The Wisdom of Gilbert

There are two ways of getting home, said Chesterton; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we get to the same place. 

If you read Gilbert Keith Chesterton for too long in a sitting, you are apt to start speaking in paradoxes, which is why I limit myself to one Father Brown story, or one short essay at a time. Today, because my car is being serviced and I'm limited to the house and quite sick, I started with The Everlasting Man. After several pages, my head was spinning; a surfeit of paradox and a mild fever are an ugly combination. Instead, I found myself returning to the first page, and the quotation above. Chesterton is referring to the defence of Christianity that he is about to undertake, but the idea of journeying in order return home has other applications. I refer, of course, to my own circumstances, because I'm egocentric like that. Also, I'm sick, so indulge me.


A while back, I wrote about the concept of home, and how my heart hasn't settled on one. Broadly speaking, Australia is home, and always will be; but the smaller picture is cloudier. I don't feel tied to the place; I don't think I'll feel particularly homesick when I leave it (I'll feel peoplesick, but not homesick). Perhaps it's because I don't, in fact, own a home and haven't got my own family. However, unlike in the past, when I've complained, lengthily and drearily, about my lack of ties, I'm now at a point where I find this fantastically liberating. It means I can go to the farthest ends of the earth, unencumbered, and have adventures and learn about God's beautiful providence in new ways. So, I will; I'll leave the home that I know, which is a home I hold lightly, in order to walk round the whole world, or as much of it as I can, and return with a richer sense of what it means to be at home.

And as I walk and wander, learn and serve, I hope that my ideas about home might be shaped into a solid thing; and I hope that I may come to realise what it meant when the Son of God said that he had no place to lay his head. I think people who live a life of service in needy countries understand best what he meant. They give up lives of comfort and security to participate in the grand adventure of worldwide service; they offer up their lives, bodies, families, in a refining fire of sacrifice, to be continually changed and molded into the image of the nomadic Son of God. Thomas Merton (who I also dabbled in today) observed the following: a man is a free being who is always changing into himself. A more recent wordsmith, Marcus Mumford, encourages us to be more like the man you were made to be. For me, the best place to change into myself, to be more like the person I was made to be, is to be homeless. Because amongst the comforts of this place I call home, I find myself unchanging; or at least, changing more slowly than I would like.

So, when I return to Australia, I hope that I will have learned a little better how to be content, whatsoever the circumstances, like the apostle Paul. Perhaps that is what it means to be 'at home'; to find contentment no matter where or how you live in any given week, month, or year.

Anyway, that's all very self-indulgent. Forgive me. Did I mention that I'm sick?