home

Here’s my mate Alan. He is a gifted chef…that is to say, he cooks meat very well over high heat. As sherry wrote below we had a special Australia day celebration at the Harvey’s yesterday. it has been a great homecoming so far – being with family and friends, (re)discovering the things I miss about this place, and to top it all off, a national day of celebration. Home is most certainly the USA now. I have fallen deeply in love with my adopted nation and feel a vocational call to that land, but it has also been nice to be here in my original home and to be immersed in the strange-familiarity of Australia.

This time around there is an added joy…I have had fun watching Isaac encounter many of the things that are precious about my upbringing. We have watched cricket together, played at the beach, snacked on fish and chips, and I can’t wait to take him to the footy (Australian Football) and barrack for the mighty pies. The particular experience of only returning ‘home’ every 3-4 years is a difficult one to communicate, mostly because the feelings associated with it don’t fit anywhere familiar on the emotional spectrum. At best I have two homes. More negatively, I have two ‘homes’ but I don’t belong to either place properly. Quite obviously life goes on here in Melbourne and I have missed almost a decade of political, economic, social, and cultural shift. While in Kentucky I am still an oddity no matter how much Wendell Berry I read or how much I know about the Kentucky Wildcats (University Basketball team).

But for the most part I am thoroughly blessed to be cross-cultural and the sustaining thread across these places is the love that so easily connects along family and friendship lines. This kinship is amplified through the way we share a passion for the ways of Jesus. So, back to Al and his mateship. Home is where I can share an afternoon with him and his family…and home is drinking coffee with fellow sojourners at Pat’s 3^rd St Stuff coffee in Lexington. It is always good to be home wherever that might be.