Heavenly Homeland: Or, Am I Missing Home?

"How can I desert you? How to tell you why? Coachman hold the horses, stay, I pray you." --Stay I Pray You, Anastasia the Musical

"My thoughts are always with you, have you changed since I've been gone? Oh how I long to see you, the time has been so long." --Go To Sea No More, Matthew Byrne

(Linking up with Grim again for Remember, O Thou Man! Am I sorry for only writing about Heaven, of the four last things, so far? Not really. ;)

"Do you miss home?" people keep asking me. And I keep having to tell them, "no, I haven't been missing home so much...but I really miss my Newman centre at my home university." Every time I say it, I feel bad. Because I do miss my family, but I talk to them on a fairly regular basis, so I don't feel their absence very keenly--although I do think on a near-daily basis about all the things I'm excited to show them when they come to visit. Newman, though, I miss with great missingness, to the point that I was watching a video from a Newman event the other day and started crying. Those of you who know me may know how big a deal that is. 

I was talking to a friend about this the other day, who matter-of-factly said "Of course you miss Newman. That's where you're supposed to be right now." And while I may take issue with 'supposed to'--I am 'supposed to' be in England right now, because that's where God has sent me--that's true, in a way. I'm missing Newman because it's business as usual there, and I'm not a part of it. (Or at least, I'm mostly not a part of it. I still can get on people's nerves and order them around for the things I'm technically in charge of from afar. And I do.) It's kind of like my observation from my first year of college that I didn't miss my family (because I talked to them regularly), but I missed my home parish. (Still true.) I don't miss my friends at Newman so much--because I talk to them every week, although I do still miss them--but I do miss Newman. Wandering into Fr. M's office, drinking tea (or cocoa), and talking about whatever is going on. Helping out with the retreats. Waking up and rolling my sleepy self down to the chapel. Goofing off in the front office. Running into people randomly in the caf. Having study spaces that I can pop down to from my room. The broad spectrum of people that aren't friends such that I keep in close contact with them while I'm away, but who I still enjoy seeing on a weekly basis. 

I've written about this before--the bone-deep love and ache for a place--but I don't know that I've ever experienced it this intensely before. 

It's also really hard because I have to hold in tension how very much I miss Newman with also how very much I am enjoying my time here and am glad I'm here. Every day (well, almost every day) I'm happy to be in England, and I delight in every little thing, from the cappuccino flapjacks to the beauty of the moors to the silly excitement of seeing the first of the new lambs on the hills. 

I don't want to be the kind of person who takes issue with everything she encounters in her new home, just because it's not the same as the things in her old home. And it's easy to give that impression even if one isn't being that sort of person...just by comparisons. It's important to me to try to avoid that, most of all because I love England, and I love being here, and I am already lamenting how many things I won't have time to see in the amount of time I'm here. I know from experience (both my own, and watching others) how easy it is to give the impression that you hate a place, when really you're just missing another place, and you'll miss the current place just as much when you leave. I haven't entirely succeeded in avoiding giving that impression, I don't think (and it doesn't help when every other person seems to want to ask me questions about America) but I'm trying. 

I was thinking, the other day, because of this missing and because of various other things, including rewatching The Sound of Music (absolutely fantastic and I may gush about it later because gosh I had forgotten/not realized how amazing a movie it actually is) about the concept of a homeland. A place where one belongs, where one has roots, and where one's roots go deep. A place that birthed you, and a place to which you always want to return.

I wonder if, in this age of wandering the globe, we've lost the concept of a homeland. 

I wonder if I even want it back, at least in the sense of living one place almost one's entire life and having deep roots that are extremely hard to uproot. 

Because as much as missing places can be awful and sad and hard, I wouldn't want to not have Newman to miss. Does that make any sense? I wouldn't want to have not gone to school 2000 miles away from my family, because now I have all of these wonderful memories and friends from this place that became my second home.

And now, I wouldn't want to have not come to England. I love England. I'm going to miss it almost as much when I go back to the States as I'm missing Newman now. Right now, I'm sitting in my room, looking out the window at the misty purple hills around Sheffield, covered in their brick and limestone houses and wondering how I'm going to feel when that's no longer the view I wake up to every morning, when opening the curtains is the first thing I do after I silence my alarm. 

Even though the PNW is my homeland, I want to live in these other places, and love them, too. 

And I wonder if Lewis was on the right track in The Last Battle, when, in Heaven, there is a glorified England, a glorified Narnia, and so on. We love these places God has made so much on Earth--will He not return them to us in the New Heavens and the New Earth? And when that happens...will I be able to be in all the places I love at once? Will I finally not be missing any place? The places would have to each be distinct, even still, because part of what makes me love them is how different they are. But everything is possible in God, and Heaven is a moment of glorious eternity. 

I guess I'll just have to wait and see.