Everything reminds me of home.
Driving down Jefferson, walking around Campus Martius, getting stuck behind the Q-line, running through my neighborhood--it all reminds me of home. I grew up in a big city and dearly love cities in general. Give me the hustle and bustle of a busy thoroughfare over the serene calm of a rural landscape any day. Even so, I don't feel at home in Detroit. In my mind, I live in a shadow of what I love.
There's no way to skirt around the reality that I am a white man living on the East Side. Growing up I operated in the majority culture with all the amenities that a large, prosperous city affords a white man living in a comfortable, safe neighborhood. Many of my frustrations with living here stem from my discomfort with realities that exist only due to systemic racism. I won't deny that much of what I miss about home is the ability to do what I want when I want.
The tension I feel then comes from the fact that I don't JUST miss the creature comforts. Those things are threads in a greater tapestry of sorrow I feel when I think about home. Yes, home means having a local grocery store and well maintained sidewalks but it also means late nights playing esoteric board games with friends and being known to my core by people whom I love. I constructed an amalgam of characteristics that when taken together mean "Home" and the physical setting mixes inextricably with the community I built there.
As a result, my feelings of shame and longing jumble together whenever I encounter something uncomfortable about where I live. I may vent about the lack of running trails but truly that relatively mild discomfort carries on its shoulders the heartache I feel when I think about how much I miss my community back home.
The fact that what I miss isn't real anymore serves as an uncomfortable backdrop to this whole story. Most of my friends have moved on and even the ones who live close together operate in such different circles that they rarely see each other. If my little family and I picked up tomorrow and moved I would probably find myself in a place that looks familiar but feels entirely new.
I pine after a fiction and it paralyzes me.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wrote everything above about a week prior to adding this addendum. It capably expresses something that weighs on me every day but it didn't feel quite right for sharing. In the intervening days, Oak posted the first part of a series called "Home" where the author referenced a passage of scripture that worms through my brain whenever I contemplate this topic. The passage is Jeremiah 29 which I will reproduce here for ease of reference:
4 “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. 8 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, 9 for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord. 10 “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
I kind of hate this passage. Am I allowed to say that on a blog about the intersection of faith and culture? I'll be sure to send this to someone before posting to make sure...
Shock factor notwithstanding, this passage frustrates me. When we first moved out here, my wife and I discussed this passage a lot. Displaced from our community, starting new jobs, planning a wedding, and trying to find a church threw us both into deep depression. Neither of us wanted to set down roots. We planned to stay here two years then go back. That was five years ago. Ironically, I suggested discarding the two year plan based on this very scripture and God's admonition to build lives while in a foreign land.
Maybe "Home" means "waiting." Maybe my white, male, American preconception that home means a nice house, stable job, a family, and cute dogs misses the point in a seismic way. God tells us unambiguously that our Home is Heaven and we wait with bated breath for Jesus to return while we reside here. Perhaps He intends that I apply that grand spiritual reality to where I live now. Stop seeking a physical home and instead embrace the waiting for whatever (and wherever) He has next.
Lately I have thought a lot about a line from a song in a silly musical television show. The lead character donates an egg to a friend of hers and finally meets the baby girl who results. She sings awkwardly but sweetly to the child:
So since you're both the future
And kind of a mirror
I'll tell you right now that life doesn't get clearer
All I can say is have fun in the gray
My life doesn't feel clear right now. I blame God for pulling me away from my home. I don't feel particularly close to Him as a result. But maybe I need to give up that frustration. Maybe I need to accept that life may not get clearer and I need to learn to thrive in the gray.
I'll let you know if I figure it out.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI've never had the kind of "home" you describe here, though I have often wondered what it would be like. Over time, I have learned, after moving from place to place, that this feeling of unfamiliarity, of being the outsider, that lingering and hollow sense that I'm out of place, is a unique opportunity to act out the Christian pilgrimmage.
ReplyDeletePeter describes followers of Jesus as "strangers in a foreign land" who are nonetheless commanded to live the kind of godly life that puzzles and points elsewhere. The prophets and the apostles teach us to put down roots, honor the king, build homes, raise families, work with our hands.
In a recent Christianity today article, the author--a seminary professor and Christian historian--explained how the early church "engaged the culture without excessive compromise and remained separate from the culture without excessive isolation," how they found what became known as the “Third Way.” This was largely fueled by the sense that they didn't belong, and yet those early believers--despite the temptation to assimilate entirely, or isolate completely--committed to be present in ways that inspired and confounded those around them.
It's a great article:
https://tinyurl.com/y6qjyqhm
May we, as disoriented as we are, do the same.