In Sunday’s “Observer” there was an article by Elif Shafak: ‘We are not rootless. We are each others roots.’
The novelist on the deep human need for a homeland and how storytelling can help to unite people in an age of displacement.’ It caught my eye because I’m a fan of her novels, but also because I recognise ‘the deep human need for a homeland,’ although my understanding of our homeland is different from hers, or maybe not. Let me summarise her by quoting what she wrote.
“I want to begin with five simple words: “You can’t go home again.” Imagine, for a moment, this being your reality. What would it feel like to be severed from the only life you have known since the day you were born; separated from your friends, your neighbours, your loved ones and the land you have always called your own; what would it feel like to be cast into a complete unknown? This is precisely what so many people across the world are experiencing right now………
The great poet Maya Angelou believed that one could never leave home: that whatever happens, no matter how far we are forced to migrate or how utterly unfamiliar the new environments we are catapulted into, we always take home with us: “One carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and the dragons of home under one’s skin,”……..
So, on the one hand, you cannot go home again. It is a rupture. On the other hand, you cannot ever leave home, because it will always come with you wherever you go- so much so that its absence will become a presence………
At the same time, alongside this sadness, this fractured and fragmented existence, this sense of loss, there is also a cultural enrichment, a possibility for renewal, a spiritual and intellectual growth that comes from meeting fellow human beings from all backgrounds……
Why is “home” so essential and existential for humans? The ancient Greeks had a specific word for “homecoming”, nostos. They were very fond of this idea, and the return of the hero to his homeland was a favourite theme. Homer tells us in The Odyssey: “There is nothing dearer to a man than his own land.”
The word nostos is also related to nostalgia. Inside this concept, in addition to nostos, there is algea, which means hurt, pain, grief. So nostalgia is the painful longing for a place left behind, for something we have lost but someday hope to find.”
I recognise all that she describes, but with respect to my spiritual journey not my earthly one. My experience has led me to locate my home as primarily a spiritual dwelling rather than an earthly one, although I recognise the pull of the latter. I have a spiritual home that I left at my birth, and of which I have powerful memories, and to which I long to return, but for now I’m a refugee. I wrote about in blog 54 ‘Memories of Home’.
John’s Gospel talks of Jesus being with God prior to His birth and returning ‘home’ to God after His death, having also been a refugee on this earth. I have come to understand that this is true for every human being: we each come from God at our birth, live as refugees on this earth & return home to God at our death. We bring with us at our birth memories of our original home, that underlie all that we value, and which we project forwards into our dreams of ‘heaven’.
This is not a uniquely Christian awareness, its one that other faiths share. ‘There is a wonderful line in the Divan [one of Rumi’s books]: “ we were once in heaven, we were friends of the angels, let us all return there, that is our city.’ In other words, there’s yearning to be re-joined to where we were in eternity before we were born. It’s an echo of the Qur’an, which says ‘we belong to God and to God we are returning,’ and in the meantime, the human soul is yearning to be reunited.” Carole Hillenbrand speaking in an ‘In Our Time’ conversation’ with Melvin Bragg.
If there is truth in all this, it is surely that our earthly human need to return home is an earthly reflection of a spiritual awareness. We are all of us ‘refugees’ in the spiritual sense, and our awareness or not, of that, will inform our treatment of those fellow human beings who also find themselves refugees in an earthly sense.
You can find Elif Shafak’s article here:
A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY 
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