Subject: A Long and Winding Road Home - Part One
Dear Friends,
Around this time thirty-one years ago I was wrestling with a whole
cascade of ideas and emotions. It was one of the hottest summers on
record in England, but it was the United States that was so much on my
mind as the days ticked by, and we found ourselves getting ever closer
to pulling up our roots and moving across the wide Atlantic Ocean.
We were venturing into the unknown. As exciting as the prospect was,
fears and anxieties jostled and adrenalin pumped. Was this the most
colossal mistake we had ever made in our lives? How would we ever adapt
to living in such a strange and alien country as the USA? How would our
children fare amidst so much change? How would we adjust to the American
Church? And so the inner debate went on and one.
Between keeping our little girls clean and fed, we were packing up our
home, and bringing to an end the happy years of our ministry in Bristol,
England. During the long light summer evenings Rosemary and I talked
endlessly about what we were about to do, praying, and at times holding
onto each other as both reasonable and silly fears swept over us.
I will never forget the moment the British Airways 747 lifted off and
the roofs of Heathrow Airport quickly disappeared beneath the mist. I
fought back tears, felt nauseous, and wondered whether ever again we
would see our beloved homeland. It seemed we were about to fall over the
edge of the world. If crossing the Atlantic was as emotionally fraught
as this for us, how must it have been for the first settlers in Virginia
and the Pilgrims?
Three decades have passed since these things took place and many of
those same feelings have again become our companions. However, this time
we are preparing to make the return journey. The days are ticking by for
us to go back to England, and after a half a lifetime of Americanization
I now find myself anxious and concerned about whether I will be able to
fit back into a very different Britain, and a much altered Church of
England from the one that we left.
While there is a sense of adventure about all this, in my calmer moments
I wonder whether issues of sanity come into play when people consider
migrating across an ocean for the second time in their lives! Yet how
many folks get the chance to serve the Lord in a position that perfectly
fits their gifts and skills when they are in their early sixties?
A number of years ago when trying to prepare for the latter years of my
active life, I had this sense that God's purposes for me might be in the
realm of bringing to birth the next generation of Christian leaders, but
as time passed and nothing came of it I concluded that I had misread the
signs. Then when such dreams had been forgotten, out of the bright blue
yonder came Ridley Hall, Cambridge. Now I find myself amazed that I will
be able to wrap up four decades of stipendiary ministry playing a small
part in this vital enterprise of getting the next generation onto the
front lines. In many respects I can hardly believe my good fortune, but
leaving our world here is the price that we have to pay.
Right now we are wrestling with realtors, and beginning to part with
precious possessions, wondering all the time whether we can financially
make it in a place where a modest apartment costs about as much as a
significant mansion in this neck of the woods. There are fears galore,
and while England isn't an unknown there are trends and subtleties
within the culture that are sure to come as a huge surprise. How will we
adjust back to the English Church? Isn't it going to be very difficult
to leave our younger daughter, a physician and wife, here on this side
of the water? Meanwhile the question of thirty years ago comes up again
to haunt us: are we making the most colossal mistake of our now
considerably longer lives?
My late Aunt Mary has been a warning to us. After twenty-five happy
years in Montreal, Canada, and having been widowed, my father's elder
sister returned to our hometown in the 1970s to live. It didn't work.
The woman who had left the United Kingdom for the Dominion of Canada in
the year of the Queen's coronation, had been altered by the New World
out of all recognition. She chafed at the smallness of English life, and
it wasn't too long before she sold up and returned westward, never even
wanting to visit her birthplace again.
I find myself wondering in my darker moments if it is going to be the
same for us. I am already bracing myself for my first year back in
England's green and pleasant land. Like my aunt there are bound to be
elements of English life that will chafe, irritate, drive me mad, make
me angry, and trigger reserve homesickness. I live here amidst a
residual Christian culture within which I am comfortable, how will I
adjust to the European side of the ocean where such a thing is long
gone, and the most significant religious challenge of the 21st Century
is how to address the rising tide of Islam?
During these many years spent in America we have experienced periods of
intense homesickness. At first it was an agonizing sense of loss, but as
time has passed it has turned into a delicious bittersweetness -- more
romantic yearning for a Masterpiece Theatre figment of the imagination
than a longing for the England that is really and truly there. At this
point I find myself walking into a bracing north wind that is blowing
such dreaminess away. England is not about rose-covered cottage doorways
and Jane Austen country house society, but is an over-populated,
thrusting, secular realm which at times has a very nasty edge to it. It
is to this England that I am returning, and to which I must readjust.
It should be no surprise that as we let go of our American life we
should be be looking back and assessing what it has all been about. For
a start, I am immensely grateful for the time that I have spent here.
For nearly a quarter century I have been a citizen of two countries,
never entirely at home in either, and I expect this to be true for the
rest of my life. There is so much about the United States that I love
and admire, and I hope that during our years here we have been shaped
bysome of the very best in American culture and Christianity.
The United States may be far from perfect, but I recognize that this is
an extraordinary country that still has extraordinary potential, and
while here I have had the privilege of knowing some of the most
remarkable people that walk the face of this planet. I hope that I will
carry back to the Old World some of the great benefits that are mine
because of the time that I have spent here in the New.
I am not entirely sure of how it is there now, but the Britain I left
was one where some of the brightest ideas would very politely have cold
water poured over them (unless they came from someone who was very
forceful, or who had the right background and connections). The America
to which I came was one that was willing to take a calculated risk and
give something new and different a try. Failure was not seen as
terminal, and space is given to folk to pick themselves up, dust
themselves down, and move forward after such a hiatus. I still believe
this to be the case, and it is part of the strength of the American spirit.
I want to ponder the Episcopal Church at length in a later piece, but I
cannot finish this one without some reference to it. I came to the USA
believing that God was asking that we play our small part in its
renewal. During the years I have been here we have seen some remarkable
things happen and God acting in ways that were beyond our wildest
dreams. But now as I prepare to go back to England, the Episcopal Church
has reduced itself to a pitiful tatter of its former self.
I grieve the fragmentation and the rich web of relationships and
ministries that have been badly damaged or terminally broken. It seems
increasingly evident that the Episcopal Church I have known and loved
has committed itself to the garbage heap of history, but I am not sure
the course which has been taken by many who have been fellow-travelers
and colleagues in the past is the right one. I said many years ago that
if the Episcopal Church were to split then the only people to gain from
it would be the attorneys. Alas, from what I am seeing and hearing, this
sad prediction looks set to turn out to be true.
I try to comfort myself that we are passing through that time of
confusion that inevitably precedes a new beginning. It is my prayer that
after this time of upheaval steadier hands will take the tiller of the
Episcopal Church and its separated daughters, and with it wisdom and
willingness to face up to what the Kingdom of God demands will emerge.
Perhaps the Spirit of God will take that American can-do mindset and
enable us to come out of this slough of despond into which we have
fallen, and help us to create a missionary body that knows how to reach
the hearts and souls of post-Christian, post-modern America, with the
Good News of Jesus Christ in all its fullness.
Meanwhile, my job is to get on with the process of sorting my things,
wrapping up my life here, and getting ready to go back to my homeland
and all the challenges and opportunities for the Gospel that await us there.
In Christ,
Richard Kew
RichardKew@aol.com
http://richardkew.blogspot.com
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