Spiritual Perspectives
Homesickness of the Soul

By Kris Pikaart
Special to the Independent

I am one of an increasing number of folks who have moved “back home” to the Gallup area. We moved from the Bay Area in California — an exciting, beautiful, romantic place to live. There were many reasons for our return here, but one of the simplest and most tangible was that we were becoming really house hungry. We’d been house hunting in the Bay Area for about two years — we spent the majority of our weekends going to open houses — fighting crowds of people to look at small, pretty houses in neighborhoods of some questionable repute. Our search got increasingly frantic and obsessive until we hit our absolute low point. On that day, we looked at a house for which we had no competition, and one that we could actually afford with relative ease. It was, no kidding, a bona fide crack house. Burnt floors and walls, and the tenants running this lucrative business still living in the downstairs half, nicely protected from eviction by strict renters laws. And I found myself saying things like, “Well, there is some really nice details that would look great fixed up.” “And if the floor wasn’t so sloped, it might look really pretty refinished,” and “It’s a decent sized yard, once you get all of the old cars and washer machines out of it!”

Our pastor finally sat us down and said, “As your pastor and friend, I’d like to respectfully point out that if you are even remotely thinking about this, you have officially stepped over the line of sanity.” We had indeed officially gone house-crazy. That was the last house we looked at there. And so, even though we now join the rest of you in grumbling about house prices, we still can’t believe that we can actually afford to live in a house with more than one bedroom and a little space around it.

Homes are important — they are our promise at the end of the day — “If I can just get this done, then I can go home.” We spend time making them into a nest — not just so it looks good to others, but so that it is soothing and comforting to our own souls and spirits. We fill them with the colors we love, with possessions that mean something to us — my grandma’s old desk, the bed my father slept in as a boy, the food and smells that signify comfort and security to us.

Since my husband is the director of CARE 66, I’ve had a lot of opportunity to learn from those who don’t have homes at all. Last count was in 1990, and then there were around 5,000 homeless people in our county. Lots of these people are the invisible homeless — not the guy with the cart on the street, but people who you would not guess from appearance are homeless. Many or most of them have jobs — it’s just that the jobs are the sort that don’t pay them enough to get together a first and last month’s rent very easily. Many of them have been living not exactly on the streets, but in hotel rooms for months at a time or out of a car or truck parked in various locations. And perhaps the most horrifying: we have learned that for most people, homelessness is precipitated by a crisis — a divorce, a fight or split in a family, the death of an earning spouse, or maybe a significant health crisis that wracked up a lot of bills, maybe a layoff from a job, a natural disaster that ruined a home. These things can cause homelessness immediately, or more slowly through the increase of substance use and decrease of familial patience and support. At any rate, what has become painfully, frighteningly clear is that the line between the “homeless” and the “homed” is a thin little veil of cellophane wrap.

It frightens me to really see and believe that my home is not so secure. These same things could happen to me, and I would be a happy homeowner no more. We have seen that our security is very insecure indeed.

Most of us deeply crave stability: of our lives, of our families, and of our institutions, even of our beliefs. And yet, it only takes a stiff wind to blow the roof off of our home to remind us that our homes, our institutions, our churches, our schools, our national security, all that we think we know for sure, are just transitory. We too are vulnerable and homeless, and we know this in the middle of the night when we feel acutely the incompleteness at the bottom of our stomachs, the feeling that we are not yet where or who or what we will be. We know this when we feel the deep homesickness of the soul.

But this soul-homesickness might be the key to a profound truth.

Through the story of the Israelites wandering around the desert to the story of the wandering Jew who said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” the Bible tries to challenge our notions of security. We can’t and shouldn’t put our trust in those building that we create, or security becomes just another idol to chase after. Maybe we are not supposed to be about feeling secure. Maybe we are to grow ever more deeply aware that we breathe, eat, walk, love and are loved not because of our own doing, but because we are constantly being held and protected by God.

In Psalm 51, the psalmist gives us the beautiful image of God spreading out wings like a bird. Just as the mother bird — from the plain old chicken to the glorious eagle — will spread out her wings around her chicks, inviting them to gather in, so to is God’s protection. What this is not is a hard, rigid building, and bullet-proof covering. God’s wings invite a different feeling — something alive and vibrant, moving, changing, giving warmth, and the protection not of invincibility, but of ultimate love.

We are none of us home yet. Children of wanderers, we are on a journey to true rest and ease. Augustine wrote

“My heart is restless, Oh Lord, until it finds its rest in thee.”

Kris Pikaart is the chaplain for the Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care System. She can be contacted at kjpikaart@yahoo.com or (505) 863-7140.

This column is written by area residents, representing different faith communities, who share their ideas about bringing a spiritual perspective into our daily lives and community issues. For information about contributing a guest column, contact Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola at The Independent: (505) 863-6811 ext. 218 or lizreligion01@yahoo.com.