But if I pull away from the angst of this current dilemma, I feel the truth that I have actually felt homeless ever since my mother passed on some twenty five years ago now. She created my home for me. I was living on the other side of the world stationed in (what was then) West Germany in government barracks when she died, but my home had always been that place where my mom anxiously awaited my return. It wouldn't have mattered to me where she lived. . . .that still is where my home would have been.
So, yes. . . .I've been homeless for a long time.
I have tried to create home here at the canyon, but it's been one long fight, so home feels more like a battle ground than a safe haven right now. Is it worth the fight? And what does that mean for me if it's not worth the fight? Do I leave the canyon? Do I find alternate housing more locally? These are no simple or easy questions to answer because there are both practical and emotional components to what a home means. Home is where we store our personal belongings and pieces of history. Home is where we eat and sleep and cleanse our bodies. Home is where we socialize and connect with the outside world via TV, phones, and computers. Home is that safe place we come home to at the end of a long day, that place where the hearth fires burn for us until we return.
I've started reading Waldon by Henry David Thoreau, and it's resonating deeply with where I am in my life. He believed that the masses lived lives of quiet desperation, which he did not want to do. So he conducted a personal experiment where he built a log cabin out in the middle of some New England wildnerness and examined his life and its relationship to the outside world of creature comforts for more than two years. People of the day thought him to be crazy, but he wanted to understand his place in the world in a self-examined way. Very few people ever do that.
I have also conducted such experiments. I once shaved my head to understand the role that my hair had in my personal power as a female. After that I wanted to understand why I kept toting around all of these "things" from place to place, so when I moved into my home in Riverside I kept everything in boxes just sitting in the middle of my living room for what turned into many, many months. Nothing could be touched, not even the dust balls that were collecting in the corners. I wanted to sit with and study everything within my personal space until I understood why I paid to store what I felt compelled to own and possess. Neighbors probably thought I was crazy, too. . . .lol. Others asked when the house was going to be vacant, believing that I was packing to move. . . .lol. But I am beginning to think that it just may be time again for another critical self-examination of my life, specifically what "home" means to me.
I woke up this morning and sat here looking around at everything I have in this space, wondering why I am fighting so hard to maintain the space to house it. I haven't touched an art supply in probably nine years, yet I still have them, and pay to house them. The same with my books and trinkets. When do I actually look at them or utilize them in some meaningful way? I walk past them a hundred times in a day, but I don't ever really see them. They fill the negative space, the empty space of my home, but once they are placed, when do I really interact with them again?
There is an entire genre of paintings from antiquity where the wealthy aristocrats would commission an artist to paint them with all of their belongings. This wasn't done to document belongings for insurance claims, but rather to document their wealth and status. What would it say about me. . . .to view this kind of painting of me and all of the "stuff" I have? That's how I feel today looking at all of the "things" I have. . . .not as an aristocrat, but just wondering why I feel the need to provide space to maintain it all? Why do I have so much stuff? The more stuff I have, the more space I need to house it.
My friend (and sister by Edmondson adoption) Stacey posted something recently about how God's plan isn't so much for us to be happy as much as it is to be holy, and more like Jesus. I have been thinking about this a lot, because Jesus lived the most simplest of lives. Jesus didnt have a bunch of "stuff" to tote around from place to place. No. . . .God wants us to be holy, to be spiritual.
Things are things. . . .and I feel so burdened by all of these things I have right now. I also don't like that my home has become a fancy prison of sorts, because it is all of this stuff that forces me to have a home in the first place.