Homecoming: Bunnies and Mums

I’ve been asked to write on the theme of homecoming. At first, the topic of homecoming seems sort of like a bunny rabbit. It’s light, fluffy, and soft. It brings you comfort and makes you smile. The very idea of it makes you all warm and tingly. Homecoming. It’s totally harmless. Right?
Not always. Take your average Texas high school football homecoming, for example. Anyone who has experienced this phenomenon knows how complicated and sometimes painful it can be. The gargantuan mums alone, festooned with streamers, candy, trinkets, and full-sized toys, can give a girl a backache.¹ Even worse is not receiving a mum at all, or having more degrees of separation from the members of the homecoming court than you do from Kevin Bacon. Either of these things can mark you as a social pariah or, more tragically, make you believe you’re one.

And then there are the awkward homecomings most of us experience as we age. The ones where we find our childhood living rooms a tad bit outdated, our parents’ ways of talking and thinking a tad bit annoying, and our own selves a tad bit cramped in what used to be a comfortable space. These homecomings, especially, make you wonder what Jesus was getting at in the parable of the Prodigal Son. The robes and the rings and the fatted calf and the feast and the forgiveness—it’s way too fairy tale. (Things get more interesting when the grumpy older brother appears, but that’s another blog post.) Yes, they feed you and love you and give you stuff when you go home. But as most of us know, going home can sometimes be a real pain.²
I know this from my own experiences as an adult child—one who adores her parents, by the way. But I learned it again this summer in a new way, as the parent of an adult child. At first, when my son returned home from college after his freshman year, everything was great. He appreciated the food, the love, and the stuff. He appreciated furniture you could stretch out on that was not a dorm bed. He appreciated the back yard and the morning paper and the private bathroom. Eventually, though, he got a look in his eye. A look that said, in the most subtle and loving of ways, “I am exercising patience with you people.” A look that said, “There is, perhaps, somewhere else that I would rather be.” A look that said, very sweetly and delicately, “I love you and in many ways still depend on you, but, right this minute, you are getting on my last nerve.”
Thank God for these looks. They indicate that our son has grown beyond his planter, that he has work to do and people to love in places other than here. They indicate that he has been called by life and has heard this call.
Let our prayer be that all of our homecomings are like this—that they feed us, love us, and give us gifts, but also that they sharpen our sense of outward growth. Let us pray that our homecomings make us feel not only like bunny rabbits, but also like ridiculously oversized mums. Let the burdens, self-doubts, and discomforts we encounter remind us of the places we have been sent and the work we have been given to do. Let us bless all our homes not only as havens, but also as husks. We grow beyond them in order to feed, love, and give to others elsewhere.
 
Dr. Claire Colombo is the director of the Center for Writing and Creative Expression at the seminary and has served on the seminary’s adjunct faculty since 2012. As a freelance writer, she develops religion and language arts curricula for Loyola Press of Chicago. She is a regular contributor to their “Finding God” magazine and newsletters.
¹ If you’re not a homegrown Texan and/or have no clue what I’m talking about, go here: http://teachinginthe915.blogspot.com/2010/10/mums-word.html.
² We know from Gospel accounts of Jesus’ exhausting returns to Capernaum that he knew this, too. See, for example, Mark 3:19–27.