Making home

I've been thinking about home, and about homelessness.

"Home" is a very important idea to me. Having moved so many times in my life, so often to places that I knew would be temporary, having a place that I think of as home is something that has often been absent from my life. I remember going to university, the first time and the second, and finding that my fellow students got homesick, a bit -- that never happened to me. I found they referred to their childhood homes, their parents' homes, as "home home", differentiating between that and the casual slang of home as wherever one happens to be sleeping for the time being. I've always had a roof over my head but this house I'm living in with Sweetie and Intrepid Anthropologist is the first place that has felt like a home, the first place that has been at once a sanctuary from the world and a base from which to do work in it.

Also I think I might be finding a spiritual home of sorts in Christianity, even in Anglicanism. I'm not sure. It does seem to be more about the people than the doctrine, more about the fellowship than the structure, and that makes me wonder whether any other community wouldn't do as well. There are certainly things that make me very uncomfortable, too. And yet -- no family home is without running arguments and conflicts. And no matter how much we wish for different parents, different siblings, most people wouldn't seriously consider giving up the ones they have.

At some point I started saying the Nicene Creed with everyone else. I still don't know how I can believe it. I still wouldn't have any trouble singing it. I don't know when I started, or whether I'll stop being able to say it. But right now, saying it and holding the tension seems to be important. Like my physical home, I find myself turning to this religion, these scriptures, this God, for spiritual solace and protection, and also as a base from which to work in the world. So that is where I am right now.

But that's not the only thing that's making me think about home. It's partly the home I do have here in Upper Suburbia, the spiritual home I and finding in Christianity (and there is nobody more surprised than I am about that!). It's partly... I've been thinking a lot about purpose lately, about vocation if you like. What am I actually for?

See, I thought I knew that. I'm a teacher and performer of music. I'm a creator. I find shiny things and show them to people, or make shiny things and show them to people, and this work makes me feel deeply fulfilled. It brings pain, it brings joy. I love this work. It doesn't feel onerous. It feels like a great privilege.

But every time I walk past a homeless person I wonder how it is that I have somewhere to stay and they don't. It really is a case of "there but for the grace of God go I." There, but for the social support that seemed to spring up around me while I was depressed, would I be. There, but for the institutional support that was offered to help me sort myself, would I be. There, but for the NHS, I almost certainly would be! My impulse, my instinct, is always to bring someone home to share what I have. At this point I don't know if I could deal with that, and I'm certain my housemates would have some pretty strong words. But that doesn't change the insistent scratching at the back of my soul.

I don't think this is a straightforward "do some work with the homeless" nudge, though.

The one thing that makes me think I probably won't end up on the street is that I believe if I had to I could perform my way off it again. As long as I'm able to sing I'll sing for my supper. I've done enough busking to know it can be a viable subsistence for me. There's not much to do about that but thank God, for the years of music tuition (almost none of it in singing), for the fairly good memory, for the experience busking previously, for the instrument I have -- this voice, this mind, this body. Wouldn't take me long to buy a tin whistle or a recorder, something that carries the sound further.

It doesn't take me long to think of half a dozen projects involving music and the homeless, or music and vulnerable people. It doesn't take me long to justify my existing work as a sort of musical guiding people home, helping them find and create their own safe space from which they can reach out to others -- the children I teach are often quite privileged, but that doesn't mean they always feel safe.

None of that feels like exactly the right thing, either.

I guess thing to do at this stage is to wait, and listen, and maybe take a few tentative steps. Volunteer at a shelter, wait and see if anything presents itself. Talk to people I trust with this sort of thing, see if anything presents itself. Pay attention: is it homelessness, particularly, that's making me feel this unease, or poverty? Or mental health issues? Or the general lostness of humanity that we all try to ignore but is absolutely obvious in the sight of a woman in her 50s wandering the streets looking for somewhere to sleep? Am I responding to some God-given part of who I am, or just trying to fix the world before breakfast again?

What is this insistent scratching at my soul telling me about how to serve God?