Reflections on Home

“Make your home in me, as I make my home in you.” Jesus

“Within the house of love, relationships are characterized by mutual vulnerability, gratitude, peace, and celebration.” Henri Nouwen

Dear Friends,

When we moved to Tigard from Dallas, we sold the house we had lived in for seven years, the first (and only) house we have ever owned.

  

This little place on Woods Lane wasn’t just a house. To us, it was a home in the deepest sense of the word. To those not emotionally invested in it, it may not look like much. But to us, it was the place where we shared in the fullness of our life together as a family. It is where we laughed and cried and argued and played and celebrated and ate and rested. In this home, we felt safe, secure, known, respected, valued. One day, we left this home as a family of three and the next day returned as a family of four. We opened the doors of this home in hospitality to friends and family who through their loving and gracious presence helped to bless the space we inhabited. At the end of a long or difficult day, it was to this home that we returned to take refuge. 

I’m on the brink of getting hopelessly sentimental and sappy, so let me also say that this house was a royal pain in the backside. I spent countless hours painting it, rebuilding the deck, and erecting a retaining wall out back. We discovered a water issue under the house, and so I had the “pleasure” of wriggling around in the crawl space getting filthy and up close and personal with spiders and other critters. The heating system died, which was only one of the major repair expenses we had to dig deep to pay.

And still we loved it.

For me, leaving our home was one of the most difficult parts of our move last summer. I remember returning from a run one spring evening before the move and, as I walked up the gravel lane to our house, finding myself unexpectedly in tears at the thought of leaving our home. It had been filled with so much life. I felt like I should do what Jacob did—erect a stone pillar and pour oil on it to consecrate the place for surely God had revealed Godself to us at that place.

In every change life brings to us there is, of course, an opportunity. Yes, we human beings are drawn to place—to those sites where significant events have transpired, to the buildings that have witnessed the drama of our existence.

But the opportunity for me is to remember that my true home is not made of 2x4’s or drywall or composition shingles. My true home can’t be found on a map or with GPS. While the address of our life’s events is important, we all know that loving, caring relationships are what make any edifice a home. For me, those relationships—particularly with my family—continue to be my place of refuge and safety. Those relationships are the place where I am known and valued and respected. Those relationships hold me and protect me. Through those relationships, I can be at home anywhere.

The spiritual growth opportunity for me is to make my home in these loving, caring relationships that can hallow any patch of earth, any dwelling. This is what I think Jesus means when he says, “Make your home in me, as I make my home in you.”

So as I continue to adjust to life in a new community, living now in an apartment, my address has changed.

But in a sense, I’ve never left home.

Six Feet Under

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
--Traditional

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;
in our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity.
In our death, a resurrection; at the last a victory,
unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.
--Natalie Sleeth

Dear Friends,

After presiding at a grave side service a few weeks ago, the family of the 95 year old woman who had died did something I had not seen before.

They stayed by her grave until the casket had been lowered into the grave and the lid of the vault had been placed into position. It was not an easy task, taking the cemetery workers about 20 minutes and requiring special machinery to maneuver the 250+ pound metal casket into the vault and the 1,000+ pound vault cover into place.

Over the 13 years I’ve presided at graveside services I can’t remember another time when the family of the deceased person stayed to watch the casket lowered into the grave. In my experience, after the short graveside service, the family will linger a bit longer to shed more tears and share a few more stories before making their way back to their cars. It always struck me as odd to drive away from the cemetery with the casket still positioned above ground over the grave with artificial turf placed around it to mask the fact that it would be placed into a hole dug into the earth. I remember feeling guilty, like I had abandoned the deceased without ensuring that they actually made it to their final resting place.

The very first graveside I ever did was in Suffolk, England. After the funeral at the church, I rode in the funeral coach (aka the hearse) to a tiny village where there was a cemetery alongside a little Anglican church that was probably hundreds of years old. The simple wooden coffin was carried on pallbearers’ shoulders to the grave, a dark rectangular hole in the ground that smelled of damp, fresh earth. There was no artificial turf to mask the grave or hide the soil excavated. There was no concrete vault into which the coffin would be placed, no 1,000+ pound vault cover that needed to be positioned with special equipment. The pallbearers simply lowered the plain, wooden coffin into the grave using ordinary woven straps. 

And then, when I came to the line in the graveside service, “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” without being told to, those around me each scooped up a handful of earth and solemnly cast it into the grave onto the coffin. And that was it. She was in her final resting place and eventually her body would be turned back into the dust from whence it had arisen.

When I die—which I expect to be many years from now, but who knows?—I hope my loved ones stay with my body until it is lowered into the ground or slipped into the crematory fire. 

If I am cremated, I don’t want my “cremains” (yes, that’s a real word) to sit in an urn on a mantel. Scatter my ashes in a wildly beautiful place, a serenely tranquil setting, or a place where I was bursting with the goodness and vitality of life. 

If I am buried, I don’t want to be sealed away from soil and water and worms in a vault or metal container. Place me in a wooden coffin in the same outfit I was wearing the day I entered the world and return me to the elements that gave rise to my flesh and bone in the first place. 

Please, no artificial turf or shallow platitudes. Cast earth into that deep, dusky grave as a sign of hope that we can indeed consign our loved ones to the earth (or fire) knowing that the story is not over, not even close, and that the love of God flowing through us in indestructible.

Peace be with you,

Jeremy

P.S. Burial or cremation? At one point in my life I thought I knew. Now I’m reconsidering.

The "Reverend"

For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb…My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance…  (Psalm 139:13, 15, 16a)

God does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart… (1 Samuel 16:7)

The universe is not all about any one of us, but only all of us together and with God.  (Richard Rohr)

Dear Friends,

In my new appointment as the pastor of Tigard UnitedMethodist Church people have been asking me how I wish to be addressed. Reverend and Pastor seem to be the two options even though I have suggested “Most Venerable, Honorable, Esteemed and Very Right Reverend.” No takers on that one yet.

All kidding aside, I feel ambivalent about titles. I was given a name plate several years ago that included the word “Reverend” engraved beneath my name. Every time I looked at it struck me as pompous and self-important so to tone it down I wrote “IR” on a piece of paper and taped it in front of “REVEREND.” That felt much better. When asked the question about how I wish to be addressed, I usually say something like, “Just call me Jeremy.” It is my name, after all.

I know that honorific titles like Rev and Pastor and Dr and Mr and Ms have a role to play in how people relate to one another. I don’t want my children to call their teacher or doctor or the President by their first name. I want to teach them proper respect for authority figures. (I also want them to learn how to challenge unjust authority…but that’s for another time.) And for adults who use honorific titles, I also acknowledge that it is meant to show respect for the leadership role that one inhabits which is distinct from the person in that role. By virtue of my ordination in the United Methodist Church, I am a clergyperson—a “Reverend”—just like a person with a medical degree and license is a “Doctor.” So while I don’t shun a title, I don’t particularly feel a need to broadcast a title, either.

For me, it comes down to that basic question of identity. Who am I, really? Beneath any titles I might be justified in using, underneath the roles I inhabit—pastor, father, husband, leader—who am I? Much of the spiritual life is about acknowledging and stepping beyond the ego. It’s about recognizing that all of the information we think makes us who we are is, in fact, peripheral to our true identity as a creature who has come into being through the creative impulse of God. Ultimately our true identity is not about our work, title, education, career, nationality or any other similar descriptors. Our true identity is rooted in the divine imprint upon our soul. I have seen how a strong attachment to one’s title or position of authority can wreak havoc on one’s spiritual life. I don’t want to go there, hence my ambivalence around titles.

So call me what you will—Rev Jeremy, Pastor Jeremy, Hey You, Jeremy, or Mister. Just keep it nice. I’m praying all the time that I will remember that my true identity is beloved child of God. May you remember that, too!