I wrote the post below during the summer months of 2024, but have hesitated to publish it. To be honest, I’ve been struggling over the past months to write.  Usually, this isn’t too much of a challenge for me… the writing part.  But, as I reflect on the beauty of Karen’s words in this blog, and then my own,  I  sometimes feel inadequate.  

I know how Karen would feel if she read these words.  I’d get a bit of a berating and she’d remind me that writing is something that comes from inside, not from the outside of who we are as people.  She’d remind me that no one wants to read her ideas and thoughts wrapped up in my words.  She’d possibly say that writing is an act that comes from God, that writing speaks to what is percolating and stirring in our soul, and that for a writer, writing becomes a cathartic activity much like sketching does for an artist, or baking does for a baker, or even operating might feel for a surgeon. For sure, she’d offer that doubt and self-deprecation don’t come from a loving, faith filled place, but instead,  from a place where failures thrive, a place where there isn’t the light that comes from living in the Kingdom.  

So,  I’m going to write.  I know that what will be written here will look and feel different from what has been written before.  Karen and I have unique life experiences, so what felt so familiar to her might feel very foreign to me.  I will probably come at “apprentice” writing from a different mindset as a public school educator,  reader, and, for a period of time, missionary.  I trust that the pieces that are shared will reflect a viewpoint that can offer readers some sense of hope, encouragement, and a reminder that we are faced with moments on a daily basis that offer us opportunity to put our apprentice lens into practice.

Joy

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“Home”

In the English language,  “home” has many meanings. The Merriam Webster Dictionary online has sixteen unique definitions for home used as four different parts of speech.  (Merriam-Webster)  Home can be used as an emotion, an idea, an action,  or even a philosophy! With all its interpretations, home has been something I have thought about a good deal over the last year or so. As a recent “empty nester” with two of my three children taking jobs at least a full day’s car ride away over the past two years, I’m starting to question my sense of home as a place.  My youngest is a college student as well,  so, for a solid portion of the year, I am on my own in the house.  The house doesn’t feel quite the same without them, and “home” is not always how I would describe it.

Likewise, after a job shift over a year ago,   I left a position I had had for over 13 years.  Karting over 15 boxes of books out of the classroom to places unknown (including my basement for way too many months), got me thinking about the qualities of home as it relates to our work and profession.  I love books and building my classroom library for my students with diverse reads and accessible materials was always a joy. For years, the phenomenon of favorite books not being returned to the library was a pleasurable one, knowing students had given them a new “home”, one where they didn’t want to give them back.

Over the past year, I have also considered “home” when working with a young refugee family who came to the US with little more than a plastic bag of belongings. There are challenges and barriers. Language, culture… It isn’t a simple thing to move three children under 5 to a foreign land with little context or understanding. Being torn from the lifestyle and culture they knew well, their feeling of being in another world has been difficult to shake.  As their children grow and learn in an American culture, the parents are challenged to make decisions about what their home looks like, deciding what is going to be included in areas such as religion, language, and culture. As well, they think through the areas they want to adapt.  How do they create a home where they can belong together?

As I was thinking about each of these situations,  I came upon a poem from well known 20th century poet Rainier Maria Rihlke titled “Widening Circles”. Karen had referenced the poem in an essay titled by the same name in Booklet Nine of the series Under Ordinary Skies, Living as Apprentices Every Day.  The poem talks about life as a spiral of “widening circles” that grow and spiral until we are unable to complete our last one.  The section of the poem that resonated with me as I reflected on the word home,  was the second section of the poem that reads like this:  

…I circle around God, around the primordial tower. 

I’ve been circling for thousands of year

And I still don’t know: am I a falcon, 

A storm, or a great song?

Life is FULL of change and newness.  Rarely do we move through life without having a variety of times where the “home” that we have created and formed with love and attention switches to a house that needs work.  It isn’t possible to stay on a circle and not have it shift under our feet forcing us to runf to catch up or hop onto the next circle.  As we jump, we, ourselves, continue to transform, becoming more and sometimes less of what we were in the previous circle.  

So, what is constant?  What can we depend on?  In thinking of those sixteen definitions of home,  I don’t think we can fully put its meaning into simple words.  Nevertheless,  in my mind,  home is so difficult to pinpoint BECAUSE it is wrapped up in a search that we each have in our lives.  Humans seek “home” on a soul level.  We each look for people, activities, emotions and ideas that widen our world, our circles, as we look for places to belong.  Home becomes an entity, a feeling, and a place where we know we are enough.  Home equals acceptance and peace.  

Consider Psalm 23 as this conversation on home returns back to one’s faith and the realization that our only true home exists in God. Those reassuring words in verse 6,  “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” reverberate the reality that we are always home at our deepest core when we accept the shortcomings of an earthly home counter to our spiritual one.  As in Rilke’s poem,  we “circle around God, around the primordial tower”, the central realization is that finding our home, our place occurs with permanency only in our relationship with a God who loves us more than we can fully grasp. 

For me,  having the reassurance that change and adjustment is just part of a new circle is comforting.  Remembering that one gift of a life comes in the joys of building temporary “homes” heartens my journey.  Each new experience, fresh memory, or uncomfortable upheaval creates another avenue, another circle where I become closer to the house of God.  And in that most important reality, I am always welcome.  Our Lord waits for us, strewing goodness and love along the way, in each of our small strivings for belonging and rest. He is watching, even as we look to name ourselves and find wholeness in a broken world, until we walk up to His door and knock, enter His home, and join the choir of angels forever. 

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Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Home definition & meaning. Merriam-Webster.   https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/home#:~:text=Synonyms%20of%20home-,1,one’s%20place%20of%20residence%20%3A%20domicile