Searching for home
Bowling Green, Ky, Aug. 15, 2011
Some people search for the next big thrill. Others for wealth – how much money can they earn in a year. Meanwhile, there are those whose lives are devoted to a search for meaning – the big questions. Where did it all begin? Why am I here? Where did I come from and where am I going? Is there really a god?
I am going to confess to some of those predilections. There’s an emptiness in all of us that needs to be filled. Few can boast of their cup perpetually running over.
That sensation of being satisfied is a rare gift.
My search is not for happiness, for gold, for acclaim. Mine is for home – for a sense of belonging. To lose the permanent stain of outsider in favor of the mantle of belonger. I don’t want to be an insider.
There’s no desire for me to furrow that deeply. I just one to belong - to feel as if I am exactly where I need to be and not try to be someplace else.
I was acutely reminded of that internal debate during two recent outings. The first was to the Gadsden Cultural Center in Quincy, Florida. I drove to the Cultural Center to see “Rich in Spirit,” an exhibit of artist Dean Mitchell’s work. Mitchell grew up black and poor in predominantly black Quincy. His work celebrates the people and places of his boyhood. His watercolors capture real life texture in ways no photograph can. They evoked a sense of place that teased my heart anew.
Recently as I drove from Bowling Green to Franklin, Kentucky, the route was marked by strip malls and chain restaurants and payday loan storefronts before giving way to cornfields with stalks as tall as giants. Silos stood over open fields like guards. Barns, their red paint stark and rich against a sea of green leaves, interrupt the flow. Even at 40 miles an hour, those images evoke a time and place that speaks to my heart, that beckons and seduces me. Is this the kind of place to find emotional solace? Can cornfields and red barns be the cure for my restlessness?
My greatest fear is that one locale will yield to another. This modern day nomad will continue looking for the next horizon. That the ache, the need, the yearning for home, will never end.
I suspect that I will never find home as long as I keep looking for it. Home needs to be in the here and now, where I am at that moment. That place is less geography but an emotional terrain, a spiritual place. When I find it my wanderings will cease. I’ll know it. I’ll feel as if I belong. There will be no boasting but a quiet affirmation that I’ve found it. When I do, I won’t ever let it go. I promise.
