Friends,
Many of you know that when I was a junior in high school (back in the second half of Ronald Reagan’s first term), I was an exchange student in the Dominican Republic. Over the years I’ve kept in touch with a few of my exchange student friends, and last week a fellow exchange student and I were corresponding about the COVID Pandemic and about what it will be like for me as a pastor and him as a flight attendant to re-enter the post pandemic world. “It feels a bit like reverse culture-shock,” he told me, and I think his is the best description I’ve heard for what lies ahead.
In the lingo of 80’s-era exchange students, “reverse culture shock” refers to the disorientation one feels after coming home from a year abroad. Exchange students often feel confused when they first go overseas—for example, I was dumbfounded by the Dominican cultural disinclination to form lines and stand in them, and I never quite got used to the Dominican sense of time wherein it is considered impolite to arrive before 10PM to a party scheduled to start at 8PM—but I expected to be stretched by new cultural experiences. That’s why I was an exchange student in the first place. I was not, however, prepared to be confused by life back home in Mendocino after a year away. I no longer understood my friends’ humor (much of which was based on fun and odd things that had transpired while I was away), I missed taking siestas every afternoon, I was confused by how all American money is the same color, and I really wanted to go out dancing some place that played salsa and merengue, but that simply wasn’t an option behind the Redwood Curtain.
None of this is to say that I wasn’t thrilled to be home. I was overjoyed to be with my family and returning to the North Coast gave me a new appreciation for the beauty of the place were I grew up—something I often took for granted when I was younger. But still, it was difficult to come home because after a year away my home had changed almost as much as I had.
And so it will be when all the mask mandates and social distancing directives are lifted. It will be wonderfully and powerfully joyful, but it will not be easy. There will be reverse culture shock in significant measure as we try to remember how to do things as simple as passing by strangers on the sidewalk. It will be hard to come out of the safety of our homes and to set aside the security of our masks. Our comfort levels will vary. We will all be unsure of the new rules. Any claim of normalcy will be rooted less in reality than in nostalgia.
It won’t be easy, but it will be good, and I am looking forward to navigating and negotiating the post-COVID reverse culture shock with you. I think we will emerge on the far side stronger and better as a congregation.
And, good grief, I hope it happens soon.
God’s Peace,
Ben