Where Souls May Meet

Thoughts on Home, Hearth, Creativity and Eternity

Recently, I have been thinking about what makes a place to live into a home, and whether or not ‘home’ as a concept is something that a Christian should even be aiming for. We are taught, for example, that this place in which we find ourselves, this chunk of rock orbiting an enormous natural fusion reactor, is not our true home, at least in its current state. It will be changed as we shall be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, and it will only be a true home when there is no separation between creation and its Creator. God will dwell among us and we will be as gods, glorified in some way.

But what about now? What about here? Can or should we seek to have a home? I’ve struggled with this idea for a long time. The closest thing to having a home of my own I have ever come was a couple of rooms in different houses during my university days, but though I added personal touches, they were still rooms for rent in other people’s houses. The rest of the time, I have either lived with my parents or with my husband in an apartment that was his space first. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love living here and have made it my home in many ways, but I think it’s only now, after almost ten years of marriage, that I am truly coming to see this place as what I think a home is, which is, to borrow a pagan expression, a place of power. Someone says—Robert Frost? Will Rogers?—that “home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.” But this refers to the ancestral home, the family home. Do those places truly exist anymore, or are they less about place or land and more about the people in them? Is home a physical space or a state of mind while occupying a space? Can the earthly home be more than just a weight of care that steals the thoughts away from God and from eternity? Saint Paul seemed rather skeptical of this position, seeing marriage, family and home as snares to catch the unwary soul, making it harder to live the life of the Gospel. After all, Christ had nowhere to lay His head, which would seem to support Paul in his thinking, and yet He was often welcomed into people’s homes to dine and to even stay at times.

So, what of us? What of me? Is this place where I sit on the seventh floor of an urban apartment building my home? In one way, of course it is, as it is where I live with my husband. It is our proving-ground as well as our sanctuary. Here, we find our occupations as well as our pleasures, but we are here by sufferance of several levels of government and of a corporate landlord. We did not build this home with our sweat and labour, and yet we have made it our own. I believe that there is a definite—well—vibe, for lack of a better word, that radiates—well—us when you enter this rather generic apartment. We have infused it with ourselves, but is that enough?

I believe, as I said, that a home can and should be a creative space, a place of power from which ideas may take flight and to which inspiration may occasionally make visits. But is this kind of home the physical kind? As Christians, we’re called to be a home for christ, to allow Him to come into us and make his abode there as he did among the animals in the cave at His birth or as He did when he was invited to dine in the houses of publicans and sinners. So, we are called less to possess or acquire homes than to become homes for christ and thereby, homes for the stranger and the sojourner. The idea of the home as a little church is a lovely one and should be cultivated, but it cannot be cultivated on an external level until the internal compass is set correctly. Or rather, it cannot be cultivated on an external level unless the internal compass is continually being corrected and directed to what is our true home, which is God.

I often think of home as the place where I can drop all my public masks and just be who I am without pretence. This sometimes means, unfortunately, that I am a rather cranky person when I shut that door behind me. Rather than appreciating the freedom of being home, I find myself brooding at home on stuff that has happened out in the world, so that home is not a place of power but of pain and resentment. Of course, this is when I actually get out into the world. As things stand now, my husband and I share our home for most days in the week. Of course, we are able to create our own little virtual spaces through the use of headphones and other means, but for much of each day, we sit together in a single room, each engaged upon our various projects. For the most part, we lead a contented life this way, but I know that it certainly isn’t for everyone.

I used to think of myself as somehow inferior or not adult enough for spending most of my time at home. If you spend most of your time at home, you must either be pretty selfish in not contributing to the economic growth of your society or lazy or unable to actually make it in the world. Then, I met a man for whom his home was his place of power, his place of prayer and his place of truth. Whether he was in an apartment, a drafty building downtown, a rectory or an assisted living facility, he was home, because he carried his place of power about with him. Prayer was his home. Kindness was his home. Eternity was certainly his home, though it had not come to meet him fully when I knew him. He never ventured into the world, or only for the briefest of times, and yet he was not aloof from it joys or its sorrows. He had made Christ his home and so had become a home for others, a tree in which the birds of the heavens lodged. In other words, he exemplified the idea of the Kingdom of God, and he is by no means the only person whom I have met who could do this.

Home need not be a chain or a weight of care, though of course it can be at times. However, it can also be a sacrament, an antechamber of eternity, an outpost of God’s Kingdom, So, while I definitely do not live in the sort of house I always imagined, I do have a home which is both here and not here, which is sort of a liminal space between time and forever, and even if the physical surroundings change, I hope that I will not lose that space, that place of power and peace. It may not have wood-paneling and it may not have a fountain or wind-chimes or any number of other things that I always imagined, especially the wooden porch—ah! The wooden porch!—but my inner home can have those things, whatever they represent, and though it will take time to build that inner space properly, there is One who can design it far better than I can. A home is where souls may meet. It is where one welcomes and one receives welcome. So, whatever happens and to the best of my abilities, there will always be tea and sympathy, whether literal or figurative, waiting for anyone who happens to drop by my little fixer-upper. Perhaps one day, it will become a palace!.