It is so weird to be home. I don't even know what home means anymore. It's undefinable. It's probably the concept I've put the most fruitless effort into defining since 2005....when I graduated from High School and started at Wooster. The best answer I have is that home and soylent green are the same thing: people.
But I'm not too sure what that means. I know that some places look like home...but things don't feel like home without the right people, and those people, for whatever reason, have to be how you left them, right?
But they can't. That's an impossibility...it's an impossibility that, when I think about it, scares me...but that's another story for another day.
I've learned that a lot in the last four years, and most especially this past weekend. I've heard it said that you can't go home again (and that itself is a line I think, from a song or something), and that true in and of the reality that people change when you leave them. I don't know how this applies to family. But I don't think family will ever work as the end of feeling home. It is just the beginning, if that. Family is always there...they always will be. It's the starting point and home is more a feeling than a technicality. Even life with your family doesn't feel like home sometimes....or a lot of times. I can take that to the bank, that's for sure. But I think we, at least as a culture, will refer to our parents place as "home." My grandma, dad's mom, still refers to central Ohio as "home" when she's lived all over the state and in Lima for the last nearly 40 years or so...it's just built in. But I don't think the feeling of home is attached to our name for it....sure, I'm "home" this summer because I'm living with my parents, but I'm not home when compared to what this all was when I left 4 years ago. It really does feel like I left 4 year ago, even though I've been here for shorter periods of time in between...I guess I didn't live in Ottawa then, so that makes something of a difference. Believe me, this place is different. Of course it is....things change, people change...but they're still people. Unfortunately, the fact of who someone is cannot often transcend what someone is when we paint in broad strokes and talk about theory. And I am different too. Very different. Very not-what-I-was-when-I-left. But I think I am better....perhaps I know I am better, and perhaps that is a problem.
I don't know if all of this is in and of itself a problem as much as an analysis of what's going on, what happens, what happens to us all. At the peak of it all is the undeniable fact that we will always structure our lives around the family unit...either where we came from or where we're headed. I've been in enough relationships to know that it's in the best of times with a significant other that "home" actually feels real again. It's true. Or at least its true for me. And that's what makes my life feel like it's on some kind of hold or just some kind of journey, entirely without a net. I am surrounded by people I love...but people that love others more...and I can't blame them. But it's the major change agent. It always has been, and I do believe it will always be so. It is alright...I am dealing with it and I am confused about it...and I am a best man in a wedding in just a few weeks now. Regardless of anything and everything, I know that where I am and what I am doing is exactly what I am supposed to be doing.
And I don't think I am the writer I once was. Indeed, I know I am not. That's not really a problem, because I don't have to be, and I don't care so much anymore. All I really care about, when it comes to writing, is maintaining my own voice and not defaulting to the ever-present ministry tone....I don't know if it's avoidable, and I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, but there is a certain way people involved in ministry write, with a lot of unrealistic emotions, dodgy language, and turned truths...that I just don't want to slip into. That's probably a large part of why I keep this and use facebook for a lot of communication. If a setting gets too formal, I will lose too much of myself and my own voice. And my voice is important in its individual sense...not because I am important, but because God created me as me for a reason, and my voice as my voice, the voice he gave me, is important to him and to me. I want to lose myself in him, certainly...but I know in doing that, I wil find myself more purely, more true. And I do not want to lose myself in conjured, trite, illusive diction that seems to go with my job far too often.
Speaking of my job, fund development is the slowest job ever. No matter how aggresive you can be with it or how aggresive you are...it just seems that there will be times when there isn't much you can do but wait...and that's where I am right now. I know God gives us waiting periods for a reason, and I know I am in one right now for a reason. And that is alright...that is good.
I love basketball too much. I love the Cavs more....and LeBron falls somewhere in between the two. But I have got to stop caring so much. I think part of the problem though, is that I'm tying up God's love for Cleveland and my personal love for Cleveland and how much they just need and want (and have) hope that needs to be realized into the Cavs. Cleveland does not need a Cavs championship to have hope. They have hope. It's called Christ. Christ does mean Messiah, but that does not mean LeBron. It would be a good thing for the city if the Cavs went to the Finals and won...it would end a nearly 60 year title drought in all sports. But it's not the be all, end all hope for the city, it's not the solution...it would just be good. The solution is now and will always be the hope that is in Christ and how he is and will and will always transform lives and use them to rebuild and reshape that city. I do want the Cavs to win...badly. But more than that, I want to see the light of Christ shine into Cleveland and retake the city where it has fallen and where it has problems. Only Christ can do that...and never LeBron. But, I must admit, I am consistently impressed by LeBron's personal reinvestment into humanitarian efforts in the city.
I appreciate Wooster a lot more as a graduate than I ever did as a student....even before I stopped trying.
-Zack
"Four walls with no windows doesn’t mean they don’t exist"
-John Reuben
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