Homecoming

Two years ago this week, I found myself off the East Coast of the Malay Peninsula on Tenggol Island with members of the Luther House diving team. Content with being a surface dwelling fresh-air breather I spent the weekend snorkeling up above as they did the scuba thing below. It was a time for laughing, relaxing, and enjoying one another's company.

It was also part of saying 'Goodbye.' Within a few weeks my year in Malaysia would be complete and I'd be on an airplane heading back to the United States. As far as I knew then, it was the end.

Earlier this month, I found myself worshipping with Luther House Chapel again. In the morning's message, Pr. Thomas made the observation that the congregation is like a family. With a not-so-distant history of struggle and challenges, there was ample opportunity for those wanted to leave to do so and for the community to disband. And yet they stuck it out - stuck together - bound by something much deeper.

Looking around the assembly, recognizing faces and recalling stories, I realized how much I am bound up with them.

Maybe it is Stockholm Syndrome and the tendency for a captive to identify with one's 'tormentors' (said with with deep affection and the winking eye of an inside joke), but I don't know that I'd have it any other way. Having gone to the U.S. and come back to Southeast Asia again, what had been a one-off event has been extended into a relationship. No longer 'the intern,' I'm now colleague, brother, pastor, friend.

As I've become a transnational citizen, one who leads a life across borders with communities of significance and influence in multiple countries, Kuala Lumpur and this group of people who gather around Word and Water and Bread and Wine in a shoplot in SS4C have become (a) home. Passing through KL these days brings jungley adventures, running jokes about Charlie the Unicorn and the Annoying Orange, the warmth of hospitality and 'liquid duck,' invitations to eat, and open ears to listen. In other words: brothers, sisters, family, friends.

Now, as was the case two-years ago, I'm full of gratitude for the mysterious turnings of the universe/spirit/bureaucratic processes that plunked me down in the middle of such a wonderfully motley crew.