One of the basic of all Bible stories is the journey of human beings, exiled from all that is familiar, who find home. Lynda Weaver Williams from foreword in The Glad River.
This thought intrigues me because I've lived a nomadic life. My parents moved 4 times during my youth and I have followed that with 7 moves during my professional career. At my current age of 57 that is an average of 5.2 years, (57/11), at each place. While I did find gifts of beauty at each city where I have lived I can't say the longing for home ever left me. I enjoyed those homes in those cities but I never came to think I am home. My question then becomes how do you find home? Is the emptiness I feel telling me I'm not home yet?
Our longing is for home, but where is that for a people who have lived nomadic lives? Both sets of my grandparents lived out of state and we made annual trips to visit them. I loved the country living of my maternal grandparents and the quiet smallness of the town my paternal grandparents lived in. Yet, whenever we visited them there was never a feeling that we were returning home. Last summer I spent 4 days in the Rocky Mountains west of Denver and my time there can be described as beautiful and breathtaking, but they weren't home and when it came time to leave I felt no drawing to stay there. Colorado was nothing more than just a place to visit.
I lived in California and enjoyed gold panning, the redwoods, and the mountains, but when I was transferred to Houston I picked up and left with barely a look in my rear view mirror. I fear westerners have lost the comfort of home, because we have become nomadic and have tried to convince ourselves that home is wherever you live. It's not! Of the 11 places I have lived in my life time, none of them ever felt like home. In the River Dance play there is a moment when a young couple has to leave their island and migrate to America. As they are preparing to leave the wife, stands and looks out over the countryside as though she is trying to burn the image into her memory. Her husband takes her hand and then they turn and walk away. At the last moment before boarding the boat the husband takes a quick glance back to see their land for the last time. That is my thought of what it means to have a home. A place your heart longs to be. A place that tugs at your soul. A place that you can tell others about with much detail. Home. Where are you?
