Homesickness

We have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness. — Hermann Hesse

When I was a young girl I went to camp one summer in the mountains of Colorado. It sounds like a long way from home but was actually only about an hour, in time, from my home in Denver. I really wanted to go to camp and was very excited about this new adventure, until I got there. I suddenly realized that I was surrounded by strangers, in a strange place. It was very disconcerting. At night I would cry myself to sleep. I did not want anyone to know how badly I was feeling but it must have been obvious because within a few days my counselor was hovering over me urging me to do things and get involved. Slowly but surely I recovered and was able to enjoy the experiences of camp. I returned every year after that until I was 16. By the time I went the last year it felt like returning home to pull in the gate of the camp. And yet even that last year I would feel the familiar tug of homesickness albeit briefly during my stay.

When I went to college, in Iowa, I felt the familiar tug of homesickness my first year there. Everything seemed so different to me, the people talked differently, the place looked different, my mountains were gone, my family far away. I couldn't wait to get home for Thanksgiving. The irony was that in that first visit home I didn't feel at home, everything there was different, my room had been rearranged, my parents were busy with their own stuff, my brothers and sisters felt like I was intruding. By the end of that week I was telling my best friend from 7th grade, the only one who still seemed predictable, that "you can't go home again." And being my best friend she nodded in sympathy and gave me hugs and waved goodbye at the airport.

Two years ago my husband and I moved to the mountains of North Carolina. It was the culmination of a lot of dreaming and planning that we had done over the years. In every regard it was a dream come true. We moved from our home of 27 years in Florida, leaving behind our many friends and our children, both in university there. We had planned for everything except for the sense of loss, loneliness, and emptiness that overtook me last winter. Finally, the pain of my homesickness drove me to seek help. When I sat down with the counselor the first time all I could say was, "I feel homesick and I don't even know where home is." She said nothing, which being a counselor myself I figured meant either, figure it out yourself - or I don't have a clue what you are talking about. Silence is a wonderful tool in the therapists toolbox!

So, once again I sat with my homesickness. Over the years there have been other occasions when I felt that sadness and yearning. Almost without exception loss of the familiar has ushered it in and almost without exception seeking out the familiar has not put it to rest. Instead, I have had to force myself to open up to the new, the different, the challenging. I have not been able to go back and have dreaded moving forward. Usually I think hiding will help but it doesn't and then I am left to "stumble through the dirt and humbug." During this latest occurrence I realized the truth in my words, ..."I don't even know where home is." The truth is that no matter how much I love my surroundings, my friends, my life, my children, these things are all temporary. I cannot depend on them for that sense of "home" that I long to find. I have not lost any close loved ones as an adult but friends who have describe the same sense of loss of bearings. It's more than just the loss of that person, it's the sense that you have been cut loose from your own moorings. The sense that no matter what stays the same everything is different. When I read Hesse's words I said "yes!" I am not the only one who has this sense that home is out there but I have yet to reach it.

Is this heaven I am seeking? Or God? Or some universal heartbeat that merges with my own? I can only guess and yet I keep being pushed forward by this "guide." Forced to face the impermanence of most things, I sense that somewhere not too far from here, is the home I seek. Perhaps an hour away, a day's drive, a quick flight. I don't know how I will get there, only that I will. As much as I dread the feeling of homesickness I appreciate that it is what pushes me on. And as I stumble through the dirt and humbug, worrying over each misstep, I realize that the trip is one we all share. When I was the saddest I could be at camp in those long ago days, my heart breaking as I hid beneath my sleeping bag, a calming stillness would wash over me and I would sleep. And on waking stumble some more.

Crying Over Spil't Milk

Please read the following and if you weep, do something.


CPTnet 3 June 2005
FALLUJAH, IRAQ: An unnatural disaster
by Joe Carr
Fallujah is devastating to drive through. There is more destruction and rubble than I've ever seen; even more than in Rafah, Gaza. The U.S. has leveled entire neighborhoods, and about every third building is destroyed or damaged from U.S. in April and November 2004 air ground assaults. The city looks like it's been hit by a series of tornados. Rubble and bullet holes are everywhere.
We visited a family's home in a neighborhood where every structure is damaged or destroyed. Their home was full of holes and black inside from fire. They said that they'd left during the fighting with their home intact, and returned to find all of their possessions had burned. Three families, more than twenty-five people, now live in this three-room burned-out shell of a home, including four infants.
U.S. checkpoints continue to strangle the city. One shopkeeper said that farmers from around Fallujah can no longer deliver their produce unless they have a U.S.-issued Fallujah ID. The shopkeepers have to go out and pick up the produce. He said the trip takes him around four hours because of the checkpoint delays. "They mistreat us," he said, "they point guns at us and insult us, even the women." Both U.S. and Iraqi troops search through the vegetables roughly, sometimes dumping them on the ground and smashing them.
Iraqis from the rural areas surrounding Fallujah are now dying of treatable illnesses because they can't get through the checkpoints to the Fallujah hospital. One hospital employee said that many patients also die when they try to transfer them to hospitals outside Fallujah. "It's better to take them in a civilian car than in an ambulance," he said, "because the troops delay and search ambulances more."
A Sunni cleric told us that during the first invasion, several families near his mosque took cover in a home. U.S. troops used megaphones to order all them out into the street and told them to carry a white flag. They complied, but when they all got out, the soldiers opened fire and killed five. He said one boy had run to his mother who'd been shot, and Americans shot him in the head. A U.S. Commander cried as this happened, "but what good were his tears?" he asked, "He didn't do anything to stop it."
During our meeting with the cleric, a man told us, "The Americans shot and killed my 15-year-old daughter, was she a terrorist?" The U.S. military denied killing her. "With all respect to you," he said, "I hate Americans; they killed my family. They shot and killed my sister-in-law while she was washing clothes, and my other brother's hands and feet were blown off." He apologized for interrupting, but said that he had to tell us because he's in so much pain.
Someone once told me, "You can't bomb a resistance out of existence, but you can bomb one into it."
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Christian Peacemaker Teams is an initiative of the historic peace churches (Mennonites, Church of the Brethren, and Quakers) with support and membership from a range of Catholic and Protestant denominations. Supporting violence-reduction efforts around the world is its mandate. Contact CPT, POB 6508 Chicago, IL 60680; Telephone: 773-277-0253 Fax: 773-277-0291; e-mail: peacemakers@cpt.org.

Truckin'

I live in a county of about 23,000 people and about 50,000 trucks. These trucks come in all sizes and shapes; SUV's, old and new, hauling stuff and from out of town; pick-ups with toppers, with crew cabs, with fifth wheels, with hitches; old trucks with rigged up wooden sides and bad paint; new trucks with shiny chrome wheels, air conditioning, and sound systems; delivery trucks with advertising on their sides and wide mirrors; and most especially dump trucks.

These dump trucks get your attention partly because every 3rd vehicle you see on the road is a dump truck and partly because when they move you move. No one argues with a dump truck. You see them heavily loaded with gravel, dirt, and trees. You realize that there is a lot of earth being moved around which is why so many dump trucks live here. There is a quarry near my house and at any time of the day you see the trucks going in and out filled with rock of all shapes and sizes.

I particularly like the dump truck drivers, they all wear hats and grin at pretty girls and their left arm is eight shades darker than their right arm. In this part of the world most of them have a southern mountain drawl, real slow and easy. They talk like they have rocks in their mouth so it takes some getting used to but once you get an ear for it it's like no other kind of talking. Most of these guys (they would say boys) listen to country music while they drive, or bluegrass. They all have an ear for banjo pick'n and a lot of them play the banjo or the guitar or maybe the fiddle and they all have rhythm. Some of them have shiny new trucks that they wash religiously and others have trucks that you swear will fall apart under the loads they carry but somehow they don't.

I often wish I was up there in the cab of one of those trucks riding or driving. It seems like it would be so much fun to be king of the road. You could look down on the rest of the vehicles on the road, puny little cars without power or size, and you could haul loads of stuff to out of the way places and push the levers to make the back raise and the load slide out. I see the men standing on the top of a load sometimes pulling a tarp tight over it and they move so easily, climbing up on the load and over it and then jumping down like there's nothing to it and these are guys older than me which is pretty old to be moving so effortlessly. I think dump truck driving would be more fun than race car driving. You couldn't go fast but everybody would pay attention to your passing. And if you honked your horn you would surely get a response.

Our county may not have many people but we got lots of trees and flowers and trucks. I like it.