Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, November 24, 2019

We just sang some newer words, set to a traditional thanksgiving tune. They were written by two UU ministers in 1963, just days after President Kennedy was killed. These two ministers, Dorothy and Bob Senghas, wrote those words for a Thanksgiving hymn in those sad November days to help their people hold both their grief and their gratitude:

Both sorrow and gladness be find now in our living,
We sing a hymn of praise to the life that we bear.

My first year here, around the time of Thanksgiving, several different people came in to see me. They came to talk about their families and share their stories of sadness, disappointment, and betrayal. I wondered if the upcoming holiday had brought back those memories. This season we’re about to enter, of holy days and holidays, can be hard because it heightens our expectations for how things ought to be, and accentuates our disappointment when our lives are less than what we hope for. We are painfully aware of difference between how things are and how we wish they would be. The invitation is to live in this tension between between disappointment and hope—even when we are sad and in grief, to sing our hymns of praise and thanksgiving.

And how do you do this? The only way I know, is by being grounded, being rooted in something larger than your self. It’s why we gather to sing of community and do the daily work of making it real. Because as we just sang, our freedom comes, paradoxically, when we bind ourselves to others. And isn’t that kind of belonging why you are here?

In this month when we’ve been reflecting on home, I keep hearing songs in my head about the longing for home, about people looking to find their way home. And I find myself remembering a scene from the movie “Out of Africa,” the story of a Danish woman who moved to Kenya with her new husband, and later wrote a beautiful book about her life there. The husband is a hunter and he is seldom at home. And one day, his wife, played by Meryl Streep, travels out into the bush, a long way, to find him. And when she does, she simply asks, “When are you coming home?”

This is the question that has been on my mind lately. When are you coming home? It often gets said in a practical way, like, what time can I expect you to be here? Are you going to be late for dinner? If you’re not here, at what time should I start to worry about you? When are you coming for Thanksgiving? Are you coming at all?

I know from experience that it can be easy to hear “When are you coming home?” not as a kind invitation, but as expectation or command. Because, you know, I want to keep my options open; I’ll get there when and if I can. As the song says, “Don’t fence me in.” When I was younger, I could get irritated by that simple question, as if it held expectations I didn’t want to live up to. And no matter how old you are, there is within us, isn’t there, an independent streak, a perpetual adolescent with an attitude, saying “Don’t tell me what to do; you’re not the boss of me,”.

We want to go our own way, at least a part of us wants this. But underneath that adolescent streak there’s a deeper desire, for connection and belonging. For home. And here’s what I want to ask you about today. We know about, and celebrate, wandering and searching. What I want to ask you is this: when are you coming home?

I’m not thinking about a place, but rather, a state of mind, a way of being. One in which, wherever you go, there you are, as Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield says, you are at home. At home in yourself and on this earth, in this one life you have been given. To be human is to know a certain restlessness. Are are the only creatures on this earth that aren’t naturally at home within our own skin? But where else are we going to feel at home? And our restlessness and longing is nothing new; it’s part of our human condition. Listen again to Christine Robinson’s take on Psalm 84, 

The sparrow has a place in the rafters.
The swallow raises her young in the nest she has made.
They live and move easily in their places.
They flit and soar around Your world altar.
They are home.

It is not so easy for me.
I long for that ease of being and pray
for the grace to live in the world as at Your altar.
Happy are they who live in the Pilgrim way;
They walk through desolate landscapes
and find your springs.
They toil through mountains and discover your peaks.
They set themselves to the tasks of love and service
and know deep satisfaction
One day lived in this grace is better than a thousand spent
at our own devices.
When we walk our appointed path in peace,
We find our home and our way.

I know some of you, because of your experiences or because that’s how you are wired, take issue with the idea and images of God. And some of you can’t imagine life without that Presence. And here we are, companions of one another, all we kindred pilgrim souls, making our way by the lights of the heavens and the light we have to share. Whatever your theology, I love that we are in this together, that we are fellow travelers. There’s a poem by Ada Limon, in which two people are out in an open field talking a walk and having a conversation. And the poet writes: 

I think of that walk in the valley where
J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said,
No. I believe in this connection we all have
to nature, to each other, to the universe.
And she said, Yeah, God. 

Beyond words and names, underneath our ideas and interpretations, there is this luminous and mysterious reality, that we get to travel in for a time. Yeah, God. That’s a name I use, a name I happen to like. But you can call it whatever you like. I just hope you won’t let a name keep you from being open to that fathomless mystery.

This month when I’ve been hearing songs about home going through my head, one keeps coming back. It’s a country song, “Calling My Children Home,” and it’s about a parent missing her children, and longing for them to come back home. The chorus goes,

I'm lonesome for my precious children,
They live so far away.
Oh may they hear my calling... calling…
And come back home some day.

In this culture that celebrates and prizes independence and autonomy so much, that we can equate family with obligation, as stifling and oppressive. We can hear a parent’s longing for us to come home as a guilt trip, rather than as a love letter. And we can miss these opportunities for connection and belonging. 

It is my hope and faith, and it is my experience, that the Presence which animates the universe, the Presence we sense in these connections we make and share, it wants to be in relationship with us. This animating force has a pressing question that she is asking of us, and it’s this: “When are you coming home?” When are you coming home to your true self, to the fact that you are beloved on this earth? When are you going to trust in that? When are you coming home to your true nature, to who you can’t help but be? When are you going to stop trying to meet others’ expectations and start listening to that deeper, quieter voice within? 

This question comes with no strings attached. It is not offered as criticism or as obligation, but as an invitation and a blessing. Offered in the spirit of a loving parent who is longing for their child: who only wants to see them happy and safe at home.

Coming home is about being present to what is—it may require letting go of how you thought things were going to be, so you can be open to, and thankful for, the way things actually are. Seeing that where you are is holy, that right under your feet that is holy ground, and wherever you are, right there is home. 

John O’Donohue wrote a blessing about longing, a few lines of which I offer to you now as a prayer for your coming home, an invitation to hear that voice that is calling, ever calling you home:

May your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.
May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.
May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.

May you know this now, and always. Welcome home, my friends. Welcome home.

Amen.