The spiritual life arises out of a deep longing. Long ago, David described his longing in these words, “my God, you are the One I seek. My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you” (Psalm 63:1). Made by God, we long for God. Spiritual formation is our acknowledgement of this longing and our desire to satisfy it.
In the 23rd Psalm, David used the imagery of a home to describe his confidence in the culmination of his longing “I will dwell in your house, YHWH, for days without end” (23:6). Jesus spoke of the Father’s house (John 14:2), and Paul took us beyond earthly time to write that we have “a house built by God, an everlasting home in the heavens, not made by human hands” (2 Corinthians 5:1).
Henri Nouwen has written extensively on the idea of the spiritual life using the metaphor of home. I suspect he will be most remembered for his book, ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son.’ [1] The subtitle is, ‘A Story of Homecoming.’ And after he died, friends took some of his notes about homecoming and published them under the title, ‘Home Tonight.’ [2]
Frederick Buechner has likewise written about his spiritual journey in multiple volumes, one of which is entitled, ‘A Longing for Home.’ [3]. He defines the spirituality of home as “a place where you feel you belong and which in some sense belongs to you, a place where you feel that all is ultimately well even if things aren’t going all that well at any given moment.” [4]
Buechner’s use of home to weave the threads of belonging, ultimacy, and realism captures the essence I hope to achieve in this series. We all live with some soul-sense of being “away from home,” and that awareness creates our hunger for God, our hunger for a life summed up in the words of Julian of Norwich, ““All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” We are on our way home.
[1] Henri Nouwen, ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming’ (Doubleday, 1992).
[2] Henri Nouwen, ‘Home Tonight: Further Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son’ (Doubleday, 2009).
[3] Frederick Buechner, ‘A Longing for Home’ (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996).
[4] Ibid., 7.
Oboedire 