Home Today

Today’s the day. Today’s the day they told me to go. I had lived in the same room for just over five weeks; today’s the day I walked from that to my car, and my love drove us to our home.

In the hospital, I found myself moving quickly up and down the halls. The wheelchair rolled quickly down the smooth hallway. And when I walked, I made better time than most people who were living in the rooms near mine.

Today, though, I move back out into the not-hospital world - where I notice that as comparatively quickly as I locomoted in the hospital, I’m slow compared to most people. I’m slow, and my gait is stilted and shuffling.

Now I sit in the comfort of our home, recognizing that the hospital is safer and easier to navigate than an apartment complex or a grocery store or the sidewalk next to a parking lot. I sit here, recognizing that I’ll be slow and clumsy for a while.

And today - the day I’m released from the hospital, the day I come home - today, I realize again that it will be challenging to make my way through this world. And embedded within that realization, I begin to understand the truth that I'm just the same as every single other person. 

Advent Midweek Reflection, Week Three - Creating a Home

This is the outline of the reflection I shared the most recent Advent midweek Vespers service. As one might expect, this outline does not contain exactly the words that were spoken, but it's pretty close.

***   ***   ***

Before the reflection, the following was read:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
     ~ Hebrews 3:3-4

***   ***   ***

It’s a shell, an empty space,
walls, rooms, floors,
a kitchen that might have prepared
food in the past
but it was unfamiliar food that was cooked,
for someone else to eat

It's a shell, an empty space
         until we move in
that day, there's Chinese take-out, eaten on the floor
a still-packed moving box
serving as the table

someone once told me
(she was in a military family,
and moved every couple years for a while)
that the first thing she did in a new shell, a new empty space
was to hang pictures on the walls
doing so provided some immediate familiarity
she told me
I wondered, also,
if that served to transfer some memories
a sense that the empty shell
might become home before long

the last time I moved
we brought the bikes & books,
furniture and photos
that had been part of life in the previous house
and of course the giant, heavy,
awkward, hand-me-down swingset
to set up in the back yard

the new place was an empty shell, and became home
only when the swingset got swung on
(and climbed on)
when familiar books were read
while sitting on familiar furniture
when we cooked familiar food
in an unfamiliar kitchen

because despite the familiarity of the things
despite how full the rooms were with the stuff
the house was still an empty shell

it only became a home
when the memories started to be made
when laughter echoed from the walls
when sorrows sought and found consolation
when family and community gathered
when love was shared

see, a house is simply an empty shell
until a home is created

and home is the place, or condition
or community
or family
or reality
in which we feel cared for
safe,
and loved 

Advent Midweek Reflection, Week Two - Home as an Adult

This is the outline of the reflection I shared at last week's Advent midweek Vespers service. As one might expect, this outline does not contain exactly the words that were spoken, but it's pretty close.

***   ***   ***

Before the reflection, the following was read:

Jesus is worthy of more glory than Moses, just as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.

     ~ Hebrews 3:3-4

***   ***   ***

nine hundred square feet, give or take

an infant, a toddler, a mom, and a dad
moved in to nine hundred square feet, give or take

apparently, at that time, I was an adult
and I moved into an adult home

here’s what I (think I) know

when I was old enough to be an adult
I knew that I could decide
that I could have Captain Crunch for breakfast
and a Snickers bar for dinner
Every.
Single.
Day.

I realized that I was actually an adult
when I found myself knowing where to find the
main water shut-off & the breaker box
when I found myself buying toilet paper & butter
before I needed it

At least those are some of the markers

there are others that, in my experience
create an adult home

with the help of my older child
I added approximately 25 square feet
to the 900 we were living in

well, a toddler and I built a 5 foot by 5 foot playhouse
out in the back yard
a playhouse that moved with us
out of the 900 square feet
into a much larger house
into a parsonage, originally built to house five kids and two parents
in which we had way more room than we’d imagined
we added to that house,
a trampoline
family friends
and neighborhood kids

thing is, though,
nine hundred square feet isn’t too small
and five thousand square feet isn’t too big
for a couple kids and their dad to
wrestle
trade tickles
cook and eat together
read books … so many books
decorate for Christmas
and experience the joy of the excitement
that wells up when the other returns home

Then, when we moved again
I realized that 900 square feet isn't home
that 5000 square feet isn't home

Home, instead, is what happens in the interactions
maybe within those square feet, maybe not

Home is the place, or condition
or community
or family
or reality
in which we feel cared for
safe,
and loved. 

Advent Midweek Reflection, Week One - Childhood Home

This is the outline of the reflection I shared at last week's Advent midweek Vespers service. As one might expect, this outline does not contain exactly the words that were spoken, but it's pretty close.

Before the reflection, the following was read.

***   ***   ***

You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.”       ~ Psalm 91:1-2

My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.      ~ Isaiah 32:18

***   ***   ***

We all kinda wanna go home
      especially around Christmastime

I remember my childhood home

there was a front door on our house

            that we never used

      the front door opened on to a living room

            that we hardly ever used

 we spent time in the sun porch

      the tv room

            and the kitchen

in the summer, the door between the sun porch

            and the car port

      was almost always open

            and the screen door constantly banged shut

                  as we blurred the boundary between inside and out

in winter, the wood burning stove

            on the sun porch

      is where we’d spend much of our time

            huddled around the warmth

eventually, though, us kids had to go to bed

      in our bedroom,

            far from the burning wood in the stove

      on the other end of a drafty house

            that wasn’t well insulated

I’d run as fast as I could manage

      I'd launch myself into the bed

            creating a cocoon

                  by tucking the blankets under my feet & under my shoulders

                        leaving as little space around me as possible

      I’d stay perfectly still

            until my body heat took the edge off the cold

***

and I was home

      and I felt safe and secure

***

I went back years later

            drove a borrowed car out the two lane road

                  turned on the single lane tarmac

      turned again on the two-track gravel

                  (one track for the passenger side wheels, one for the wheels on the driver’s side)

            and stopped close enough to talk to the owners

                  but far enough away to not be a threat

I told them I’d grown up there

      they invited me to take a walk around

driving away, I realized that place wasn't home

Home is the place, or condition

      or community

            or family

                 or reality

      in which we feel cared for

            safe,

                  and loved.

Belonging

The other day, the day after I arrived back at my home after a mont-long journey, I went to work out at the (amazing, fantastic, unbelivable) gym where I'm a member.

I walked in to the gym, into a large group of people, into a surprising welcome. I felt like the mere fact that I had returned and was going to work out again was celebrated - I felt like I had arrived at a place where I belong.

(At this point in the story, I'm compelled to recall the theme song from that 80s sitcom ~ a song completely and fully about welcome.)

Now, granted, I'm a regular at the gym, and have been for a couple of years. I'm not new, I'm there pretty frequently, and I show up a different class times, so I get to know more people than just one subset of the gym membership.

Of course some of the people there the other day didn't welcome me back, simply because they don't know me. But the ones who I'd spent tiem with seemed genuinely glad that I had returned.

***

I'm thinking about three specific families who I've known in my capacity as a pastor. Each of these families had been members of the congregation for at least four years (or as long as 15). For each of these families, life circumstance had taken them away from the congregation for between 6 months and two years.

When life circumstance brought them back, I observed them slip quietly into a pew with hardly any notice from anyone in the congregation.

***

What's the difference between my gym and many congregation?

• Is it that I spend 2-5 days per week at the gym, while most people spend 2-4 days per month at church. I show up at they gym at least four times more often than most people show up at church?
• Is it that we suffer together at the gym, while most people show up to church acting as if they don't experience suffering at all, and therefore don't need to share suffering?
• Is it that the simple act of showing up at the gym is an implicit (or explicit) admission that we fall short and need improvement, while at church we do our best to hide our faults?
• Is it something else?

These are real questions, and I'm genuinely interested to hear what my eight readers think.

$0.02