"What is the connection between the home we knew and the home we dream? I believe that what we long for most in the home we knew is the peace and charity that we first came to experience there, and I believe that it is that same peace and charity we dream of finding once again in the home that the tide of time draws us toward. The first home foreshadows the final home, and the final home hallows and fulfills what was most precious in the first."
- Frederick Buechner, The Longing for Home
"Joy is home, and I believe the tears in our eyes were more than anything else homesick tears. God created us in joy and created us for joy, and in the long run not all the darkness there is in the world and in ourselves can separate us finally from that joy, because whatever else it means to say that God created us in his image, I think it means that even when we cannot believe in him, even when we feel most spiritually bankrupt and deserted by him, his mark is deep within us" (Buechner 128).
"We are moved by those precious moments when something holy seems to break through our lives both to heal us and to summon us to pilgrimage...as for what lies ahead, we can take great heart from St. Paul's words to the Corinthians that although now we see only through a glass darkly, there will come a day when we will see face to face and understand fully even as we are fully understood. It is the nature of faith to look beyond itself- and beyond the doubts that must always exist in tension with it if it is a living faith- to a time on the far side of time when the holy dream is at last revealed to be reality and all that we take now for reality glimmers like a dream" (Buechner 170-1).
*These photos were taken on July 2 while sailing on Lake Michigan with some of our neighborhood friends. The view of the city from the lake is so different from being in the middle of the intimidating skyscrapers. The city appears almost quiet and majestic. What an amazing experience!
** The quotes are from a book I read this summer by Frederick Buechner titled The Longing for Home. It is a helpful mediation on the idea that our longings and desires both for a nostalgic past and for a deep sense of home are really a longing for our eternal and final home. Not all of the book is great nor would I completely agree with all his theology, but I like that he identifies and addresses our deep longings for joy, faith, hope, fellowship, and ultimately HOME.
Caroline, My aunt and uncle are the caretakers for Fred B's estate in Vermont (with his wife Judy Merck, as in pharmaceuticals) and take care of he and Judy when they are in town. They have never been convinced that he is a believer, but he does write beautifully and is at least a great deist.
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