by Neil Boggan
An anniversary is certainly an occasion for remembrance. I will begin with my remembrance of the Clarks’ arrival in the Philippines. The Director of Grounds and Maintenance (Kuya Jonathan) and I went to Manila in order to collect the Clarks on Saturday, September 25, 2010. Their flight had been delayed a little, so we had to wait longer than expected to meet them. They arrived at night, and with our collective fatigue (it averages about a six hour drive from Baguio to the Manila airport), we had planned to stay at some nearby missionary housing managed by the International Mission Board.
Kuya Jonathan and I slept very well that night, but an earlier-than-expected knock on our door from Ryan brought news that Emily Jane had not slept at all and that he and Cindy had taken turns staying up with her throughout the night. They were ready to go as soon as possible. As soon as Kuya Jonathan and I had roused ourselves sufficiently, we started the Clarks’ first journey from Manila to Baguio.
The journey was uneventful for most of it. Cindy and Ryan’s observation of the landscape would intermittently be interrupted by my questions inquiring about the journey or about mutual acquaintances back in Atlanta. They faded in and out of sleep, and by “they” I mean Cindy and Ryan, because Emily Jane was showing no signs of not having slept for about 36 hours straight.
We stopped to buy a crib for Emily Jane in Rosario. Kuya Jonathan asked the attendants to set up the crib Cindy and Ryan had picked out piece by piece in order to make sure that it would assemble correctly. After discovering that it would come together as intended, we loaded up and continued the drive. Not too long after this stop, Emily Jane finally feel asleep…for about forty-five minutes and then she was wide awake again. It was at this point where she began to feel the affects of the long travel and a major break in her routine. She threw up, we stopped to clean up, and she threw up again a few miles down the road. She took it in stride. She wasn’t sick in the sense that she had a stomach virus; she just had had a long trip. Emily Jane would slip into a comatose state of sleep on the way to dinner that night. Such was the Clarks’ first trip from Manila to Baguio.
I had been in Baguio for about seven weeks when the Clarks arrived. We had met in 2006 when I first entered McAfee School of Theology. In fact, Ryan had sent me the information and the application to that school in October 2005. I struggled with how to make my myself available to them in the best way. On the one hand, I wanted to help them out as much as possible, but on the other hand, I knew they would need to get their bearings on their own terms and to meet people as themselves and not through me.
If I had any anxiety about this, it went away quickly as the Clarks dove into their Baguio lives headfirst. Cindy brazenly wanted to explore downtown Baguio on foot as soon as possible (and she did). Ryan cavalierly sought out as many faculty, staff, and students as he could in order to begin the process of learning names and titles.
They were the same outgoing and curious people I had remembered so fondly from my time in Atlanta. Just like in Atlanta, they intentionally created community in Baguio wherever they were, and they were still good at it. I don’t know how many times I went to their house for dinner, but I greatly appreciated it every time not just because I like them, but because it allowed me to be in community with them. We shared several adventures together: Tam-Awan Village, Bataan, Mt. Samat, Pure Gold Supermarket trips, haircuts, a church anniversary, Hong Kong, and ethnic dancing to name some.
Perhaps the most blatant roles to point out in which the Clarks served in my life were chefs, hosts, a baby sister, trip companions, and co-workers. The more abstract, but no less important, roles to point out were personal counselors, cultural interpreters, cheerleaders, good examples of parents, and safe space. They helped me process what was going on in my life in the Philippines and what I would bring back to the USA with me from the Philippines. Their commitment to the creation of community demonstrated, as it did in Atlanta, their intentionality and their generosity with their resources.
Those of you who know the Clarks will not be surprised by their outgoingness, curiosity, or their generosity. You are aware that these attributes are part of what it means to be Cindy, Ryan, and Emily Jane Clark. In terms of their one-year anniversary, however, I would like us to engage in an act of holy memory and remember who the Clarks are becoming.
What I’m asking you to do seems like a blatant abuse of grammar, for how can one remember something that is not past, but rather, that is ongoing? In celebrating an anniversary for overseas missionaries, we can’t just remember them for how they were the last time we interacted with them. We have to remember why they are overseas in the first place: to enact change and to be changed. The Clarks are in Baguio, the Philippines for two and a half years in order to change the lives of the people they encounter. Simultaneously, the Clarks felt the need to be changed by a long-term mission experience overseas. They did not want to be changed because their lives were boring or because they were avoiding a massive amount of gambling debts; rather, they felt that God was nudging them toward this experience.
As a result of the active change they will be doing in the lives of others and the passive change that will be done to them through others and through circumstances, we as their supporters and loved ones must actively and intentionally engage in acts of holy memory so that we will not try to control their becoming with the limits of the memories we have of them in our encounters with them in certain places and certain times. No, we must give them sacred space to become the Clarks of tomorrow and the Clarks of 2013 (their slated year of return) today. That doesn’t mean we throw away our pictures of them and expect them to be unrecognizable when we encounter them next. It does mean, however, that we place their lives within our holy memories so that we can properly allow them the sacred space to develop into people who are changed by an experience that very few of us get to witness firsthand.
In order to illustrate this better, I will refer to a story in a book I am currently reading, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler. In this autobiographical story, Hessler recounts his two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Fuling, China. Toward the end of the work he tells about his father coming to visit him. He says of his father’s visit, “And I found that it was difficult to predict what would bother him, because I had been in Fuling for so long that I no longer saw it with a true outsider’s eye…I found that the parent visit was a kind of revelation: suddenly I saw how much I had learned and how much I had forgotten” (pp. 328-329).
With this era of technology, one doesn’t always forget as often as in days when there were no Skype or e-mail, but I think it safe to say that the Clarks feel fairly integrated into the society in which they are currently living. Ryan’s parents came to visit not too long ago, and I think that the experience was revelatory showing them how much they had learned in the time they have been in the Philippines. The Clarks, of course, have one of the best mechanisms for measuring how much things are changing: a blonde-haired, blue-eyed two-year-old (going on three) daughter. Through Emily Jane, Ryan and Cindy have a more tangible grasp on time and change, although this does not necessarily help them gage how they personally are changing.
Still, no matter how integrated they are in the Filipino society, they are not Filipino. On the other hand, no matter how integrated they were in US society, they are not living in the US currently nor do they anticipate doing so for another year and a half. You see, a long-term overseas mission experience causes a lot of internal cultural confusion. You go back and forth between the macro worlds of home culture and current culture and the micro worlds of loved ones from home and loved ones from the temporary home. As you become more accustomed to the current, temporary home learning its language, customs, and manners, you fall out of practice with those same features from your native home.
As you reflect on the one-year anniversary of the Clarks in Baguio, the Philippines, exercise your holy memory. Remember, the Clarks are in Baguio to enact change and to be changed. They are straddling the two macro worlds of their U.S. lives and their Filipino lives. They go between these worlds daily. Sometimes this goes smoothly, and sometimes it does not. On some days, they will feel almost 100% integrated into Filipino society, and other days they will feel just how nonintegrated they are into Filipino society. At times they will think they could live the rest of their lives in the Philippines, and at other times, they will wish they were living in U.S. again.
As they get a more objective grasp on what U.S. culture and Filipino culture value, they will evaluate these values and decide the positives and negatives of them. As their identity becomes more and more mixed with their Filipino lives, their own identities become more mysterious to themselves in some ways. They will ask themselves, “Who am I (are we) becoming?” It is at this juncture that we bless them through our financial gifts, our prayers, our letters, and our care packages. This is how we affirm and encourage them in their process of becoming. This is how we say a holy “Yes” to their enacting change and their being changed. This is how we keep them in holy memory.
Ryan, Cindy, and Emily Jane: Happy One-Year Anniversary! I miss you all, and I remember our time spent together in Baguio very fondly. May Christ be a beautiful part of your enacting change and your being changed. Thank you for sharing your lives with those whom you are encountering. Your hospitality and generosity are gifts from God that you are passing on to many others in the form of the “Beloved Community” to quote Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. Best wishes to all of you and much love, always.
Neil
