I wrote this a couple of years ago, but wanted to share it again tonight.
I leave tomorrow for a church meeting in Houston, TX and will finally be back in the NW Saturday night. I hope to resume normal blogging on church planting, life, theology, and reading next week. Until then I hope you enjoy this. Thanks for reading.
JRL+
In the movie Garden State the main characters Andrew (Zach Braff) and Sam (Natalie Portman) talk about the idea of “home.” Andrew says, “You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.” Later, he continues, “You’ll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it’s just gone. And you can never get it back. It’s like you get homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. I mean it’s like this rite of passage, you know. You won’t have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it’s like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.”
I wonder how many people feel this way. Especially those of us who are in our 20’s and 30’s. We are a transient generation. I’ve had many conversations with friends about how nice it would be to stop moving around, to settle down – put down roots, find someone with whom to live life and experience those simple every day things. How nice it would be to have everything in one place. To make friends with the idea that you will be around for a while to cultivate those friendships. To begin building that idea of home again. For now, however, many of us have a sense of homelessness, lostness, disconnectedness. Even as we live in a community together.
Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of opportunities to build community, but I wonder how many young people feel like we have a place we can call “home” and how many more yearn to have such a place. In his book The Land Walter Brueggemann writes, “The sense of being lost, displaced, and homeless is pervasive in contemporary culture. The yearning to belong somewhere, to have a home, to be in a safe place, is a deep and moving pursuit. Loss of place and yearning for place are dominant images.”
For many people in our ‘postmodern age’ we have space, but we do not have place. Space is everywhere. Place is something altogether different. Again Brueggemann:
Place is space that has historical meanings, where some things have happened that are now remembered and that provide continuity and identity across generations. Place is space in which important words have been spoken that have established identity, defined vocation, and envisioned destiny. Place is space in which vows have been exchanged, promises have been made, and demands have been issues. Place is indeed a protest against the unpromising pursuit of space. It is a declaration that our humanness cannot be found in escape, detachment, absence of commitment, and undefined freedom.
Place has a sacredness that space does not. In The Hermeneutics of Charity Brian Walsh and Steven Bouma-Prediger examine this phenomenon of home and space in “With and Without Boundaries: Christian Homemaking Admist Postmodern Homelessness.” They lay out seven characteristics of what it means to be home. They have also written a book, Beyond Homelessness, that looks (and expands) similar concepts (as well as actual homelessness). If you are interested in this topic I’d highly suggest you read their book.
1) Home is a place of permanence and familiarity. It is more than a place to stay, but “signifies a certain degree of spatial permanence, a kind of enduring presence or residence.”
2) Home is not simply a house, but there must be an experience of at-homeness that makes the house into a home. This happens “when it is transformed by memories into a place of identity, connectedness, meaning, order, appropriation, and care.” Another way to say this is that homes are “narratively formed.” Forgetfulness then becomes exile; “once stories are forgotten, there is no home to return to becuase there is no place, or even potential place, that could be shaped by those stories.”
3) To dwell is “to be at peace.” So, home is a place of rest. A place of enough, of satisfaction, of contentment.
4) Homes require the practice of hospitality, or they become self-enclosed fortresses. A sense of home is formed in the welcome of the Other.
5) A sense of home requires inhabitation. A putting down of roots. It is a matter of being “not merely at our destination but fully involved in it.” Care and cultivation of a particular space turn the space into a place and make a home.
6) Home is a point of orientation. “Home is a nomic structure that provides order and direction for life.” Home is how we orient everything else we do, and everywhere else we go.
7) Home is a place of belonging, acceptance, and affiliation. Home is “where people know me, and where I find recognition without having to struggle for it.” Home is a place where we belong, and a place that belongs to us.
Home sounds like a pretty good place…
