This isn’t your normal Home page. This is an article I wrote about my journey to find home.

What Is Home?

When meeting someone, a common question is where are you from? However, especially as a younger adult often the question can be phrased, “Where is home for you?” For many people that is not a difficult question to answer. But what if you had a different experience growing up? As technology has progressed, the vastness of the world has changed the ways people interact with place.

Terms that I’ll be using a lot in this article:

· MK — Missionary Kid, a child whose parents serve[d] with a religious organization for a particular goal (mission).

· TCK — Third Culture Kid, a child who is exposed to multiple cultures while growing up causing the child to develop into a third other culture that is mixed with the ones previously exposed to.

Once upon a time, an individual could be born, get married, and die within a 50 mile (approx. 80.5 km) radius. Now people can travel around the world at a pace unimaginable by our ancestors. Never before would we have imagined how easily one could move from place to place. Families travel around the world for various reasons. People get jobs or serve in positions that cause them to move to foreign areas and sometimes move quite often. The military, Christian missionaries, high ranking business officials, and government officials are some of the key individuals that lead this semi-nomadic lifestyle. This lifestyle has caused an unforeseen change in the people these individuals raise — their children. Being raised by parents of one culture and a society of another culture, or even by two differently cultured parents, develops the children into what is currently known as a TCK (Third Culture Kid). “The term, coined by the American sociologist Ruth Hill Useem, refers to a child who has spent a significant part of his or her formative years outside their parents’ culture. People who fit that bill have a tendency to mix and merge their birth culture with their adopted culture, creating one of their own: a third culture.” — Ndéla Faye.

“The term, coined by the American sociologist Ruth Hill Useem, refers to a child who has spent a significant part of his or her formative years outside their parents’ culture. People who fit that bill have a tendency to mix and merge their birth culture with their adopted culture, creating one of their own: a third culture.” — Ndéla Faye

Why does this matter? Well with the increase of TCKs in society, and the refugee crises going on globally, the number of TCKs will only continue to increase. “ . . .life as a TCK can create a sense of rootlessness and restlessness, where home is “everywhere and nowhere.” — Kate Mayberry.

“. . .life as a TCK can create a sense of rootlessness and restlessness, where home is “everywhere and nowhere.” — Kate Mayberry.

These people were, are, and will be people of the world. Ones that struggle with nationalism and understanding the pride that others exuberate for their countries. How do you think these semi-nomadic people will feel about people exporting people, refusing refugees, and not welcoming the global community? In this realm, your TCKs will empathize with your refugees, minorities, and isolated parts of society. This is why it matters to you — because the world is rearranging itself to raise the question: where do I belong?

Identity, as a people group to a particular land, is shifting. The old world is slowly collapsing into global individuals. People you will interact with, “Belong but doesn’t fit” — as my friend Steve Stasiak says. Each TCK will become a “TCA” (Third Culture Adult) — Ricky. The emotional landscape of TCKs often is filled with unprocessed grief. Transitions are hard, and to a child, these changes often can be traumatic. If you are someone who has never been around TCKs, you will probably encounter one in your life, and learning to understand some of their struggles will help you relate to them. Understanding that a large portion of the world does not fully have a connection to the word “Home”.

“Belongs but doesn’t fit” — Steve Stasiak.

What is Home?

Let’s change the question from where is home and turn to an introspective question, “What is home?” By changing the first word you come up with a difficult question to answer. Not everyone that I have talked with agrees on a singular definition. Is the word home necessarily attached to place? Or is it some other — a word that, given a slightly different sentence structure, reveals a complex portion of your identity that reflects your experiences?

This question of what is home came to me after experiencing a resurgence of identity crises in my own life. Originally I had hoped to solve the question quickly. After several years of mulling it over and resurfacing many old issues that laid dormant in my life, I admit that I’m no closer to nailing down, “What Is Home?”. However, it is clear to me that the question is something that has been lost. It is an unidentified, subconscious association that we predominantly link to a community that we were/are connected with. Because it is not an active question but rather an association we make, we can become oblivious to what home truly is: an experiential belonging ingrained into our lives. It is a link that could be compared to a living organism. That organism will eventually lose its sense of belonging when it’s connection to the place it was planted is broken. Some changes promote growth, some bring about sickness and death. If you cultivate a plant from one location to another though, it can blossom and grow fruitfully. The question becomes, “What is Home to you?” Once asked this way we can contemplate the deeper connections of community, belonging, and security.

For me, changing the question changed how I viewed “home”. Once that change happened, I could ask questions that drew out the deeper answers hidden in my subconsciousness. Those questions are: based on “What Is Home?” where is home for you?; and, “Where do you find community?” These questions draw out key conclusions to help us understand both ourselves and how to build good communities around us going forward. First, we identify what we believe “home” to be. Second, we take that perspective and attempt to determine where that is, if at all, for us. Third, we ask ourselves where we are trying to find that community to fill in the gap of belonging for us. Any person who moves will inevitably need help finding community. Not always will they associate it to a loss of “home,” but without acknowledging what the issue is we cannot hope to recover from this sense of being lost.

These questions in this order draw out key conclusions to help us understand both ourselves and how to build good communities around us going forward.

Is there an answer?

I do not expect to ever truly have a concrete answer. Should Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle have started this question long ago I doubt we would ever find an answer. It takes the tangible, physical concept that most people understand and shapes it into a metaphysical question. Upon shaping it that way, not only does it become difficult to answer, but it awakens a realization that there is something deeper. One would be arrogant to assume there is but one answer to “What is Home”. Therefore, my hope is not to solve the question and give an answer that is complete. Rather I wish to build the question and lay the groundwork for you to rally around and build on top of.

The understanding of meaning is experiential, lived out, and reflected upon. All the answers I could give would merely place band-aids on wounds that are unrealized if one does not open their mind to the consideration of them. My experiences, my cultural understandings, my perspectives, and religious biases project onto my interpretation and working out of the answers. This is why you must ponder the question. Examine the pieces and the relevance in your own life.

This is why you must ponder the question. Examine the pieces and the relevance in your own life.

I hope you will join me as I ask these questions and wrestle with them in more detail in the next article. On top of my own perspective, I will be interviewing several friends and pulling from multiple sources I have read recently to build a greater picture of the traits, indications, and general shape of “What is Home”.

Finding Home

One of the basic human desires is belonging. Often we find a sense of belonging and security in a place we call home. What makes a place Home? Is there a magical combination of items that you can check off to make one feel at Home? This journey is one that I started after feeling a weird peace and belonging in several cities and countries that I had never been in but were closer to the culture I grew up with than the country of my birth.

This article is interspersed with audio and video to help enlighten you on my journey to discover What Is Home. I have interlaced them at different points where they can help provide context for what I am writing. A good portion of this article is my reflection on my interactions with the people I interviewed and my own findings. Let’s get started and see where this journey takes us!

A Story Starts Somewhere

I grew up moving around a bit more than most Americans. I’m at an odd stage in my life, a good portion of those who know me know that I was an MK in Moscow, Russia, some of those people forget that I was borne in the USA and the other group do not realize I ever lived anywhere but the USA. From four to twelve years old my family lived in Russia, with a one year gap when we came back to the U.S. to raise money as Missionaries — which is another story for another time. Little did I know that the one year gap would be the start of my nomadic spirit, the birth of my loneliness, and loss of belonging. When we moved to the States when I was twelve I thought it was temporary. But a year went by, then another. Soon I was fourteen and returning to the place I had called my home for so many years was a fantasy. Yet in that transition, I had friends and family near me. There was some comfort and some hope that the new “home” would be where we had been since moving to the States. However, that did not last long, as on the third year since leaving Russia we moved from where we had been in Iowa to a place called Lafayette, Indiana. This place contained no friends or family. There was only the opportunity to join and maybe create new communities.

Little did I know that the one year gap would be the start of my nomadic spirit, the birth of my loneliness, and loss of belonging.

I was oblivious to how deeply losing my “home” was to me. For years, I thought when I get back to Russia things would return to normal and I would once again belong. Eventually, time went by and the distance between me and that was once my home grew. After taking the opportunity to do a study abroad in Europe an entire decade worth of nostalgia and pain came back. While traveling through countries I had never been too, I found myself at peace. There was a sense that I fit in, and belonged, that I had never felt in the States. With this new awakening of emotion, I came back to the college I was attending to struggle with another great sense of loss and dissonance.

“To be an American is to move on, as if we could outrun change. To attach oneself to place is to surrender it, and suffer with it.” Kathleen Norris

2016 ended with me starting to ask what did I experience? What was that sense of belonging, and what is home? The journey has not stopped since then. As the topic came up in discussions I found that multiple people had the same feelings I did. These friends were those who had moved often, and especially those who lived overseas. Realizing that in close proximity there were several people who did not have a home or concept of home, I decided to start asking questions in hopes to find an answer.

“Geography is simply a visible form of Theology” — Jon D. Levenson

My friend Jonathan Walthour created a podcast series that speaks into our topic. While each episode does not tackle “what is home”, he hosts people who have different growing up stories that share a unique cultural blend to their lives. You can find the podcasts by searching T.C.K. Tales wherever you get your podcasts. Click here for their website. I highly recommend listening to the podcast. I’ve found a lot of solace hearing about stories similar to mine and how others are dealing with odd senses of belonging.

One of the things we got to touch on the episode above was how proximity affects relationships. Jonathan referenced his relationship with his older sister as one that has not fully recovered due to distance. He also spoke about long distance relationships can be a little awkward as you find yourself deep into communication but when presented with face-face interaction one is not sure how to interact. These subtle hints are ones we briefly touch when we both acknowledged that relationships are more than just communication, they are also action. When we consider our friends, we have a unique and special bond to people that we do things with. There is something special about work friends, friends that we do sports with, and people that we work towards a common goal. That bond is strengthened by doing things together. You can become emotionally attached to people who you do not do things with, but the simple act of combining time and pursuit of a common goal amplifies the bond of friendship.

…the simple act of combining time and pursuit of a common goal amplifies the bond of friendship.

Tracing the hints I think that community is a large part of belonging which for me, is a big part of feeling at home. Communities that resemble our upbringing also tend to bring us into a lovely state called nostalgia. In those instances both Jonathan and I have experienced being in locations that were unfamiliar to us, yet gave us a sense of belonging greater than locations in the U.S. The key thought I had with this interview was if relationships are about doing as well as communicating when separated from the physical location of the community, do you cease to belong there?

One other thing we touched was about serving and callings, which I felt echoed a part of the forward for No Home Like Place by Leonard Hjalmarson.Loren Wilkinson writes, “In Christianity we might say, we have callings, not places. And usually in those callings or vocations we regard place as irrelevant… rootedness is not a widely practiced Christian virtue. In fact it is often not considered a Christian virtue at all, but a spiritual impediment”.

In Christianity we might say, we have callings, not places. And usually in those callings or vocations we regard place as irrelevant — Loren Wilkinson.

When interviewing my friend Jacob Rogers he reinforced this concept of friends making the place special, and doing things with people is what makes bonds. In his life, he has seen how his CrossFit gym experience has been very similar to his church experiences. Never had it crossed my mind that there were other communities that resemble churches in a Western Evangelical context. But through his experience, he painted that image. They do things together, work towards common goals, cheer each other on, and build friendships.

…his CrossFit gym experience has been very similar to his church experiences.

For me, someone who grew up with their whole life focused around a Western Evangelical church context, I am realizing I’m at a disadvantage to finding local communities. There are plenty of ways where I could point to ease of access to a community based on religious faith commonality, but the other side of the coin is something Jacob mentioned. He mentioned that in Hong Kong he had a gym he went to, and while he did not make as many close friends there, he still made some friends and interacted with others. Contrasted with my life, where outside of work and church I only make friends based on the education I partook in. When I took a nine-month break from school I did not make friends outside of church and work settings. People can find many different communities around a city and get involved. To me, many of these remind me of Western Evangelical churches. But it would be interesting to see who takes after who’s model of community. Did the Western church adopt other community like qualities in order to retain members, or did the church’s model for community appeal so well that other groups adopted it? Better yet, were we as humans wired for that community already and that is why the church and outside the church are mirror images of each other? These are more questions for a different day.

Another point Jacob brought up was putting yourself out there. Being proactive in going and participating in activities. As Jacob put it, “It’s very easy to just stay home, chill and watch Netflix or something on Friday night by myself. I was like, no, be active and try to find something to do if someone takes someone up on that random invite to, go out to dinner with them and some other people or go to a bar or a show or whatever it is that people are going to… I’ve always been pleasantly surprised how open people are and how willing people are to embrace your own weirdness.”

“It’s very easy to just stay home, chill and watch Netflix or something on Friday night by myself. I was like, no, be active and try to find something to do…” -Jacob Rogers

Being bold and putting yourself out there can be tremendously terrifying, but in our discussion, Jacob and I recognized that putting yourself out there to make friends is far less risky than putting yourself out to ask for a date. Since it is far less risky, hopefully, that gives you the courage to be a bit bolder in opening up. Because by being open and letting people into your life you create space for friendships and deeper, meaningful interaction.

Places and communities are precious. Yet as Alvin Toffler puts it in Future Shock, “Never before in history has distance meant less. Figuratively, we ‘use up’ places and dispose of them in much the same way we dispose of Kleenex or beer cans. We are witnessing a historic decline in the significance of place to human life. We are breeding a new race of nomads, and few suspect quite how massive, wide-spread and significant their migrations are.”

“we ‘use up’ places and dispose of them in much the same way we dispose of Kleenex or beer cans.” — Alvin Toffler

My friend Drew was the only person I was able to interview who has only lived in one State, Illinois, his whole life. That to me is intriguing, living in one geographical area and moving but still being confined to the same general locality is incomprehensible for me. There are a lot of things that differ in our upbringings, but Drew and I have many similarities as well. While in our discussion he mentioned how a big part of community, and a big part of home, for him centers around the table. The food becomes the draw to invite others to partake together and commune. He said, “I didn’t get married when I left Moody, so I got out of college and then had to make the decision of I can either have frozen food for the rest of my life or I can learn how to cook and I guess I should figure that out.”

“I can either have frozen food for the rest of my life or I can learn how to cook and I guess I should figure that out” — Drew Smith

For Drew, home and hospitality are intrinsically linked with food. He has learned to be a wonderful cook to foster that community. Which he recognized he needed in college as he would force himself to go to his student dining room for breakfast, when the food was subpar, because there would be people. It was also in college that he learned to love Korean food. The story that he gives in the interview speaks about how he learned about community making coupled with food and Christian evangelism. He had to go, learn of the culture by being engaged, asking questions, and partaking in the hospitality of a culture through a Korean restaurant. When we were talking about that I thought of the wonderful picture of community around the table in the Bible. In the New Testament, we have this glimpse into the Jewish Passover feast that Jesus takes and inspires Christians into remembering Jesus’ sacrifice by creating the sacrament of the Eucharist. This sacrament has something deep and profound to it. A meal. A celebration. A time where people came together and spent time together in common remembrance and solidarity.

This perspective meant a lot to me as over the past few years I have been attending an Anglican church that celebrates the Eucharist every week. I grew up Baptist and we rarely ever celebrated it, never would call it a sacrament or Eucharist, it was always “communion”. What makes this thing so special? For me, it has become an anchor to remembering not only my own faith but also to speak into my life that the people around me are part of my community. We have something in common, and we have a bond. It’s more than we just attend the same meeting each week in the same building. This Eucharist meal is centered around a table, a table that on that Passover night Jewish men and women celebrated and remembered the salvation from something past, and the Christians would take into another step into remembering Jesus. I am biased towards the Eucharist because in this time of searching it has been the light to help me remember a lot of who I am. But I believe that for Christians, the fact that one of the most important events of the Bible happens around a table should give us some clues to what home and community truly look like.

…the fact that one of the most important events of the Bible happens around a table should give us some clues to what home and community truly look like.

Leonard Hjalmarson puts it this way, “The Eucharist table is not only at the center of worship, but also at the center of our politics. At the table, we learn an economics of sharing. Yoder observes that, ‘[Bread] is daily sustenance. Bread eaten together is economic sharing. Not merely symbolically, but also in fact, eating together extends to a wider circle the economic solidarity normally obtained in the family.’ At the table we learn a politics of hospitality, welcoming the stranger and sharing our sustenance with each. At the table we learn a politics of dialogue, learning to listen together in a world that is increasingly marked by ideology and violence.”

“Think of Ironman. When Tony Stark comes back and first thing he does is gets a Burger King cheeseburger. That’s what comes to my mind. You know? It’s like things like that. Little things that comprise your culture that would give you a sense of familiarity and coming home.” — Jake Ashey

When I got to sit down with two of my former roommates at the same time to discuss the question of “What is Home?” I never would have guessed that many of the stories shared and pieces of their lives would illuminate mine. There are some differences, but the pieces of wisdom and truth they said became aha moments for me.

Ken mentions in our discussion that when he travels back to his home state, Michigan, he spends more time in the town where he went to college and made conscious effort to create and participate in community. As children, we are often dependent on our parent’s and family’s placement of our life, schedule, and commitments. Rarely do children take a conscious effort to go and involve themselves in particular areas without some sort of guiding. Then once they mature into adults they have to learn how to put themselves out there without guidance and/or assurance from someone else. That brings back Drew’s comments about making space post-college where he proactively made community by having dinner guests. Is the proactively placing oneself into a community or creating it, leave deeper meanings? If we take the effort to create our own home, do we have more sentimentality to it than previous versions of home we experienced?

But how does modern reality change the way we view home? Jake brought up an article that was interesting. “I was reading some article about how much like sense of community is dwindling because of how virtual our lives are. And so before all of this efficient virtual interaction, we kind of were more forced to organize ourselves based around our interests”. What is changing as we drop physical place from our sense of community? I think that is a wonderful question we need to be thinking. Perhaps our loss of home greater than the ex-pats, military kids, MKs, and TCKs.

“I was reading some article about how much like sense of community is dwindling because of how virtual our lives are. And so before all of this efficient virtual interaction, we kind of were more forced to organize ourselves based around our interests” — Jake Ashey

What then makes Home? The people you are with that community that forms culture, the culture and people you are secure with because of the familiarity, where you store your possessions, where you eat together, build meaning, and traditions. These areas where you spend time in common interests, making impact in each others’ lives while doing things together. These pieces came up within our discussion. Which leads us to our next section, so what is home?

What is home?

· People · Security · Familiarity · Possessions · Culture things · Food · Meaning / traditions · Heritage / Legacy · Common interests · Doing things together

These are the pieces of the puzzle. That, when built, brings about a sense of belonging and safety that we call home. Yet place does have a significant role to play in this search. As Leonard Hjalmarson writes, “To return home is to return to a place; through experience human hearts become rooted in place”. Every aspect of this philosophical question is hinged on the experiential part of our lives. But as time passes on and location is downplayed we need to be aware of the alterations we are setting into motion.

We are becoming a nomadic people. People of the world universal, not isolated to the imagined communities that once separated us from each other. It is yet to be seen the cost of this transition though. While Christianity has long been aware of globalization in its history it is worth noting that we have not served God’s creation as we should have. “The ordinary is transparent to us; we tune it out. In the Greek mind, the idea of a thing was more real than the thing itself. The Western church is heavily influenced by this dualistic spirituality. My maps were formed in heretic and isolated church culture that knew a lot about heaven (the real) and not much about the earth (the temporal). We tended to think of salvation FROM history rather than salvation IN history. But this dis-placed, disembodied salvation has little resonance with biblical faith” — Leonard Hjalmarson.

“[an] isolated church culture that knew a lot about heaven (the real) and not much about the earth (the temporal). We tended to think of salvation FROM history rather than salvation IN history.”

It is this dangerous place we find ourselves in. Where we have lost the significance of place as a Western culture, and more specifically the Western Evangelical Church has lost its understanding and emphasis on place. Remember that quote from earlier, “rootedness is not a widely-practiced Christian virtue. In fact, it is often not considered a virtue at all, but a spiritual impediment”? This extra gap we have created with creation leads us into a strong disassociation for our concern with the world God created.

To reencounter home I believe we will need to take on a greater stance on the sacredness of place. Opening our homes and our gathering places to others who are nearby and searching for the meaningful community their hearts long for. Because home is not just place, “[home] is more than location; it is a meaningful integration of activity and persons within location” — Leonard Hjalmarson.

“[home] is more than location; it is a meaningful integration of activity and persons within location” — Leonard Hjalmarson

Conclusion + TL;DR

Home is a multifaceted experiential concept that fosters belonging and safety. By losing the significance and sacredness of place we put ourselves at risk of dislodging the concept of home from its fullest potential. While home is many pieces comprised together bringing community and activity together, it is also centralized upon the concept that those two things are partaken in a geographical area. It would be a shame for us to forget that as we look forward into our technological world. Let us not be disillusioned that we have set into motion an experiential nomadic people with no recognition of place. Crafted by our unintentional progress that was isolated from continual reinforcement of meaning. Bearing in mind that the community (The Church) that was designed to help ground culture, meaning, and community with place sacrificed her locality long before other communities. This is why as humans it is our responsibility to reestablish home by engaging in hospitality through our universal commonality, the table where we eat.