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others

one of my goals for 2011 with this blog is to get back to using it for more reflection on my/our experiences and the things we are learning. hopefully, 3 fridays a month will be "reflection" posts, and then the rest will be the typical pictures and updates. here then is my first installment!

as i head in to my third new year in Boston (and Amy in to her fourth!), we find the question, do you feel Boston is home now, being asked of us a lot. What a fascinating question! on the one hand, of course it's home: Boston is where we live and work and do life and that's home no matter where you are from. on the other hand, i find myself telling people (and i really believe this) that we could live in Boston for 25 years and we will still be Californians.

living in Boston has been an interesting experience for both us. speaking for myself, i have never lived anywhere else where I have so strongly felt "alien" or "other" (of course i've lived in California for 83% of my life...the time we spent in India as a family i was only 1-2 years old, i looked "other"...anyway, i do have to admit there is a not a lot of experience to draw from). this is a hard phenomenon to explain to people mainly because it's just a feeling, a prevailing awareness, that i "from" somewhere else. there are superficial differences like dress and accent, and challenges that are inherent in moving from coast to coast (like navigating a new city, weather, etc). but the best way i can describe this is just that there is a deep, underlying, consistent awareness that this is not "home".

now, we both love Boston. it is a great city (the second best in the country: i have scientific proof that SF is the best), and we love all that it has to offer. we have great jobs, strong community, a fantastic neighborhood, a wonderful apartment...we've been blessed over and over again in our married life here. there is a lot to be grateful for and a lot to enjoy.

but when i get stressed out and tired i find myself fantasizing about In-N-Out Burger and highway 17 and real beaches and some KNBR (the Sports Leader) and Los Gallos Taqueria and being closer to family and northern california lakes and weather that fluctuates between 55 and 75 and not having to pay to drive on the freeway because it is actually free and this:

during our recent holiday visit amy and i spent the last 24 hours exploring San Francisco. we grew up in the area but never lived in SF, so to call us locals would be a stretch. but i've been there enough times to still have a deeply ingrained mental map of the city. while we were there we never got lost, instinctively found free parking all day, and tracked down many of our favorite spots (i even found a Boutry family favorite restaurant in Chinatown). there was something profoundly familiar about the whole experience. i still struggle with that sense here. it can be quite easy for me to get lost in Boston (it doesn't help that i will never shake seeing the ocean as my western reference point).

i hope this isn't taken as complaining, we do like it here! but, it is VERY different and that feeling of being "other" hasn't dissipated in three years, if anything it has grown.

the question, is Boston home, is a tricky one. yes, we make our home here, but it is not home if you get what i mean.

and, in many ways, this is a beautiful thing. as a church we've been exploring the Exodus narrative on sunday mornings and other OT stories in community groups. much of the OT contains the stories of displaced people, people far from home, people feeling distinctly "other" and "alien".

our neighborhood has one of the highest concentrations of recent immigrants of any in the city. as much as i feel like a fish-out-of-water, imagine what it must be like to grow up in Brazil or Colombia and then find yourself trying to make it in Boston in January with language and distinct cultural differences and barriers on top of all the other adjustments.

henri nouwen, in his book Reaching Out, discusses what healthy spirituality looks like and concludes that hospitality is part of the key. he writes "when we are willing to detach ourselves from making our own limited experience the criterion for our approach to others, we may be able to see that life is greater than our life, history is greater than our history, experience greater than our experience, and God greater than our god. that is the poverty of the heart that makes a good host. with poverty of the heart we can receive the experience of others as a gift to us."

i think that displacement, the awareness of being other, can be transformed in to this poverty of the heart. and as we love and lead students from all over the world and our neighbors here in eastie, openness to others is vital. maybe the best people to help integrate outsiders are outsiders.

will i still fantasize about California? probably...i mean look at that picture up there! but i am learning to embrace my "otherness" as a window to experiencing God's heart and the stories of others in a more meaningful way. and that is pretty exciting to me.