Re-entry 101

Timidly I clicked the sign in tab. I have not written in a bit, and so much has passed in relation to France since my return that I feel I have treated you unfairly by not inviting you into what has been a rather trying month of re-entry. I would like to tell you what will pour forth onto this screen from my fingers...but I truly have no idea. Let us begin, shall we?

Texas was my official re-entry point. And, while it was wonderful, memorable, and all the other superlatives I can imagine, Texas was not ideal. For what reasons?

One, everything is extremely spread out and you have to use your car to do anything. My soul rebels. I have been living in cities and compact spaces, such as Compiegne, for three years, and I have grown accustomed to the ease of life in such settings. Bike, foot, or bus, perhaps the occasional train, and you're there--at lunch with a student or friend, at the boulangerie, over at the church, down into Paris, at the university, working at L'Arche. It's just so easy. Dallas for one overwhelms and I nearly pass out maneuvering through the Jetson-like sky high tollways of Houston. Texas, you can have your massive concrete creations for the too big, too loud contraptions commonly referred to as "monster trucks" and their smaller companions called extended cab Ford F-150s. I'll take my elops B'twin bike any day.

Two, literally my first day back in Waco I stumbled across the city magazine Wacoan, which since I watched the editor honest to God intentionally not photograph my fellow black dance team members for their coverage of Waco High homecoming I have not been a fan. July 2008's cover sealed the deal. A nameless woman's arms spread open in what I translated to be worship asked me to read "Profiles, p. 20." I found on this page a lead-in to several ads of Christian merchandise, services, etc. I returned home, waving it vehemently in my mother's face yelling, "WHAT is wrong with THIS?!" Stunned, she looked on as her distraught daughter explained, "MARKETING! This is not Jesus, these are goods which can be exchanged, a culture created, and we feel Christian about it!" An article later in the magazine, a discussion between four Waco-area pastors, started off with the statistic that Waco houses over 250 religious establishments. (The article asked a great question--With all these institutions, is Waco a community of faith?) Waco and surrounding areas top out around 130,000-150,00 population depending on what developments you include. L'Oise Valley houses approximately 1 Protestant church per 60,000 inhabitants. We see quickly the gross disparities and points which might lead a recently returned French missionary into hysteria. I have been overwhelmed to say the least at the market-driven, brand-conscious nature of Christianity in the states and in Texas. And I am implicated and convicted by it, knowing that my habits of church selection are formed in great part by this reality. It has not been easy.

Third, I have had moments where I simply blank out and in the midst of whatever I'm doing simply forget, feel lost, or walk back and forth trying to accomplish anything, something. The best I was able to articulate this phenomenon is captured by the following: Generally I function fine and in fact well in physical or relational chaos. I tend to see potential in chaos and ways to organize it, solve it, fix it. However, upon re-entry, I experienced a new one--mental and emotional chaos further complicated by physical chaos and relational loss. While I ran hard and busy during the three weeks of the Texas tour seeing supporters, loving on family, traveling the roads, packing and repacking, I felt at all times teetering over some unseen edge. I am still waiting in a sense for the major breakdown of tears and emotions. We shall see when and if it arrives.

I believe the hardest point of removal from France has been this: While I had "tasks" at hand each day, so much of my life there was about entering into the lives and stories of others and journeying together toward God. Lives and stories are not easily replicated, because they are bound to particulars, moments, heartbeats, and laughs...and even tears. None of us have the privilege to return to moments which were, and lives go on. They have and they will. And that is a hard reality. My particular philosophy of ministry per se has become this: That we are granted moments in which our life intersects with an other's. And it is in this intersection that we are privileged to ask together our questions of it, in the great hope of finding God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit working in our midst. May God grant me the grace and peace to continue this at a distance. May I be as well a pliant spirit in a place which has come to resemble not home to me, but some far away land in which all the people wear crosses, the billboards tell me to repent in the name of Jesus, and the God I read of in Isaiah seems a far cry away from the God we have placed on the puppet stick.