Odyssey: Returning Home and Journeying On

“Odysseus” by Tom Leonard

it took me so long to get back to who I am 
why was I away so long why was the journey so tortuous 
all those false masks against a backdrop narrative to do with authenticity 

but now arriving back there is still much debris to clear 
the clearer to see the point from which I started 

that from which I set out confused in sundry identities at war with themselves 
now to find calm on that setting-out point as the final destination 

How do we all feel? No doubt a mixture of emotions. No doubt so many of us have missed that feeling of congregating together in time and space. It has been a tough time. Let’s not think it is over, if is not, we are just starting to come out of our shelters and attempting to be together once again, in a variety of ways. This week has proven this to us. The virus is very much with us and we need to take real care about howw e are around each other. This is hard for everyone but it is the loving and considerate thing to do, for the good of everyone. Things are not the same, things will never be exactly the same, but then remember as Heraclitus so famously said “No one steps in the same river twice, because the river is not the same and neither is the person stepping into it.” Or at least he said something like it. I suspect in these last few months, to some extent, we have all changed and even as we return to some of the old familiar, we will find that they are not quite the same either. We need not fear this, although change can feel uncomfortable at times. My life has certainly changed in so many ways these last few months as I have adjusted to a variety of changes in my life, personally and professionally. So, I know that I am not returning to the same places in my life in exactly the same way.

I returned to the gym on Monday. It was strange and really tough, but I soon got used to the changes. It will take time to build my fitness up, but I am getting there. I have adjusted to the changes there, due to the virus, they are doing a good job. It was wonderful too to see many of the same faces. It certainly lifted my spirits, to be there. That said I have not been back since Thursday nights announcement and I do wonder if I should continue to do.

Now please do not die of shock, but I have something I need to tell you. I have served as minister to the good folk in Urmston and Altrincham for ten years. Hard to believe I know, but nevertheless it is true. My ministry began on 1st of August 2010, Yorkshire Day of course. So much has changed in this time, Although nothing in comparison to the last few months, we are living through unprecedented times.

Living of course is what we must do, perhaps differently, but living still the same. We journey on together if in different ways. I am certain that as we pass through these challenging times that change will come; a change that will not be merely transitional or even developmental, more transformational, if we allow ourselves to flow with the river and not anchor ourselves too much in fear.

Any journey of transformation begins with an event in one’s life sometimes referred to as “The Call.” An event that grabs at our souls and catches our attention. Sometimes it is subtle in nature, it taps at our soul and other times it is more a drastic event that is unpredicted and unwanted, like this pandemic. The Call offers us an opportunity to lean into the unknown and to explore the unforeseen. It is a portal to adventure that lies ahead filled with opportunities for shedding some old skin, discovering aspects of our lives and of ourselves, and the potential for a more fulfilling life yet to be lived.

No one wants the call to change that this virus has brought, but we cannot escape it. The task is to make something meaningful from it and not only for ourselves, but for world and the future generations that will follow us. Our task is to journey on and to invite others to come and join with us. We must journey on and not be held down too tightly by the anchors of life. Things are never going to be quite the same again. Well maybe this is an opportunity to create something better.

As we return as we come back, things will seem unfamiliar. We may not recognise them as they were. More shockingly if there has been change in ourselves and or others we may not recognise one another. This may be a little frightening at first, but we need not fear it. We certainly cannot wish or will it away.

Returning to something unfamiliar can lead to us wishing for a time past, to become anchored in some form of nostalgia. Nostalgia tcan be a dangerous thing, it can lead to a denial of reality and keep one anchored in a time and place that does not exist.

I do like the word Nostalgia though. It is one of those interesting ones, as words often are. Nostalgia is one of those words that has changed in meaning over time. Originally it meant “severe homesickness considered as a disease” from the German heimweh (home+woe) homesickness. It is rooted in the ancient Greek words “algos” meaning pain, Grief, distress and “nostos” meaning homecoming. Nostalgia is a painful homecoming. 

As we return to our lives it will at times be painful, it may well cause us to yearn for a time long gone. Sometimes as we return, especially if something has changed within us, we may feel rejected by those we meet. The river may well be the same, but we stepping into it are not. This can lead to a deep homesickness, even though you have physically come home. A classic example of this can be found in Mark's Gospel Ch 6. It depiscts an account of Jesus returning home. When he speaks to his own people he is mocked. He said to his disciples ‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.’

Sometimes we might not be recognised when we return home, how painful can that be. We can feel like a stranger in our own land. Think of Odysseus, in homer’s Odyssey, who is recognised by no one on his return. It is only as he begins to speak that his old, now blind, dog recognises his voice and his tail begins to thud with joy and love and recognition. To not be recognised must feel like the most painful kind of rejection.

I am going to share with you a wonderful poem by Luis Borges "The Art of Poetry"

"The Art of Poetry" By Jorge Luís Borges

To look at the river made of time and water
and remember that time is another river,
to know that we lose ourselves like the river
and that faces go by like the water.

To feel that wakefulness is another sleep
that dreams it is not dreaming and that the death
that our flesh fears is that death
every night that is called sleep.

To see in the day or in the year a symbol
of the days of mankind and of his years,
to change the outrage of the years
into a music, a rumor, and a symbol,

to see in death sleep, in sunset
a sad gold, such is the poetry 
that is immortal and poor. Poetry
returns like dawn and sunset.

Sometimes in the evening a face
looks at us from the bottom of a mirror;
art should be like that mirror
that reveals our own face to us.

They tell that Ulysses, tired of wonders, 
wept with love at the sight of his Ithaca,
green and humble. Art is that Ithaca 
of green eternity, not of wonders.

It is also like the endless river
that passes and remains and is the mirror of one same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same 
and is another, like the endless river.

This poem by Borges explores some of the great ancient Greek stories. One being Ulysses (which is the Latin translation of Odysseus) and his painful return to Ithaca. He also speaks of Heraclitus who, as I have already said suggested that we can never return to the same river. This is because water continual flows on and on and the water we step into is never quite the same, but also because we who stand in the river are not the same person either, life will have changed us too, so much so that we are not recognised on our return home. Like the river our lives, go on and on, ever changing. It will serve no good purpose to continue yearning to return to some mythical ideal, for it will stop us living the life, we are passing through and that is passing through us, the life in front of us. We need to fully experience the adventure, the beautiful journey as the poem by Constantine Cavafy, “Ithaca” suggests. This is the lesson of Homer’s Odyssey and perhaps all the great stories. The treasure is the journey itself. We do not get to choose the journey, but we can choose how we journey and of course who we journey with. Remebering always that to journey literally means what you do or where you go in a day. To journey means to travel one day at a time. 

We need to remember as we begin to return to our lives, that we need to be careful not to yearn too much for times gone by, as these will become anchors that will hold us down and perhaps lead us to reject the life we have now in front of us. If we do not welcome this life and perhaps find a way for us to turn away from it, we might just make ourselves feel unwelcome in our own homes.

Anchors are there to keep us secure for a short while as we take refuge in port, they are not to hold us forever though and become chains. As Margaret Silf so wonderfully put it in “

"The only trouble with anchors is that they can grow roots! We need the still point of rest and restoration that our anchor offers, but we also need to be able to let go of the mooring and set sail again. We must let go of every signpost and journey on. We cannot be 'established.'

Life is a journey and a beautiful one at that. One in which we are coconstantly turning and returning again and again and again. It is not always an easy, there are always troubles and difficulties. There will even be times when we will not be recognised and may not even recognise ourselves; there will even be times when we will feel completely lost and won’t know where to turn for sanctuary; there will even be times of darkness too, but we all must journey on, not knowing which direction we are heading, but we have to trust the journey. In the end of course we return from where we came. We return, return, return, from the beautiful Odyssey.

So let’s keep on journeying on together, in our fellowship of love.

I am going to end this little "blogspot" with a rather wonderful poem by Barbara Crooker, which goes by the rather wonderful title “Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton, ‘We are All Writing God’s Poem’”

Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton, 'We are All Writing God's Poem'

By Barbara Crooker

Today, the sky's the soft blue of a work shirt washed
a thousand times. The journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step. On the interstate listening
to NPR, I heard a Hubble scientist
say, "The universe is not only stranger than we
think, it's stranger than we can think." I think
I've driven into spring, as the woods revive
with a loud shout, redbud trees, their gaudy
scarves flung over bark's bare limbs. Barely doing
sixty, I pass a tractor trailer called Glory Bound,
and aren't we just? Just yesterday,
I read Li Po: "There is no end of things
in the heart," but it seems like things
are always ending—vacation or childhood,
relationships, stores going out of business,
like the one that sold jeans that really fit—
And where do we fit in? How can we get up
in the morning, knowing what we do? But we do,
put one foot after the other, open the window,
make coffee, watch the steam curl up
and disappear. At night, the scent of phlox curls
in the open window, while the sky turns red violet,
lavender, thistle, a box of spilled crayons.
The moon spills its milk on the black tabletop
for the thousandth time.