Homesick?

Homesick
I sit and stare out into a sky of endless time,
Grey with the worry of a nation in the grip of ghosts,
Gruesome in their gory recollection of the Glory days’ been,

It’s dotted with the colourful interludes of a God who,
Continues to come from blue to break bread and share it,
With people, differing shades of grey, who know not its meaning nor care to.

Sacrifice is the stuff of statues built to remind us of days,
Past when we mortals thought ourselves immortal,
Through the acts distinguished in the history we believed we created,

Yet You go on creating, good breaking forth from broken,
Tales of broken men, tells the truth of our sordid history,
Moreso than statues, moreso than statues litter the street.

I sit and stare out into a sky of endless time,
Wondering why’s? Waiting for the Word that,
Settles in my heart, shows me history’s centre and my home.


This week I’ve pondered the notion of homesickness. Perhaps I’ve more than pondered it. Perhaps I’ve experienced it. Certainly it’s a new thing, whatever the thoughts of this week have been, they have certainly been new. Original. Well, as much as nothing is new under the sun, original in me. Boarding school I recall, had times when I wished not to be there, and home was the alternative and wished for place, but equally could have been replaced by some other place, at least that’s how my mind’s eye recalls it. University involved an unbelievable amount of good times and yet, with certainty, some broken ones also, and again I longed for somewhere other than where I was, maybe home, but again, maybe somewhere else. Or is it just the ‘benefit’ of hindsight and the lack of crystal clear memory that sees my mind recall those times as something other than homesick ones. John Mayer puts that idea across well “…most my memories have escaped me or confused themselves with dreams.”

For sure, It’s an interesting thing what the mind does with the past. I read recently that human beings have not the capacity to remember pain. We recall times when we were in it, but not the pain itself, not in the way that the mind can recall familiar yet distant smells, and mental images. We lack the capacity to do the same with painful memories. Surely a good thing, for otherwise no mother would repeat the pain of childbirth, no lover scorned would dare jump headlong into another potentially life enhancing yet also (by the same freedom of the individuals involved) potentially heart crushing relationship, despite the obvious fact that it may well be the one their life had been building towards. No football player (or any athlete) once injured would return to the field. Perhaps no one would grow at all, for surely pain of any description leads to reflection on the cause at (at least) a superficial level and the consequent alteration of behaviour. And in that way some good is born of the pain we suffer, as it brings about changes in us for the better. I’m sure you can think of such examples in your own life.

Getting back to homesickness… I wonder can we feel homesick when we don’t know what ‘home’ really means to us. For home is certainly something more than a geographical location. More than a building and more than a place. It’s more than family and friends, more than a job or having a purpose. It’s more than the language and the way words are phrased. It’s more than sport, public opinion, politics and cultural experience. It’s more than a place of learning, and more than a place to teach. It’s all of that, but it’s more too. It’s the place of belonging – belonging as John O’Donaghue (celtic mystic and author of Eternal Echoes) puts it, is a place of longing (ie to be longed for) as well as a place of being. And I’d apply that description to home. The antithesis of course is that homesickness relates to a feeling as though you don’t belong, where neither your ‘being’ nor your ‘longing’ can find fulfillment. Surely homesickness is a merely transient feeling, but then as indicated in the poem above, it can be a permanent condition. A realization of the biblical truth contained in John 17 that (some people at least) are ‘in the world’ but not ‘of the world.’ And hence not home.

At any rate when you’re an alien in a foreign country you can easily come to the conclusion that you don’t belong. I was stunned while in China at how friendly and welcoming the people were, granted most of them probably looked at you as a walking wallet and some friendliness was likely for that reason and therefore not genuine. But I was touched by a few interactions we had with local Chinese people on the trains and in restaurants. Usually them poking fun at me and my way of using either the seats (while my wife stood – in my defense she did start out on my knee and I tried to offer her the seat…) and my use of chopsticks. Conveyed was the idea that I did things a bit funny, certainly different, but the interaction was entirely respectful, and entirely not about pointing out that you don’t belong, but rather: here’s a way you can belong more.

Similarly when we arrived in Nottingham and went visiting local churches we found some who went out of their way to bridge the gap and try and make the ‘aliens’ in their congregation feel welcome. There were also those where you felt very much the outsider. It’s times when some of the voices in your own mind are telling you ‘you don’t belong’ that you really need an external voice to tell you that you do.

My experience tells me though that even outside all of this there are times when I feel homesick not because of anything external, or even related to the current situation I find myself in, except for the fact that it can be compared to a former time. And here’s what I think is a very common experience – looking back to the past, looking at glory days (as in the Bruce Springsteen song), at times when things were better than they are today. When you were a better (or nicer, or more altruistic) person, when life was better, or perhaps when life was just easier. So this week my homesickness has simply been a realization again of just how ‘rich’ life was at home in the few months before we left. Of just how much I enjoyed it, enjoyed the place we were in. Perhaps the time itself was one of those ‘mountaintop’ or ‘transfiguring’ experiences from which you have to come back (but the inclination is always to want to pitch a tent and stay right? – see Matt 17, Mark 9).

So my learning points of this week? Firstly, that I (we) need to work out a few more plans that can achieve all our financial, travel, cultural experience type goals, but are temporally perhaps a little more brief. Second, that perhaps I’m not as robust an individual as I’d previously thought, that i’m no wandering vagrant, as romantic a notion as it may be, but rather I prefer a home base where I know I belong. Third, that ‘home’ is a complicated idea, and much more than I ever gave it credit for. Fourth, that my posture is every bit as crappy as the patients of mine who complain to me of their back pain after sitting typing for hours on end. Nuff said.