Whatever book I'm having my students study usually spills over into my everyday life in lots of ways. Right now my Classical Literature class is nearing the end of "The Odyssey." What a great story! As you're probably aware, its basic plot has to do with a man coming home after the battle of Troy. It takes him ten years. Throughout the book his longing for home is emphasized and reemphasized. So it's gotten me thinking about home and attachment to home, and when I run across other things pertaining, they jump right out at me.
One such "other thing" is the songs I've run across about longing for home. There's Charlie Zahm's "Caledonia and Me," Robert Burns' "My Heart's in the Highlands," Dougie MacLean's "Caledonia." Of course, these are all having to do with Scotland, but there are numerous other examples having to do with other people's homes.
And then I was wondering whether today we have the same kind of attachment to home as people have had in the past. We are a much more transient society, as I am regularly reminded, being a teacher in a school with a large population of military families.
Although it's not to the same degree, I think there definitely remains that loyalty to home that the ancients knew so well. I feel it for Fairwood, I know! There's nowhere else on earth that I belong so thoroughly as I belong at Fairwood. Part of that is the people, no doubt, but it's more than that, too. And of course I feel a lot of patriotism for the US. I love my country!
But I also feel it for Scotland. While I was there I felt an indescribable and deep connection to the land. And I know many of us have felt it for the land of Israel, as well. I've heard Grace talk about this bond with Armenia. Not just an "oh cool, this is where my ancestors lived," but something much more profound (not that Grace would ever say "oh cool"). There's more to this love for home than meets the eye, I think. There's something about it that goes beyond reason and intellect. "There's more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophies..."
Perhaps the reason this idea of home is such a compelling and poignant theme in literature, and something we find so strong in our own experiences, is that it flows from the inborn desire in each of us to reach our real Home. Our lives are our odysseys to the place we most truly and deeply belong.
2 comments:
Or perhaps you feel this bond because in a different life you lived there, maybe as a snail or something, and the inner spark that is your essence has survived, reincarnated in your current body. At least that's what a Hindu might say. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the urge to be totally irreverent. The deepness of this post requires some kind of attempt at silliness.)
But more seriously, it sounds like you are a classic romantic, believing in an unexplainable connection between two physical entities (you and some land). If it were love for Israel only, you might explain that in spiritual terms, since maybe you could feel a special love for what God especially loves. But love of Armenia? Or Scotland? Unless you can make the case that God also especially loves these lands, I think the "romantic" label is the best explanation! :-)
I like the idea of longing for home relating to our deep rooted need for heaven/God etc. Here's another, related theory: Perhaps it is our minds that tell us there is something more homey about the land of our ancestors, whether spiritual or physical, and this belief (even if false) then makes us feel a special connection with that place, because it is a shadow of the true connection we will feel with heaven. There, how's that for adding a classical twist to the picture. Plato's forms, shadows on the wall as reflections of true images, etc. etc.
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