Wayfaring Lent

Some of my favorite old hymns have the word ‘home’ in them.. Come home...Ye who are weary, come home... Jesus is calling, sinner, come home... Come home, oh why will you longer roam? Come home, O prodigal child come home...I’m going home to die no more... and my favorite... The Wayfaring Stranger. The words in this song have haunted my imagination and captured my ear with its minor melody since I was a child. It is the perfect song for Lent... my theme song this year. Like many of the old sacred harp songs, the images are dark and bright at the same time... joyful and sorrowful... transcendent and earthbound... plaintive... a reminder of all we have lost and all we have yet to gain... going over home.
"I am a poor, wayfaring stranger, while traveling through this world below... I am just going over Jordan, I am just going over home". Lent is the season that reminds us of our wayfaring... our unfinished business in this world. We are on a long journey towards home... at home in this world only temporarily, not forever. When we take inventory of our souls during Lent, it can be excruciatingly painful and freeing at the same time. We own who we are... name what we have done and undone... recognize the damage and hurt in ourselves... seek forgiveness from God and those we have wronged... are able to come home to our best selves.
In the church of my childhood, we sang that song year round. Our Easter was not preceded by an understanding of, or practice of Lent. We went straight for the joy, joy, joy. But every time we sang that song, the feeling of Lent trickled through our souls and raised the hair on the back of our necks. Sometimes we heard it as a solo... Mr. Thompson with his deep bass voice or Mrs. Morris with her clear soprano... or we would sing it a capella with our voices blending and distinct at the same time. It always made me cry...
I’ve lived through some of the dark clouds the hymn writer listed. My father, my sister, some of my classmates and friends are over home... some of my path has been rough and steep. But I still want to "sing salvation’s story" and I am still headed towards home. What is it about the image of home that pulls us... comforts us... haunts some of us...is both hope and fear for us?
Some of us had happy homes...homes with laughter and grace... homes that were safe harbors for our tender souls. Some of us lived through homes that were stormy, dangerous, rough and steep... homes that tried our souls. But for all of us, regardless of our experience of home, the yearning... the longing for a true home colors our living in this world. We create home for ourselves with houses, apartments, special belongings, music, ritual, people, the right color scheme... all outward symbols of our need for a place to rest where we are known and loved anyway... loved just because we are. But the only interior design that will help satisfy our hunger for home is the interior design of the soul. If we are wayfaring strangers in our souls, unable to name where our home is, no destination for our journey, how can we ever go home again?
I am going to do some naming... some naming of my homeplaces... in this world and in my soul. Cloverly, Sabbath rest farm, First Congregational, a little farm in Morven, Georgia, the Blue Ridge mountains, the music I hear all the day long and through the night as my soul sings, the sound of children’s laughter, the words in the Bible, the sunrise I see every morning through my bedroom windows, the love that washes and rinses my soul when I watch our church family come forward to take communion, the pleasure of the company of our animals... so many homeplaces... my final resting place... my sweetest home of all... the loving arms of my God held out to me in welcome as I start up the long lane towards home. Thanks be to the One who waits for me over home... for the gift of the journey through this world... for the love I have both given and received along the way... for the homeplaces in my heart and for those yet to come... I am most heartily grateful.