Project Homeward Bound
"A Seed, a Fluff"
So, the unsnagging... Yes.
Have you ever had a dream that was actually a memory, but it was altered in such a way that gave you comfort? And then as you wake up, a twilight voice in your head says, "But that's not how it happened, was it?" I felt this phenomenon yesterday morning, after a dream shaped by wish-fulfillment-- where I had been vulnerable, I was protected; where I had steeled myself, I was loved. But as my two worlds overlapped, another something came to mind, where I saw that those things that gave me the comfort, though simply my imagination, still served to show me what it is that I truly needed at the time... as much as I still seek it now. And so, this magnification of disparity is not in vain.
You see, I see the Kingdom all around me... above me, behind me, before me, below me, as they say. And yet, I have no "home." And yes, I know the theological answer: "our only true home is in God," and I believe that. But I am starting to understand that, while I have learned to become the person I've always needed in my life, rather than placing hope into fragile people and places, I have to answer the question "what now?" for myself. If I had not eventually come to experience the love I eventually did, that helped tend the seeds that remained of my once-self, I would not be here, and continuing to strive at all. But even that bed, it seems, could not be my home, as much as I still grieve it, and will. It is only recently that I’ve dared to enter the sharp, "outer" world on my own, therefore, with fresh eyes.
But now... I really do want to go home. Or rather, to have a home to go to, at least. And I have realised something about the place I am in my life that speaks to a transition I didn't realise was happening, but has started behind the scenes-- I am starting to think that I can have a home, and follow God, too.
I’ve never known what it feels like to hold and be held in permanence. I have hoped, of course, but it was never so. Again and again I am as a seed, a fluff, blowing in the wind. And sometimes it it to my pleasure, but not when I need rest. I am a guest everywhere I go, whose belonging relies on the welcoming love, or dispelling whims, of others. And unlike Odysseus, who longs for a place he remembers, with his Penelope, Telemachus, and Argos, I have nowhere to actually return to. I’ve only known the shape of it in fragments, by watching others, and the feeling of its absence. There is no constant tether for me on the rock face I climb, with absences patched by my own force of will and imagination.
But even if I did... Home isn't a place that can be built on nostalgia and imagination alone, lest one stagnate or regress. And even as I imagine what a such a place of retreat and belonging could look like, in my days of fatigue, I realise it's not about finding a hiding place, but a place one can recharge, reinspire, and rest the heart, mind, and soul to facilitate continued growth.
In my own mind, home is... where love is, and where familiarity allows for rooting and expansion. And so I collect fragments to try to pull together and grow a sense of "place" where it is otherwise hard for me to find completed for me.
And so... considering all these factors, and all that seems to continue to fall away or into place in my life-- and despite my efforts, flaws or failings-- once again it seems it is all I can do is be sated in tending the work that lies before me, trusting that other things will be woven in time.
