Going Home

Home has such a depth of meaning for most people. Its not where you live, but where you are. It is where you lay your head at night, and where you surround yourself with family or loved ones. At different points in our lives home may be a childhood bedroom with a twin bed, a dorm room with stacks of books, a small apartment which used to be a garage.

There are a multitude of images which the word home evokes for each individual. A quick Google search of the term, "Going Home," just spit out 339 million results. There are songs, poems, pictures. All about going home.

I chose to go home this Christmas, taking my daughter and my 2 dogs. To my childhood home, where my parents still live. It was an event preceded with much trepidation and anxiety. Our family was coming together, in its tiny entirety, for the first time in 5 years. It was a wonderful time. A true blessing. But I think we all know it could have gone either way- good or bad. We were blessed. The visit was beyond lovely. The whole time I was home, I kept hearing the Jenny Bruce song, Home,
in my head:

Mirror of life
Pillar of light
Blood of my heart
oceans of fate,
rolling and deep
could not keep us apart

I know they say you can't never go home again.
But all the world be calm
Going home...
you will walk into the light
there's fire burning warm and bright
open up the door to a room where they're waiting for you
and you feel so at ease you will know you're at home

all that I am
fruit of the tree
falling from grace
you are the sun, moon and the stars
no one can ever take your place

I know they say you can't never go home again
But all the world be calm
Going home...
you will walk into the light
there's fire burning warm and bright
open up the door to a room where they're waiting for you
and you feel so at ease you will know you're at home

Inside, faith is gonna find you
somewhere no one knows the word goodbye.


At 2 a.m., one blustery and dark morning, I took dog out. There I stood on my parents lawn, in the still black of the night, in my bare feet and pajamas. That song was running through my head, as were a multitude of other thoughts. Thoughts about the whys, the hows, the what comes next for me....and I looked up.

There in the still sky, shining as if just for me, was Orion's Belt. I was a kid who liked to think a lot, and always looked to the heavens. Orion's Belt was what I would look at every night before coming in, and again every morning before heading off to early morning seminary. After nearly 20 years of creating my own home where ever I am, I looked to the skies and saw a constant.

Like the hand of an angel, those stars instantly calmed my soul. Yes, came the answer. You can always go home. Faith will always find me, and home will always be where no one knows the word goodbye.