In a World Full of Refugees: Who is s Stranger, a Foreigner, an Alien?

You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Deut. 10: 19

Around 1850, unknown to each other, two families left Germany and found themselves in Canada, one in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, the other near Walkerton. For eight generations the family provided a living for their families: as yeoman, farmers, landowners, teachers, nurses.  German was spoken, the faith was Lutheran, and German traditions were incorporated into Canadian life. I am the eighth generation of these two families; not that you would know by my last name as it changed from “Mueller” when I was married.

I am a Canadian. I belong!

I practice Christianity as a Lutheran. I belong!

I belong until asked, “How does someone with a name like McNabb, end up Lutheran?”

I belong until my grown-up journey is interrupted... 

I grew up around Georgian Bay with beautiful big water, jack pines, limestone and granite.

My job took me to Northern NB where the land was unfamiliar: big water was a river, there was little corn with few cows in the fields, rock striation was vertical, there were no cedar trees. I was exiled from familiar scenery like that represented in the Northern paintings of Tom Tompson and the Group of Seven. I was aghast on one occasion to hear directed at me, “Well you’re just an Upper Canadian.” I belonged to the community in which I lived, but, a part of me felt like the stranger, a foreigner, an alien.

My job brought me to Halifax, NS.

Nova Scotia felt like coming home. It looked a bit like Northern ON with rocks and trees, and water so big you can’t see across it. The peninsula of the city is like an old European city. The city has a spirit, one that holds in tension the colliding of old and new, a warmness where visitors are treated as guests, where organic fair trade coffee and locally crafted beer is found on every other corner.  I was shocked the first time I heard the quip “CFA,” that means a person who “comes from away.”  Twelve years later, I am, and will remain a CFA.

 I belong here.  My spirit is akin to this place.  I belong to the community in which I live, but, a part of me feels like a stranger, a foreigner, an alien.

And I guess a piece of me, my heart (is grounded) in the Algonquin forest, not in Alex Colville paintings, or the great depictions of ships at sea that flood the NS Art Gallery.

The smell of the sea does not smell like the Great Lakes.

The sea air is not home, as much as my spirit is akin with the spirit of Halifax, I remain a

CFA:  a stranger, a foreigner, an alien.

God,

I belong

I feel that I should

Eight generations of living in this land

Designated as Canadian

White, privileged

And yet,

Although a Maritimer --- an Upper Canadian, a CFA---

I belong and yet, a stranger, a foreigner, an alien

In my homeland.

Perhaps we all belong and are all strangers at the same time.

Embracing this may I enfold every other as sister, as brother, for we all journey on foreign land.

Amen.


an additional prayer:

God of Land and Sky and Sea,
As you journeyed in the creation of all things,
You filled the world with Mystery and wonder.
There is a piece of you in all.
The variety is overwhelming; astounding.
May the pieces of land and sky and sea,
that we experience, awe us such that we approach all journey 
and everyone's story with a new understanding ---
an inkling of respect.
May our journey be one diverse abundant trail where 
Mystery binds our hearts as one.
Amen.