Home - A Reflection and Poem

I was in between permanent residences from May until September. During this time, my wife, Amy, and I lived out of suitcases as we: travelled to Israel, house sat, and stayed with family and friends. I have moved, in some sense of the word, a total of nine times in the last four months. However, as of September first, we got keys to our Vancouver basement suite near Regent College, where I will begin graduate studies next week. As I have relayed to a few people already, Vancouver has never been a draw for me that it has for others. It has always been there and I have always been close but it was never a place I went out of my way to visit often, especially from Abbotsford. I think partially it is because I allow relationships to govern location, and I just don't know many people in Vancouver. So it was always nice, and I would wind up there once a year or so with friends but not often. And I always wondered why we had to drive so far to hang out when we could have just done something near home.

However, all my doubt and ambivalence melted away as I drove over the Lions Gate bridge for the first time in nearly 10 years. I have swam at Spanish banks 2 of the 7 days I have been here, and also went to a beach BBQ tonight. I have a U-PASS and took the bus today very successfully. I live on a tree lined street that has three tire swings. In a few very short days I have found myself converted. I think it would be fair to say, that I feel more at home, more quickly here than I have in the last number of places I have lived and that in this place I somehow in an almost surreal way feel at home in a way that I'm not sure I have necessarily felt in while, not fully at home, but home in a surprising way that I'm not sure I could explain - or maybe I just missed the ocean.

This leads me to the discussion of "home" a word filled with meaning and emotion. "Home" is an elusive concept often talked about and often longed for. It is interesting to consider where and what feels like "home," especially after one has lived in a number of places. It can be quite disconcerting to go away and come home and discover that home doesn't feel like "home" any more. One suddenly finds themselves in an existential crisis of homelessness or exile. Theologically, one could argue that this is actually our perpetual state as we wait for Jesus. Either way, during my time actually being homeless I reflected on this and the pain of the loss of a sense of "home" and wrote a poem. I actually wrote this after binging on spoken word by Taylor Mally and George Watsky, so at some point it may also become a video...

Home.

They say its where the heart is

but what if you're broken hearted

and your home is where it started?

Is home a feeling or place ?

Is it the taste of Christmas dinner

or the the look upon on my face

when exactly where I am

is where I want to be ?

home is where you are

when you are who you're meant to be

Or is home where you are?

Your mother, lover or your friend...

Are we a socially based

relationally placed people

without identity individually,

finding home exclusively within

community?

Say it with me

"home is where you are"

does it become meaningless?

Home is everywhere and no where

a moving shadow

disappearing in the sun.

So is it you are or you are?

Is is it you alone or you together?

Whether or not together is possible

for another discussion with other critical capitals

Have you ever gone home

and found it disappeared?

You don't belong

You don't fit in

You're not safe

You're not loved

You think too much

But its not enough

Its like in Garden State when they just stand in the rain and scream.

We can rebuild it, we have the technology!

But no matter how hard I try I never quite feel at home

I'm always just a bit too alone

Home isn't where I am

It's in another time or space

with Peter Pan in Never Never Land

some how it escapes 

us

as the human race

a race

because we're running

and looking to make the fleeting feeling

last

instead of it slipping into the nostalgic past

doomed to the unreproducible perfection of a rose coloured glass

perpetually exiled from the perfection we aspire to

we persist and perspire in our unyielding desire

to go home

they say home is where the heart is

but home is where you are

and if you are what you eat

then your home is down the street 

on the shelf at Costco with all the other frozen meat

You don't have to go home but you can't stay here.

but if I'm always leaving how will I ever get there.