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Leaders in Faith: The Importance of Home in Uncertain Times

By Lois Boney
Interim Vicar, St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church

As the days grow longer and we begin our countdown to spring, many of us find ourselves settled into a routine that (thankfully) lacks the hustle and bustle of the holidays.

Lois Boney

December’s decorations have been put away, students and teachers alike are still hoping for just one more good snow, and warm-weather fun is still too far off to generate excitement.

February can be a droll month, even with Valentine’s Day stuck in the middle. We stomp the mud off our boots before going inside, throw another log on the fire and seek out the warmth of home, of what Harriet Beecher Stowe called, “a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserved.”
With the rush of the holidays behind us, thoughts of “home” and “family” conjure up different images for each of us. Some of us delighted in reuniting with relatives at a familiar place that offers comfort and security. On the other hand, some of us did all we could to avoid a place that holds cold memories and people who offer no security or comfort. Families are funny, though, for no matter our relationship with our family of origin, we all had one at some time.

Christopher Reeve once said, “All people have families, and all families have value.” This past holiday season I was struck both by how much my own family has been redefined over the years and how rapidly the human family is ever more uncovering its own definition.

We are no longer a world made up of single-family units, organic and stationary. We are an increasingly nomadic people. Advances in technology, transportation, economic infrastructure and world trade have long since uprooted the notion that home and family are permanent geographic fixtures. We can communicate from one side of the planet to the other in a matter of seconds, but we remain fractured in our humanity.

In a war-torn world where millions of people are displaced and a staggering number of children die worldwide from starvation, where the ravages of climate change, religious intolerance, economic disaster and political enmity all create barriers for unity, we must consciously resist the droll existence of inaction and instead work to empower families of all sorts and conditions.

The alternative is a future where the world is filled with outsiders-perpetual visitors in a common land. Mother, father, cousin, brother, sister, spouse, friend-all will become sterile connections instead of life-giving and life-shaping relationships if we cannot find some pathway that brings us together in a place called home.

According to Charles Dickens, “Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.” I have come to believe that home is that place we go to be fully and authentically engaged in life, and family are those folks who celebrate our presence when we arrive there.

Families listen to our hopes and fears, our good news and bad. They rejoice when we triumph and lament when we fail. Wherever it is, home invites us to come in from the cold, to get comfortable and join a conversation already in progress.

Home is where coming and going is a choice, not an obligation. It is the result of a deeply rooted hospitality that empowers rather than judges. This place may be an ancestry residence, a gathering among friends, a worship community, a Web site or a 12-step program.

Be it made of walls or friends, located on a hillside or in our memories or found at a Web site or on a map, home is a good place to be during the usually droll month of February, when bare trees begin to look lonely and the hint of warmth seems so far away.

So be ye watcher or wanderer-maintaining the home fires or heading toward them-keep heedful the path and find your way home. The shortest days of the year are behind us. The sun will return, the light will come back, and beyond the wilderness are the voices of family-voices that give us the courage to go forth into what Thomas Wolfe calls, “the strange and bitter magic of life.”

Residing in the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina since 1993, the Rev. Lois Boney is the Interim Vicar at St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church at 1101 Vandora Springs Road. Boney holds a Masters of Divinity, a Masters of Arts in sociology with a specialization in child and family studies and a Bachelor of Arts in English literature. In addition to parish work, Boney has a background in nonprofit resource and organization development.

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• Leaders in Faith: A spiritual limp
• Leaders in faith: Label maker
• Leaders in faith: Lonely child prodigies

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