Location, location, location

Finding Home

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

Maya Angelou

The idea of home is an interesting one, isn't it? It's kind of like the idea of mind—where is that, how is it different from brain? For instance, I have lived in Birmingham, AL since 1980—37 years; more than half my life. Yet I still feel myself to be displaced. My house here feels like home, but this location on the map does not. The notion of home has as much to do with tribe as with place. Home includes the people who know you, who share the same moral compass; who, though you may disagree with them about many things, are nonetheless an integral part of your psyche. Home is the place and the people where you fit, like one piece of a jigsaw puzzle, into all the surrounding pieces, and without you, the picture is incomplete.

We enter this time of year when, regardless of you religion or lack thereof, the holidays come starkly into view, and ideas of home begin to crowd into consciousness. I think of all the human lives now being lived in squalid camps on the borders of strange countries. In tents, or shacks, among people who are indifferent or even hostile, they try to maintain a semblance of home. How difficult that must be. But we don't have to look across oceans to find displaced people, disrupted homes. We are surrounded by them.

Fortunately, I have found a tribe in Alabama. We progressive folks huddle together against the accusations of “liberal elite” and “socialist sympathizers” that are regularly hurled at us. We work to expand the possibilities for change, for addressing poverty, poor education and high infant mortality rates. We do what we can to embody Christianity as a religion of inclusion, acceptance and openness in an environment that is hostile toward the stranger—especially if the stranger is Muslim.

I have friends who were born here, who have lived in the deep South all their lives, who feel more at home in distant countries—their tribe is there. Their moral sensibilities and preferred way of life are more in line with the people of India, Switzerland, Spain, Africa. Home is where we feel we belong, regardless of location. It is the people who belong to us, regardless of bloodline. The question is are you at home inside yourself? Without that, no place will feel like home.

I hope this holiday season, you gather your tribe around you and celebrate in ways that strengthen and deepen your connections. Cherish the relationships in which you are embraced exactly as you are—even if you're weird like me. That is the true meaning and location of home.

                                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                                      Jane