Belonging And The American Dream

"We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is good, because it is good, if bad, because it works in us patience, humility, and the contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country.” C.S. Lewis

Like locusts that eat golden years, termites chomp on wooden dreams. In times past I had a house. As great a house as it was, it was more a symbol of a dream. A dream of stability. A dream of connecting with neighbors and creating memories of my daughter growing up. Wife, daughter, dog, lawn, backyard, gas grill—the American dream. It took five years for it all to blow up. It was never about the house anyway. It was about belonging.

Since Hillary Tower was stolen away I’ve known it. She was an older woman—maybe twelve years old to my six. She lived in the house behind ours. I’d go there and play games, in the house and yard, Ring-Around-The-Rosie, Hide-and-Seek, Tag. I had a thing for Hillary. One day she disappeared. Like Puff the Dragon; gone. My parents mentioned her moving briefly, “Oh yeah, her parents had to move.” I thought as a grown up I could have stability. No more Hillary Tower episodes. It was about connecting.

I’ve moved ten times since Hillary. I’ve been fortunate as each move brought me into contact with rich, abiding friendships. At every structure I’ve lived in God has brought a friend into the picture. The friends remain. I keep moving. 

I am partially known. Partially settled. Still searching. This is the ever-present tension: to be fully known, fully accepted and home. The angst is brought to light in the life of Abraham, “he lived as an alien in the land of promise, in a foreign land, dwelling in tents, a stranger and exile on earth, for it is clear he seeks a county of his own.” 

I expect to move into a house, with my beloved and settle in for the next little stretch of life. A little house, in a nice tract, with ideal walkability, close to wilderness, near restaurants and night life. It’ll be good but just good. I’ll never quite belong, never have the perfect connections, never feel quite settled. I’m made for that eternal country where I will be fully known, fully accepted. God will redeem the years the locust has eaten.

Photo by Tom Thain on Unsplash

Lessons I Learned From The Immigrants

And if I sing let me sing for the joy 

That has born in me these songs

And if I weep let it be as a man

Who is longing for his home.

I spent my childhood in the company of immigrants and refugees. Dichondra and Bermuda, chlorine in pools; the neighborhood. Settled in. Life in the San Fernando valley. Yet our parents still smelled the salt water. Our parents; family names like Mitrevics, Oeffinger, Cardella and Fusillo. Fleering other lives to live this one; leaving pogroms, property and riches for the new world.

We observed like kids do. I told my close friend I could barely understand his mom because her accent was so thick. “What about your mom’s accent,” he asked with emphasis. I assured him that my mother had no accent. He swore his didn’t either. 

The accents are an echo of a land no longer lived in. A home that day to day life keeps at bay. Comfortable at get-togethers. Almost home again. Laughing in native tongue, breaking traditional breads; pirogi and Rupjmaize (dark rye). At times; quiet, lonely times, the pain is palpable. James A. Smith gives this example of what it feels like to be an immigrant, “You lose something of your upright bearing if you no longer have the soil of your own land beneath your feet; you feel less confident, more distrustful of yourself.” What’s my takeaway as the child of an immigrant?

Freedom is a painful process. Hardship is part of the process. Moving forward (a myriad of meanings) entails going from the comfortable known to the questionable unknown. Always trading something; cigarettes and soap buy the next border crossing. The journey isn’t about escaping pain. It’s about grasping freedom—inching forward in small increments toward greater fullness. 

There will always be a transient tension; the homeland behind you, hunger for all that ‘home’ implies ahead of you. Home is comfort not permanence. Being home is having a sense of ‘place.’ In a broader sense just as Jesus had no place to lay his head, he was able to find sleep wherever he laid his head.

Be hospitable to strangers. As God reminds us in the first testament, “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” By culture, compassion or both the mothers in the neighborhood were mom to their own children and their friends. They, my own mom included, often took in the outcast as well. As the sojourner is blessed he blesses others.

By faith Abraham lived as an alien in the land of promise, a seed of blessing to many. Freedom, tension, movement and pain are part and parcel of the process. This is the transient tension, setting out then settling down. Losing self, finding self, giving. Such are the lessons learned from the immigrants.

Photo by Alexandra Kikot on Unsplash

The Steps of Abraham

“By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he went out, not knowing where he was going.”

And Abraham got all his ducks in a row and went out.  Nowhere is that written.  Then I’ll go out; then I’ll move.  Nope.  We don’t operate that way.  Having the ducks lined up would be proof; would be safety, would be easier.  God doesn’t operate that way.  Convinced of the call we’re moving forward.

“And he went out, not knowing where he was going.”  It’s that step-by-step thing.  God only gave Abraham enough information to get him to move.  There is a sense that we are doing the right thing.  The wife grew up in that house.  It’s her old stomping ground.  It’s alien territory to me.  

We’re moving in with my mother-in-law to provide her support.  We are moving west, from desert to ocean, big house to shared house, wide open space to elbow-room, desert quiet to city hustle, five restaurants to a million eateries.

Looking backward one can see the closed doors. There was the church small group that wouldn’t materialize—though we talked to pastors and placed phone calls. An odd loosing of personal connections. There’s been a gentle severing of ties to all but our closest of friends. One wonders if doors closed for Abraham or if he just woke up one day and shut them himself.

Though the call be from God the sweat required is ours. The house has to be boxed; storage planned, some storage rented.  We have to find jobs in the new location.  Then the actual move.

It can be overwhelming.  Did Abraham’s thoughts whirl in his head in the middle of the night?  Did hearing the call and knowing the Caller make a difference?  For Abraham, it was still a step-by-step process.  So it is for me. “Sometimes I think of Abraham, how one star he saw had been lit for me, He was a stranger in this land, and I am that, no less than he.”  The same star and same God that created them is the same God that led Abraham. The not-knowing is unsettling. The following is part of a grand adventure.