"Knowing Home" Reflection for Water Ceremony Sunday

August 6, 2017  "Knowing Home"
The Story shared in this service was "The Agreement" by Barry Lopez

Readings

Excerpt from “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer (p.22)

“I once heard Evon Peter—a Gwich’in man, a father, a husband, an environmental activist, and Chief of Artic Village, a small village in northeastern Alaska—introduce him self simply as ‘a boy who was raised by a river.’  A description as smooth and slippery as a river rock.  Did he mean only that he grew up near its banks?  Or was the river responsible for rearing him, for teaching him the things he needed to live?  Did it feed him, body and soul?  Raised by a river: I suppose both meanings are true—you can hardly have one without the other.”

First Lesson by Philip Booth

Lie back daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man's float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you. 

“Knowing Home”

Last month I got to participate in a panel discussion at the library—part of an afternoon of events on “adulting.”  Do you know what adulting is?  You know, taking care of the adult things in life, the things that kids don’t usually have to worry about, or shouldn’t have to.  Basically, functioning as a responsible adult.

The panel was asked a very powerful question:  What do know now that you wish you had known or been taught when you were a teenager?

Well, I could have said something about buying a house and mortgages, or how to manage to get through college without too much debt, or how to find the best mechanic.

But instead, being the minister on the panel, I went with something different:  I wish, when I was teenager, that I’d known or that someone had told me, that when I reached the age of 42, that I would not necessarily feel like an adult, all grown up. 

I would not feel like I had figured it all out, or put life in my control, or feel as if I had “arrived” back home to the place where I can just let go and float.

No, usually I feel like I’m the salmon swimming upstream, not always struggling exactly, but it’s not an easy, lazy float down the river.  Whew, is parenting ever like this!  All I want is to get to a place of ease, like I know what I’m doing.  I just want to create lovely mornings when everyone is happy and no one yells or cries or whines, especially me.  Parents should be able to do that right?

Hardly!  The reality is that everything is constantly changing.  The flow of the day, the season, the age of the kids, to say nothing of everyone’s moods—nothing stays the same for very long.  The water just keeps flowing. The river keeps moving on.

And then there are the occasional days I feel like I can’t even find the river, the path to take me home to God and myself.

So lately I have tried to stay focused on the moments.  The glimpses of knowing my true home in this world.  Not a physical place.  And not a destination that I will some day reach and live in for all time.

But a fleeting experience of Home-ness. Of sanctuary.  Of confidence. Of letting go and knowing that though nothing is perfect, I’m not going to sink.

Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says “With practice, it is possible to live in the here and the now.  The here and the now is our true home.  If you do not live in the here and the now, you miss everything.” (in interview with Parabola, Winter 2006)

So, right here, right now:  With whom are we connected?  How are the relationships with them?  How are our love agreements doing? Are we taking anyone for granted? Are we able to say what I need and what I can give away?

And also:  right here, right  now: how do we depend on the earth itself?  How am we fed and nurtured and raised up by the land, the plants, the water, the air, the animals?  Can we imagine, as Robin Wall Kimmerer puts it, that the earth itself can both sustain me physically and teach me what I need to live?  That perhaps this is the Earth, the Universe, telling us that we are loved.  

If we remember to include the Earth in our agreements, then maybe we can know Home, no matter where we are.

And then, we might float for a time in that embrace.