"Where are you from?"
It's the question that haunts people like me with a globally mobile childhood. People hear my accent, or just think the question is a quick and easy way to figure me out, and suddenly I'm evaluating pros and cons. How much detail do they want? What do they mean by "from"? How far back do I need to go? I have a short answer (My dad's South African, my mom's Norwegian, and I grew up all over the world), a much more detailed answer, an algorithm to break it down by percentages, and a few flippant answers (I'm from my parents. How about you? or Oh, everywhere but here).
That last answer - "everywhere but here" - is what brings me to today's topic: belonging. Certain characteristics mark people as belonging to a group. Physical characteristics such as pale skin meant I was told by another child in Dallas that I was lying when I said I was from Africa. (You obviously don't belong here, but your explanation of your funny accent must be false, because you don't look like it!). My accent has always marked me as not belonging. One of my early memories, from our church in Israel (which we left when I was 4), is of being surrounded by a group of American and Canadian teens trying to get me to pronounce party "parrr-dy" instead of "pah-tee". A year later, my South African nursery school teacher noted that I overpronounced my "r"s. I have never sounded like the people around me, never not been foreign. This can work to one's advantage - I was asked to be a focus group's mouthpiece in college because my accent made me sound "more professional" - but it would be nice to have a place I didn't stand out. Being a math geek who is hopeless with round moving objects and considers fashion a waste of time didn't help.
The place I felt the most belonging was Caltech. I arrived on campus and saw a sign on a computer in the library: "Out of order. Please do NOT try to fix it!" I knew I had come home. There is nothing like trying to design a space elevator during late-night socializing with friends, going to a restaurant and getting into an argument that can only be solved with diagrams on a napkin, and watching the sun rise on a problem set to whose solution you have contributed freshly baked bread and well placed questions. But I found that this belonging, at least to a physical location, didn't outlast graduation. When I returned for a 5-year reunion event, none of the current students knew me, and I wasn't suffering through impossible assignments with them - I no longer belonged.
One day, when I was in South Africa during a year I took off from Caltech, I was feeling utterly beaten down at my lack of belonging. I had been volunteering with Scripture Union, a ministry that ran camps for children among other things, and one of my co-workers had wounded me. She had been telling the children about social decay, corrupt morals in American movies - "and Jane's an American." I had TOLD her I was South African. Of course, my accent proved I was lying. But I couldn't have stayed in America during my year off, because my visa didn't permit it - I had to go "home" to South Africa, where I had no friends. As I sat in my room, I thought, "I'm an alien everywhere. There's something in the Bible about being an alien. I think it's in 1 Peter 1." I scanned the chapter and didn't see anything, and then had an intrusive thought that didn't come from my own mind: "You want 1 Peter 2:9." That's weird, I thought. Might as well look at it, though - it couldn't hurt.
1 Peter 2:9. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Me. Part of a holy nation. A nation that extended beyond any human-created boundaries, beyond any physical characteristics or linguistic anomalies, beyond my own time and place, back through time and on into the future. A nation that will endure forever, a kingdom - the kingdom of God - that is taking over the whole world, every tribe and language and people and nation. A nation where I will always belong. And he has called me out of darkness, and I am right where I belong: proclaiming the excellencies of his marvelous light.
It's the question that haunts people like me with a globally mobile childhood. People hear my accent, or just think the question is a quick and easy way to figure me out, and suddenly I'm evaluating pros and cons. How much detail do they want? What do they mean by "from"? How far back do I need to go? I have a short answer (My dad's South African, my mom's Norwegian, and I grew up all over the world), a much more detailed answer, an algorithm to break it down by percentages, and a few flippant answers (I'm from my parents. How about you? or Oh, everywhere but here).
That last answer - "everywhere but here" - is what brings me to today's topic: belonging. Certain characteristics mark people as belonging to a group. Physical characteristics such as pale skin meant I was told by another child in Dallas that I was lying when I said I was from Africa. (You obviously don't belong here, but your explanation of your funny accent must be false, because you don't look like it!). My accent has always marked me as not belonging. One of my early memories, from our church in Israel (which we left when I was 4), is of being surrounded by a group of American and Canadian teens trying to get me to pronounce party "parrr-dy" instead of "pah-tee". A year later, my South African nursery school teacher noted that I overpronounced my "r"s. I have never sounded like the people around me, never not been foreign. This can work to one's advantage - I was asked to be a focus group's mouthpiece in college because my accent made me sound "more professional" - but it would be nice to have a place I didn't stand out. Being a math geek who is hopeless with round moving objects and considers fashion a waste of time didn't help.
The place I felt the most belonging was Caltech. I arrived on campus and saw a sign on a computer in the library: "Out of order. Please do NOT try to fix it!" I knew I had come home. There is nothing like trying to design a space elevator during late-night socializing with friends, going to a restaurant and getting into an argument that can only be solved with diagrams on a napkin, and watching the sun rise on a problem set to whose solution you have contributed freshly baked bread and well placed questions. But I found that this belonging, at least to a physical location, didn't outlast graduation. When I returned for a 5-year reunion event, none of the current students knew me, and I wasn't suffering through impossible assignments with them - I no longer belonged.
One day, when I was in South Africa during a year I took off from Caltech, I was feeling utterly beaten down at my lack of belonging. I had been volunteering with Scripture Union, a ministry that ran camps for children among other things, and one of my co-workers had wounded me. She had been telling the children about social decay, corrupt morals in American movies - "and Jane's an American." I had TOLD her I was South African. Of course, my accent proved I was lying. But I couldn't have stayed in America during my year off, because my visa didn't permit it - I had to go "home" to South Africa, where I had no friends. As I sat in my room, I thought, "I'm an alien everywhere. There's something in the Bible about being an alien. I think it's in 1 Peter 1." I scanned the chapter and didn't see anything, and then had an intrusive thought that didn't come from my own mind: "You want 1 Peter 2:9." That's weird, I thought. Might as well look at it, though - it couldn't hurt.
1 Peter 2:9. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Me. Part of a holy nation. A nation that extended beyond any human-created boundaries, beyond any physical characteristics or linguistic anomalies, beyond my own time and place, back through time and on into the future. A nation that will endure forever, a kingdom - the kingdom of God - that is taking over the whole world, every tribe and language and people and nation. A nation where I will always belong. And he has called me out of darkness, and I am right where I belong: proclaiming the excellencies of his marvelous light.
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