I hear Russian through my window, rising from the street below. Students are walking by, to and from class. Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Albanian I hear in my room on a regular basis, and I encounter several other languages if I stroll through my dorm…or through the Klaipeda city streets. When I go to the Orthodox church, beneath the tall spires and domes, looking up at the priests I could hear Polish, depending on which church I am in.
I go to the store, called IKI meaning “see you later”, and the packages are in Lithuanian, or Russian, or sometimes something else…rarely in English. I select what I want by looking at the picture. The cashier greets me, and I do not know what she says. After I pay, and receive my change, I usually respond “Achu” meaning “Thank you” and go my way, arms full.
I feel alone, separated here. I am learning the language, becoming familiar with the customs, but I am a man apart: I am in exile here. It is an exile because I am completely removed from the environment that is comfortable to me, that I grew up in, that I know best. Exile because I am living so far from home, from family, from where I usually see God.
I find it interesting that the root idea of the word, which we get from the Latin by way of Old French, is the idea of a “wanderer.” Certainly I feel like a wanderer here…having recently visited Latvia and Estonia and soon will be visiting a small corner of Russia. I am moving, seeing, experiencing, living.
The Old Testament of the Bible tells how the entire nation of Israel was forced into exile for their generations of disobedience of God. They were deported to Babylon for over 70 years, and most of the nation never returned. Here in the Baltics I have learned that the Soviet Russians exiled Lithuanians by the thousands to Siberia, and few ever came home.
What is the purpose of my exile? I have not disobeyed God, at least not as Israel did. I am not being oppressed by a Communist regime. Mine is an exile of being; to learn: about other countries, ways of life…and myself; to grow, for that is the direct result of learning. One cannot truly learn without growing. To mature, for I am still a boy, awkwardly being a man. In seeing who I am from different perspectives, like viewing my reflection in foreign shop windows, layers of vision are added to my sight. In experiencing God in totally different contexts, like standing in churches I would never have entered before, dimension is added to my faith. In being transplanted into Lithuanian soil, like living in a foreign city, I branch out in ways I never thought possible. In losing comfort, familiarity, friends, and family, like in being exiled, I mature in the wake of those losses.
Sometimes it takes exile, a crucible of life, to grow a man.
a simple man 