Not at Home

It’s a process for me.

Certainly I’m not the only one. Taking in and processing daily change-ups and challenges.

Being uncomfortable is not new to me – pushed to adapt and flex, not new – launched on unexpected and steep learning curves, also not new.

What’s new to me is this settling in reality: the “home” to which we thought we returned is gone. Instead it’s unexpected foreign territory, a new culture to which to adapt.

Change is part of living life, but not all change is good. Some just happens. Some is thrust upon us. A lot seems to involve human actors.

Thoughts and feelings roll over and around. Many questions go unanswered, at least until later when time eventually provides some.

I’ve traveled quite a bit – not everywhere by any stretch. But enough to see a lot with my own eyes, hear a lot with my own ears, smell, taste, touch and be both heart-broken and soul-inspired. Humans everywhere need and want some the same kinds of things.

Many humans around the world may not be able to relate to or even imagine the kind of turmoil broiling in my home country. As we deepen the chasms between ourselves, we seem oblivious to the absolute privilege we each have in the world, our citizenship makes that true (but it’s changing now!).

Marveling at a new day, a dawning sky, many mornings I reflect on this: the sound of morning doves here remind of my home in Kazakhstan – warm summer mornings on our patio there –my neighbors talking about plans to leave their home after saving up all they can to come to place where they dream of freedom and possibilities they don’t think exist for them where they were born.

I watch and listen. Pay attention. I see a tearing down, not only of statues and history, but also of dreams and potential. I hear a striving for a system that sounds like one others dream of escaping. And I don’t know how to respond to all I’m feeling and experiencing.

Then I interact with my teenage kids, who are even more like immigrants in a land not their own, and listen to their feelings and their ponderings, and my heart cracks a little bit more.

I think of the words in the southern African American spiritual tradition: “This world is not my home; I’m just passing through.” And it speaks clarifying truth to me – suffering does clarify a lot (even suffering brought on by ourselves). And suffering can lead us closer to God and His great heart of love.

The truth is that there’s a whole lot more to life than what we can take in with our senses – deep in our souls we know that. When our senses enjoy the experience around us, we are lulled into a comfortable complacency. Until – BOOM. We are not comfortable anymore. And that leads to suffering.

I watch the failure of our leaders to lead, our citizens to be responsible, and our churches to be the vanguard of truth and justice, honest love and compassion. And I too am tempted to despair.

There’s not much hope as we turn on one another and smash the whole system to smithereens. And I’m not convinced a new system, a new government or a new society will be any better. In fact, I’m quite confident of the opposite.

Like the author of Ecclesiastes wrote: “There is nothing new under the sun.” The world’s been around long enough to teach us that. History repeats itself – humanity seems destined that way (maybe burning books or throwing away piles of them into dumpsters doesn’t help?).

For me this means hanging – clinging, in fact – onto truth that stays solid in shifting sands. Faith is the substance of things hoped for – it’s the evidence of a reality I can’t see. This may be all I’m surly confident of these days. And I think it’s enough.

The sand will keep on shifting. What leaders say and do will be one thing today and tomorrow something else. A human system will not save us. It will not create a world that is equally better for everyone or anyone.

So by God’s grace, walking in His mercy, may I live the best I can in this world that’s not my home and reflect some of His generous heart of love to each pair of eyes I meet and every covered face I greet, one individual heart at a time.