STAYING AT HOME (Grounding in Home)

STAYING AT HOME / GROUNDING IN HOME
April 12, 2020 [it's been almost 30 days since we started closing down and sheltering at home during the Coronavirus/COVID-19 crisis]

Officially, during the last 4 weeks, we have been under a "Stay at Home" order in Minnesota. Some call it "lockdown," some call it "sheltering at home," some call it "sabbath," hmmmm. I guess what you call it depends on your perspective. Officially, I can't write in my journal right now without having this situation be part of my thoughts. Quite simply, the COVID-19 crisis has affected everyone and everything I know, except love. Love is a constant.

Coincidentally, my book group started reading and discussing "Grounded: Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution" by Diana Butler Bass in mid-February. After being derailed for a couple weeks, I invited the group to meet with me on Zoom to connect and discuss the book. Also, coincidentally, the chapter we discussed last Thursday is called "Home." Butler Bass does a great job of thoroughly covering the subject of home (ancient history to modern times including Bible and church effects on home) except she doesn't cover what home might come to mean to us after a mass quarantine such as we are in the middle of. Truthfully, I don't know the answer to that either but I do have some thoughts I'd like to share.

So what is home? Where do you live? How do you define home? What does it mean for you? I agree with Butler Bass that these are sacred questions. So I ask, what does 'Stay at Home' mean for your heart?

The beach I grew up on in Madagascar

Home as a Place: In my early years, home was plain and simply Madagascar (the island on the other side of the world, not the movie). The whole island, which is as large as Texas, felt like home to me. The climate, the people, the food, the earth, everything felt like home. It is the place of my birth, which is often our early definition of home. In particular, the ocean was home to me. The ocean is constantly moving and changing, always another wave coming in and in that changing, there is life you can count on. I always feel better in my heart, like I am home when I am near the ocean. The second best is being near any other body of water. Home is a place where my feet can wade in the water and know there is life, there is breath, there is another day.

Home as Family: It gets messier when you start thinking about home and family as being synonyms. It's messy because family is messy. My parents loved each other and the world. They also loved their faith life. To the best of their ability, they tried to create home for us, a place where we could grow in love and faith. My dad as a missionary pastor enthusiastically shared his faith with us. My own faith journey starts with my parents. In many little ways, my parents are why I feel so connected to my own spiritual grounding. God's love and grace is home to me.

the HOME, Missionary Children's Home

But, (with family there is always a but) we all went off to boarding school when we were 5 or 6. In fact my siblings were already there when I was born. So the messy of my family is that we never really lived together all in one place, as a family. Then the kids and adults at boarding school became a second family to me, one just as messy. In fact our boarding school was affectionately called "the Home," short for Missionary Children's Home. There was the girls I had as a roommates who still feel more like siblings than my family of origin. There were the houseparents who were there when I was sick, who heard me give my first speech and my first piano recital and all that. And there was the fact the missionary family were are always coming and going, so one could never sink roots too deep. You had to be ready for the next goodbye.

Then when I came back to the states both of those families evaporated. Once in America, my parents and siblings ended up living coast to coast and all in different states. It is hard to build relationship from a distance. The same was true of my classmates and peers from boarding school. For awhile and even still, it often has felt like I am an orphan, without a family. Dad and Mom died 33 and 13 years ago respectively. At moments I have even been jealous of friends' siblings fighting, thinking "at least you have a sibling to fight with." I did get a new family though. I married my dear husband straight out of college, when we were 22. Part of the attraction was that he had a family, a very grounded and solid one. The Bonde family has been such a gift to this orphan. I've been able to graft my heart on to their solid vine and have some roots as a result. And that's helped Minnesota to feel a bit like home.

Pete & I at home.

I wanted so badly to have family, that I had four kids and then became what is called at "homemaker," a stay-at-home mom. Yes, that's me! I built a whole career, a whole life on stay-at-home. I haven't always like the moniker 'homemaker' but it really does describe it. I didn't just find a home, I created one. And I didn't do it alone. I had help from Pete and my friends and later, my kids. So that's an interesting twist to this combining of family and home. Do you find home or do you create home or is it both? I found Pete to be my home AND Pete and I created a home together.

Home as Relationship and Community: Had you asked me in 1976, where I would make a home in the USA, I would not have said, "Minnesota." It is not my climate at all. I want something closer to the tropics. It is as far away from the ocean as you can get in this country. There are no mountains. My siblings aren't here. But after 39 years of living here, I find myself feeling more and more home. And the reason is not the climate or the river but the people. As time goes by, I find more and more that people are my home. Church is home because it's full of people earnestly searching for a common way of love and forgiveness, people supporting each other, accepting each other. Community song circles are home because they are full of people, bravely willing to live authentically and wholly, offering their pure hearts in song. Writing circles are home, for the same reason. My close friends are home because they invite me to be me. My children and grandchildren are home, each carrying a piece of me in them. And each of them loving me in spite of my mistakes. My husband, Pete, is home. With him, I am truly and wholly myself, in all my dark and light moods. With him. I am home.  Home is the people. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else now because so many of my people live here.

And that brings me back to the corona virus crisis and the order to stay home. I have had moments of naked loneliness because I'm not seeing my people. And I've had moments of deep gratitude that I have people to miss. I've also had time to find the home, the place of center and grounding in me and had time to breathe into the home of my soul. I'm not happy about the crisis but I am grateful for the invitation to breathe within. The question is can I be at home in my heart, soul? Can I be at peace and not afraid of just being with myself? Can we be home in just being? and not always doing?

Other definitions of home: Diana Butler Bass has several definitions of home in her chapter. Here are some of them:

• Home is more than a house (p. 166).
• Home is the geography of our souls (p. 166).
• Home is a place where we belong (p. 167).
• Home is a place where God meets us (p. 167)
• Home is where the heart is (p 172)…the abiding place of our affections.
• Home is the location that shelters our lived experience, but also holds our memories and shapes our desires. (p. 172)

What is your definition of home? How are you being invited to "stay home" during this time of isolation and social distancing? Where do you find home? Where do you live? Who invites you to feel safe at home within?

I pray that as you leand into this time of social distancing, you find peace and health in your home and in your heart.

~Jules