My sermon title, "The Journey is Home," comes from the autobiography of feminist theologian, Nelle Morton. She wrote of how we "hear each other into speech," how the telling our stories is the basis of our own transformation and the creation of communities of faith. It is my hope this morning that you will "hear me into speech," - that my words today will help you get to know me better and serve as an invitation for you to share your life and faith journeys with me. As many of you know, I moved to California in 1999 to begin seminary. It is there that my story begins.
After the last minor earthquake I felt in San Francisco, I lived with the near constant sensation that the ground underneath me was shifting. Though this was probably technically accurate given the tectonic plates, I knew I was not supposed to be feeling this. I lived on the fifth floor of a San Francisco apartment building. In many ways it felt unnatural to me - like we were suspended in space and could fall over at any minute. I dreamt this often.
The #31 bus bounced through our uneven intersection and our apartment shook. The previously vacant lots behind and to the side of us were abuzz with the pounding of jackhammers and thundering of earthmovers and our apartment continued to shake. For several weeks it was so bad that we had to move the glasses back from the edge of their shelves every time we opened a cabinet. Most days I felt this swaying and rumbling as having no grounding.
Some days the noise of city living felt like it was grating against my bones. I took to wearing earplugs much of the time. It dulled my senses, but at least took the edge off. I wondered if I developed "superhero" hearing - detecting sounds that others didn't seem bothered by? Then I realized it wasn't just the sounds that wore at my soul - it was the absence of silence. Most times there wasn't noise per se - the kind you could go ask someone to turn down, but more the noise of the busy intersection below and the sounds of living from the apartments on both sides of our paper thin walls. It was that absence of silence which drove me mad.
In that bustling city, I would often make my way to Grace Cathedral to sit and soak in the silence of the place. You could hear the space in your skull. You could listen and feel the room for response. Somehow these spaces felt holy: the silence, the way you could feel years of prayers absorbed right into the stones themselves.
If I told people this - that I constantly perceived the very floor under my feet moving and shifting and that I was hearing sounds - I was sure they'd think I was crazy. (Perhaps you're thinking that right now! "Note to John Weas and the Intern Committee: new intern is crazy.") But isn't it more 'unsane' to live in a place without silence and without being able to walk in and out of your front door, feet covered with dust and grass stains?
It hasn't always been this way. Prior to 1999, I lived in mostly rural places in the northeast. My specific location denoted more snow or less humidity, better autumn foliage or fabulous April downpours. In each location life mirrored the ever-turning 'wheel of the year' - reflecting the rhythms of life itself. The seasonal smells, the leaves on trees, the arrival and departures of geese and other migrating birds all told the time of the year. To my surprise, I am often homesick for those places - and for home.
One of my earliest memories is the smell of honeysuckle near the farm in New Jersey where I grew up. Honeysuckle reminds me of my Nana. She and I would stroll hand in hand along Emley's Hill Road until we reached where the "bubbling brook" would cross the road. Walking along we'd admire the honeysuckle plants creeping up the sloping roadsides. At the brook we'd lean on the guardrails and throw pebbles into the running water below.
Aside from the honeysuckle, I thought the best smells were those which heralded spring: the smell of lilac and the wafting of manure freshly turned in the red clay earth to fertilize the fields. I know Rochester loves its lilacs too. Yet, among city-dwellers, I realize that I am in the minority of people who welcome the pungent earthy smells of the land...
This magical place I describe - of honeysuckle, grandmothers, and farmed fields - doesn't exist anymore. Even though I have tried for many years, there is no place to which I can go home. Before my mother sold the farm, I would - like the geese - return seasonally for holidays and birthdays. Yet, farmers sell their debt-laden fields and development encroaches. Grandmothers die. I am not that child anymore.
That land, that home is fading into memory. That place was as much time as space. Both are gone now. Someone else bought that farm. Yet that house still stands - wood and brick - which holds the memories of a girl who loved that land; and yet, as she grew, felt constrained and choked by the place, just as the bubbling brook was overtaken by weeds and cattails until it became a trickle. It holds the memory of a girl who always knew her dreams would take her far from home.
To go back to that place is to return to the nearest town where the first Jewish families bought houses and lawns where a cross would burn. To go back is to drive home along the road past the dilapidated shacks where the few Black families lived. To go back to that place is to revisit my high school where homophobic slurs were slung unchallenged. To go back is to remember why I had to leave, to find a place which could hold all of my Self.
And so there is homesickness for a mythical place. I can return and look out over the land - it is the same and yet never was the place in which I lived.
So, beginning with college, I packed boxes and cars and U-Hauls and moved nearly every year. Then I sent boxes on a truck and flew 3,000 miles until I arrived at the Pacific Ocean. There I lived in a place where the ground was shifting under my feet. I lived amidst the noise of the world and the roar of life filling my ears. I knew I was supposed to be there. But I was still homesick. Part of my spirit still walks along Emley's Hill Road, pebbles in hand. It will never find its way here. And I can never go back to that place.
I share my memories of home and journeys with you today because what I experienced mirrored my faith journey. Raised Roman Catholic, I loved many things about my faith. It formed who I am and the spiritual community in which I was raised. But as the years went by, I began to feel my soul straining against the edges of that spiritual home and place. If I did not leave, my soul would have to remain constrained inside that box.
So I left that home and wandered, without community and without spiritual sustenance, until I found Unitarian Universalism. This faith is my chosen home - one in which I have the freedom and nourishment for my soul to flourish. It is within this tradition my lifelong call to ministry is welcomed and celebrated.
Yet, the faith of my childhood is deep in my bones. It is the hunger I have for old stone churches, candles flickering, awe and mystery, ritual so familiar you could recite it in your sleep. I am homesick for that spiritual place, the place where God lived.
But, like my childhood home, I cannot go back. I must find a way to bring what is in my bones to this new place - to build a bridge between the places of my soul which love both mystery and freedom. In seminary out in California, I wandered down amazing new roads, new maps in hand trying to find a way to where God lives now. Trying to find a way of saying God which will not constrain and choke, but allow me and the world to flourish.
August 2001: boxes, U-Hauls, trains, airplanes, rental cars and 3000 miles later my partner and I arrived here in Rochester so I could begin my internship in this church. Well, I confess to being a bit homesick some days for school and the Pacific Ocean. But at least the earth has stopped moving under my feet! And I am looking forward to both the snow and the lilac festival next spring.
This new place, surely not yet home, is a very important part of my spiritual path. You and I are still nearly strangers, only just begun in our getting to know one another. The events of the past month have left many of us shaken, changed. Yet for the next nine months we will be pilgrims together on our journeys of life and faith. Will you walk with me sharing your stories of the places which have "worked their way into your bones?" Will you talk with me about the path of faith you're traveling?
In struggling to find my way these days, I carry with me a new map I'd like to share with you. It comes from Buddhist teacher, Sharon Saltzberg, who encourages us to pay wise attention. This mindfulness allows us to see clearly. "Seeing clearly," she writes "we realize that we have no distance to travel in any direction to find our real home, where we belong, where we can be at ease - it is right where we are."
Now I understand what Nelle Morton meant when she titled her autobiography, "The Journey is Home." For the journey itself is home, in every moment, right where we are.
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