A Place to Come Home to

My neighbor had a baby this year and he’s ten months old today. I always say he’s like a ray of sunshine, because that’s just the best way to describe him. He has the brightest most contagious smile. When he looks at you, you can’t help but smile too. Last year at this time we were waiting for him to be born and his parents were getting ready. Not only did they have to get things for him, like a car seat and a crib, onesies and diapers, but they were in the middle of renovating their house, which was more of a project than they realized when they bought it. As things came down to the wire, they just wanted to make sure they had the most important things done before he arrived. What are the most important things for a baby to have when they get here? They need a warm place to sleep, and a clean safe space to be fed, they need quiet and protection, and care. 

There is a speech that went viral back in 2016, by Valarie Kaur who is a film maker, lawyer, and Sikh faith leader. In the speech, she acknowledges that we are living through dark times as a nation and as a world. But then she says, “The mother in me wonders, what if… what if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb but the darkness of the womb? What if this is our world’s great transition? When we are giving birth, the midwife tells us to push and breath. What if this is not the end, but the beginning of something beautiful? What if the world we need to create is growing now in this darkness?" Her speech led me to ask the next question: What are the things we have to do to make sure the baby has what they need? 

In the Advent season, preparing the way is about getting ready for love to be born, for the new world growing in this darkness to have a place to come home to. What it needs are the things that any baby needs- food, water, protection, love, and joy… It's understandable that in this darkness we might feel angry and despairing, but there’s a baby being born and it’s important for that baby to have joy, even in dark times, maybe especially in dark times. Let’s not deprive this baby of it, because it might be the most important thing we’ve ever learned. 

Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit priest who founded the world's largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program, in Los Angeles CA. His vision of ministry, which I learned about in his book Tattoos on the Heart, is one of the things that led me to apply to seminary. I was listening to an interview with him last week and he was talking about a Tibetan saying that goes “Home is where you feel loved”. He liked the saying but he said that he would change it slightly. He hopes instead that people can make love their home. In that case, whenever we return to the state of loving someone else, it’s like we are coming home. He says, when love is your home, you’ll never be homesick. 

The sin of the world is that we have been centering profits for the rich and not the needs of living things. If we want to make sure this new world has a place to come home to, we need to keep building networks of mutual care and solidarity: food, water, protection, love, and joy. Especially joy.