Home

    While at Wild Goose this past week, we were continually told "Welcome Home". For the Goose, home is not a place, for we were in a new location this year. And home isn't even necessarily about people, for we are a community in transition, with some old faces along with lots of new ones. So what is home?
   In the Book of Jeremiah the message that God gives the prophet for the people in exile was to build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat of their bounty; multiple their families and settle their households. To seek the good of this foreign land, for when it was at peace, they would be at peace. A hard task for people longing to go back to where they came from. Longing for what they thought home was. It was as if God was reminding them that home is not about the physical location, rather where they felt whole and safe.
    In many ways I feel like a nomad, often spending more time in my car than any where else. Yet, I know where home is. And in the words Alice sings in the musical Wonderland, "home is not a place or an address you memorize. Its more than seven flights to apartment 8A. Its where you never feel lonely, even when you're alone." Home.
   For too many people they never had home. They made have had a house and a family, but never a place to feel safe and whole. A place where they were never lonely even when they were alone. A place to sink their roots into, like the prophet Jeremiah is declaring. It is for these folks and so many others that the Wild Goose's cry of "Welcome Home" is triumphant. Welcome to the place where you will not be judged. Welcome to a place of nurture. Welcome to a place of wholeness.
   We all need places like this. Places that restore our souls. Where is your home?