November 7, 2011
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The wandering soul
Hello all,
This is a long post in coming. No, it's not the one where I critique Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution is True. That must wait until I have more time, though...it's approaching a year since he actually met with some people at the Chicago Temple.
No, what is on my mind other than graduate school is homelessness.
My Homelessness...
True, it's a far cry from actual homeless people on the streets. After all, I have a warm place to stay and comforts that they do not have. But, is a place to stay at night (even temporary) what we call home? Is it what I call home? Is home where I spend most of my time? Is home where my heart is? Is home a particular community? Is home a spiritual home? What does home mean to me?
If it's a merely a cozy place to live, then home is not my physical place of residence. I don't LIVE there....unless I choose to vicariously live through other people's digital lives. No, I LIVE my life outside of the home. I don't even spend most of my time physically there. It's a place for me to crash after long nights of school and work. Let's face it, we only LIVE our lives in our waking moments unless you believe we are in the Matrix. Depressing as it may sound, when I say I'm going home, it's so that I can pass into oblivion before I start the cycle again. This can't be what I mean by home.
If home is where the heart is, then I carry it wherever I go right? This sounds pretty good, until I realize that this concept of home means to forever wander where the heart leads. There is an element of emptiness that constantly needs to filled by something, be it life goals or love (in this case I mean that special someone). What if you have never reached goals in life? Had to give up on them? What if there has been that special someone yet? Of course, here I over romanticize. I don't think you need to have someone "complete" you, but there are days when you look around and feel a bit empty. The grass indeed greener on the other side, even if I know that going there won't provide you anymore sense of contentment than where I currently am. Thus, the heart is never full at anytime to permanently call it home even though I carry it with me all the time. It is no place to find comfort, unless you find emptiness such a source. It is always searching for something else.
Home then, is perhaps the people with whom we associate. We have our work communities, our church communities, our social communities. This too however is dissatisfying. The home is a composite. It is by nature fragmented and kept together by sheer will and physical effort. Heaven knows I have tried to keep in contact with all of my communities, but invariably choices have to be made as to which ones are important and which ones have to be temporarily suspended. Home here, is determined externally, so is not intrinsic to myself. At best, I have "homes" but not a home. Perhaps this is a good thing because then I can hop from one to another, finding sources of comfort, permanence, and belonging. This like the heart however, is a wanderer, searching for something else and can only work at the expense of giving up on self contained concepts of home. Furthermore, this particular home concept is only as good as the communities themselves.
Being a seminarian of course prompts the question. What about God as home? Well what of God? If seminary has taught me anything, God-talk is exceedingly complex and frustrating. Because of the fear of creating idols, no concept of God is truly God.....well....except for Jesus...when He was around. Yes, I am a Christian so I confess a Trinitarian concept of God, and I'm beginning to understand what the Trinity is and how the Trinity works. But. Given the contextual nature of theology and the various Trinitarian concepts out there, be it Latin, Asian, African, which one is the "right" one? Suppose all of them are and thus the mysteriousness of God is because of God's fecundity. It is not that God is incomprehensible because of some unknowable quality....the Kantian noumena. Again, dissatisfying because then it seems that whatever God-talk we have is at best is only symbolic and thus while in Tillich's terms participates in the divine, is not the divine itself. There appears to be no truly genuine way describing God without making God...not God. God as home then....doesn't appear to be a home if it is something that I can never get to until after death.
So what is home to me? The fact that this post is titled the wandering soul suggests that I have no concept of home. I am always emigrating somewhere. I am always an immigrant in someone's life. The transitory nature of home however dissatisfied I may be with it, is probably the best I concept I have. There is a need for permanence, belonging, comfort, and my soul seeks after it. Does this mean that I'm depressed, sad, and lonely? Far from it. I am genuinely happy, just not complacent. To be completely at home somewhere means to me that I have become complacent with life....with LIVING. Thus home is a dynamic concept. It takes the fragmented, transitory concepts of home, combines it with hope, and then permanently makes it a part of my self identity. Home then is permanently within me, but I am never...at home.
