Hope Remains Even When We’Re Dislocated

One of real estate’s favorite mantras is “location, location, location.”

Whether you own a home or a business, you want a place that fits you, that makes sense to you.

This mantra runs counter to what has been on my mind and heart recently as I’ve encountered so many people whose mantra seems to be: “dislocation, dislocation, dislocation.”

A middle-aged friend is wandering through a wondrous yet frightening inner labyrinth in search of what he really wants to be if he grows up.

A near-centenarian who was moved to North Idaho in recent months so family could better care for him, he has outlived his friends of decades. His sense of dislocation is multilayered.

Both he and his family are stumped on what it will take for him to live his remaining time with some inner peace.

Nursing homes have many emotionally and physically dislocated people living there. I think of two particular women who, in spite of wonderfully caring staff members, are longing to die just because living as they are has no purpose, no meaning, anymore.

And, quite honestly, if I visit with them about the “home in heaven” they can look forward to, however true that is, it sounds as trite and meaningless as their daily earthly lives have become to them.

We could fill pages with stories of people who, for reasons unique to them, feel dislocated on a daily basis. They literally may be homeless. Their homelessness may be emotionally based.

Or they may be soul mates of St. Augustine, who wrote: “My soul is restless, O God, until it finds its rest in thee.”

My dislocated focus today also surfaced as I began to reflect on next week, Holy Week. Today is the day before Palm Sunday, the traditional day when we celebrate Jesus’ “triumphant” entry into Jerusalem.

It was not a “welcome home” parade Jesus could really get into.

I can’t imagine Jesus sensed much triumph when he knew the cheering crowds would be jeering just a few days later. He knew his own home was “not of this world,” but he worked so hard to be at home with the people who needed him.

I easily imagine Jesus as a dislocated man, a homeless man who walked with and among those who also had no homes. The oppressive Roman rule was a cruel reminder that even their homeland was theirs no longer.

And finding their spiritual home was no easy task. Their sense of God’s presence in their lives was surely impacted by the stiff-necked ritualism symbolized by the temple in Jerusalem.

That wasn’t really home to those who couldn’t pay the temple tax or who were vulnerable to the manipulations of some religious leaders.

It wasn’t home, but it was the closest thing to home they might find.

So they had to deal with both political and religious dislocation.

Along came a homeless man so different than anyone else. Jesus didn’t let any form of earthly dislocation ultimately get to him.

In John 14, Jesus tried to prepare his disciples for the time he would no longer be with them in the flesh. He spoke poetically of a house in heaven with many rooms, awaiting them.

But Jesus wasn’t so heavenly minded that he couldn’t be any earthly good. He promised his friends that after he was gone from them a “comforter” - God’s spirit - would be their companion as they moved through their daily lives.

God hopes we become friends with that spirit, that companion, in the midst of our own dislocations. My own experience of companionship with God’s spirit varies greatly - a flesh-and-blood person one time, an ordinary glimpse of nature’s wonder another time, then a word of hope written for those of us who need written reminders.

So many more reminders of God’s presence are around us than we are aware. Some may never embrace us in our search for being “at home.”

But in our search we may find another “homeless” person who will know a renewing warmth inside from the reminders we miss entirely.

Another possibility? We unexpectedly may become a companion for a dislocated, homeless person. And in that moment, we are another step or two closer to being at home within ourselves, with the world, with God.

It may be that moment, in fact, when we realize God’s open arms are welcoming us home to right where we currently live.