Conversation Point

Coming Home

Travelocity.com and I are becoming intimately acquainted on my diligent quest for flights home sometime in the next few months. Many other state tourism bureaus clam the title "God's Country" for their neck of the woods, but Wisconsin's Door Peninsula, where I grew up, is surely the place God rested on the seventh day. What better place to enjoy the land, water, fresh air, sunshine and homemade ice cream after six long days of constant creative activity? I once told a friend that I thought the whole world would be as beautiful as this place. She laughed, saying I must have been quite disappointed on discovering that wasn't the case.

Perhaps.

Something else to consider is whether or not we can ever go home, at least to whatever imagination holds, together with our heart, soul and memory, as being that perfect place in which we believe we feel most comfortable, most ourselves. That definition could easily describe an entirely different place than the physical boundaries our of which we found our way to adulthood. It's a fair question to ask ourselves: How do we think about home? All the implications contained in the answer each of us comes to inform the rest of our lives.

Having just celebrated my fiftieth last week, I am also living my jubilee year, something the Biblical book of Leviticus tells us is hallowed, a special time of reflection, reorganization and renewal. Another part of the jubilee story is that this is the time in our lives in which we find ourselves going to the land that God is giving us. Jubilee is not only a time to kick back, smell the roses and drink very old, very good Scotch. There is also some deeply felt movement in our souls that requires paying attention in new ways so as not to miss the next steps of the journey. For myself, I am not sure where the land is that God is giving me, anymore than I feel fully comfortable calling where I grew up home.

Is this uncertainty about home also a Biblical tradition, a sacred trust handed down to us through the named and nameless faithful ones preceding us? How did Adam and Eve feel after they were booted from Eden? What was their next address? Did they long for the only home they had ever known? I think of them, and I think of the Israelites wandering the desert for forty years, feeling a sense of kinship, an understanding of that confused, rootless state in which I have found myself each time I have moved. Excitement only carries me so far, and then I must find new places to grocery shop, get my hair cut and my teeth cleaned.

And what of Jesus' life? The Gospels don't mention his desire to find a good chiropractor while he was on the road working those three years, but they do mention that he stayed wherever he was welcomed. My guess is that translated into some pretty interesting accommodations, some of which he probably never mentioned to his mother. But he appears to have appreciated the hospitality of friends and strangers alike, those who had permanent pillows on which to lay their heads each night and who understood the needs of those who did not enjoy the same luxury. Sometimes home is carried for us by compassionate souls until we can find our way back there for ourselves.

Perhaps home isn't so much a physical place as much as it is how we find our way though life. If that is so, we are always coming home and God welcomes us, not as a treasured guest, but as family. Knowing that one basic truth is what carries us.

posted by Cory L. Kemp @ 2:14 PM