READINGS:

From Staying Put, by Scott Russell Sanders, p. 29:
 

The word house derives from an Indo-European root meaning to cover or conceal. I hear in that etymology furtive, queasy undertones. Conceal from what? From storms? beasts? enemies? from the eye of God? Home comes from a different root meaning "the place where one lies." That sounds less fearful to me. A weak, slow, clawless animal, without fur or fangs, can risk lying down and closing its eyes only where it feels utterly secure. Since the universe is going to kill us, in the short run or the long, no wonder we crave a place to lie in safety, a place to conceive our young and raise them, a place to shut our eyes without shivering or dread.

Genesis 47: 27-31
 

Thus Israel settled in Egypt, in Goshen; there they acquired land, and were fruitful and increased greatly. Jacob stayed in Egypt for seventeen years and lived to be a hundred and forty-seven years old. When the time of his death drew near, he summoned his son Joseph and said to him, "If I may now claim this favor from you, put your hand under my thigh and swear by the LORD that you will deal loyally and truly with me and not bury me in Egypt. When I die like my forefathers, you shall carry me from Egypt and bury me in their grave." He answered, "I will do as you say;" but Jacob said, "Swear it." So he swore the oath, and Israel sank down over the end of the bed.

From The Land Remembers by Ben Logan, pp.. 3-5:
 

Once you have lived on the land, been a partner in its moods, secrets, and seasons, you cannot leave. The living land remembers, touching you in unguarded moments, saying, "I am here. You are part of me."

When this happens to me, I go home again, in mind or in person, back to a hilltop world in southwestern Wisconsin... That land is my genesis. I was born there, cradled by the land, and I am always there even though I have been a wanderer.

I cannot leave the land. How can I when a thousand sounds, sights, and smells tell me I am part of it? Let me hear the murmur of talk in the dusk of a summer night and I am sitting again under the big maple tree in the front yard, hearing the voices of people I have loved...

Let me feel the softness of ground carpeted with pine needles and I am lying on my back in the middle of a great grove of trees, looking up to where the swaying tops touch the blue. Around me are my three brothers, and we argue endlessly about the mystery of the pines. Where did they come from? How old are they? Could a tree that's three feet through and eighty feet tall come from a seed not much bigger than the head of a pin?...

Let me hear an odd whirring. I am deep in the woods, following an elusive sound, looking in vain for a last passenger pigeon, a feathered lightning I have never seen, unwilling to believe no person will ever see one again.

Let me look from a window to see sunlight glitter on a winding stream and I am in the one-room schoolhouse in Halls Branch Valley. A young teacher has asked me to stay after school because of a question I asked. Voice full of emotion as it seldom is during the school day, she reads to me of an Indian speaking to his people. He sweeps his hands in a circle, taking in all lands, seas, creatures, and plants, all suns, stars, and moons. "We are a People, one tiny fragment in the immense mosaic of life. What are we without the corn, the rabbit, the sun, the rain, and the deer? Know this my people: The all does not belong to us. We belong to the all.:

Let me hear seasons changing in the night. It is any season and I am every age I have ever been. Streams are waking in the spring, rain wets the dust of summer, fallen apples ferment in an orchard, snow pelts the frozen land and puts stocking caps of white on the fence posts.

I cannot leave the land.

The land remembers. It says, "I am here. You are part of me."

From T.S. Eliot (Reading 685 in our Hymnal):
 

I.
What we call a beginning is often the end
and to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

II.
We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.

We humans have a deep need to feel at home. Somewhere in the world--whether it is in the house where we currently live or not--we need to feel at home.

One of my favorite poems by Robert Frost is about a hired man who seeks sanctuary at a farm where he had worked on occasion. Warren, the farmer husband, doesn't want to let the hired man stay: this particular hired man always took off when the work got hard. He was next to useless as a hired man. "Why doesn't he go [to his rich brother's house]?" Warren asks his wife, Mary. "Thirteen little miles/As the road winds would bring him to his door."
 

The hired man won't go to his brother's--never did--because it isn't a home to him. "Warren," Mary says:
'he has come home to die:
You needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time.'
'Home,' he mocked gently.
'Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he's nothing to us, any more
Than was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.'
'Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.'
'I should have called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve.' [Selected Poems of Robert Frost, p. 25-30]

This is a good place to start in defining "home": a place where they have to take you in, regardless of what you've done or said; a place you somehow haven't to deserve.

We often confuse "house" and "home." They are not necessarily one and the same. Indeed, often our home in the world is not the same place as the physical house in which we live. Certainly this is true of people who are beaten and abused in their houses. In such a case, one's house is about as far from a home as you can get. For different reasons, Jacob's house in Egypt--where he had lived for seventeen years--was not his home. His home was back in Israel, back where his forefathers were buried. Jacob made his son swear that he would not bury him in Egypt, but would one day haul his bones all the way back to Israel, back to his home. It is clear, too, that for Ben Logan, the author of The Land Remembers, his true home was not in New York City, where he lived most of his adult life, but was and always would be his childhood farm in southwestern Wisconsin. And for Frost's hired man, his home was the one place where some kindness had been shown him. For none of these people, then, was their house a home.

What is a home? I'm going to give a mosaic of definitions for home. Home is the web of place and community where you feel most powerfully a sense of belonging and identity: it is a place where you know who you really are and how you are related to your place on the earth, your fellow humans, this magnificent cosmos. Georgia O'Keefe put it well when she left New York City and found her true home in New Mexico: "I feel like myself--and I like it." Home is the place where you're most connected to the earth and the web of life. In Ben Logan's words, home is the "secret place where dreams can grow." Home is where it all comes together; it is where you find meaning and purpose. Home is where you feel safe, in the words of Winifred Gallagher, wrapped in a "cozy, protective mantle of memories." Home is the place you go for renewal and restoration.

The best image I have for such places is an anchor. They anchor us, grounding us in identity and relatedness. We all need at least one or two anchors. I have had four such anchors.

My first anchor is my childhood home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I spent the first eighteen years of my life. It was the home my parents had built and in which they lived for forty-three years. Even after I left for college and beyond, that house was an anchor for me. When I returned for visits, the first thing I would do after saying hello to my parents would be to take a look around the entire house. A little over a year ago, my parents--for the best of reasons--decided it was time to move. I can no longer physically return to this anchor, except someday perhaps to drive by it. I cling to the memories of the home, and for some reason it is very important that my four-year-old daughter also remember the home. Somehow her memories keep my memories more alive. Every time we visit my parents in their new home, I always remind my daughter of the few things she might remember of the old home. The conventional wisdom is that you can't go home again. While that is literally true for me, I can go there in my mind and my memories. Though different, that is important.

My second home is my childhood church in Grand Rapids. The whole church building is sacred to me, but most especially the sanctuary. In that sacred place I was dedicated as a baby; my mother was baptized when she was a young woman; Amy and I were married in that place; as a third-grader, I read the Christmas story from Luke's Gospel at the family Christmas service; as a custodian, I cleaned the sanctuary; I have preached there; and I have attended memorial services for loved ones there. It is a beautiful sanctuary--cathedral-like in its immensity, with the most beautiful stained glass windows I have ever seen. The place was so big that as high schoolers we would try to fling a frisbee from the front altar area to the rose window on the back wall. Without exception, the frisbee would always fall harmlessly in the seats, ending its trajectory far before the rose window (thank God!). I remember as a kid studying those windows each Sunday, telling the weather and the time of year by how the light came through the windows. I remember looking down from our balcony seats--we always sat in the same seats--on the people below and recognizing them by the tops of their heads. There's my Uncle Fred and Aunt Marion. There's our school superintendent. There's the school band director. There's President Ford's counsel. I remember the test a friend and I had for determining when we needed stronger lens for our glasses: when from our seats the minister started to get a little fuzzy, it was time to see the eye doctor (who sat a few rows behind!).

That sanctuary was my place. It still is my home. It is always there. When I return in the summer to preach, services are held in a smaller chapel. I always take a few minutes on my way out of the building to wander into the empty sanctuary. I sit and look at the windows. I feel the presence of my family--my mom and dad, my mom's parents, my brothers and sister. I feel the presence of the ministers, of the friends that made up my childhood community. I know who I am, and I see my place in the scheme of things. I know that I belong.

Let me add here that I know that this room--our Fellowship hall--is a powerful home to many of us gathered here. Leaving here for our new building will as a result be painful for many of us. In the joy and excitement of moving into our new place, we mustn't forget to let ourselves grieve the loss of this place. As minister, I believe that one of my major functions in the building process is to make sure that we have the time and space to say good-bye to this building, and to grieve its loss.

My third home is South Manitou Island, a part of Michigan's Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. My friends from church and I used to go there at least once a summer during high school and college. We have even returned once or twice since college. Each trip there was a wonderful, elaborate ritual. We would leave Grand Rapids at exactly the same time of day, stop at the same McDonald's for breakfast on the way, arrive at the dock for the boat to the island at the same time. The two-hour boat ride was the perfect separation from our everyday lives. When we got off the boat and loaded up our backpacks, we knew we were on sacred ground. We were home. We would practically run the two miles to our favorite spot in our favorite campground. We didn't want anyone to beat us to that spot. Almost always we got our spot (though the year we ran to the spot only to find it already occupied was extremely unsettling). This spot was on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. Across the water we could see the Sleeping Bears Dunes. The freighter traffic always passed right in front of us, between the island and the mainland. Inevitably--though unintentionally--there would be a full moon during our visit, reflecting on the lake below. Near our camping sight there was a little sandy hollow. During the day we would lie in there, protected from the wind, reading, talking and soaking up the sun. When we got hot, we would run down the bluff and jump in the forever cold lake. On the last night, we would sleep not in our tents but in that little hollow, watching the shooting stars, waking in the morning wet with dew. Year after year, we always had the same menu and went on the same hikes. We even had the same arguments at precisely the same moments and places from year to year. Most importantly, every year we had the time and space to catch up with each other in a deep way. And every year, as we rode the boat back to the mainland and our everyday lives, we inevitably felt refreshed and renewed.

My final home is a new one. It is Amy's parents' cabin in the northern part of Michigan's Lower Peninsula, about an hour south of the Mackinaw Bridge. In many ways, this cabin has become my most important anchor or home--especially in the aftermath of my parents' sale of my old family house. It is so important that I want my remains scattered there.

The cabin, nestled on the side of a hill, is simple. Filled with a mishmash of used furnishings, it somehow feels cozy and warm. The cabin sits on forty acres of mostly wooded land. There's no lake or river. There's no fancy cottages in the area, and there probably never will be. It is a corner of Michigan that thankfully is too far from the great (or small) lakes and from skiing areas or other tourist attractions. As a result, it is unlikely that it will ever be developed. Amy and I dream of building a cabin and eventually retiring there.

One of my favorite things about the cabin is being there with my father-in-law. Since he built the cabin pretty much by himself, he knows the cabin. And after thirty years of long walks, he knows the woods, too. When I go walking with him through the woods and up and down the hills, he tells me what he has learned about the land and the people and animals that live or visit there. His stories and the landmarks he points out bring the place alive. Walking with him makes me feel as if I'm really part of the place.

When I visit the cabin in summertime, my favorite part is the moment when the last rays of light from the sunset fade into darkness. And then, clear as can be, we hear the call of the whippoorwill. I know I'm home.

I find it important to visit these anchors as often as I can. If for one reason or another, I can't literally visit them, then I try to travel to them in my mind.

There are other places which are important to me--the house I live in now and this Fellowship hall, most notably--but these places don't quite feel like anchors yet. It takes time. I am convinced, though, that they can become anchors.

This raises the question: How can we create anchors or homes for ourselves in the world? For many of us this is a vitally important question--especially for those of us who don't feel like we have a true home anywhere, for those who feel cut off from the homes we've had before for one reason or another, and for those of us who find ourselves in a new place which doesn't feel like a home. How can we create a home for ourselves. Although much of the mysterious process of coming to call a place home is beyond our control, there some things we can do to open ourselves to the possibilities a particular place may hold for becoming a home. I want to share six things we can do.

First, we can take the time and effort to try to get to know the place as intimately as possible. Any given place has a tremendous wealth to teach us. To learn about a place, we need to ask questions like these: What other people have been here before us? What were their stories? What people are connected with the place today? Who are the neighbors, and what are their stories? What animals and other creatures share this place with us? What birds stop at this place on their migrations? How did this place come to look like it does now? In Staying Put, Scott Russell Sanders shares one very graphic way in which his father learned about a new place:

On coming to a new place, my father would take a pinch of dirt, sprinkle it in his palm, sniff it, stir it with a blunt finger, squeeze it, then rake it on his tongue, tasting. When I first saw him do this, I was puzzled. Why eat dirt? "Just trying to figure out where I am," he explained. [p. xiii]

Now I'm not suggesting that we all need literally to eat dirt, but it is a good metaphor for the effort we need to make in order to come to know a place.

The second thing we can do to create a home wherever we are is to appreciate and cherish and revere the place if at all possible, to realize--no matter where it is or what is like--that it is a sacred gift of the universe. We must never take the places we live for granted.

The third thing we can do is to treat our place as if it is sacred. We can weigh our actions to determine whether they will have a positive or negative or impact on the particular place, its ecosystem and the great web of life. Then we can act accordingly. Treating a place as sacred leads to a deeper and more meaningful connection with it.

The fourth thing we can do to create a home wherever we are is to stay in that place for at least awhile if at all possible. Constantly moving from once place to another prevents us from truly knowing the places in which we live. Not truly knowing our place makes it harder to appreciate it, and not appreciating a place makes it harder to treat it as if it's sacred. Staying put for a long while allows us to delve more deeply into our connection with a particular place. It gives us the time to explore and learn about the place.

Staying put is not easy, though. There is deep within us an instinct to wander, to want to feel the excitement of starting over in a new place. Most of us at least on occasion think that if we could only get up and go to a new place, we'll miraculously leave our problems behind and have a fresh start. The wandering spirit is strong, and as I said last week, this spirit seems particularly strong in Americans. I suspect, though, there are times in our lives when we should wander, and there are other times when we should stay put. In this society, listening to the voice from within that tells us to stay put is one of the most important and courageous things we can do.

The fifth thing we can do to create a home wherever we are is to come to terms with the past places we have lived--particularly those past places which for one reason or another were not truly homes for us. To me, the most powerful scene in Forrest Gump occurs when Forrest's best friend returns with Forrest to her childhood home--the place where her father had abused her day after day and night after night. Forrest is startled when with tremendous anger and emotion, she whips her shoes at the house. That was the perfect thing for her to do: she was coming to terms with that place and with its haunted memories. Through the horrible violence that was done to her there, that place had a terrible and destructive hold on her. She could not move on until she broke that hold. I believe that she could not feel at home in any other place until she came to terms with that house. We can't go home again--and many of us wouldn't want to--but sometimes we have to go back--either literally or in our minds--and finish our business with a place.

The last thing we can do to create a home wherever we are is to be part of a religious community like this Fellowship. Even if you don't find this space to be a home for you, it is important for you to be here. In the words of one of our favorite hymns, "we search for truth, equality, and blessed peace of mind. And then, we come together here, to make sense of what we find." Coming here can help us reflect on the places we live and the communities of people we are tied to. Coming here can help us reflect on how we can best live and act to enhance the web of life. Coming here can help us to come to terms with some of the places we lived. It is here that we can make sense of this world.

I can't resist ending this sermon by talking about my favorite episode of "StarTrek: the Next Generation." In this particular episode, Captain Picard suddenly and inexplicably finds himself off of his spaceship, in a place he has never seen before, surrounded by strangers. All of the people around act as if he has always been there; they all treat him like he has long been part of the fabric of their community. One woman even acts as if she is his wife. They tell him that he had been sick, that perhaps his sickness had caused him to forget temporarily that he had always lived in that place.

For years, Picard continues to insist that he is not from that place, that he is a captain of a great starship who mysteriously found himself on that planet. Finally, though, he comes to understand that whatever the truth is about the reason for his sudden appearance in that place, he apparently is there to stay. It is time to become connected to the place. And so he learns everything he can about the place, spending much of his time learning about the soil and climate and geography of the place. He learns what he and his neighbors need to do to nurture the planet on which they live. He fully embraces the community of relationships with family and friends. He even agrees with his wife to have children. In short, he learns to love the place and the people there with all of his heart. It becomes his home. Instead of being the heroic captain of a great starship, boldly going where no one has gone before, he now is a husband, a father, a friend, a grandfather in a tiny place on an insignificant planet somewhere in the universe. I believe that creating a home there is his most heroic deed.

We all need a home.

Frost, Robert, Selected Poems of Robert Frost (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963).

Gallagher, Winifred, The Power of Place (New York: Poseidon, 1993).

Logan, Ben, The Land Remembers (Minocqua: Heartland Press, 1985).

Norris, Kathleen, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1993).

Sanders, Scott Russell, Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993).

Toulmin, Stephen, The Return to Cosmology (Berkeley: University of California, 1982).