Aqua.

I break my silence with something that I wrote a few months ago. What you see below is a portion of a talk that I gave for my school's chapel, which took place on February 29 of this year. I gave it with my friend Adam and one of our mutual professors/mentors, Aron. We were talking about living in an odd in-between place, and the different ways this manifests itself in each of our lives. It made sense to talk about it then, because we were going through the waiting in-betweenness of lent, and because it fell on leap day, an odd, in-between day in and of itself. This is the portion I wrote about myself and my own experiences, partly in an effort to communicate them with other people, and partly to try to sort through them myself. I'm still sorting through all of this, but I thought, before I move on to talking about other kinds of aftermath, I should begin again with this. I hope it doesn't seem too disjointed, it was part of something bigger at the time, and in many ways, is still. So without further ado...

It’s hard to be here, because I wish I were there.Those of you who have talked to me for more than thirty seconds in the past few weeks already know: I lived in New Zealand last semester. It was a beautiful coastal town on the South Island of the country called Kaikoura, bounded on one side by a range of low peaks, and on the other by the Pacific Ocean. I spent my mornings learning about, among other things, two of my favorites, namely, ecology and environmental literature; spent my afternoons biking somewhere between forest and sea or sliding into tide pools; and my evenings watching the sun set behind the mountains and making up constellations for the unfamiliar stars of the southern hemisphere. I lived intentionally, with 19 other students, in an old convent in the foothills of Mt. Fyffe. I embedded myself into the culture as much as I could, and was gradually all but adopted by a local family in town. I lived in New Zealand last semester. In some ways I am there still.

Someone pointed out to me a few days ago that in all my writing about my time in New Zealand, I always called the convent home. Never once did I qualify it – home for now, home away from home, New Zealand home. It was simply home. From the very beginning. I tried to fit myself into the life there and found that I had a place. Coming back was a bit of a shock, as you can well imagine. Physically, I adjusted quickly enough, despite the drastic time change, but in other ways, I don’t know that I ever will. I had never been homesick before I came back from New Zealand. Now it seems difficult to stop feeling that way.  “This slight momentary affliction is preparing us for a weight of glory beyond all measure. . . . We look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen.”

I want to be there, but it’s good to be here. New Zealand was an incredibly formative place. But it was not my first, nor my only formative place. The time that I had in New Zealand was only possible because of the three years I first spent here at Trinity. I came to college fresh out of what can most kindly be described as an intensely bitter experience of high school, and if my focus and perspective and individualism had not been shifted by the community at Trinity, I would have arrived in Kaikoura completely unprepared for what I found. Trinity was the first place in which I felt truly engaged. I could explore. I was, and am, challenged to have the courage to change my mind. I found myself intellectually intimidated by people, and loving it. Trinity is the first place that I remember that doesn’t just feel like a jumping off point on the way to something else. I knew it almost as soon as I arrived: this is where I fit. Even in the inevitable shifting of a college campus, I found a sense of permanence here. I found somewhere I didn’t want to leave. Is it odd, then, that even as I stand before you I am plotting my return to New Zealand? That even as I revel in my final semester here, I long to take up my place in that far green country? “Whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please the Lord.”

Somehow, I'm already there, even while I'm here. I am at Trinity, and I love being here. But I also wish I were there, and I know I can’t stay away. So for now, I am somewhere in between.  I’m constantly reminded of something C.S. Lewis wrote at me once, that my memories and impressions after an event continue to add to it, and I will only know its full character as I lie down to die. Lately I’ve been suspecting that it works the other way also. That the anticipation of an experience or act is just as much a part of it as the thing itself. Maybe the joy that I have in remembering New Zealand is also a pointer forward, toward something else, something more complete. Something new. So for now I can live with this tension as intention, this joyful longing as faithful expectation. “If anyone is in Christ -- new creation! . . . Everything has already become new!”  

Slate.

Now that I have been back in the States for slightly over a month, I decided I am as qualified as I will ever be to reflect a little. Bear with me, the transition is still in progress and may, I hope and fear, never end. But more on that in a moment.

I arrived in San Francisco approximately nine hours before I left Auckland, and altogether, December 9 was 43 hours long for me. I was a bit (read: extremely) tired, but jazzed to get back to Chicago and see Jonny. Even though he was flying Auckland to LA, we were both going to O'Hare, you see, so we'd arranged to meet up for a few hours while we waited for people to come and get us. The problem was, as I was sitting on my plane set for Chi-town, seat belted, safety briefed, upright, an announcement came that the plane was unfit to fly, and that we would all have to get off and book other flights. Seriously? Long story short, three hours later I was on a different plane to Chicago, which provided about ten minutes to see Jonny. Lame. Nevertheless, I arrived and he was there to give me a hug and help me get my bags and chat for the short while until his father arrived and he went off to find him. And then, a miracle happened. They came striding up to me, both tall and thin and with exactly the same jawline, and invited me out for breakfast. Because that's what you do at the end of a 43 hour day in which you've been awake for 41 of them. The other part of the miracle was that my ride hadn't left yet, so I could just call and cancel that, and accept said invitation without the slightest twinge of guilt. So I did get to see and hang out with Jonny after all. And there were chocolate chip pancakes involved. And his dad turned out to be the perfect first person to talk to about New Zealand. I'm sure it was the result of having been asked all the wrong questions so many times, but he knew exactly what to ask us about our semester. I don't remember how long we were there, eating far too much food, chatting with the waitress, sipping more or less caffeinated drinks, and telling stories, but I loved every second of it. And then they took me home. Well, back to Trinity at least. And Jonny got to meet a few of my friends, and I got to be weirded out at the sight of him, not at the Convent, but on campus. My campus. I think that was one of the most valuable things about that encounter. I think it was really good for me, psychologically, to see someone from CCSP outside of the program itself. To let the fact sink in that these incredible people exist here in the States too, and that goodbye need not be forever.

Since then, I have been transitioning back in some ways, and holding on to others. After the first week I stopped going to the wrong side of the car to get in, and it took only slightly longer to start looking to the left first when I am about to cross the street. But I still eat with my fork upside down in my left hand so that I can pile things onto the back of it with my knife. It took my body a little while to get used to the food here (though since I got home instead of school it's been a lot better) and a long while to get back on anything close to a good sleeping schedule. I'm excited to go back to school for my last semester, but of course, I miss CCSP terribly.

Some days are better than others, but there is never a day in which I don't think about The Old Convent and everything I did there. About the people that I met, both American and Kiwi, and that amazing little town called Kaikoura. About the mountains and the ocean and New Zealand in general. We tried to talk about parts of this process during our last week there, but I don't think that it's entirely possible to prepare for not living in an intentional community while you're still living in one. And I admit, there are times when I feel desperately alone. There is another feeling though, that is almost always stronger than all the others regarding NZ. It is the feeling of being unfinished. I spent three and a half months having all of these experiences, and some part of me refused to accept that it is over. At first I looked for a way to convince myself that it is indeed over, so that the feeling would stop and I could begin to have some kind of closure. But the longer it persists, the more I am coming to realize that the feeling probably shouldn't go. I am not who I was when I left, so why should I feel exactly the same? Why should I act the same or make the same choices I would have? Going back to the way things were before CCSP doesn't make sense at all for the very good reason that they aren't the way they were before. They will never again be that way, and I'm glad of it. I still do need some closure, but I think that will come the more I think and talk and write about it. And I know now that I will go back there, sooner rather than later. I don't know exactly when or how, but it would be impossible to stay away. I have been infected with a disease that is physically imperceptible, psychologically obvious, and more chronic than most: a deep love for Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud, New Zealand.