Beyond the veil of changelessness
Proper 9B | Mark 6:1-13
“You can’t go home again,” they say. It’s a phrase intended to temper expectations. Because we usually can go home, but it won’t feel like home. Or it may not be home anymore.
Two weeks ago, I drove through Lansing, Michigan and up US-127 like I have hundreds of times before. The sight of Uncle John’s Cider Mill brought waves of nostalgia while the massive windmills around Ithaca brought more recent memories. I yearned for those feelings, that familiarity. But I also didn’t want to relive any of it, either.
This familiar drive along a straight bit of familiar divided highway was only that: familiar. It was never going to be the same.
And that’s the thing about homes. They never stay the same. They age at least, if we don’t change them ourselves. Build or rebuild.
Our returns may be full of such revisits to memories and our own expectations. But this is merely our perspective. When children return home, do we account for any growth in them, for them, or with them?…
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