Home is where your friends are
Home is where the Army sends you
Home is where a hot meal and good friends sit around the table with you
You might know the phrase with a different ending. Regardless it reminds me that we define home in several ways, not just in an address.
As many of you already know I grew up in a military family, we moved routinely every 1-3 years. One of my least favorite questions to be asked was “where is home”- you see both of my grandfathers were also in the army, so while they resided in Florida and in Arizona, those places were not their places of origin though they had become home.
How do we define home?
In the south this is in reference to where our people are from, where they are buried, where they have come from.
For me home has become where you are in the moment and what has formed you. AND home is where there is a seat a the table.
For me, Sewanee is one of those places. College was the first time I lived anywhere for 4 years and during those four years my parents moved 3 times. Sewanee, though, stayed the same (sometimes a strength and sometimes that is it’s own weakness). Sewanee is the place where I chose to listen more deeply, to wander, to be in groups that were different, and ask harder questions. And we always found food together in the dining hall.
Sewanee is also a place I keep coming back to, for weddings, for funerals, for council meetings and while an official capacity brings me back now, it’s the relationships that make it home. Finding time to drink a cup of coffee or tea, go for a run (race pace has been redefined from those college years) and savor the space as it changes and as I do too. Tonight we will share a meal together with the soon to be graduating class of seminarians as they head out from calling Sewanee “home” for three years and go to “work in the vineyard.” Home is about to change for these new graduates.
At St Luke’s in Atlanta they are home to a congregation who worships there, they are also home to a “soup kitchen” where folks come to eat and they are the physical home address to a large population that have no homes. As you may or may not realize, to do a lot of the paperwork you need to have a job you must have a physical address. St Luke’s has become that for their people who are in need and go through their assistance program. While people do not reside at the church, they do not have a shelter, they do have a program where St Luke’s is their mailing address, mailroom, and physical home address. The church opens up their doors so that their folks in need can get their feet on the ground and on their way to finding and creating their own homes.
As I am traveling, I have been staying in homes along the way. Dear friends have opened their doors and and tables to invite me in and we get to sit around the table sharing a meal and catching up, hearing where the spirit is moving in each person’s life and laughing at the joyful adventures God has us on. Each space has become home for the night for me, each meal feeding both heart and soul.
Where is home for you? Is it a place? Is a meal?
How are you inviting others in to experience “home” with you and inviting them to your table?
