Happy Lutheran

This is the second post I wanted to share with some reflections sparked by Henri Nowen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son, and today, I want to combine a few threads that all wind together, with their roots in the book—but we’ll see if they come out as more than a tangled mess.

Let’s start with home—a word that is as simultaneously simple and complex as perhaps any in the English language. The picture of John and me at the top of this post symbolizes “home” for me in a few different ways: first, I am with John, and, for me, given how much I have moved around in my life, home often finds its meaning in family—in people. “Home” is where my family is. Second, this picture was taken in Sweden, which is where our dear cousins live, a place that connects me to my beloved Uncle Carl and my mother’s family—so Sweden also always feels like “home.” I could have chosen dozens of other pictures, but you get the idea.

In his book, Nowen, describes home in a spiritual sense—“home” is being with God. Therefore, for Nowen, “Leaving home [which the prodigal does] is, then, much more than an historical event bound to time and place. It is a denial of the spiritual reality that I belong to God with every part of my being, that God holds me safe in an eternal embrace, that I am indeed carved in the palms of God’s hands and hidden in their shadows” [37].

Home, one’s true home, is where one is called the beloved—that is the second idea I want to reflect on. This home, this place of belonging with God, is a place that can never be taken away, regardless of what our earthly home looks like, regardless of whether or not you have a home, regardless of whether or not anyone in that home sees you as beloved. This home is the voice of God telling you that you have nothing to fear, giving you life, protecting and preserving you. This home is where you continually live into the reality that “beloved” is your true name—and that as the beloved, you can move mountains. Nowen writes:

As the Beloved, I can confront, console, admonish, and encourage without fear of rejection or need for affirmation. As the Beloved, I can suffer persecution without desire for revenge and receive praise without using it as a proof of my goodness…As the Beloved, I am free to live and give life, free also to die while giving life.”

My identity as “beloved” is renewed, strengthened and restored when I anchor myself in my true home with God.

Ok—now for the third idea: alcoholism and AA. Two things came together serendipitously the past few days that caused me to weave this thread in with the other two. First, my vacation days in Vancouver happened to overlap with the once-every-five-years international AA convention. For three days, as Kris and I walked around seeing Vancouver, everywhere we went we also saw friendly people walking to and from events, with absolutely nothing physically/visually in common except for their name tags, identifying them with AA. Second, I just finished reading a book I started on a whim: Drinking: A Love Story, by Caroline Knapp. This was a can’t-look-away train wreck of a book that recounts in detailed precision Caroline’s alcoholism and eventually recovery in AA.

Her book left me struck by how—at least in her case—her alcoholism prevented her from having any sort of home, in the real sense. Yes, she had a place to live; yes, she had family and friends—however, nowhere, with no one, did she have a true sense of home. She lied to everyone, was anxious in everyone’s presence, and was most estranged from herself above all. In her mind, alcohol provided her that sense of home—but of course, that was the biggest deception of all. She was in love with the very thing that prevented her from having a home, prevented her from being “beloved,” prevented her from hearing herself called by her true name.

My brother is in recovery, and I am so very proud of him for fighting so hard for his sobriety—for his life and for his future. I knew about his drinking, but because we don’t live together and I don’t see him often, I had no idea it was so bad. Alcoholics are very good at hiding the truth, especially from people who are not eager to see it. I think he is finding his way home; I think he is finding his own identity now as beloved. And I am grateful.

So, for all of us, I pray for homecomings, however they come—joyful and triumphant, or tail-between-your-legs. And I pray there is someone there to meet you, who will put her arms around you and speak love into your ear, into your heart.

I pray that you hear yourself called “beloved.”