Reflections on Home

Three days a week I commute to Reading Area Community College where I tutor multi-lingual students, or students whose first language is something other than English. There I hear many stories about home. Most of these students currently live in an urban setting, but many come from rural roots and talk longingly about the family farm they grew up on, among mango trees and banana groves, the pueblos in South America or villages in Africa or India. Most when speaking about their childhood homes, whether from a big city or a small town, light up brightly, remembering relatives they haven’t seen in years, flavors and spices that make their mouths water, and neighbors who all look out for one another. 

In September, I participated in the Run4Refugees campaign to raise money for Church World Service’s work to support refugees here and around the globe, people who have quite literally been forced to leave their homes. As I walked the 35^th and last mile of my challenge for the week, the word home kept arising within me, like a mantra. Home. I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of home, and what that means. Does everyone who has a house feel at home? What is home? And isn’t home what every person desires and deserves?

My belief is that a home is more than a place of residence. Home is a place not just to lie down our heads at night, but a place to sleep in peace. Home is a place where we feel free to be ourselves. Home is where we are loved, cherished, wanted.

One of the reasons I chose to walk for refugees and write about their stories and one reason I am passionate about empowering immigrant students to reach their dreams at my local community college, is because for the last four years, the idea of home has been threatened for many here in the United States of America. 

The reason I wore black on November 4^th, 2016, was because I was grieving. Not for myself. Not because my preferred candidate was not elected, and I was sad that “my team” lost. I was grieving for the harm I saw coming to many who call this nation “home” – for the most vulnerable in our country, beginning with our refugee and immigrant neighbors (and how many of us are not the great-grandchildren of refugees and immigrants?), extending to all people of color, to my friends with sexual orientation different from my own, for anyone who might be considered on the fringes of society.

Today I learned from a colleague that her immigrant students also were grieving that day four years ago. One student, a mother of young children, said in tears that she wondered if her children would not be better off back in her home country, though moving there would mean they’d give up access to electricity and running water. This may sound dramatic to those of us who pass as white or who have lived in this nation for several generations. We feel at home and our status feels secure. But this home, once proudly known for its welcome of the marginalized and touted for being a land of opportunity and freedom, does not feel like home to all of its residents.

It has been terribly painful to watch the harm I feared come in waves these last four years. From the disparaging rhetoric of the president toward my Mexican neighbors breeding fear of Latinx Americans, to the threat of pulling significant funds from the peace-keeping and humanitarian efforts of the UN, to the devastating executive order slamming the door on refugee settlement programs here in the U.S. and the travel ban targeting Muslim countries, to the funding of walls and prisons splitting up Central American families seeking asylum (as opposed to using that funding to address the root problems of migration), to withdrawing troops along the border of Turkey who were maintaining peace in Syria, to wanting to break promises for Dreamers by seeking to end the DACA program that protects thousands of children living in America, including personal friends of mine, to the fanning of the flames of hateful white supremacist groups. The toll on these lives over the last four years has been insurmountable.

Home has been threatened in this nation in which I have always called home. And not just for foreign-born Americans, but also for black Americans (many who would perhaps say that this nation has never lived up to its definition of home for them), for LGBTQ Americans, and really for all of the rest of us. For what becomes of a home when it is divided against itself? 

I was raised in a home that often housed more than just my parents, my two brothers, and myself. Since as long as I can remember, our home was a place of welcome. Our home welcomed a refugee from Ethiopia escaping civil war, exchange students from Germany and Japan, a friend recovering from traumatic loss, and many others who needed temporary housing. These additional guests at our dinner table enriched our lives. I learned that home is a place not just for kin, but a place of hospitality, a place of welcome, a place for the “outsider” and the “stranger-soon-to-be-friend.”

I’ve also tasted the hospitality of homes away from home. I have experienced only a very small bit of what it means to be a visitor in another land, and my experiences were pleasant and privileged. The rich warm mugs of chai and beaded jewelry placed in my hands when I visited strangers’ homes in Kenya… the sincere smiles and pura vida greetings when our family visited Costa Rica. The friendly warmth and cead mile failte we received when we spent a week in Ireland. I want to receive others as warmly as I have been received.

So, my prayer for my family’s home, and for this nation that I call home, is that we would always leave room at the table for another. 

I once heard a story of a poor man from Nazareth who fed a crowd of people with just two fish and five loaves of bread. From him, I learned that love and sustenance multiply exponentially when we take just what we need and share generously with others, when we make room at the table for “the other” and open our homes, and our hearts, in welcome. May it be so.