Home Sweet Homecoming

October 20. The window panes are cold. My fingers trace ridges and valleys across the dark glass, trying to remember the architecture of the mountains we saw yesterday. Tired and peaceful, I think that tonight could almost be a college night. After a long day on campus, we lingered over a late supper, and now I am working at the computer late at night, a marked-up manuscript on the desk beside me. Lauren and Charlie are just across the hall; Emily and Kevin could hear me if I called their names. Tomorrow we'll meet Eric at First Baptist for church, and Jeremy might join us for lunch afterward.

It could almost be home. The familiarity of this night, this place, is bewildering and consoling all at once because tonight is not, after all, a college night. We are all nearer twenty-eight than eighteen, and instead of a dorm, Kevin and Emily's house is our gathering place. Sharing a meal with these friends is no longer a common joy, but a rare event--it has been years since we were gathered around one table, and it may be years before it happens again. This is not home, but homecoming.

My dear friends Dave and Mandy live here in our college town, and on one wall of their living room, they have painted the words "Home is..." in large letters.  They and their friends have written other words and phrases to complete this sentence all around the wall, and Saturday was my turn. I contributed a curious line from George MacDonald's Lilith.  "Home," I wrote, "is ever so far away in the palm of your hand."

This is the paradox of homecoming. We return to a place and a time that was home, traveling across memory, miles, or both, but we know we have not come to stay.

 Walking in the shadows of familiar buildings on Saturday, I began to catalog all the friends I would need to see walking to the cafeteria, or perhaps headed towards the dorms, before I would feel that I had really come home. This was not mere nostalgia; I don't wish I were eighteen or twenty-two again, and I would not come home, even to my beloved college, to meet my friends unchanged. I want a more-than-Facebook vision of the people they have become, with real voices telling stories about work and ideas and families. I want hugs and handshakes and looking-in-the-eye. I imagined all these friends gathered around Kevin and Emily's dining room table, but even as I indulged in my fantasies of reunion, I could not ignore the distances that were keeping us apart.  For some of the friends who once made Carson-Newman home, finances, jobs, and miles prevented their pilgrimage to the east Tennessee foothills. And there are other kinds of distances that, I knew, would have followed even my dearest friends back to our alma mater.  We might gather, but there would be subjects tactfully avoided at dinner, questions left unasked as we recounted the recent news. Home, I often think, is ever so far away. 

I was prepared for these distances, braced against awkward conversations and tentative reunions. I had resigned myself to any number of tepid "remember whens?"  Instead, I spent all weekend overwhelmed to see the ways in which the virtues that first drew me to Carson-Newman had grown in the lives of my teachers and friends. As a high-school senior, I had my choice of full scholarships to several colleges and universities.  I chose Carson-Newman because everyone I met there invited me, in one way or another, to become the sort of person I longed to be. I was a shy, neurotic, self-absorbed teenager, and by the time I finished high school I was very nearly sick of myself. When I visited Carson-Newman, I met young men and women who were brilliant without pretension, kind without condescension, fun without stupidity. Their confidence, kindness, and service attracted me more than any number of brand-new residence halls or manicured flowerbeds. Returning as an alumna, I realized how remarkable and rare these virtues are. I came home, after all, to friends who plan October picnics of pumpkin stew and ginger tea; who wash up the supper dishes without being asked; who spend their days teaching high school students to love reading or math; who go out of their way to include others in a conversation; who stand up for their convictions about the environment; who train dancers; who raise children to love truth, beauty, and goodness. I came home to the faculty who inspired me to be a professor--wise, compassionate men and women who greet their students with eager questions and hugs after half a decade.

All weekend I found myself wanting to hold on to everyone I met, literally to wrap my fingers around their wrists and to touch their faces. I want to be among these people, I thought. I want to live my life with their courage, grace, and kindness. I felt the same rush of hope and longing that led me to this school. This, I realized, is the reason for homecomings: not to retire from daily strife, not to escape into nostalgia, but to witness and remember what it takes to establish a home. It takes Emily's curiosity. Shannon's enthusiasm. Kevin's steadiness. Jeremy's thoughtfulness. Eric's fidelity. Lauren and Charlie's merry kindness. Dave and Mandy's creativity and convictions. Mari's courage. Mark's lovingkindness. Keith's wit. Rachel's compassion.

 As a student, I always cried at the end of each semester, and my flight back to Texas could have been one of those bittersweet journeys from one home to another. My heart was heavy as a thousand miles unfolded between me and Carson-Newman, but some of that heaviness came from the weight of gratitude. The home I have made in Texas owes so much to what I learned in college. I have no idea where my next home will be, but I will be proud if it, like Carson-Newman, is a place where people become more than they knew they could be. When we find such places, we do not always have the privilege of staying for long, but somehow, our true homes have a way of following us. Through faith, hope, and love, through friendship and imagination and determination, you may be startled to discover that home is in the palm of your hand.
   

Eric, me, Lauren, Charlie, and Kevin. Home sweet homecoming, indeed.

With Emily, fall 2005

With Emily, fall 2011

Come Rest

"Aren't you exhausted?" Jenn asked as I waited for yet another kettle of water to boil.
I laughed, wanly, perhaps, because I had just decided that I was going to begin this post with the line, "I am so tired."

Reckoned simply according to hours, there's nothing unusual about the amount of work I am doing this week, but Jenn's question reminds me that I have good reason to be tired this semester. Two weeks ago I was spent several 15-hour days working on dissertation revisions, and last week, while it brought a break from Coleridge and MacDonald and literary tradition, was soon full of cover letters for job applications and essays to grade.

I don't write this as a complaint. I love my work and know that I am privileged to make my living as a scholar and a teacher. However, Jenn's question has set me thinking about how I work, and how my work habits shape my understanding of home.

As the child of campus ministers, I did not grow up with any concept of a separation between work and home. When your dining room is piled with monthly reports, and students knock on the porch for counsel at 2 o'clock in the morning, being at home is also being at work.  My adult life has also lacked these divisions. Especially when I lived in a two-room apartment, establishing separate spaces for work and rest became very difficult.  As I have moved through graduate school, I have tried to learn how to make home a space for both work and rest. The work part is easy. I come home trailing lesson plans, and my dissertation haunts every bookshelf.

"But how do you do it?" Jenn asked as I poured the now-hot water over the tea leaves. "How do you keep these hours every day?"

This happens at nearly every party I attend.

In college, I had a number of wise and determined friends who made sure that our campus was a place I worked and played. I didn't need to make my own times and sites for rest, because sooner or later someone would kidnap me for a mountain-road drive, or come and demand that I exchange paper-writing for supper with friends. As a proper grown-up, I have to be more intentional about making rest a part of my homemaking.

And I have been intentional. As I tried to answer Jenn, a number of coping strategies came to mind.  I keep Sundays as a Sabbath from any kind of school work or business. If I am working from home, I keep grading and dissertation work in the office, away from my bedroom. I go for walks, do yoga, ride my bicycle. I schedule time with friends. I even indulge in the blissful numbness of television every once in a while.

Some days, however, these things are not enough to give me the joy, peace, and strength that I know are the fruit of real rest.  Although I know it is healthy and humble to stop working at least a little while before bed, I still feel guilty whenever I put my papers or books away before ten or eleven.  Pride and anxiety often compel me to work more than is wise or even effective, and my to-do lists nearly always overestimate the number of hours in a day. As a single person, I can sustain days and days or work because few people think they have the right to demand that I stop and spend time with them. I like to think that when I am done done grading this next set of essays, or done with job applications, or done writing my dissertation, that I will rest. But those are treacherous thoughts. I need to learn to rest now. Matthew 11.28 says, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." I want to know what that rest. I want to surrender to it and find myself renewed. I want to ponder that invitation, to feel the cool smooth weight of it like pearls in my hand.

But that will have to wait for another day. Tonight, I am too tired to think clearly about how to rest well, and there is still work left to do. 

Is a home a place of rest for you? Is resting from work ever a challenge? How do you build rest into your life?

Glimpses

Writing a dissertation, applying for jobs, leading a new lifegroup, preserving time for  friends and  solitude: these are quick and beautiful days, but very, very full. Until I make some time for writing (writing that isn't my dissertation, that is) here are two glimpses of home I'd like to share with you. These pictures should help you understand why I love living with a woman who has an eye for beauty and a heart that ministers to others, and with an an engineer whose quiet sense of humor is one way he cares for his friends and family.

Jenn brought me this rose from one of the weddings she coordinated.

In the middle of making bread, I had to leave for a few hours. When I returned, this is what I found.

Thank you, God, for days that are full of good work, and homes that are full of grace.


What does your home look like this autumn? How are you and yours spending your days?

Settling the Solitary in a Home

Two weeks ago, I delivered this testimony during worship at Calvary Baptist Church of Waco, Texas. Many of these stories and ideas have appeared elsewhere on my blog, but I think it is worth repeating in whole.

“God settles the solitary in a home.” Five years ago, these words from Psalm 68.6 were difficult for me to believe. I had just arrived in Texas to begin my graduate studies, and this cross-country move was the culmination of a disorienting year: in a matter of months, I had attended the funeral of my last grandparent, broken up with a boy I could have married, graduated from my beloved college, and now I was more than a thousand miles away from my friends and parents. An introvert and an only child, always quite happy to be alone, I suddenly found myself, at twenty-two years old, deeply and truly lonely for the first time.

The people at Calvary were kind from the first morning I visited, and when I joined a lifegroup later in the fall of 2006, I learned that God was going to use this church to teach me that the Gospel brings us into a body, a kingdom, a home. On my first visit to that lifegroup, I arrived a little late, and as I crept shyly through the front door, I could see that everyone was already seated in a circle, sharing a meal. “She’s here!” someone said. “Come in,” they called, “We’ve saved a chair for you.” When I heard those words, I felt as though I had walked into a parable.  Is this what the kingdom of God is like? I wondered.  To arrive at a stranger’s table and find they have saved a place for you?  Ephesian 6 tells us that through the Gospel, the Gentiles are co-heirs with God’s chosen people, strangers made at home in the kingdom of God. Through my experience with lifegroups, I was a witness to this mystery every Thursday night.

In so many ways, the members of that lifegroup were ministers of the Gospel to me during my first three years in Waco.  Especially during that first lonely season, they met the physical and spiritual needs that so often come with young adulthood: our lifegroup suppers were usually the only meals in a week I didn’t eat alone.  And holding hands during our prayers was the only time in a week that anyone touched me.

When school was discouraging, they assured me that my work as a teacher and scholar could serve the kingdom. When I fell in love with teaching, they rejoiced with me.

This would be a partial testimony, however, if I only gave an account of my own consolation. My lifegroup taught me to turn my own sorrow into compassion, my own joy into an invitation. Listening to my friends share their stories, I was able to step outside of my narrow fears and loneliness. Praying together, we endured illness, unexpected pregnancy, medical school applications, depression, job decisions, and family strife as one body. Celebrating together, we gave thanks for new life, acceptance letters, and reconciliation as one body. Studying and discussing together, we tested ideas, hoping to find words and actions that would bear witness to our faith.

These memories are so precious to me that I hate to admit our group’s quiet but painful dissolution. Jobs and school took many members away, leaders changed, and somewhere along the way we forgot that the Gospel demanded that we be more than a supper club and support group.  Our prayer times became brief and vague, our discussions drifted from questions about faith and practice to intellectual squabbles, and most dangerously, we forgot that we were supposed to be serving the church, Christ’s body, not ourselves.

As I prepare to step into a new lifegroup this fall, therefore, I am both eager and watchful. I have seen lifegroups wither and fade, but I have also seen them make the kingdom visible.  I have seen God use them to settle the solitary in a home. I have seen, as Pslam 84 says, that  

Even the sparrow finds a home,

and the swallow a nest for herself,

where she may lay her young,

at your altars, O Lord of hosts,

my King and my God.

Beloved, we are so many sparrows perched upon the altars of our Lord. God forbid that we neglect  any good way to establish one another here, as heirs of this kingdom, as children of this home.

And the Winner Is.....

Hear ye, hear ye!  I am happy to announce that Lauren is the winner of my first-ever book giveaway! Lauren selected one of last December's "Christmas Storytime" posts as her favorite, and now my head is full of ideas for sharing stories this Christmas.

Enjoy your copy of Living More with Less, Lauren! Thanks to all who entered. I have at least one more giveaway planned for this fall, so check back soon.

More with Less Giveaway!

This could be you!
(Cat, mask, and pleasant living room not included.)

I have truly enjoyed the responses my recent posts on learning to live "more with less" (read them here, here, and here) have inspired.  I an anticipate more entries on this theme in the coming months, and in the meantime, I would love to put a copy of Living More with Less into your hands. Few things are more delightful than receiving a book in the mail, and I'm eager to share that happiness with you. I have an extra copy of the original edition, and I would love to express my gratitude to all my faithful readers by offering this compelling book as a giveaway.  

Here's how to enter the Living More with Less drawing:

1) Look through my blog archives (I'm nearing my one-year anniversary!) and pick your favorite entry.  Post a link to this entry on facebook, tumblr, Google Connect, etc.

2) Come back to this page and leave submit your entry through the comments section (below). Tell me your first name, the name of the entry you posted and where you posted it, and an email address where I can reach you if you turn out the be the winner. 

Enter by 11:59 PM on Wednesday, September 14. I will announce the winner on Thursday.  

You, Me, Light Inside

"You have a light," she said, pointing to the candle in my hand. "Like this, light inside. You, me, light inside. Life. Together."  The woman struggled for the right English words. She gestured to her heart, then her head, and said a word in Spanish. "A light inside," she repeated. "You a pretty girl. You, me, light inside. Some -- no light. Something wrong. They cry, need, need something. Life. Life, light, together."

Still smiling, the woman took the remaining candle and walked away. I turned, baffled. I had not expected to meet a Spanish-speaking mystic in the laundry aisle of the grocery store, but some mornings just turn out that way.

All day I have been full of such joy and such gratitude that if Waco had mountains I would climb one and shout the words I rather awkwardly called after my laundry-aisle prophet: "God bless you!"

Home should be a place that fills us with grace, and I am full, my friends, so grateful I can't go to sleep until I tell someone about this beautiful day.

Jenn and I left for the store shortly after seven this morning, blaring Mumford & Sons as we drove down Bosque Boulevard.  The fierce music rang like a prophecy for our golden Texas morning ("awake, my soul!"), and together we filled our cart full of good things: peppers, sweet potatoes, milk. We saw a mother with a small child and an elderly man, pushing his buggy in a suit and tie. His basket was filled with apples, peaches, bananas, and pears.

Returning home, I made a cup of tea, prayed, and wrote a letter to a friend. By nine I was at work on my dissertation, and I spent the rest of the morning reading, writing, pondering ideas about faith, literature, and nature. Jenn sat in the living room, hard at work on her wedding planning business. The morning was cool, and we kept the door open to the wind and the light.

This afternoon I met with my "dissertation club," which includes two fellow graduate students who are at a similar point in their writing. Steve, Jeff and I exchanged chapters last week, and we spent three hours providing questions, criticisms, suggestions, and connections for one another. Their comments for my chapter were insightful and practical, pointed and encouraging. We dwelt in one another's ideas, tested and pushed and sharpened the good we all found in each text.  What a privilege, I thought, to call these brilliant men my colleagues and friends. What a help, to receive their honest and thoughtful comments. What a comfort, to discuss the perils of the job search, the joys of our vocation, and the future of our discipline. In addition to our dissertations, we discussed job applications, cover letters, interviews, and bigger questions of higher education.  These things have driven me to stress and tears on many Friday nights, but the more we talked, the more I felt that light within me growing.

I left that good gathering for another--homemade pizza with a giddy group of friends--then went home to a house where people cared about my day and were glad to see me.

I don't know that words on a screen can communicate the deep and dazzling joy of this day--all the more dazzling because I expected none of it. I anticipated the gentle peace of an ordinary Friday, perhaps the satisfaction of a task or two completed. I did not expect a stranger to call out the light within me. I did not expect friends to name that light and to demand that I be brave because of it.

Perhaps they know that all too often, I forget.

I am writing this because I wonder if you, too, forget or do not know of such a light. I am writing because I overwhelmed by the grace of  food, music, friends, colleagues, work, rest. All today's good things have grown from my life in Christ, my participation in his body, the Church: the trip to the store with a friend-turned-housemate; the meeting with other young scholars who take their work--and mine--seriously; a dinner with friends whose laughter helps me forget myself.

I am writing this because I wonder if you, like me, have been sad and lonely. I want to tell you that lonely seasons can pass. They may linger for months or even years, but then, one day, the wind changes, the clouds scatter, and the light surprises your weary expectations.

I am writing this because I love this city and season of my life, yet I know that in the next year I may move to another city, state, or even country.  At this time next year, I may need this day to stand as an emblem of hope, a testament to grace.

This has been a good day, my friends. I pray it has been for you, too.

You, me, light inside. Life. Together.