My wife has a favorite speaker who once talked about the concept of Home. We seem to be a race that is ever searching, or ever consuming, finding satisfaction only with great will power. We have an unfilled longing that none of us can seem to place. He holds that it is the want for Home. Not meaning the residence we all have, but a true home. A place of peace and contentment.
The first thing that comes to mind is that I hate it here. Not this house, not this state, not even really this country (hard to believe), but this planet, this life. Every single thing about it rings out of decay and has the taint of death that first wafted in from the Garden. And not just in the final sense of shuffling off this mortal coil. Look deeper and you find the ugly stain of it all in every single persons every single action. There is no move that we can make without its foulness touching on what we do as well. No matter the good deeds we do. Even the selfless acts we create here have the thread of ugliness attatched to them. We cannot escape it. Our kindness is double faced, our strength is undermined to the point of collapse, our sweet words are laced with selfishness and ulterior motives.
And even those who, for a few brief seconds achieve something that is truly pure on this earth, the world rushes in like a hungry animal to consume them, and blacken thier nobility. Monks who saught enlightenment and peace in the East are dogged by attackers so that they change thier peaceful nature into a martial art of self defense. But their origional principles are aldready tainted. A new prophet comes to the dessert to show his beloved people a new way to be free and seek the spirit of God. But his work becomes utterly corrupted as his followers seek power over all others using his words. The followers of Christ, who for so long faught the persecution of the Romans preaching the non violence of turning the other cheeck, eventually launch (and continue today) the bloodiest wars the world has ever known.
Where are the peacemakers? Who is left to inherit the kingdom of Heaven? Who still wishes and longs for Home so much that they are willing to give everything up to bring just a peice of it here to this earth? They are gone. Poisoned by the tragedy that is this world. Brought low by the petty things that we make our selves believe are so direly important. Ever trying to fill the void left in us, the void that our avarice created.
There are Roads to take us home, to a place where we Belong...
We don't belong to this place. This world. This cruelty that must be endured. We are meant for Home, and that is where we are bound.
1 comment:
Wow, someone had a dark day... I know what you mean about the longing for Home, but I think I've caught glimpses of it, in people, in locations, in moments of quiet and of craziness. When I've described it to some people, they call it the Presence of the Holy Spirit, and to others it sounds like some sort of existential connection with the Universe, which could very well be the same thing depending on how you look at it. But there are those moments when everything just seems a little brigther, a little richer, a little more Real, like the difference between looking at the world through a window and then stepping outside to see it without the filter.
And while I agree that most of the time, 99.99999% of the time, any good work or kind word is laced with ulterior motives or colored with envy or cynicism, there are times when I've even surprised myself with a random act of kindness, and actually thought about how amazing the feeling that comes from such a thing can be. Usually those are the things that I just blurt out without thought or planning, or something that I do on complete whim or with an overwhelming feeling that it just has to be done.
I can't believe I'm the only one to ever experience those moments, those feelings, and I certainly can't believe that I fall into some niche of better-than-most-of-humanity that one would associate with those things. I think we all have that one pure thread in our making, the one that makes living worthwhile, the one that lets us recognize God in the world. And what could provide a better glimpse of Home that that?
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