don't truly belong in So Jo... I want to patch myself in, but I know it's not really where I should be. 


A few months ago, I got asked to give a talk on faith, and I focused both on the faith of Abraham in Genesis and the parallel explanation in Hebrews. But the verse that made me break down was Matthew 19:29: 

And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life.

Where I belong isn't necessarily where I am from or where I feel most comfortable, but where God has asked me to serve, the place, the community He's burned into me, in the corner of East London, full of over 60 different nationalities, languages and combinations of mixed races. But really, that feeling of "not belonging" is Christ drawing me and everything to Himself, the perfection outside of this world. Or the perfection deep inside it, waiting to be revealed and appreciated. 


I've learned to love where I'm from, holding onto the good it's done me and recognizing the faults, the shortcoming, and even the things which were fabulous which may no longer be effective. What I try most to do, now, is help my students to love themselves and where they are from. I try to encourage them to be the best speaker of their language, the best practicer of their religion, to make the best food from their country, and along with that, to appreciate the same things about everyone else. Not just uprooting, but being so settled in their own identity and sense of being, that other cultures don't uproot them. 




I've known people who are "world travelers." They save up some money and hop around different places, snapping photos and drinking local beer and moving on in a day or so. Some of them might learn some local phrases or eat traditional dishes, and some might even talk to locals. 


I think to myself "So what are you going to do once you've 'seen' everything?" When there's nothing left to sample from the global palate? 


I love traveling. But I like to sink into a culture. To wander around, attempt (badly usually) to speak in the native tongue. I find local shops for food. I wander down small lanes. I spend much more time in a city or town than I need to in order to hit it. I want it to sink into me so I can remember it, programming my whole body to it's global location and feel. 


But what really gets me going is finding out the local concerns in an area. Every time I visit a place, I want to stay and serve it. I've not always gotten the opportunity to do this, but it's where my heart always takes me. "If I lived here I could..." 


I don't know if this spirit of collaboration, global collaboration, is really for the better or not. But where there are positive, loving and innovative people working for the good of the city, interesting things will definitely happen. 


For as we know from the prophet Jeremiah... 

seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (29:11)