We were at Sherkin Island when one of our friends’ children came running up while we were preparing for lunch and wanted someone to come see what she had found. Being partially wrapped around her little finger and not nearly as enmeshed in preparing the sausages, I followed her to the spot pictured above. Someone had planted a flower garden in the sand, spacing each bright bloom far enough away from the others as one would when expecting roots to grow. Or maybe it was only for symmetry. But the sweet girl was delighted that I photographed her find. There is a story in the background of this photo, but not on the island. The story is in my recent days, weeks, months, possibly years.
One might think that when you move from a familiar culture to an unfamiliar one, the initial adjustment to all the differences would be the big deal. Not to discount initial differences as they were quite significant, but I’m finding that something more subtle is even more significant.
If you really mean to join in the culture on as deep a level as possible, you make a kind of commitment in your own mind. A commitment to stay, to join, to belong, to immerse. And while a cross-cultural traveler does not ever lose the essence of who they are, I would say that it is edited, quite a bit. I remember reading a book that promoted the idea that you become a 150% person – 100% of who you were and then 50% of a new you that is influenced by culture. I’m no sociological genius, or even very well informed, but I think I disagree with that number, or maybe with it’s distribution. To me, it feels like 50% of me is just the same and another 20% of me is reformed by the new culture. That’s leaving me at 70%, I realize.
The other 30% is in a limbo state. It’s neither here nor there. Hundreds of little blossoms that are pieces of me, of who I am and what I think, have been blown about and the seeds of those blossoms are carried in the air. There are a few thousand little things floating loose inside that person that I regard to be me. It’s pollen-season in my head.
This was not sought. The wind came in the night (night being a long while of living outside familiarity) and boom! . . . personality chaos ensued. What am I like? Where will I land and what will I be like?
The boundary fences - or tent pegs – have been moved. The stretching of me is a constant companion and I wonder if everybody can see that 30% of me is not in place. Years ago, a friend living overseas said she felt she was being stretched – and when I asked how, she didn’t or couldn’t really say. Now I know.
I would like to see it and examine it, to write about it in a notebook and to quantify and qualify it. I would like to know where and when these things will be planted. But in the meantime, I will just sit deeply and equidistantly and hope for real rootedness. Yep, that’s me.
The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,
they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
planted in the house of the LORD,
they will flourish in the courts of our God.
They will still bear fruit in old age,
they will stay fresh and green,
proclaiming, “The LORD is upright;
he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.” – Psalm 92:12-15
You will flourish. It’s a promise.
Psa. 1:1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
Psa. 1:2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
Psa. 1:3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
Just thought I would keep the tree/root metaphor going. May you and Scott’s roots continue to grow in the Lord and your new culture. We have been rootless living in new areas before. It usually takes 5 to 6 years to feel like a part of a new community. So give it time. We have been in Decatur 6 years, come October. So that is about right. We feel more a part of the community and church, and less like new people. Keep up the writing, I enjoy reading your posts.