I didn’t intend for it to be a self-imposed exile, but in some ways that is how it turned out. When I graduated from college in 1973 I lived in Kyoto, Japan for two years on a fellowship that involved teaching and being the resident Fellow in a university dormitory. I went to be in a different culture, to do some traveling throughout Asia, to have an adventure. All of which happened in ways that have had a profound impact on my life and how I look at the world.
One of the first Japanese words I learned was gaijin, which means foreigner, or alien. Someone who doesn’t belong. Gaijin was more a term of fear than of disrespect. At the time Japan was a homogenous culture. There were some indigenous people in the northern island of Hokkaido, and Korean nationals who were sprinkled across the country (and were never granted citizenship).There was no immigration to speak of. In a paradoxical way, Japanese people could keep their distance from gaijin by being unfailingly polite. But as I began to speak Japanese with a second grader’s fluency and adapted more to Japanese culture, I found myself being reminded in all sorts of ways that I didn’t belong; that my foreign presence made many people nervous, if not afraid. I lived in exile. In some ways it was emotionally and spiritually challenging, but it was softened because I was materially very comfortable, and I always knew I had the freedom to go home.
That is not the case with the countless number of people living in the United States who are being exiled faster than we can track of their deportations. It is almost as if we have taken the term gaijin and Americanized it by ratcheting up the fear level and then justifying the removal of people who don’t belong, all the while making wild and often false claims about their criminality and their threat to the American way of life.
And the passion to send people into exile is not just confined to those who are being rounded up in this country by masked ICE agents. People in vulnerable parts of the world are exiled from the medications and treatments that have kept them alive because aid has been cut off and medical resources have been shut down. And as SNAP benefits dry up, lines at food banks across America are getting longer as people are being exiled from the nutritional resources they had counted on. Medicaid cuts won’t take place until after next year’s midterm elections, a cynical and cruel ploy that is an attempt to shroud the exiling of millions of people from their medical care.
In many ways my feelings today mirror the experiences I felt more than fifty years ago during my two year sojourn in Japan. Unlike so many who are physically, nutritionally and medically in the crosshairs of the ‘big, beautiful bill’, I am materially comfortable. I have a home which is not under threat. I don’t feel the need to leave, yet I am filled with emotional and spiritual anxiety because I feel exiled from the hope and promise that have been bedrocks of this country. I feel like a gaijin again. But this time there is nothing polite about it.
The exiled communities in this country grows in numbers and categories. Exile leaves so many people feeling fearful and disoriented. This is a time to resist, yes, but also a time to learn. History is filled with the stories of peoples who have been either disconnected from their pattern of life, or sent off altogether. A little over 3000 years ago the psalmist laments the exile of the Jewish people from the promised land into Babylon: “How do we sing the Lord’s song upon an alien soil?” (Psalm 137:4)
How indeed.
We need to learn the songs of home and hope sing them. We need to listen to the stories of those who have been exiled, or will be exiled – in all the egregious ways that the Administration continues to roll out – and retell them. We need to build relationships with those who are being exiled – be it emotional, spiritual, physical or medical – and stand with them. We need to name exile, and claim its reality. The forces and voices that are fiercely committed to sending people into exile want – and expect, the exiled to exist in isolation from one another. We can’t let that happen. The solidarity that can be created as we sing and stand together generates a power – and a hope. We need that power. The world needs that hope. History has demonstrated that it is available to us. Faith pracices can help us discover it. Let’s use it.
