What Is My Address? 5-2-11

Anderson, South Carolina


Recently I found myself on several occasions sleeping on hard cold floors in airport terminals; giving me a powerful tutorial in the realities of homelessness. Even simple chores such as going to the toilet proved challenging. Foreign airports are highly attentive to unattended baggage, gathering it up and taking it away to be destroyed; hence a journey to the far side of the terminal to use the facilities requires one to haul his pallet and all other belongings with him. Homelessness consumes a lot of energy at many levels, even when experienced for only a couple of days.

In recent decades extended travel has become readily accessible to the masses, making it possible to be everywhere except home. Some of us have fallen into the trap of using our travel experiences as some sort of moniker of success. We put up web sites containing thousands of images of the world, yet we scarcely know what home looks like. We achieve some sort of iconic status for having been everywhere. Our admirers envy our opportunities to see beyond the last range of mountains.

The beloved late Catholic priest Henri Nouwen described our worry-filled lives as fragmented. “The many things to do, to think about, to plan for, the many people to remember, to visit, or to talk with, the many causes to attack, or defend, all these pull us apart and make us lose our Center. Worrying causes us to be all over the place, but seldom at home.”

I think Henri was reading my mail. For one having lived in fifty-eight places, for one having been in fifty nations, some repeatedly, I’ve been literally all over the place. I do struggle with a sense of homelessness, even when not sleeping on airport floors. Nouwen goes on to say, “One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there. We know where we belong, but we keep being pulled away in many directions, as if we were still homeless. All these other things keep demanding our attention. They lead us so far from home that we eventually forget our true address.”

Circumstances have dictated that most of my extended travel be done solo, not often finding others willing to make the journey with me, even when I offer free first class air to them. If I’m truly honest, I must say these journeys can be exquisitely lonely. Being alone in foreign lands without language skills or knowledge of cultural rules only exacerbates the experience of always having an empty chair across the table. Cameras make good travel companions for only a short season. Yet, I return to my physical address and struggle with much the same thing Nouwen describes, “the many things to do, to think about, to plan for, the many people to remember, to visit, or to talk with, the many causes to attack, or defend.” I find myself chasing my tail without even leaving my house, which so often doesn’t feel like home.

Orbits, Travelocity, Travelzoo and frequent flyer miles make it nearly effortless to sling myself to the far side of the world in my attempts to find a sense of belonging and purpose. Alas, there is no geographic cure for unsettled souls. I can indeed go to China for two weeks for a few hundred dollars but the odds are against me finding belonging, purpose, or home. Nouwen suggests Jesus is the only one who can respond to this “condition of being filled yet unfulfilled, very busy yet unconnected, all over the place yet never at home. He wants to bring us to the place where we belong. But his call to live a spiritual life can only be heard when we are willing honestly to confess our own homelessness and worrying existence and recognize its fragmenting effect on our daily life.”

Nouwen keeps reading my mail. “While our minds and hearts are filled with many things, and we wonder how we can live up to the expectations imposed upon us by ourselves and others, we have a deep sense of unfulfillment. While busy with and worried about many things, we seldom feel truly satisfied, at peace, or at home. A gnawing sense of being unfulfilled underlies our filled lives.”

Just last week I finished a project of many months, preparing all the exhibit materials for a new history museum in another city. A thousand well-dressed celebrants showed up at the dedication, important people spoke for several hours; media people were all over this event. Hundreds of articles were spawned on the Internet. I didn’t know a soul there except the curator who hired my services. It was all over in seconds, it seemed. That’s it? Six days later I find Nouwen’s gnawing sense all over me once again.

Even with smart phones, social networks, free air tickets to anywhere on earth, high profile projects to work on, nascent success with my own photographic work, the sense of disconnect can be staggering. Nouwen’s mandate to be honest strikes home. I have a growing list of perhaps a dozen people who have made it clear they would like to connect for a variety of purposes. I’ve never followed up with some of the very individuals who could give me a sense of home, connection, and belonging. These individuals all live within biking distance of my house.

Perhaps it’s time to get off cheap or free travel sites, stay out of the car, get out my old phone and call some of these people and have them tell me a bit about where I really live, or how I ought to.