As he stands in the Square waiting to get his picture taken, Gordon M. Fauth '93 has to be reminded to smile. It's a sunny, brisk day, and chattering students and the Out-of-Town News worker cut between Fauth and the Crimson photographer, ducking their heads, nodding in silent apology and moving on down the street. All around swirl the sounds of the Square, from the hawks of the Square Deal man to the laughter of the kids in the pit by the T-stop. Gordon's silence and stiff posture are strangely out of place in this acre of motion and life. He fixes his steady, unchanging expression on the lens of the camera, and slightly bends his lips, trying to comply with the photographer's simple request. Despite the smile, however, he stands upright, hands awkwardly at his sides, the Harvard insignia from his sweatshirt planted on his chest.

One gets the impression that this is a familiar position for Fauth--existing as part of a world, and carrying the banner of that world, but at the same time standing out from that world, not knowing exactly how or why to fit in.

At Harvard, Fauth's obvious stand-out characteristic is his age--he is 35 and a sophomore at the College. At first glance, it seems as if his first-year facebook picture is one of those jokes which the facebook editors like to stick in for fun: Fauth has a beard, and he is surrounded on all sides by posed high school yearbook photos.

As in the Square and the facebook, Fauth has, throughout his life, existed between several worlds.

Secularism, Religion and Alfalfa

Fauth was born in Toppenish, Washington; he grew up on an Indian reservation.

Because his parents, both of whom were highly religious, were skeptical of the benefits of a secular education, Fauth's formal schooling ended with the eighth grade. And even during these years, Fauth's education was sporadic, for his parents' religious work involved much travel and took him out of school for as much as a year and a half at a time, he says.

He never went to high school.

But during those younger years, when he was required by law to attend school and learn math, history, and English, Fauth's life involved a lot of juggling; at the end of each school day he returned home to his father, a priest, and a household in which the number one priority was God. His home life mainly involved worship and working on his family's alfalfa farm.

After the eighth grade, Fauth worked as a day laborer on the farms in the area, he says. At age 17, he moved, along with his parents, to Jerusalem, where his dad became the pastor of a church at which Fauth's grandfather had been the priest.

But at this point in recounting his history, Fauth's speech becomes more vague. He stayed more or less under his parents' wing, he says working for a church newspaper distributed to American churches from Jerusalem. And sometimes during those years he got out on his own and traveled around most of the Middle East.

"I hadn't intended to be away [from America for] that long, but one year becomes the next," Fauth says about his time in Israel. His speech is filled with a sense of the general, as if a decade and more of his life had passed him by almost inconsequentially.

Time To Come Home

Seventeen years later, Fauth returned to the United States for the first time since his arrival in Israel. His visit to America was brief--the stay lasted only one month, during the summer of 1988. But that one month seems to have been more important to Fauth than his previous 17 years in Jerusalem. It was during this month that he decided it was time to come home.

When Fauth speaks of his experiences during this month, his voice becomes softer, more passionate. One senses this was a time that helped him find his own place in the world.