How to Make a New Place Feel Like Home
“If you don’t know where you’re from, you’ll have a hard time saying where you’re going.” - Wendell Berry
From.
and
Going.
From and going. Both of these words offer an invitation to reflect and imagine. In a time of transition, both are needed. Both at times hold sadness and hope. Sadness at what is coming to a close, and honesty in knowing that the future does not promise to hold the same people, things, and experiences that once were present. Hope also seems present that people, things, and experiences can be different in the future. Hope that the things that were a part of the past that were painful or bleak can somehow find a future of newness.
Each ending is a beginning.
Each beginning is an ending.
Yet, how are both experienced? How do we activate our senses as we experience the world?
As someone who has moved into a number of different locations, I have evolved into a minimalist. This was done with intention as a way to hold onto the relics that I have that hold meaning: the items that help me to remember. They hold the nuance of these stories with beauty, pain, art, and experiences. Sure, I still look back fondly on the history that makes up my life, and I hold space in my life for beautiful people and places that have been formational. Each has become a part of a never-ending show and tell.
The imagery of Scripture often seems like this as well: showing and telling. Passages and stories of ways the Triune God spoke love, reminded people provision would always be. I often wonder about how these people marked their endings and beginning. Did Adam and Eve use the juice from berries to paint a picture of the Garden of Eden before they ate the fruit? Did Moses gather up ash from the burning bush and put it into a jar to remember that encounter? Did Esther save jewelry from when she first became queen? Did the magi who came to meet baby Jesus gather sand as they traveled to see this infant? Did Joseph and Mary save the boxes that held the gifts from the magi?
Did the woman who poured oil on Jesus’ feet keep the jar with her to remember the scent of this gift? Did the believers in the early church have relics from generations that had gone before them?
What is tangible can help remind us of where we are from and create something tangible in where we are going. What relics do you have that will be helpful for you to carry with you to your next beginning? What imagery is helpful for you to remember where you are from as a way to launch your imagination to where you hope to go?
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Dr. Julia Hurlow is an avid traveler nationally and internationally, while currently residing in a rural neighborhood in Indiana. Creating spaces for people to gather, share meals, and explore the outdoors in all seasons are essential elements of her life’s rhythms. With a master’s degree in counseling as well as a doctorate in semiotics and future studies, she appreciates finding redemptive meaning through remembering, lamenting, and celebrating. Her current work as an assistant professor at a university entails educating, offering spiritual direction, speaking, and writing.