Lenten Meditations on the Cosmic Riddle, Part 2

 "Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.  It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, 'Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so that we may obey it?' Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you  have to ask, 'Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so that we may obey it?' No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so that you may obey it."

-Deut. 30:11-14

"When you ascended on high,
You took many captives;
You received gifts from people,
Even from the rebellious--
That You, LORD God, might dwell there."
-Ps. 68:18  

"By faith [Abraham] made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.  For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. ... For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come."
-Heb. 11:9-10; 13:14 

Home.

What is it, really?

"The place where one lives permanently, esp. as a member of a family or household." 

OK.  Or perhaps you prefer this one:

"A place where something flourishes, is typically found, or from where it originates." 

Hmmm, this is interesting. It seems that I have asked the wrong question in the first place. If we listen to the New Oxford American Dictionary, home is not a "what" at all, but a "where."

Reset.

Home.   Where is it?

As I've already stated, planet earth is home. But that's pretty general, isn't it? I mean, everyone's from "earth." This doesn't really tell you much about ME. I had a difficult time with this question for a while, because my family moved around when I was a kid. I was born in Wisconsin, spending some years more or less in the "big woods" area of the state (in an itty-bitty town between Eau Claire and Superior, if you're up on your Wisconsin geography). We moved from there when I was 7 years old, crossing the big lake to Grand Rapids, Michigan. We lived in Grand Rapids for 10 years, until 3 days before I was to start my senior year of high school. [It's a long story, but moving away was a good thing, not a bad thing.] My dad took a job pastoring a church in Central City, Nebraska, which is almost as "nowhere" as you can get in the US. The town started as an Oregon Trail outpost on the Platte River, being called "Lone Tree" because it was the only tree for miles and miles and miles. (There are lots of trees there now.)

Here's the thing for me. Even though I lived in Michigan for 10 years of my childhood, it never felt like home to me. It still doesn't. I used to ride my bike all over that town, and I know that place like the back of my hand. But after having spent my youngest hours out in the country, the city never quite felt like "home." When we moved to Nebraska, I felt very much like a fish out of water at first, but only at first. I graduated from high school and went away to college. And even though I had grown up mostly in Michigan, I called Central City my hometown, because of all the places where I'd lived, I discovered that Nebraska felt the most like "home" to me. And it's true, Heartland culture suits me much better than anywhere else I've lived in the US.  Although my name is Irish, my familial cultural identity is definitively German.  I value precision, stoicism, and hard, hard work.  I have a vomit-like hatred of hypocrisy and phoniness (even if that means being a jerk sometimes).  In my natural state, I have a propensity to drink too much alcohol.  Even though I'm not sure I would ever want to live in Nebraska again, I still have an emotional tie to the Great Plains that is not the same anywhere else in the world.  I'm an American citizen; and for me, Nebraska is home.  

But not everyone is in the same kind of situation. I have some good friends, including my wife, who never grew up in any specific "home" culture.  People who grow up in this situation are often called "third culture kids" (3CK), but a better description is probably "no culture kids."  3CK's grow up in a different cultural environment than their parents did, and so end up caught "in the middle" between the cultural they know from experience (but is ethnically different) and the culture to which they ethnically ''belong" (but is practically foreign to them).  I've heard 3CK's say that they actually feel most "at home" when they are in transit from one place to another ... in essence, the airplane becomes home.  Now that I've been married for a while, I've heard Allison say at different times that, for her, "home" is wherever I am as her husband.  One of my 3CK friends is getting married this summer.  I wonder if he will have the same experience toward his wife?

So maybe I still haven't asked the right question yet.  Reset again.

Home. -- Who is it? -- What is His name, and what is His Son's name?

I feel jealous of 3CK's sometimes.  Allison has contemplated the reality of heaven much more deeply than I have, and I think it's for this exact reason.  I am still locked into a place where I belong, both geographically and culturally, a home.  But she isn't, and as a result, she is much further along the road than I am in terms of finding her identity in eternal things instead of temporal things.  But one of the things that I'm looking forward to in terms of this whole cross-cultural experience is (hopefully) eventually being free of this concept of a cultural "home."  

Who knew we had to cross the sea to ascend to heaven?


[to be continued]