MISSIONARY CHILD IN INDIA, IDENTITY 1
One of the first things I realize when I try to sort out my tribal identity is that I didn’t become a liberal by conviction. I may be convinced that I am absolutely right to be a liberal, but the way that I became a liberal was because my parents were liberal, I simply fit into my parent’s beliefs as much as I could understand them as they fit into their parent’s beliefs. My mother, an Illinois farm girl, married my father and fit into his more liberal beliefs. I am no more a liberal by choice than I am white or male or American by choice. I am all these things by accident or chance.
But one of my tribes, through which I gained my identity, was by growing up as the child of agricultural missionaries in India and by going to an American missionary boarding school in the lower Himalaya mountains,
Woodstock School. From the age of nine through high school I spent nine months a year away from home except for the time when my mother would leave the hot plains of north India and come to a missionary owned mountain cottage and take me out of boarding for three or four months. During those 9 months I would only see my father for a brief 10 day summer vacation when we would go hiking or traveling. My identity was formed by living with children from many nations in dormitories, often twenty beds in a large room in the lower years. We were an expat community that was embedded in India but were mostly not Indians and certainly outsiders. We felt comfortable in India but didn’t feel we belonged there and when we graduated from high school didn’t think we would ever come back. Woodstock was a magical community isolated in space in time. My class has kept in touch with each other over these sixty years. I went to a Woodstock reunion in Estes Park this last June.
It was a nondenominational Christian school. We had prayer in school and scripture classes three times a week and many of us had Christian Endeavor meetings on Sunday evenings. Some of the students were from very conservative denominations and therefore we didn’t have dances or learn how to dance.
Square dancing and roller skating parties were all acceptable. We also didn’t have movies on campus because some denominations thought they were a sin, or course we didn’t smoke or drink. Presbyterians were liberal, Mennonites were conservative but being quite different didn’t seem to matter at all. We were all good friends, didn’t feel we were threatened by anything or missing out on anything. We had a great time.
But the point of this was that this part of my identity, shared by very few Americans, is still a major part of my life. Certainly, with students from all over the world we are open to all forms of cultures and religions and of course were liberal. Our experience liberalized us.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 