Place

Place. Location. Belonging.

Continually circling and rising to the top are the questions, the needs, the desires for placement and belonging.

The surviving spouse group on Wednesday night talked about coming home to empty homes. How do people do this?

The woman yesterday talked about planting a tree and placing a plaque with her deceased husband's name so those walking the path would know he'd lived.

The friend struggles with where to work, where to live, where to be because those who'd made this place so good and sweet have abandoned her.

War refugees don't know where to go.

Place. Location. Belonging.

Feeling guilty because the place we created nine years ago is not looking so good right now because my time and enthusiasm for maintaining it are lessening.

Feeling anxious because the future might be right here and it might be somewhere else.

Ambiguity doesn't sit well with the need for security.

And yet, this is where most of us are asked to live, to find our home, to make our place in this world.

On challenging days pieces of our external and internal worlds become shaky as we pine, we yearn for what and whom gave us a place, a location, a belonging in the past.

Bombs explode on the outside destroying places where families have lived forever.

Bombs explode on the inside scattering our plans, our securities, our beliefs.

This is the story of being human.

We write our stories in specific places with certain people and expect the first story will never change, and yet, this is rarely how it goes.

The story, the place, the location, the belonging can change all the time.

And yet, we strive to keep it the same because this is how we're wired, this is how we're built.

Place. Location. Belonging.

As surely as it can be taken from us, we can participate in making it anew.

We can echo the promise of Jesus when he said I go to prepare a place for you.

We can claim the remnants of what was and shape them into what will be.

May each of us create something new today and offer it to someone writing and rewriting their story as surely as we continue to write and rewrite our own.

This is what humans have always done and will continue to do.

Let it be so.