Epiphany: H is for Home

Since I retired, I have been away more than I have been in my house. This means that I have been rethinking what home means.

I’ve written a lot about being a peripatetic worshipper these past four years, and particularly now that I’m on the retired road. I’ve wrestled with and pondered what church means when I am a guest or worker when I attend. What does it mean to not have an ongoing commitment to a church community—which is part of what having a church home means to me.

I make regular financial commitments to support a variety of worshipping communities. Home is more than money. I also have ongoing financial commitments to groups whose purpose I support—ministries of feeding and supporting women and children.

Home has a sense of some sort of familiarity. Home has a sense of a place where peace can be found. Home has a sense of rootedness that doesn’t depend on location or a certain amount of time. It has a sense of commitment regardless of how long I am present there.

Today on this first Sunday after the Epiphany I am in Taos.

Home is sitting in front of the fire for centering prayer and contemplative reading.

Home is drinking a hot beverage in my favorite coffee place with my best friend as I write this blog.

Home is my friend and I praying vesper prayers sitting with a winter sunset.

I (we) can be a viator (a wayfarer, a traveler) and still be home.

Nadia Bolz-Weber wrote about the belonging we automatically receive because whoever we are, wherever we are, we are beloved of God:

A love that is yours quite apart from what you do or don’t do. The kind of love that breaks your heart and then makes it bigger, A love that creates belovedness in the one it rests upon.

So, Beloveds… Be loved. Just sit and be loved. Even if it hurts. Just sit and be loved and be the beloved of God. Because that is who you already are. Amen.

Is this belovedness home?

Perhaps home is about being as present as we are able, wherever we are, in our place of belovedness of God. Granted, some places are easier to be home than others. But home is always as near as our sitting within our belovedness in God.