by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given September 9, 2001

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

OPENING WORDS

We bid you welcome, who come with weary spirit, seeking rest.

We bid you welcome, who come with joy in your heart.

We bid you welcome, who are seekers of a new faith.

We bid you welcome, who enter this sanctuary as a homecoming.

Whoever you are, wherever you are on your journey,

We bid you welcome.

Come, let us worship together.

The Oregonian ran an amusing story last Friday about a man who was trying to cut his way through the razor wire fence at a prison, and was caught by guards. The twist to the story, though, is that he was trying to get into the prison, not out. Having been released just the day before, he wanted back in. Now there are probably easier ways to get into prison than surreptitiously cutting your way through razor wire in a compound surrounded by guards with guns. The article doesn’t tell us the whole story—the human story behind the perplexing events. Why did this man want to go back into prison? Perhaps, I thought, the prison had become his home, and leaving there was unthinkable. Better the devil you know than the unknown one lurking outside the walls of what you have called home.

We laugh about this man trying to get back into prison. But how many of us have opted to go back into the prisons of our own lives? Back to the bottle. Back to the job that’s literally killing us. Back to the relationship that isn’t working and hasn’t worked for years and is never going to work. Back to what we know, even when it hurts.

In our very nature is an understandable movement toward the known and away from the unknown, a tendency to step into the shallow waters and not the deep, with their hidden currents, their yet-to-be-discovered dangers. Remember the story of Moses and the Israelites? Moses was told by God to lead his people out of slavery, out of their bondage to the Egyptians. And what did they say, as the horses and chariots of the Pharaoh came after them? "Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness." And do you remember what happened next? Moses told them to hold their peace, that the Lord would fight for them. "And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground . . ." And when the Egyptians attempted to follow, "the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the sea, that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen . . . And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh."

This was not the end of the doubt, the disbelief, of course. They continued to be frightened, certain that they would not have enough bread, not have enough water. They began to worship idols. But God always provided—God was always true to the covenant He had made with them. He led them to the Promised Land, He led them home.

The word home evokes much in us. It evokes memories of the bread baking, as in the lovely poem Tom read this morning. Or perhaps the smell of pine trees as in my native Louisiana. Home is what is familiar, and we long for the familiar. After all, the new challenges all our sensibilities. I remember when I was teaching high school in Liverpool, England, years ago. My class of boys went off to France for a holiday, and when they came back, I asked them to write about their experiences there. More than one student wrote: "I couldn’t wait to get back to England and have some of that good English food."

Home. Why do we love Garrison Keillor’s stories of the mythical Lake Wobegon so much? These tales evoke memories, they remind us of the neighbors we grew up with—ordinary people who have their little joys, their hopes, their moments of triumph and pain, and we know they are human, just as we are, and we know that much of life is simply living every day, side by side with others, simply caring.

I think about the homeless people of Dignity Village. They are trying to create home; they want some sense of place, some way to connect with the larger community. Being homeless is not just being hungry or cold or needing a place to rest or wash up. In fact, food and shelter are much easier to find than what they are missing—the affections and attachments that are necessary for survival. They want a place where couples can stay together, where they can keep beloved pets. I do not use the word survival loosely. Every year there is a service at which the names of homeless people who have died on the streets are read aloud. I remember one year when the names were published in the newspaper—90 of them. Ninety. Names that were identifiable by race sometimes: a large proportion as I remember were Hispanics, Native Americans, African Americans. Did they die for "lack of love alone"?

We see even in the very young, the universal longing for a home, whether it is just the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers where as children we kept our "secrets" safe from prying eyes, or maybe the privacy of a tree house. Sea creatures have shells, bears have dens, prairie dogs tunnel. We need our special space, our own corner of the world.

Home is much more than Robert Frost’s definition in his poem "The Death of the Hired Man"—he says, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." No, it goes way beyond just duty. Home at its best means safety, security—a place of refuge. It is a sacred place where we can keep the artifacts of our lives, where the pictures of those who have gone before remind us that we have honor to uphold, and an obligation to our young. Our home of origin, the place where we were brought up, is the very foundation of our sense of self—it is there we learn who we are, it is from there and only from there that we can move to something else.

Those of us who are parents of young adults watch them struggle to make a home for themselves. That awkward in-between age is hard—the twenties when they have left school and, no longer surrounded by people their own age, suddenly find it hard to meet friends. They often do not have enough money, good jobs are scarce. Mostly they haven’t found a life partner, and they’re wondering, "Will I ever have a home? Will I forever be renting a room in a house with three other people?" As parents we pray that they will be successful, because if they are not, they will come back home—for years, sometimes. But when they have to come home, we have to take them in. Madison, my younger son, is 28 years old. Up until last year when he came to visit me, he always wanted to be tucked in at night. "Mom, will you tuck me in?" He’s only 6’5", you know. Finally I said, "Madison, you’re 27, and I just think it’s time for me to stop tucking you in." Grudgingly, he accepted that. But you know, when I went to bed that night, I thought to myself, "It surely would be nice to be tucked in."

It’s hard to leave home, even when troubles abound there. It’s hard because that is what you know. But sometimes we have to leave to find out who we really are. Never forgetting where we came from, and taking the best from our home of origin, we nevertheless have to create a new home that reflects our own identity, reflects our own choices, our own values.

Personally, I have left home over and over again, it seems. I seem to be in an unrelenting search for where I belong. I was talking to my two grown sons the other day about death—my death. They hate it when I do that, because they would like to keep secure their fantasy that I will never die. Well, after all, if I die, then one day they probably will, too. Nevertheless, I felt that I had to talk with them about certain important issues—I mean, I don’t want them giving my 18^th century blanket chest I brought from England to a used furniture dealer for $25.00. I could see that happening. And then there are my manuscripts—the vast unpublished matter in my files. "What would you boys do with my writing if I died?" I asked Madison one day. Without hesitation, he said, "We’d throw it away. We know what you think." Right away I started looking for a literary executor.

But about dying. There is the matter of what to do with the body. All of the people in my family are buried when they die—but personally I don’t like the idea of rotting in the ground, so I told my sons I opted for cremation. "But where will we put the ashes?" They asked. I thought about it. Where do I belong? Where is home? I don’t want my remains in Louisiana, where my father and grandparents are buried—I’m just so far away from there in so many ways. What about Lexington, Kentucky, where I raised the boys, and where they both plan to live? They suggested that I could be in the family plot with their father, from whom I’ve been divorced for 30 years. It appears that they never have given up on the idea of getting us back together. But that wouldn’t work—after all, his second wife will be beside him (younger though she is, she will be there one day) and family plots can become, well, crowded. What about Portland? Will I live here 30 more years? Will my ashes be tossed off the Steel Bridge? I don’t know. In a very real sense, it doesn’t matter to me. What I will leave behind, for better or for worse, will come in other forms.

The first time I left home was perhaps the most significant day in my life, as I now look back on it. To make a long story short, as they say, in one single swoop my father snatched my brother and sister and me from our mother, from the white frame house where we were living in Cincinnati, to rural Louisiana where I grew up with my paternal grandparents. I was nine years old. We moved into Big Papa and Granny’s home; it was not our home—it was their home. My little sister and I lived in the dining room, where no one of course ever dined anyway, but not a stick of furniture—not the dining table and chairs, not the buffet, not the china cabinet—was moved to make space for us. They just put a bed in one corner of the room. I think how my grandparents must have felt, to have three young children descend upon them in their 70’s—I suppose we had to go there, so they had to take us in. I did not see my mother again until my high school graduation. So I grew up soft-spoken and Southern, rather than big-city Northern. I grew up Southern Baptist, rather than Catholic, my mother’s faith. Sometimes I wonder about those decisions that so changed my life—but I do not question, I no longer blame. That’s just the way it happened.

The next time I left home, it was of my own volition—and it was hard to do. I had gone off to a college just 45 minutes from home, and had majored in education. Just as I finished my schooling, a job came open in my hometown. Being the very religious young woman that I was, I thought to myself, "Maybe this is a sign from God. Maybe I’m supposed to take this job and remain at home, taking care of my aging grandparents and my little brother and sister." I sent in my application and was called in to see Mr. Haley, the Superintendent of Schools. I knew him of course—I had gone to high school with Ben and Bob, his two sons. He was a good man, a wise man. I saw the bony structure of Bob’s face in his father’s as I sat down. Mr. Haley slowly turned the pages of my resume as I waited anxiously. Then he spoke slowly and directly, as was his manner. "Marilyn, you’ve done well in school, and you are very well qualified for this teaching position." He paused. "But I’m not going to give it to you," he said. "Why not?" I asked. "Because you need to get out of this town," he said. I never felt such a sense of relief in my life, and I went out of that office saying to myself, "Thank you, Jesus!"

It appears that in my life, one leave-taking has followed the next. I had moved to New Orleans to teach, and after seven years, I found myself married to a surgery resident and on my way to Liverpool, England, for two years. The hospital where my husband worked was an international training center. I met people literally from all over the world. It was during my time in England, in the early 70’s, that I discovered that, contrary to my belief, everyone didn’t love the United States. In fact, many people looked at our country as an overfed and obnoxious bully. One memorable evening, a fiery dark-haired woman from South America just tore into me: "Don’t you know anything about your country’s foreign policy?" I had to leave my country to see it in a new light.

When we moved back to the States in 1973, I had one baby and another on the way. A few years later the marriage fell apart. Another leave-taking. I had married for security, for home, if you will—the home I had never had. I married not out of love, but out of my own neediness. I ended up with a two- and a three-year-old son and no husband. In letting go of the security of the marriage, with no job and no relationship, I felt myself floating free, unanchored to anything except my fierce love for my children. I struggled along for years in this and that low-paying job, once standing in unemployment lines for months. In the midst of depression, in sickness of body and soul, I got down literally and figuratively on my knees and asked for guidance. After a period of discernment, I moved to Berkeley, California, and entered Starr King School for the Ministry. I went on the train, and I took one yellow Samsonite suitcase and two boxes of books. Everything else was left behind. I had never before been to California.

On that first day in Berkeley, I wandered through the shops along Euclid Avenue, listening to the sounds of foreign tongues, looking at the strange dress of some. I saw a dumpster on which someone had scrawled graffiti in huge white letters--it read: RECYCLE OR DIE. "Toto," I said to myself, "this isn’t Kansas anymore." My eyes were open as only one’s eyes can be when in a strange country for the first time. Wanting comfort, I went into a coffee shop and ordered a cup of coffee. What could be simpler? And then I was asked, "What kind of coffee?" "You mean, there’s more than one kind?" I said. The second day I ate Chinese food, and as I fumbled with the chopsticks, a young Taiwanese man complimented me on my efforts. I had no idea that he was flirting with me. I wonder if I had ever seen an Asian man before. We were together for eight years.

It was there at Starr King School that I found the best in myself and exercised it. Growing up as I had, I never thought I could do much. But I found out in Berkeley that I had potential, that I could find purpose. But what about home? Did Berkeley become home? No, never—at least not in the sense of house and family and sense of place. I always knew I was there temporarily.

But it was there during my eight years in Berkeley that I—though I was unaware that I was doing so—I began to redefine home. Home, as I now see it, is what I’m always growing into—home is a kind of deepening of self that never ends. There will always be another turn in the road, because I am not really operating out of my own volition. I listen, and I follow—uncertainly and often reluctantly—but I follow.

There is no doubt in my mind, though, that I was led to Portland, to this church, 10 years ago. I can hardly believe that I’ve been with you for ten years. Seems like yesterday when my plane flew into Portland for the first time, and I saw all this green below, saw Mt. Hood out the window. For a Southern woman, I found this a strange, wild land, vast and intimidating, but oddly enough it felt like where I belonged. Some of you know my story, that I pre-candidated—that is, had extensive interviews—at 10 different churches before coming to Portland. I wondered if I was even supposed to be a minister, because no place made my heart leap until I came here. Is Portland my home? It’s more than that—it’s where I belong.

That, for me, is how I define home. Home is not Homer, Louisiana, where the big oak tree in our front yard has been cut down, where black folks and white folks are still terribly divided. Home no longer has to do with settling down with a man, though I would like to do that. Nor is it being the pancake-cooking mom that I become when my grown boys visit. You see, I take myself with me wherever I go, so there is no geographic solution or definition to home. Home is where I belong.

I have said that home is a place of safety, security. That little motherless child in me thought I could find that place somewhere on this earth. I see now that home may not be a secure place—it may in fact be on the front lines, it may involve much wandering, it may push you into your own desert places, where you hunger and thirst and wonder how you will get through.

Claude Claudel wrote in a letter to Rodin: "There is always something missing that torments me." That statement haunts me. "There is always some absence that torments me." I think it is the lot of us poor humans to be tormented that way. Perhaps this sense of loss is born when we are born, follows us right out of the womb, the womb, our first home, where all our needs are met, never again to be met in this absolute way. What then are we to do with this longing, this hopeless longing for being taken in, and kept, this longing for home?

In all my wanderings, in all my leaving and arriving, I have discovered that home is not "out there" someplace—we may travel here or there, we may be startled by newness, we may grow to love a specific place on this earth. But home, home itself, is a rootedness at the center. It is within. There is only who you are and where you are and what you were meant to be. There is only the circle that comes round right. So be it. Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we come today out of a longing for our true home. We want to become what we were meant to be. We want to love better than we do, we want to serve something larger than ourselves. Comfort us as we journey on this perilous earth, and discomfort us when we need discomforting. All the while, may your spirit light the way, and may we faithfully follow that light. Amen.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2001, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell.  All rights reserved.