returning home

the theme of home has come up again and again over the past two weeks as i've been away from home - traveling first to CA for work and then to AL and FL for a family visit

it felt like returning home
to be with my grad advisor and former labmates and to use equipment that i purchased and used daily throughout my grad school career - despite the fact that the lab had moved across the country from PA to CA

it felt like home
running into former colleagues as i walked through the hallways of the convention center, although this was not the passing in corridors of academic spaces we previously shared

it tasted like home
to be sharing breakfast and good conversation with a friend who used to live across the street and now lives across the continent

it was home
to return to Alabama and sleep in the bed my parents purchased for me when I was 9

it tasted like home
as i drank down the delicious nectar of sweet tea that used to be my daily fix

it felt like home
to be with my mother, father, aunt, and sister even in a hotel room

it was home
even in homes i'd never entered as my sister and brother welcomed me into their apartments and took me around their respective campuses

it felt like home
to have the temperature rise and the storm clouds gather resulting in sirens heralding tornadoes and delaying my flight as i was returning home

Did you catch that?  I just said "returning home", as in returning to Michigan.  This was a purposeful use of the term calling Michigan my home.  This is me choosing to call Michigan home.

Did you catch it in the first line?  I said I was "away from home".  This wasn't purposefully stated, but is how I've felt for the past several months.  I've felt like I'm away from home (and not just when I've been traveling).

It was these trips to these people and places that are home that have me thinking about what it looks like and means to be at home.  It is the familiarity that rings the most true.  I'm familiar with the weather patterns of Alabama and knew that my flight would be delayed.  I'm familiar with how to use the metal evaporator I used regularly in graduate school.  Seeing familiar faces and having shared experiences provides groundwork for meeting again in an unfamiliar place and after time has passed.  It is familiarity birthed from connections. 

"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer."
(EM Forster in Howard's End)

I delight in connecting the ordinary to the extraordinary.  This quote carries a lot of weight with me, but I'll save most of that for another day.  For today, I want to share that I'm choosing to connect to Michigan.

I'm putting my stake in the ground.  I've put in an offer to buy a house here.  I'm choosing to put down roots.  I'll no longer be able to play the game (in my head) that this all can be temporary because I'm just renting.  I'm investing in this house, but more than that I'm choosing to create a home.  A home where I pray connections (of all sorts) will be made and where love will be experienced at its height.  That my meandering journey and fragments of all my homes can be brought together into a sort of bird's nest, with twigs and string gathered along the way.  A place of rest and growth and strengthening set high in the bough of a tree, a tree that connects us all together.  Remembering that this house is as temporal as the nest, I am reminded that it is in my Father's house where all the fragmentation will cease.  Shalom is found there.