Getting Back Home is Not That Simple

This is the final leg of our Pilgrimage series. Thanks for walking with us. Today we’re led by new High Calling member and warm hostess of a place called Toad Hall, Margie Haack.

Life's a voyage that's homeward bound. Herman Melville, novelist & sailor (1819-1891)

A few years ago a delightfully quirky movie with a great sound track called Garden State was released. Zach Braff, who wrote and directed it, also starred in the film as Andrew Largeman. "Large" has journeyed home to New Jersey for his mother’s funeral; he’s come loaded with the baggage of a family history he can’t decipher. At one point Large turns to Sam (Natalie Portman), the charming enigmatic girl he’s falling for, and asks the central question of the film. He asks if there was a moment when she realized the place where she grew up was no longer home. Without waiting for a reply he concludes,

"You get homesick for a place that never really existed, and then you create your own idea of home. Maybe family is a group of people who miss the same imaginary place."

Just Imagined?

I was astonished to see, passing before my eyes in surround-sound and huge cinematic frames, the big questions that had taken me so long to face. When I finally began admitting that journeys back home didn’t reveal it as a place where both parents welcomed me - a place to stand soul-naked yet loved - I was nearly wrecked by the revelation. Until my 30s I steadfastly refused to acknowledge this trouble. Even then, I couldn’t sort it out alone, and have others to thank for chipping away my pretense: my mother, my husband, and even my eight-year-old daughter, who once delivered such an insightful observation that it first made me angry, then tearful. We were in the car on the eight-hour drive back to Rochester when she leaned over the back seat and asked, “How come Grandpa doesn’t like us?” [caption id="attachment_12401" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Toad Hall, home of Margie and Denis Haack. Wayfarers welcome. "][/caption] Some of this is another story, but the gift (I use the word purposely) of this life experience was the desire to make our own home a resting place and solace for people passing through – rather like the inn by the way that gave Christian, John Bunyan’s famous pilgrim, enough hope and rest to continue his journey toward the Celestial City. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t want to go home. At least eventually. I mean home home. Although pilgrimage can include many things like the awe of discovery, often it reflects that deepest of human desires: finding or going back to a place where we are nourished and healed. A place where we take up courage and start becoming the person God intended us to be. So often, so sadly, that is not the home where we grew up.

The Gift of Real Home

Toward the end of Garden State, Large and Sam, who are both pilgrims searching for pieces of their past, arrive at the most unlikely home in the film. It looks like a falling-apart shack teetering on the edge of a dark abyss. Then you begin scanning and taking it in. It’s an old dry-docked houseboat. An ark? Hmm. The wood is worn, the paint peeling, but there is a lemon-yellow light emanating from a rusty lamp on the doorstep and inside is a couple with a baby, the film’s only intact family, who invite them out of the rain and offer them a cup of hot tea. However far off it seems, the day will come when all that has been torn and wrenched will be re-stitched, regenerated, washed to beauty by Christ. In the next life I think I’ll journey to the Gulf Coast, to lost coral reefs, to the remade mountain tops of the Appalachians, and I think my step-dad will bless me in a way he never could in this life. The hope of being truly Home keeps me walking, walking, ever fending off temptations to get off the trail. So I’ve come to love our house, which is inviting even if it only has one full bath, leaky windows, small closets, and a cistern in the basement that contains things with external skeletons and jointed legs. It’s not perfect, partly because I live here, of course. In spite of this, our home is a small token for that better one coming. Our own lemon-yellow light flows from the kitchen windows, there’s the fragrance of fresh bread and creamy potato soup in the air, the couch beckons, and we listen to unrehearsed stories while keeping the tissue box handy. It still surprises me how often pilgrims cry in a safe place. "Wellington Boots" by Chris Gooderham. Used with permission. Post written by Margie Haack. ----- Read all of the posts from this pilgrimage series:

• Introduction – Pilgrim Feet in Popular Culture
• First leg – Fitness Only Goes So Far
• Second leg invitation – Freeze Framing Life
• Second leg – In the Yearning and Finding
• Third leg – Eat, Pray, Love a Pilgrimage?
• Fourth leg - Hollywood Pilgrims