Displaced and unsettled in my soul-but much more than that being displacement physically this past year and a half rushes to my frontal lobe. The frontal lobe must be where your thoughts duke it out because its right behind your eyebrows. Even now as I type I can imagine the little gnomes shifting my brows back and forth as I think long and hard about my relationship to the world I know and the people who make it up. I remember talking to a friend I was working with just before I left the best job I have had to date and I said something like… “my car has been the closest thing to home.” This same person challenged me in saying something like… “your a such a free spirit, but posture yourself in such a way that you are bringing others along.”
This is what happens when people decide to be disciples. They first have to leave to follow to be on the way but present living the way of their rabbi. But this is not enough. Like the teacher they invite people into something that began long before they decided to leave. In leaving we allow home to be defined less be location. And so in leaving home we do not become homeless we step out beyond homelessness toward a posturing in our world.
There is no place more beautiful to me than the mountains. When the sun rushes through a valley and the sound of streams puts you to sleep. But what a lonely place when the woods go unshared and you find yourself story-less and unheard. If everything were to melt away: the mountains, the streams and the cities only our stories would remain. And their remaining would depend on them being heard. Hospitality is inviting the story of others to take up residence in the rooms of your life. This is what God does when we lean in and trust his story for the world-ours is graphed in. But it doesn’t stop there. The very spirit of God takes up residence in the rooms of our lives. It is like hospitality has potential mutuality between guest and host. They share place… love… friendship… and may find this sort of thing at coffee… walking downtown… listening… and sharing in the living rooms of life.
