Place.
The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
~ Maya Angelou
We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
advent, 3
I turn 60 in a couple weeks, and while that number feels impossibly large, I don’t find myself wishing I was younger. What I do want as I ripen is to return to my geographical roots. I want to find my place. I want to be able to travel anywhere, but then know exactly where to return.
A couple decades ago, we lived in Colorado for a couple years, and it was a grand adventure. The Rockies were stunning and the panoramic sky majestic. I loved every minute, but in the end, it wasn’t home and we returned to North Carolina. Over the years I’ve had the privilege of traveling through most of Europe, much of Asia, bits of Central and South America—23 countries by last count—and I love that too. I want to see it all. And then I want to come home. Without home, we are impoverished.
Why would monks voluntarily choose poverty? I am coming to understand that the relinquishment of material possessions comes, mystically speaking, with the profound revelation that we actually own everything. Creation is ours, life is ours, belovedness is ours. And monks had their own version of home: traveling monks (mendicants) found the world to be their home, and stationary monks (anchorites) found a single building or even a single room to be their home. Financial poverty (or simplicity) was a divine pointer toward psycho-spiritual abundance, and this is a realization that we non-monks need too.
Because neither we nor my parents ever had a single enduring homestead, it took me a long time to figure out what geographical home even was. And while I still can’t narrow it to a specific town, I can now say that it lies somewhere in central North Carolina. And as I enter into my “third third of life,” I want to return. The mountains will always hold a special place in my soul, but my roots are calling me eastward.
Last week we looked at how our fundamental human orientation toward home begins with finding our People; now it continues by finding our Place. People and place are often connected, but not always. In fact, in today’s world I find that our strongest relational connections are often flung across the planet. But place remains fixed. It’s a pin on the map. Seems to me that when you’re young, the heart is drawn to explore… and when you’re old, something beckons us quietly but insistently back home.
Advent, too, is about finding our way home because part of home isn’t geographical at all; it’s spiritual. Discovering that our deepest longing to be eternally pursued, deeply known, and unconditionally embraced is met in the Christ-child, well, that is our hearts’ true home. Maybe your heart doesn’t need as much of a geographical center as I do for your experience of home; if that’s true, just welcome the all-encompassing embrace of God this Christmas. It’s here!
Embrace—now that’s a marvelous word, isn’t it? It implies passion and possession, acceptance and delight, and it speaks to our core need for safety and security. And if there is one place is where you always find embrace, then you have found home. Spiritually, emotionally, relationally, geographically, home is the place where you are loved for being you.
growing your soul
How would you located “place” in your experience of home?
serving our world
The closer we get to home, the more authentically we can welcome others home.
takeaway
Come Home.