No Longer Strangers

ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award

Belonging has never come easy to me.

Growing up, there was my mutated national identity to deal with—my not-quite-American, not-quite-Indonesian soul, restless in both countries. Later, when I came out as a celibate gay Christian, I found I didn't fit into the church as easily as I used to. I've often wondered what it means to belong to others even when I can't manage to blend in with them.

The way Jesus tells it, if we give up on belonging in order to follow him, we'll find ourselves belonging anyway. We might not belong the way other people do, with normal homes and normal families and normal ways of fitting in. But we'll belong in a way that's a hundred times better. We'll be fully in place because we know we are out of place. We'll belong like aliens.

Maybe you're caught in the same tension as me, wanting to fit somewhere even as you're permanently out of place. Maybe you feel like an alien.

If so, let's be aliens together.



Gregory Coles (PhD, Penn State University) is a writer, speaker, and worship leader. His first book, Single, Gay, Christian, was a 2017 Foreword INDIES Award Finalist. He lives in central Pennsylvania, where he recently completed a PhD in English from Penn State.

Foreword by Jen Pollock Michel


Tentacles: An Introduction
Part One: Belonging In


1. Womb Nostalgia


2. Home Sweet Airport


3. Poohsticks in an Open Sewer


4. The Man Who Coughed Blood on Me


5. Hide and Seek


6. Dengue Days


7. How to Deal Drugs
Interlude: A Glorious Dark
Part Two: Belonging With


8. A Jedi's Training


9. Santai Sundays


10. Friendship Costs Twenty-Five Dollars an Hour


11. The Origami Artists


12. Laundering


13. Ghosts of Friendship Past


14. Thank You for Making Me Hurt
Interlude: Stitching
Part Three: Belonging To


15. Magnets


16. That Guy Who Cleaned My Microwave


17. The Art of Neighboring


18. Table for One


19. Limbs


20. Memento Mori


21. Rivers Cannot Sweep It Away
Postlude: Shore


Acknowledgments