Amy Boucher Pye

Tag: There’s No Place Like Home

Finding Home Within by Lynda Alsford

Where is home when you lose your faith? Where is home when you’re searching for love lost? Lynda Alsford recounts a deeply meaningful account of her journey to Home. You don’t want to miss this, the last guest post in my “There’s No Place Like Home” series.

I always longed for home. As a child my parents divorced and spent time in two homes. For most of my adult life I lived in tied accommodation. From nurses’ homes to managing sheltered housing, from being a live-in nanny to working for the church, I have frequently lived in accommodation other people provided for me. At times I experienced a desperate yearning for my own home, feeling its absence keenly. I dreamed of a place to call my own – constantly. The pain of this unfulfilled dream caused me to examine my desire more closely. I realised there was more behind it than just a yearning for a physical home. There were deeper emotions at play. I needed to find a sense of home within my heart, with God. The problem was I didn’t know how to find it.

During my time working for a church in London, I got to know a minister who used to be a farmer. He told me he used to find peace and restoration standing at the farmyard gate looking over the farm and local countryside. I asked him how he found peace working in London, with the countryside miles away from where he lived and worked. He said to me ‘I learned to find the farmyard gate within me’.

This challenged me. I knew I needed to find the ‘farmyard gate’ within me but the trouble was I hadn’t found it externally and didn’t know quite what I was seeking. As so often happens in my life, God stepped into the situation in an unexpected way. In the summer of 2010, I found myself moving to in a town called Peacehaven, Sussex, UK. I took the photograph of the sea below on the very first day I ever went to Peacehaven.

Peacehaven is situated on the top of the cliffs at the edge of the South Downs National Park. I saw the blue of the sea, sunlight sparkling over the water above the green of the cliff tops and I immediately fell in love with the view. I had found my own ‘farmyard gate’. I had found the place where my heart smiles and sighs, ‘I’m home!’

When I moved to Peacehaven I was in the middle of a major crisis of faith. I had stopped believing in the existence of God – somewhat unhelpful when you are the parish evangelist at a lively church. Not wanting to live a lie, I moved away from London and ministry. I found a live-in post in Peacehaven. I may still not have had my own home but I had found the geographical place where I felt at home. However, given it coincided with losing my faith in God I was plunged into a time of great spiritual darkness. I had found a physical sense of home but had lost any sense of spiritual home.

A few months later, I realised I missed the God in whom I no longer believed. I had never felt so empty. My emptiness led me to seek Him in a way I had never sought Him before. Was God real? If He was, did He love me?

I took a tentative step towards faith again in January 2011. With that one small step of faith I experienced a comparatively large amount of peace. I continued to seek God’s presence in my life and discovered God as Father in a way I hadn’t before. His powerful love broke through and set me free. I began to find home within my heart.

Home is the place to which you want to run in times of trouble. It is the place where you feel you can be yourself with no condemnation. It is a place where you can take off the mask you sometimes show to the world. Coming into the presence of my Father God is now my home. I now have a home of my own at last and I praise God for it but it has made me more aware than ever that my real home is in the presence of my loving Father God. I am blessed. I moved to Peacehaven and found a haven of peace. I found my ‘farmyard gate’.

Lynda Alsford is a sea-loving, cat-loving GP administrator, who writes in her spare time. She has written two books: He Never Let Go describes her journey through a major crisis of faith whilst working as an evangelist at a lively Church in Chiswick, West London. Being Known describes how God set her free from food addiction. Both books are available in paperback and on kindle on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. She is currently writing a book in the Bible fiction genre. She writes a newsletter, Seeking the Healer, in which she shares the spiritual insights she has gained on her journey. Sign up for this at her website www.lyndaalsford.com. She is also administrator for the Association of Christian Writers.

October 7, 2016
At home – by Helen Murray

Home, with the scuffs and marks on the walls but also the memories of laughter and hugs. I love how Helen Murray gives us a picture of home, with the sentimental clutter and prized possessions that symbolize loving relationships. This is home, and you’re very welcome to kick off your shoes and relax. Just as you are.

I am at home today. No need to go out until the school run. My kind of day.

I like being at home. It’s my refuge. I’ve lived here a long time and we know each other well, my home and me. I love the reminders of living that are all around me. I love that from my bed I can see our church tower and that I can hear the children in the playground of the local infant school. I used to sit out in the garden and try to discern the voices of my daughters when they were little. I love the sunrise through the bedroom window, the afternoon sun on the living room sofa, the moonlight through the roof windows on the landing.

Yes, it’s a place of endless loads of washing, tidying, meal preparation, but it’s a place of relaxation and unwinding. It’s a place where there’s great satisfaction to be had when the bathroom is sparkly clean and even greater frustration that it needs doing all over again in a matter of weeks! (Obviously, I mean days).

It’s also a place where Wednesday night means The Great British Bake-off (with cake) and Saturday nights mean pyjamas and a family film and not bothering that the day’s mascara is in a different place from whence it started.

Home is a shoes off, slippers on kind of place. A ‘put the kettle on and have a biscuit’ kind of place. A ‘there’s a knack to flushing the downstairs loo’ kind of place.

It’s full of sentimental clutter, pebbles from the beach, photographs and craft creations from the children’s tiny days.

I attach meaning to the smallest things; even those little black marks where the rotor blades left by poor driving of the remote control helicopter that had us all laughing until our sides ached one Christmas.

Books upon books, an army of ceramic penguins, far too many aloe vera plants. (They will keep having babies, you know, and I cannot bring myself to discard a single one. End of year teacher presents? Give ’em a vera. Thank you? Donation to the church fair? You guessed it). This is their home too.

There’s history here. This has been my home since my Mum brought me from the hospital. I left it to go to university and for a bit of a wander, and then came back after my Dad died and we built a granny flat for Mum. It’s different enough for my husband to feel that it’s his house and not someone else’s, but the same enough for me to find myself reaching for a light switch that is no longer there, or forgetting that a door is now hung the other way.

It’s an old home of memories; both joys and sadnesses. I left this house on my Dad’s arm to marry my love and the neighbours took photographs as we climbed into a Rolls Royce with ribbons.

In this house we celebrated my first pregnancy and then we grieved its loss a few short weeks later. Right here in this house my Dad gently felt the wonder of a healthy baby’s kick – and here my heart broke when he died in his armchair a few days before she was born. We planted rose bushes with beautiful yellowy peach flowers that Mum had in her wedding bouquet. They’re called ‘Peace’.

Yes, tears have been shed here. Here we have shouted and stamped and sulked. But we have laughed and we have hugged and we have cared for each other here.

It’s a place where my favourite biscuits appear in my kitchen because my 85 year old Mum puts them there. A place where she teaches my daughters how to make buns using the weight of an egg and how to lick the spoon clean. Another generation of children now forget to wipe their feet just as we did, scuffing the paintwork and chipping the plaster with toy helicopters. This is a place of too many remote controls, hairbrushes lost and borrowed and snatched back, mysterious intermittent wifi and rice krispies under the kitchen table.

Home is where I can join Mum for a sandwich and a lunchtime TV quiz then go back to work with my husband in the afternoon. It’s where my girls flop on Grandma’s sofa after school and get evasive when I ask about homework. They come with their triumphs and disasters and find chocolate in the bowl on the counter and never doubt their welcome. Mum always has a spare pint of milk when I’ve run out and can be counted on to know the likelihood of rain and the wisdom of putting the clothes out on the line.

Home is where your people are; my people are here, and for that I am thankful.

Home is day-to-day stuff. Routine, familiarity, predictability. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it works for me.

This is a season of bustle and busyness, exasperation, mess, alarm clocks and laundry and loving three generations all together. I try to take each day as it comes. Nothing lasts forever, and I am keenly aware of how fast the weeks and months and years fly by. These days will be gone before I can blink.

So I sit here with my fingers on the home keys of my keyboard. I can hear the whistle for the end of playtime at the school my kids don’t go to any more. There are woodpigeons in the garden and the sun is streaming through the kitchen window onto the row of aloe versa – they look a bit thirsty. Mum is having her morning coffee on the bench near the roses and my husband is working on his accounts. There is so much that needs doing, but this is my writing day.

This is home.

Helen Murray lives in Derbyshire with her husband, two daughters and her mum. She blogs at Are We Nearly There Yet? where she writes about life and faith, and is working on her first novel. It’s been a while since there was much progress, but she hasn’t given up.

September 30, 2016
When Home is a Foreign Country by Andrea Gardiner

Guinea pig for breakfast? Yes, really. Andrea Gardiner tells of how she’s made Ecuador her home – guinea pigs and all.

When I left Britain eleven years ago for the bustling equatorial city of Santo Domingo, Ecuador, I never expected to call it home. I was going as a missionary doctor, to serve for an undefined period. Everything I encountered was different, other and strange. I constantly felt plastered in sweat and dust. The barbecued tripe, cow’s udder and maggots that people offered me to eat did not appeal. Whilst I admired the beauty of the tropical flowers and humming birds, they did not conjure up the feeling of home that wind-swept heather and the humble robin did.

Each morning, I ventured forth to a world where I had to make myself understood in Spanish, fight off the mosquitoes and ride the over-filled bus with chickens pecking my feet. Each evening, I returned to my rented home where English DVDs, toast and tea could be enjoyed.

Local dress.

Riding a llama.

Three years later, I was married to an Ecuadorean with a beautiful baby girl. Now, Ecuadorean culture invaded my home. My husband expected rice three times a day. Spanish was the predominant language spoken. My in-laws were free with their help and advice.

“Don’t sit the baby up, she will end up with saggy cheeks! Cover your shoulders when you nurse her, or your milk will be cold. Keep a hat on her at all times or evil spirits will enter her through the soft spot on her head.”

My own toddler woke me one morning waving a leg of guinea pig in my face. It was left over from the previous night’s meal. “Want meat Mummy,” she cried. For her, eating guinea pig was completely normal. I wondered what on earth I was doing bringing up my daughter in this strange place. I felt a sudden yearning to go home to “normality”. Tea and toast seemed a distant dream.

In traditional dress.

The beauty of an iguana.

There followed a steep learning curve of not only knowing the local customs, beliefs and ideas, but also understanding their values and priorities. At first, it drove me mad when people told me that they would be at an appointment at a certain time, and then were late or did not show at all. It was frustrating when my husband set out to do a, b and c in a day and only did a, leaving the rest for tomorrow. Gradually, I came to realise Ecuadoreans value people and relationships above work and money. If they meet someone who wants to chat, they will, disregarding prior plans. You will always be welcomed into an Ecuadoreans’ home when you turn up unannounced. A family shares the food they have cooked among the number of people who happen to be there at a mealtime. If a friend has a crisis, everything else can be set aside in order to help them.

I found I had to embrace living as part of an extended family. In a society where there is no social security or insurance, families rely on each other. When my car breaks down, I phone my father-in-law, not the breakdown services. Grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins live close by and are a daily part of each other’s lives. Individualism is frowned upon. Adult children take their parents into their homes when they are elderly and nurse them.

It was only as I came to appreciate the culture of my adopted country that I began to feel at home. Life became more familiar and predicable. It stopped shocking and jarring me at every turn. Life in Britain remains more intuitive, but there are now aspects of British culture that I find hard.

Living in Ecuador has taught me to appreciate the positives in a different society. Our God is a God of variety and creativity and each family has their own way of expressing themselves and making a home. The experience is stripping away my illusion that my way of doing things is the best way, and is making me more of a world citizen. It is making me look forward to the day when our home will be with God and with His people from every tribe and nation, living in perfect harmony and love.

Andrea Gardiner is a medical missionary in Ecuador. She tells her adventures in Guinea Pig For Breakfast. She works for Project Ecuador www.projectecuador.co.uk.

September 23, 2016
Home for All by Ros Bayes

Where is home for people who have some form of disability? Ros Bayes answers this question as she shares a moving example of finding a home for her daughter. Her thoughts resonated with me, especially as my brother makes his home with other residents who face physical challenges.

When I think of home, I think of a place where the paid staff love the residents as if they were family, not clients.

We embarked on a slow process of detaching our daughter from home when she was still quite young. She has multiple disabilities including quadriparetic cerebral palsy, autism and partial sight. She has a normal life expectancy, and so we knew that, in the normal course of events, she would one day have to adjust to life without us and that she needed a very gradual preparation.

From age twelve she went to a specialist boarding school for disabled children, but came home from Friday evening to Monday morning each week. I cried when the matron phoned home to tell me all they had been doing with and for her, feeling that someone else was filling my place in her life, even while knowing this signified that we had found what we were seeking – a place where she would be truly loved.

In the lower sixth form she came home alternate weekends, and in the upper sixth form, one weekend a month. She left school at nineteen and spent the next three years at a specialist college for disabled students, away all term time. As the time approached for her to leave college I gave God a “shopping list” of what I wanted for her forever home. It had to be in our town – I didn’t want her sent far away. It had to be a small home – she wouldn’t cope in a large environment with lots of residents. And it had to be with young people of her own age. I knew I was asking the impossible – no such facility existed in our town. And then God did the impossible – a fantastic care company moved into town, bought a six-bedroom house and turned it into a small care home for young disabled people. Our daughter was the first person to move in.

Even though I knew it was right and best for her, I dreaded the day she would finally leave home. But after she had settled in there, I began to discover that something wonderful had happened. I had switched back from being her carer to being her mum. It was no longer my job to change incontinence pads, shower her and administer her medication. Others now took on that role, while I resumed having her round to lunch every Sunday with her sisters, taking her to the cinema, bowling, shopping and out for lunch, even family holidays and weekends away. All the fun stuff and (except on holiday) none of the things you don’t normally do for your adult children.

My daughter’s home is just a five minutes’ drive from my home; this summer marks her tenth anniversary there, and as time has gone on she has made great strides. She has coped with the grief of losing her father, with seeing her baby sister grow up, go to university, graduate and come home again. She has progressed from refusing to allow new staff into her bedroom for at least their first three months, to being involved in the interview and selection process for new staff. And I know that when I’m no longer around, she will still be happy and secure, growing old with her fellow-residents. Truly “He sets the lonely in families”.

Ros Bayes has 8 published and 4 self-published books, as well as some 3 dozen magazine articles. She is the mother of 3 daughters, one of whom has multiple complex disabilities, and she currently works for Through the Roof as their Training Resources Developer, and loves getting paid to write about disability all day. You can find her at her blog and at her author page. Follow her on Twitter at @rosbwriting.

September 18, 2016
Space is more precious than Stuff by Jane Brocklehurst

An important aspect of home is space, which Jane Brocklehurst addresses thoughtfully. After all, where is home when the clutter threatens to take over?

I loved my parents-in-law and always felt welcome in their home from the first visit 40 years ago. However, accepting an invitation to sit down always felt risky. That first time my comfy seat was crammed between the piano’ and a precarious stack of newspapers. There was invariably something to move out of the way before anyone dared to stretch their legs out and relax.

When both my in-laws died everyone in the family took away a few precious mementoes from their property. Then it fell to me, with my domestic decluttering know-how, to organise the clearance of the house. My husband and his three brothers did not have the heart or the emotional detachment to do it.

After about two weeks’ work I arrived at the house one morning and it was breathing! Not literally, of course, but, with the sun streaming in to all the space I had cleared, I seemed to have set the house free from a crushing weight that had been choking it. What a poignant moment – I longed to share the sense of joy and freedom with my mother- and father-in-law who had not experienced their lovely spacious home like this for many years. There were still enough furnishings in place for the taste and character of the previous occupants to be evident. I felt like an archaeologist rediscovering a long-lost place of wonder when the people I most wanted to share it with were not there.

I wanted to ask my father- and mother-in-law why they had done that to their home. Why had they allowed so many things to accumulate in their house that relaxation, and the hospitality with which they were so generous, were in danger of being crowded out?

When I work with a client to declutter their home I encourage them to see space as a valuable commodity, not an emptiness to be filled. One definition of salvation is being taken out of captivity, or a place of restraint, and set in a wide open space. (If you read the Bible you will recognise this idea from the book of Exodus.) I gave my decluttering business the name Home Freed with that in mind.

A wide open space – Wharfedale.

Pendle Hill.

Over the last nine years Home Freed has become more of a ministry than a business. It is always sad when self-expression – through decoration or activities – has become impossible in somebody’s living space because it is buried under material possessions. We need some things in our homes to make life comfortable but, thanks to clever advertisers, most of us believe that we need far more than we really do. The challenging question is: How much is enough?

A century ago Christian writer G K Chesterton said, “There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”

Too much stuff is stifling. Cherish your space.

Jane Brocklehurst’s main career has been teaching religious studies. Married to John, a vicar, for 38 years, with three children now spread around the world, she and her husband are searching for a house near an international airport for their retirement. When her youngest daughter left home she gave up school teaching to set up a domestic decluttering and organising business – Home Freed – helping to set people free from their stuff! Volunteering at Scargill House in the Yorkshire Dales is a significant part of her life these days; she looks after the library. Books have always been important to her and now she is trying to write one bringing all the parts of her past together: Home Freed – the theology of decluttering.

September 9, 2016
Itinerancy and Incarnation by Dave Faulkner

As I’ve got to know a few Methodist ministers and their families, I’ve wondered at what effect of the regular moving has on them. Here Dave Faulkner, a Methodist minister, gives us a window into the itinerant ministry – and how in the midst of it he’s found his home.

“Dad, I never knew there were poor areas of London. I thought London was wealthy.”

“Son, welcome to where I grew up.”

My son Mark was eleven. We had just got out of White Hart Lane train station, and were walking to White Hart Lane the football stadium to watch our beloved Tottenham Hotspur cause untold misery later that afternoon for Manchester United.

Mark, dressed up in Tottenham Hotspur gear and holding a trophy for Team Player Of The Year in the side he played for.

Tottenham Hotspur is my last remaining connection with my upbringing, a mile or so north of the ground in nearby Edmonton. I have no remaining friends or relatives living there.

That part of north London is nothing like Surrey, where I now live with my family. You can justifiably prefix much of Surrey with the adjective ‘leafy’: we are surrounded by heathland, making it a wonderful place to raise a dog.

Back home, you tried to find a good comprehensive school. Here, many people think nothing of sending their children into private education. ‘Is the Gospel against Surrey?’ asked one of my colleagues. Er, yes, I think it might be.

What took me away from urban London? Answer: studying Theology as a mature student, and becoming a Methodist minister. I infiltrated an Anglican theological college in Bristol to explore my calling, take my first degree, and run the Free Church Liberation Front. Having settled on the ordained ministry of the denomination in which I grew up, Methodism sent me to a college in a deprived area of Manchester for three years of re-indoctrination.

Leafy Surrey. Horsell Common, Woking, the location H G Wells used for the Martian invasion in War Of The Worlds.

Leaving college, Methodist presbyters and deacons are ‘itinerant’. We are under the discipline of our Conference, which reserves the right to station us where we are most needed. So I have ministered in middle-class Hertford, the economically depressed Medway Towns, loadsamoney Chelmsford, and now – yes – leafy Surrey. Our daughter and son were born in Medway, but we left there when Rebekah was two and Mark was one. (Ask our children where they’re from, and they’ll give our current address, and add, “But really I’m from Gillingham,” even though they barely remember it.)

Itinerancy is justified on the grounds that Jesus and Paul had itinerant ministries, and so they did. But at the same time, we learn from Jesus the importance of incarnation. The doctrine of the incarnation is too important to be limited to Christmas. ‘The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,’ writes John. It’s critical for Christians to be rooted in an area, where they are known and can be a witness.

What itinerancy denies me is that rootedness of incarnation. The congregations know we’re moving on after a certain number of years. It exacerbates an ‘us and them’ relationship. I don’t know where home is anymore. I think that’s why following my football team is still important to me: it reminds me of where I came from.

In ten years’ time or so, I shall be retired, and I look forward to the opportunity Debbie and I will have to put down roots together in a community. But I can’t be satisfied with that. Christians have a longing for what Augustine of Hippo called ‘the city of God’. And we have already come there, in one sense. For as the writer to the Hebrews puts it:

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:22-24)

The church, then, is meant to be a sign of what it is to be home in an ultimate sense. I wonder what we do to make sure that the fellowship of the church is home for us?

But until that day arrives in all its fulness, one more time: “Come on you Spurs …”

Dave Faulkner is a Methodist minister in Surrey. He is married with two children. He enjoys digital photography and creative writing. His latest blog project is at www.confessionsofamisfit.com.

September 2, 2016
Living in Tents by Peter L. Edman

The shock of uprooting and moving and the hidden graces – that’s what Peter Edman so eloquently addresses in his contribution to the “There’s No Place Like Home” series. I’m grateful to hear Peter’s thoughts, not least because they remind me of our many years of working together in the nation’s capital. We were like brother and sister at times, squabbling but with that fraternal love that meant I knew I could call on him when I was stranded at Baltimore airport at midnight and he’d come to rescue me. True friendship to me gives a taste of Home.

One of my acquaintances used to introduce himself to an audience by giving his name and quipping, “I’m from Washington, DC, and I’m here to help you.” He usually got the wry laughter he was expecting. I too used the line over the two-plus decades I made my home in DC and Northern Virginia. Then I was transferred to Philadelphia, and I’ve been a bit wistful at leaving behind that comfortable joke—and a comfortable identity informed by that influential city.

DC is not a homey place, but we found stability and community there. I stayed at the same church and eventually managed to have most of my family close to us. The relocation—four residences and three offices in three years, all three hours farther from grandparents, cousins, and friends—has meant making a new life for myself and my family. It’s meant finding a new home while negotiating pointers, hopes, and compromises. And in a sense, recentering my identity.

The pointers, at least, have been pretty clear. A mandate to move if I was to keep a stable job doing interesting and meaningful work. The discovery of a new church that continues several relationships with our old church. The quick sale of our old house. Creative financing that secured a newly renovated historic house with room for our five children. A new family with kids unexpectedly moving in across the street.

Our new home.

There have been other pointers, even up to this weekend. On Saturday I was preparing for this post and began to think about Hebrews 11. On Sunday it was my turn to read the New Testament lesson at church, and I discovered Hebrews 11 was the assigned passage. “By faith Abraham obeyed the call to leave his home”—in an influential city—“for a land which he was to receive as a possession; he went away without knowing where he was to go” (Hebrews 11:8 REB). I am glimpsing more of its meaning now.

Our hopes have been met in part and redefined in part. We are compromising. After so many years in prosperous suburban settings, we’re still adjusting to the vigilance required in our new, mixed urban neighborhood. We don’t want to afford two cars in the city, but with public transit, my commute is the shortest it’s ever been. Our house renovations were extensive, and we have space for hospitality, but its “architect and builder” (11:10) was not God, and a series of leaks taxes our patience and our budget. We could not afford to live near our new church, but we can host a home group.

The Edman brood.

For introverts it’s hard to reach out and build new friendships, let alone replace missing support structures, but both are happening slowly. Already we know more neighbors here and have more connection with community groups than we did over our years in Virginia. The lack of pretense and the friendly attitude toward our small children in public spaces are refreshing.

The expectations on us are different too. No one asks me what I “do” anymore. I’m not expected to “help,” just to participate, to be a neighbor.

I am reluctantly seeing value in the compromises. My nature is to treat my home as a safe space, a gated community. But Abraham settled as an alien, not as an insider—“living in tents” along with his children and grandchildren (Hebrews 11:9). You can’t depend on tent fabric to keep your possessions safe, and indeed the writer tells us that Abraham was “looking forward to a city with firm foundations” (11:10), “longing for a better country” (11:16). His identity was not dependent on walls, riches, social standing, or citizenship—and yet he is remembered not only for faith but for exploits of hospitality, generosity, even warfare. God took care of his children. But no one now remembers who was king or top socialite back in his hometown. It’s worth reflection.

The joys and flaws of my new city and my new house, along with our increasing awareness of our need for help, offer regular reminders that my home, my citizenship, is not finally here. I can live with my family like resident aliens, offering and receiving hospitality, raising my children, serving those around me, and hopefully living as a pointer to the God who, in spite of all appearances, rewards those who seek him (11:6).

My name is Peter. I’m not here to help you. But perhaps I can remind you to long for a better country.

Peter Edman, an editor, is a quality assurance manager with American Bible Society, where he also manages the product line for trauma healing programs now active for adults and children in more than 80 countries and 150 languages worldwide. He lives with his wife and five children in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. You can reach him at @pledman.

August 26, 2016
Home is another country by Veronica Zundel

“Where is home when your mother’s tongue is not your mother tongue?” Veronica Zundel’s opening line compels us to read on – and I hope you will, for her thoughts on finding home as the child of immigrants will move you. She speaks of loss and yet an undergirding hope.

Where is home when your mother’s tongue is not your mother tongue? Let me explain. My Jewish mother and Gentile father left Vienna in 1939 for the UK. Their marriage in London was followed by 14 house moves (well, 14 single room moves) in a few years. Finally they settled in Coventry, where I, their second child, was born. When I was five and my doctor Dad had earned enough (Mum was unable to finish her medical studies), they bought land and had a modern house built, with a large garden including an apple orchard, where I would later pick and eat unripe cooking apples, to the detriment of my digestion!

My mother.

My mother never saw her own mother again – she perished, along with Mum’s aunt and uncle, in a concentration camp. Five of my potential six grandparents (my mother was adopted), died before I was born. The sixth, my father’s mother, along with his brother and sister, lived in Vienna, so I saw them at best annually. Neither of Dad’s siblings had children (though I later learned of my rakish uncle’s secret illegitimate daughter), so my brother and I were the only ‘next generation’. There were plenty of honorary aunts, uncles and even cousins of a sort, but no extended family. We had enough money, but this was a form of poverty not often recognized.

Meanwhile the family home held a different culture from that of school or playmates; a little enclave of Austria where they spoke a strange hybrid language laughingly called ‘Emigranto’ or ‘Refugäsisch’, where they ate different foods and even held cutlery differently, where everyone spoke at once and I couldn’t get a word in. Better to retreat to my bedroom with a book and explore other worlds, as well as playing with my imaginary English family with five children (including, as in all the best fictional families, twins).

When I was 13 and he 18, my brother became mentally ill, and was in and out of hospital until he killed himself in 1975 at 27. In the light of all this, it is unsurprising that I found ‘home’ in places rather than people. At 16 I found a new home in Jesus; and about a year later I discovered what would be my first ‘spiritual home’, at a Lutheran community/conference centre I visited regularly and later lived and worked at for six intense months. Yet a few years on, this ‘home’ would be lost, sold by the Lutherans and its community scattered. By then, I had my own flat in London, home of a sort but often lonely.

Christmas in Vienna.

Beautiful rural Austria.

Fast forward a dozen or so years to my marriage in 1989, and my parents’ decision to ‘retire to London’ to be nearer us. This was fine, except that I soon learned that the couple (a Jewish doctor and his convert wife) who bought their house, had demolished my bedroom to build an octagonal excrescence containing a new master bedroom and a kosher double kitchen. (All that observance didn’t do the wife much good, she later ran off with her personal trainer!) They also felled the silver birch tree outside my garden window, and losing the other window that allowed me to climb surreptitiously onto the garage roof. All my childhood, gone at a stroke.

Happily Ed and I had found a new, wonderful spiritual home in the Mennonite church. After a lifetime of taking photographs only of places, I started to take photographs of people, and to find Christ in them, where I had previously found him only in solitude and natural beauty. Could home, once more, be a community? But now that home, after more than two decades, is lost too, with the closure of what was the only English-speaking, non-conservative Mennonite church in the UK.

Mennonites eating together.

What is left? I have a caring, loyal husband and a delightful son who just turned 22, and we have lived in the same house for 27 years – so is this home? Coventry, which I still visit, still feels like home in a deeper way; and Vienna, which I have known since I was four, another kind of home, yet not home. Perhaps home is always elusive, a state to which we aspire. As Jesus followers we are ‘resident aliens’, citizens of another kingdom, longing for a city which is to come. Only there will we be truly at home.

Veronica Zundel is the author of nine books including three anthologies for Lion Publishing, and three books for BRF, of which the latest is Everything I Know about God, I’ve Learned From being a Parent (BRF 2013). She writes regularly for BRF’s New Daylight notes, and a column for Woman Alive magazine, which won a national award, beating columnists from the Mail on Sunday into second and third places. She is is a prize-winning poet who blogs at reversedstandard.com and on the ACW blog, More than Writers.

August 19, 2016
Home from Home

August can be a time to be away from home. What measures do you put into place when you’re away from home to make it feel more homely? Here I contribute to the “There’s No Place Like Home” series.

I watched her unpack her toiletries into the drawers in the bathroom, wondering why she wasn’t concerned about any nasties that might be hiding there. “Wow,” I remarked. “You go for it, don’t you!”

My friend had moved around a lot as a child, and perhaps this mobility contributed to her rooting herself to where she was staying even if just a night. I was in my twenties and had only experienced one childhood home, where my parents still lived, before I had moved to the East Coast in America. Maybe that’s partly why I had never thought to unpack my toiletries or even my suitcases when I went somewhere. After all, I never was sure how clean the drawers would be.

Photo by einalem on flickr

But in the intervening years I’ve adopted my friend’s ways, nasties be damned. Now when I unpack at the beginning of a stay somewhere, I’m telling myself that I will be fully engaged there. Not having to search in an increasingly rumpled suitcase for a shirt or bathing suit makes me feel more rooted. Just the physical act of unpacking informs my heart and my mind that I want to experience the joys and delights of the new place, preparing me for the adventures to come.

And if I remember to pack some wet-wipes to do a quick clean of the surfaces, all the better.

What helps you feel at home when you’re away from home?

August 12, 2016
An Embassy of Heaven by Catherine Butcher

Home as a taste of heaven – I love this from Catherine Butcher. Heaven is a topic she loves to think about, speak about, and write about, and her blog on home radiates with a glimpse of its glory. Take a few moments to ponder and wonder, and join us in thinking about home and heaven and feasting together at the table.

Not long after we were married, friends who stayed overnight wrote a kind note in our guest book. They described our home as ‘an embassy of heaven’. I’ve carried those words for more than a quarter of a century now. They are as challenging today as ever. What makes a home ‘an embassy of heaven’?

A British embassy overseas gives visitors a tiny taste of Britain – everything is quintessentially British. Sometimes that means cocktails on a perfect lawn or tea and cucumber sandwiches. But in many parts of the world the embassy is a refuge; a place of peace and sanctuary for Britons stranded in foreign lands.

And that’s what I want our home to be. A sanctuary and safe haven. More than just a place to shelter. A place to be totally relaxed. Always welcoming. Always nourishing.

Our kitchen table is the heart of our home. As soon as we could afford it we extended the compact kitchen so we could eat meals there. Later, we made further changes so there’s room to extend the table fully and entertain guests. That table is the setting for my happiest memories. As a family we’ve laughed ‘til we’ve cried. We’ve prayed in good times and bad. We’ve debated and discussed everything from future dreams to family finances.

But the table could be anywhere. What makes it home is the people seated round it. Home has been a caravan in a field; a picnic table in a forest. I could adapt that Marvin Gaye lyric (later recorded by Paul Young) – ‘Wherever I lay a table, that’s my home’.

Reading The Sacred Romance by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge helped me to understand why I feel so happy sharing a meal with the people I love most around a table. They pointed to Ecclesiastes 3:11, and Eldredge’s subsequent volumes continue to explore the conclusion of that first book: ‘Our longing for heaven whispers to us …’

When Jesus said, ‘I go to prepare a place for you’ he was talking about our heavenly home, our safe haven, where we will be fully known and fully accepted just as we are. In heaven, with Jesus, we will never feel like the outsider or the unnecessary extra. Each of us will know he has included us on purpose, not by accident. When we take our place in heaven it won’t be like one of those parties where you wander into the crowded room and wonder who to talk to or where to sit. Jesus is waiting to welcome the citizens of his heavenly kingdom, not formally, but as family. There won’t be an embarrassed shuffling of seats to squeeze you in. He has already prepared a place just for you.

Our longing for that heavenly welcome whispers to us. Jesus very deliberately chose a meal around a table as the setting to remember him. One day we will sit together at a heavenly wedding supper for Christ and his bride.

Home is where we have a foretaste of that welcome – and I want every family member and guest to feel that ‘welcome home’ as they walk through the door.

Catherine Butcher is HOPE’s Communications Director, author of several books and co-author with Mark Greene of The Servant King and the King She Serves, published by HOPE, Bible Society and LICC as a tribute to the Queen on her 90^th birthday. Her book What you always wanted to know about heaven – but were afraid to ask (CWR, 2007) is now out of print but is still available from Catherine. Find her on Facebook or email cathbutcher@live.co.uk to buy a copy.

August 5, 2016