COMING HOME

September 7, 2003

            Jayber Crow in his book, Pilgrim, says,  “I am a Pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked.  Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there.  Often I have received better than I have deserved.  Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes.  I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley.  And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been lead.   Make of that what you will.”  End of reading.

            I came home the other night, and it felt so good to come in the door, to see familiar things, to smell the smell of home.  I wanted to call my mother and tell her, “I’m home,”  but my mother, I remembered, has gone from this life, gone to whatever is home for the dead.

            There is something comforting about coming home, just as there is something reassuring about seeing the water of a stream return to the ocean, just as there is something mysterious and soothing about the possibility of returning to our deepest spiritual home, returning to our source.  It doesn’t have to be in church.  But only when I am in a holy, quiet place, like awakened by sunrise, nursed  to sleep by the stars, tranquilized by the mingling of stream and sea, quiet in my pew; for me only in the quiet do I know myself already home and pulled by a force I don’t understand to surrender completely to the call of home. 

Home is where we rest our heart.  Home may be your family, a special relationship, a place.  Home may be a vocation, a dream, an activity that you love.  Home may be a religious community.  And at the deepest level, home is communion with our source.

            Whatever home is for us at any given time, the possibility of going home raises our hopes for acceptance, affirmation, even fulfillment.  We anticipate a renewed connectedness with our heritage and with our destiny.  On the other hand, the act of actually going home exposes us to the possibility of disappointment.  Once home, we may not experience the degree of acceptance, affirmation and fulfillment we hoped for.  We may not find the depth of connectedness we remembered or expected.  It’s possible that we’ve changed so much or that home has changed so much that we might experience the saying, “You can’t go home,” or expressed another way, home never is what it used to be.

            But regardless of the possibility of disappointment, there is still a powerful pull to come home, to come to the familiar that we experienced long ago; to come to the familiar only imagined and hoped for; to come to deep connectedness with both our heritage and our destiny.

            What will we do with this call of home?  Sometimes it’s a passing thought that can be enjoyed and dismissed.  But other times, the call of home is a powerful force that demands decision.  Will we return home?  Can we take the risk, the risk that home will accept us as we have become and the risk that we will accept home as it has become?

            To which home are you feeling most drawn?  Is it your family, a special relationship, a special place?  Perhaps you’re being drawn home to a vocation, a dream, an activity you love.  Is it this religious community that’s luring your spirit?  Or is it ultimacy itself that is calling you back to your source?  Home is where you rest your heart.  Follow your heart home.  Amen.