Home Sweet Home.
There’s no place like home.
Home is where you hang your hat, or, as a waggish friend of mine once said, “Home is where you hang yourself.”
“Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
“And the hunter home from the hill.”
What the word home brings to mind before anything else, I believe, is a place, and in its fullest sense not just the place where you happen to be living at the time, but a very special place with very special attributes which make it clearly distinguishable from all other places. The word home summons up a place—which you have rich and complex feelings about, a place where you feel, or did feel once, uniquely at home, which is to say a place where you feel you belong and which in some sense belongs to you, a place where you feel that all is somehow ultimately well even if things aren’t going all that well at any given moment.
Those are the words of Frederick Buechner in his terrific memoir, “Longing for Home,” which is like all of the great Buechner books—really a memoir about us, you and me, as well as Fred himself.
This week, we’re going to explore “Home”—and we want you to help. Send us a note, a Facebook message, an email—whatever format works for you—describing what you think of when you envision “home.”
Will you do that?
Here’s just some of the rich material we’ll share with you this week to help us all think about this powerful spiritual theme: Home.
Today, we’re launching Week 5 of the Bible Here And Now series for teens—a FREE weekly “open letter” aimed at youth that many small-group leaders and teachers are using to spark discussions. This week’s theme is all about home.
Tuesday, don’t miss our coverage of a pet blessing in Georgia. You might have seen pet blessings before, but this Southern Baptist church is opening up the whole process in creative ways—and is sparking all kinds of community-wide dialogue about social justice issues and the environment. These folks have some great ideas about how to expand our notions of home.
And, Wednesday, we’re welcoming back an old friend—Adrian Plass from England. As usual, this deeply faithful yet very-sharp-tongued writer has some provocative things to say. One of his freshest ideas is that churches should change their smell-scapes to attract more visitors. That’s right—but you won’t guess what smell he suggests!
TO GET YOU THINKING, here’s a video of some folks talking about what “Home” means in their lives.
Finally—don’t forget to send us a note about what “home” means to you! Please?
Please do tell us what you think!
This is a good time to sign up for our Monday-morning ReadTheSpirit Planner by Email—it’s
free and you can cancel it any time you’d like to do so. The Planner
goes out each week to readers who want more of an “inside track” on
what we’re seeing on the horizon, plus it’s got a popular “holidays”
section.
Not only do we welcome your notes—but our readers enjoy them as well. You can do this
anytime by clicking on the “Comment” links at the end of each story.
You also can Email ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm. We’re also reachable on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, YouTube and other social-networking sites as well.
(Originally published at https://readthespirit.com/)