Home place
25/05/12 05:03
I had just turned seventeen when I moved away from my hometown. That was nearly 42 years ago now. I lived back there for a few of the summers of my college years, but I never again spent an entire year in that town. Four years later, when I completed my undergraduate degree, we moved away from Montana to Chicago. I don’t think that I would have believed it at the time, but I never returned to Montana. After Chicago, we lived in North Dakota and Idaho before moving to Rapid City. We have lived in several apartments and houses over the years. The house where we now live is the place that I have called home for more years than any other place. We have now lived in that house longer than I lived in my childhood home.
So, it really does not make sense for me to refer to Montana as my home or to speak of myself as a Montanan. Nonetheless, that remains part of my identity. Whenever someone mentions Montana or Yellowstone National Park, my ears perk up and I try to engage them in conversation about things that are familiar to me.
Of course my hometown isn’t really all that familiar to me any more. There are a few old timers who were there when I lived there. A few of my schoolmates settled in town and still live there. But most of the businesses have changed hands and many have changed locations. There are plenty of new businesses in town. The old high school is now a community center and there is a new high school. The Interstate has now bypassed the town and the route to the cemetery has changed now that it is on the other side of the highway from the town. There is a new road up to the airport and there are quite a few new houses on the edges of town. Things are just not the same. I am really not from that town any more.
I’m in my hometown this morning, having traveled here yesterday to do some business. We need to meet with a realtor about a piece of property that belonged to our mother and now needs to be sold. It is our family summer cabin. There was a time when none of us could imagine ever selling the place. Now it seems to be the most sensible option open to us.
Life is different. The world is different.
There was a time when we were a really big family: seven children and two parents. I was only sixteen when our sister Beverly died. I was 27 when we lost our father. Brother Dan died in 2010 and mom died the day before his birthday in 2011. We are fewer people than we once were. Of course the clan has grown with the addition of nieces, nephews, children and grandchildren. But the family of my growing-up years is not at all the same. Life is like that. Things change.
Vine Deloria, Jr., in his book, “God is Red,” makes a sweeping generalization about the theological perspectives of indigenous and immigrant people. Indigenous people, see God is sacred places, immigrant people see God in sacred history. This difference between God in place and God in history creates a difference of perspective that makes mutual honor and respect difficult. Of course I’m grossly simplifying Deloria’s argument here. One thing that Deloria does not examine in his book is the story of unwilling immigrants. You cannot tell the story of African Americans without telling the story of slavery. Forced migration is part of the history of many people, including some Native American tribes. It introduces an entirely new perspective into what had been an “either/or” viewpoint. Add to that the complexities of intermarriage and the fact that few have heritage from only one of those types of people and we are far more complex than he worldview presented in Deloria’s book.
It does make sense, however, to characterize Biblical history as an immigrant story. Abraham and Sarah leave the country of their forebears to go to the land that God promises. The people wander for generation after generation, circling the Promised Land, sometimes traveling through it, but end up in slavery in Egypt. After being delivered from Egypt there is another generation of wandering before Israel occupies the Promised Land. Once they find their “home” they are only briefly in control of its government. They are perpetually besieged by outside forces and most often governed by outside powers. In the time of Jesus, they lived as citizens of a defeated country that was occupied by foreign troops who responded to a distant government.
Biblical Christianity has spread around the world in the lives of immigrant people.
My own personal story, of course, is not one of being an immigrant in the sense of changing countries. I am a citizen of the nation into which I was born and in which I have always made my home. But I have traveled from state to state within the United States and have yet to have lived in any one state for twenty years.
There is a member of our church who has been living with severe dementia for several years. He lives in a care center. When I visit him he does not recognize me and cannot figure out why I am visiting. He does, however, at times remember our church. You can see our large outdoor cross from the windows of the home where he lives. A few times, when he is having good days, he can figure out that I’m “that new guy they hired at the church.” It is a somewhat funny moniker for me because I have surpassed the previous record for the longest pastorate in the church by five years. No pastor in the 134-year history of the church has served longer than I. But my friend with dementia is right. I am “that new guy.” I always will be that new guy.
So I am in my hometown today, but it is not really my home. I can visit the other places where I have lived, but they are not really my home, either. The house where we live is not fully my home. My home is in all of the places I have lived. My home is in the stories of my people.
It makes sense that we sell this particular piece of land. Doing so does not make us any less of a family. No one place can be the “home” of our clan. We belong to each other in many places.
Having said that, it is impossible to deny as I awaken to the roar of the river and the songs of the birds, that this is indeed a very special place.
So, it really does not make sense for me to refer to Montana as my home or to speak of myself as a Montanan. Nonetheless, that remains part of my identity. Whenever someone mentions Montana or Yellowstone National Park, my ears perk up and I try to engage them in conversation about things that are familiar to me.
Of course my hometown isn’t really all that familiar to me any more. There are a few old timers who were there when I lived there. A few of my schoolmates settled in town and still live there. But most of the businesses have changed hands and many have changed locations. There are plenty of new businesses in town. The old high school is now a community center and there is a new high school. The Interstate has now bypassed the town and the route to the cemetery has changed now that it is on the other side of the highway from the town. There is a new road up to the airport and there are quite a few new houses on the edges of town. Things are just not the same. I am really not from that town any more.
Life is different. The world is different.
There was a time when we were a really big family: seven children and two parents. I was only sixteen when our sister Beverly died. I was 27 when we lost our father. Brother Dan died in 2010 and mom died the day before his birthday in 2011. We are fewer people than we once were. Of course the clan has grown with the addition of nieces, nephews, children and grandchildren. But the family of my growing-up years is not at all the same. Life is like that. Things change.
Vine Deloria, Jr., in his book, “God is Red,” makes a sweeping generalization about the theological perspectives of indigenous and immigrant people. Indigenous people, see God is sacred places, immigrant people see God in sacred history. This difference between God in place and God in history creates a difference of perspective that makes mutual honor and respect difficult. Of course I’m grossly simplifying Deloria’s argument here. One thing that Deloria does not examine in his book is the story of unwilling immigrants. You cannot tell the story of African Americans without telling the story of slavery. Forced migration is part of the history of many people, including some Native American tribes. It introduces an entirely new perspective into what had been an “either/or” viewpoint. Add to that the complexities of intermarriage and the fact that few have heritage from only one of those types of people and we are far more complex than he worldview presented in Deloria’s book.
It does make sense, however, to characterize Biblical history as an immigrant story. Abraham and Sarah leave the country of their forebears to go to the land that God promises. The people wander for generation after generation, circling the Promised Land, sometimes traveling through it, but end up in slavery in Egypt. After being delivered from Egypt there is another generation of wandering before Israel occupies the Promised Land. Once they find their “home” they are only briefly in control of its government. They are perpetually besieged by outside forces and most often governed by outside powers. In the time of Jesus, they lived as citizens of a defeated country that was occupied by foreign troops who responded to a distant government.
Biblical Christianity has spread around the world in the lives of immigrant people.
My own personal story, of course, is not one of being an immigrant in the sense of changing countries. I am a citizen of the nation into which I was born and in which I have always made my home. But I have traveled from state to state within the United States and have yet to have lived in any one state for twenty years.
There is a member of our church who has been living with severe dementia for several years. He lives in a care center. When I visit him he does not recognize me and cannot figure out why I am visiting. He does, however, at times remember our church. You can see our large outdoor cross from the windows of the home where he lives. A few times, when he is having good days, he can figure out that I’m “that new guy they hired at the church.” It is a somewhat funny moniker for me because I have surpassed the previous record for the longest pastorate in the church by five years. No pastor in the 134-year history of the church has served longer than I. But my friend with dementia is right. I am “that new guy.” I always will be that new guy.
It makes sense that we sell this particular piece of land. Doing so does not make us any less of a family. No one place can be the “home” of our clan. We belong to each other in many places.
Having said that, it is impossible to deny as I awaken to the roar of the river and the songs of the birds, that this is indeed a very special place.