Take Me Home Tonight
I was speaking with my mother on the phone recently, and she made the observation that I use the term "home" rather loosely. I think the specific context of this reference was that I had mentioned that I would be going "home" to visit her and my dad during spring break. Of course, the strange thing about calling Tupelo my "home" is that I haven't lived there for any substantial period of time since the summer of 2001, which was the summer after my sophomore year of college. Since then, "home" has been the dorm on campus, the cabin where I lived as a summer camp staffer, my petit logement in southwest France, and now, the duplex that I share with two roommates in Clinton. I think my mother has trouble accepting my liberal use of the word--as she has the right to do, being my mother--but I'm pretty sure such a mutable context for the word is appropriate to the manner in which we are to live as participants in the shifting scheme of life and in the ever-seeking state of the mind and soul.

In case you haven't caught on yet, I'll just let the proverbial cat out of the bag now and admit that I'm a student of medieval literature, particularly medieval British literature. Far from being an authority in the field, I consider myself more of a spectator at this point, looking on with a great deal of awe for the remnants of this culture and respect for the society that produced them. One thing that I admire about Old English literature is its inescapable awareness that things are coming to an end:

"So this middle-earth each and every day declines and falls...the wise warrior is able to perceive how ghostly it will be when all this world's wealth stands waste." --the wanderer

"Thus the joys of the Lord are warmer to me than this dead life, transitory on land. I do not believe that earthly happiness will endure eternally." --the seafarer

"There I must sit the summer-long day, where I can only weep about my exile, about many hardships; because of this I cannot ever rest from the sadness of my heart, or from all the longing which takes hold of me in this life." --the wife's lament

"I will have need of friends on that journey, when alone I have to seek a permanent home, an unknown dwelling; have to leave behind my body, this portion of earth, the spoils of death , to remain as a treat for the worms." --the fates of the apostles

The tone of these verses is frank and startling. A coldness pervades the actions of earth because of the knowledge of death. Yet, as elements of Christianity begin filtering into Anglo-Saxon culture, the acknowledgement of death becomes an ambiguous hope. This world is full of exile. I often find myself alone, hopeless. With the truths of Christianity come the glimmer of a promise that things may not always be this way. It is just a glimmer because it does not wholly change the situation at hand. The writers are still in exile, still alone, but there is now some hope.

The problem with Christianity in America today is that we don't really need deliverance from exile. We speak of exile and deliverance metaphorically: "I was delivered from my addiction to pornography." "I was delivered from my bondage to alcohol." "Jesus rescued me from the exile of my own ways." (I am not saying that these are not real problems for folks today or that "deliverance" from addictions cannot be attributed to divine intervention. I am simply noting that where bondage once referred to an actual, physical restraint, we have applied this language as an image of invisible states of being.) Since we view the exile and deliverance metaphorically, I think we become more prone to viewing the hope of Christ metaphorically. Christianity becomes a language that we use, a society that we create, a program that we adhere to. It's not that Christ does not change lives anymore...it's just that once lives are changed, they now have a tendency to conform to pre-assigned slots in the church body so that deliverance becomes a new kind of bondage.

We've got the metaphor backwards these days, and we wonder why Christians become disillusioned and non-Christians refuse to believe. The exile and deliverance--those are the real things. The homes of this world and the systems of our Christianity--these should be the figures of speech. I wish we could live in a manner that more accurately depicts our roles as wanderers on this earth. I wish we could make evident the truth that we are never really home in this world so that anywhere we play a role, or fulfill a function, may equally be referred to as our home in the figurative sense. Because in the course of the divine, any use of the term home that is not in reference to Christ is an ironic application of the word anyway.

[By the way, the Old English quotations/translations came from Elaine Treharne's first edition anthology. As an English major, I know you've gotta give credit where credit is due.]