Home By Another Way

Not only is it my favorite Epiphany song, but it’s my basic theology as well.  Home by Another Way.

When the family was “home for the holidays” they also referred to other places as home.  “Home” in our family could be one of three towns in the Commonwealth of Virginia, a college town in North Carolina, a small town in Pennsylvania, or our new residence in Illinois.  Is it possible to have multiple spiritual homes?

I’m not talking about multiple homes as in John McCain has multiple residences.  I’m talking about multiple spiritual homes as in places we feel nourished and at peace.

My life’s work involves helping people find spiritual homes.  I want churches – spiritual communities –  to be thriving and healthy and Christ-like.  Nothing says “home” like being loved unconditionally.  Nothing says “home” like  a community where people live together, pray together, share together, reach out into the neighborhood together.  Karl Rahner once said something like this: “Every time a  new family is created, a new church is created too.”  Spiritually healthy families worship together, serve together, share life together.  This goes for blood-related families as well as spiritually-related families.

While it used to be true that people were members of One Church to which they pledged their allegiance as well as their money, time, and talent, today people seem to have multiple churches.  In other words we have a variety of spiritual communities that feed us, inspire us to serve, know us.  We may or may not be official members of these communities. My friend M identifies a variety of spiritual communities as his assorted “homes.”

It’s sort of like my own family.  We have many spiritual homes.  We don’t “own” them.  But we belong to them in a very real way.