Christianity speaks of this idea that the world is not our home. I think this idea can become dangerous at times. Too often it leads to groups of people with no regard for the planet and people around them. It can cause us to look toward some other time and place rather than being present in the here and now.
Yet at the same time, something in that idea rings true. We can never really capture this idea of "home". We buy big houses and fill them with nice furniture. We find comfortable places and try to keep them as they are to retain the moments they held. But it's never quite enough. We chase the feeling of home, trying to pin it to one place. Americans are more transient than ever, we move from one place to the next seeking out the one place we can call home, the place that will make us whole. Somehow we are more lonely than ever before, emotionally, physically and spiritually homeless.
I don't consider the town my family lives in to be home. It's a wealthy, religious, and safe city. With homes made for Pinterest and people made for Instagram. Designer bags, luxury cars, and clean parks. It is disgustingly beautiful. But when I look back at memories in that house and that city, at family devotions going an hour late because we couldn't contain our laughter, that is what I call home. Home has never been where I lived, but the moments of connection... Wherever they may be.
I have felt home at a concert, belting out songs as if each one of us were a rockstar, unified by our times of heartbreak. I have felt home in my father's office, sitting together through the hours of the night, until I was too exhausted to go through with killing myself. I have felt home in the rubble of a natural disaster. I have felt home singing hymns with a group of strangers. I have felt home overlooking the rice fields of Cambodia. I have felt home singing my baby brother to sleep, protecting him from the screams reverberating through our house. I have felt home among the homeless. I have felt home meeting God in a Buddhist temple. I have felt home laying in a field and looking up at the stars.
I think home is found when we stop looking. It's found in the moments where we are so present that everything else fades away. It's an experience rather than a place. The more I travel the more sure I am that no place will ever be home. Whether I settle down with a husband and 2.5 kids or spend the rest of my life as a single vagabond, I will always and never be home.
