Divided Loyalties

I mentioned in my post of a few days ago that there are a few different emotions that are brought up by returning to a place that was once very familiar to you. A major part of that experience, I think, is the feeling that there is often an aspect to your personality that is powerfully connected to that place - a part that may not feel connected with anywhere else. Strange and mystical as this might sound, it can actually result from a variety of quite everyday reasons: the people you love who live in that place, or the unique sensations and experiences that stem from living there. While, for instance, I may be able to eat Malaysian food even when not in Malaysia, there's nothing quite like the feeling of actually eating it in Malaysia, with the sultry heat and tropical downpour, soaking in the smells and the colours around you as you eat. This, I think, is an experience that I do not have outside of Malaysia. It awakens in me something that is not awakened anywhere else.

Then there is the love I have for the people, for the school I am visiting, for the whole, gloriously imperfect experience of being here, with them, doing what I'm doing. While I may have comparable feelings in Australia, at my school there - and I certainly do - I am someone who tends to become consumed by whatever situation I am in. While in Malaysia, my mind is almost exclusively on Malaysia. When back teaching in Melbourne, that's where my mind is once more. The effect? Not necessarily what R.D. Laing or William James would mean by the "divided self", but perhaps a more everyday approximation of it. I am still me in any place where I go, and I can be both happy and sad in equal measure wherever I find myself. And, more to the point, God is the same wherever I am, and never leaves me or forsakes me. Yet I am conflicted. I long to stay here, yet I long to go home.

Isn't this, I wonder, what we should feel about Heaven? Yet the feeling, in that case, should be more intense in the conflict it causes, while also more clear-cut in where the lines are drawn. Heaven, unlike Malaysia or Melbourne, is perfect, and we will only ever be happy there, never sad. Going to Heaven will be the true act of Going Home, where there will be no sadness or regret. Yet the Apostle Paul captured the tension perfectly when he wrote these words:

"For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body." (Philippians 1:21-24)

Perhaps, when we feel these inner conflicts, they are because our divided loyalties result purely from division between earthly motives. If our desires and hearts are fixed on our true Home, then we will feel conflict, but not the conflict of a divided heart. Whether here or with Christ, our hearts will be with Him and His kingdom.

Early last year, reflecting on this same conflict, I wrote the following poem, words which, now I am back in Malaysia, bring me back to the very emotions that must have prompted me to write them. I will let this be my prayer today:

The Undivided Self

(After John Donne)

I am a homeland of warring fractions.

I am a mountain pulled by opposing forces,

a mass on the verge of becoming many islands.

If you have the power,

and the love to overpower my will,

keep me as one –

or, if there is much that must be discarded,

may you leave just the parts attached to your land;

cleave them unto your shelf, your continent,

and may all else cleave away.

If I cannot be one, then make me all None,

and make my nothing All on the land-mass of

your wondrous whole.