Finding Home

Home is where the heart is.
Bloom where you’re planted.
It’s not about the place, it’s about the people.

One scene I remember vividly from my childhood was a time when I was choreographing intricate dance moves to Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven is a Place on Earth. In the middle of my intense choreography my mother walked over to my Magnavox D8300 Yellow Boombox and shut Belinda off. “Heaven is not a place on earth,” said my mother sternly. She went on to say other words that I did not hear because I was utterly distraught that she’d had the nerve to shut off the tape I’d just spent hours recording off of 92 Moose WWME Maine’s #1 Hit Music Station. My mother was attempting to teach me that heaven could never be a place on earth because heaven is our home. In other words, we will never be fully satisfied or content here on earth because our hearts, hope, and home is in heaven.

Fabulous. This is just great news. How hopeful would anyone feel to learn they will never feel at home, at peace, or content on earth? However, lately I have been wondering if perhaps this is reality.

I have lived in Athens, Wenham, Gilroy, Santa Cruz, Pasadena, Beverly Hills, Jeffreys Bay, Cape Town, Brattleboro, and Spokane. Not one of these places have I considered home. When people ask “where’s home?” I don’t have an answer. When people ask “if you could live anywhere in the world where would you live?” I don’t have an answer. Ideally, I’d live near friends. However, they are spread throughout the world. Ideally, I’d live in a warm climate by the ocean. However, the 1% have cornered the market on any hope of living in such a place. Ideally, I’d live somewhere that had people from any and every season of life, rich in culture, socioeconomics, ideology, race, mentality, and spirituality. However, I’ve never found such a place.

As a single, thirty-three year old, white, heterosexual, Jesus-emulating, sun-loving, eclectic, liberated, woman it has been the most challenging endeavor to find home in the midst of continually uprooting. Building community from square one is quite comparable to building a sand castle – it takes immeasurable time and effort, depends solely on the substance of the sand, and gets washed away with every new wave. Being single at 33 presents significant challenges in making friends who are similar in age, ideology, and season of life. My current living location is actually worse than rural Africa in this regard. People in my current big town/small city (or as I enjoy referring to it as a tity) tend to fall into one, some, or all of the following categories: have lived here for over ten years, all their friends have lived here for over ten years, have no need for new friends. This tity is predominantly homogeneous, monocultural, and white. It is depressing.

Frankly, I’m at a loss. I don’t want to settle in the current tity where I reside which makes me not want to invest in community here. However, how am I every going to create community unless I stay in one place for a longer duration than a few years? So does one choose to stay, invest, hunker down and create a home or does one search for the environment they desire to live in and hope the community in that environment will share similar interests, values, etc?

Heaven may not be a place on earth, but it seems that a home, a haven, should exist somewhere for everyone.

21 Days

A dear friend invited me to participate in an extended activity for 2011 - each month focusing on a particular thought/deed/action for 21 days. The schedule is as follows:

January - 21 days of Self Care
February - 21 days of Gratitude
March - 21 days of Thinking Globally, Living Locally
April - 21 days of Walking with the Rabbi, Jesus
May - 21 days Loving One Person Well
June - 21 days Seeing Injustice
...still brainstorming ideas for the last 6 months of the year.

In addition to simply acting, thinking, seeing, participating differently we decided to blog about what we were thinking, seeing, participating in, and/or acting upon.

For January I am taking care of myself by joining Weight Watchers, getting my ass to the gym 5-6 days a week, and being more consistent with taking all my vitamins! I want these changes to be lifelong, habitual, routine, and necessary to my daily routine. I've already learned how to cook Quinoa, experimented with baking butternut squash and kale, and am perfecting split pea soup!

The most immediate difference I have observed in conscientiously taking care of myself is that I am able to better give, provide, share my time and energy with others. I am operating at a fuller capacity and therefore can pour out more to others. Like most good and healthy things once put into practice we wonder why we hadn't made the change earlier. And yet it is a daily challenge to get up at 5:30am and make my way to the gym. A daily temptation to resist the food that is easy and accessible and take the time to cook something nourishing. It takes thought, care, and drive to persevere...take up one's cross, put on the sword, shield, thy daily bread. Daily. Moment by moment.

It is a good reminder at how vulnerable and fragile we all are - susceptible at any point to the snares and lures of darkness. I want to give my best to others and therefore must give the best to myself. Out of the overflow of thy heart (and energy) shall thy mouth speak (and actions be taken).