[Magdalen] Where is home? (was Re: RIP Dorothy Mengering, 95.)

[Marion Thompson]

Home is where the heart is, they say, and at this time my heart is in 
Port Hope.  Twenty-five years in Whitevale are but a distant dream, 
devoid of attachment.  Funny that.  The centre of my life here is St. 
Mark's and I rest content (and very busy).

Marion, a pilgrim   ... today my sail I lift ....


On 4/13/2017 7:01 PM, Roger Stokes wrote:
> On 13/04/2017 21:34, Jay Weigel wrote:
>> I was sad when my mom died, and I still miss her, more so than my 
>> dad. When
>> your parents are gone, it means you can't ever go home again. I'm not so
>> sure I like this business of being at the head of the generational 
>> train,
>> either.
>
> This weekend should really focus our attention on that question. Do we 
> hark back to where we came from as home or look to our eternal home? 
> Not long after Joan and I got together I took her to the city where I 
> was brought up (Rochester in Kent which traces its roots to Roman 
> times). It didn't take me long to realise it was not home for me. My 
> parents still lived in the general area, but they had downsized into a 
> retirement apartment block from the house I left in 1965, over 20 
> years previously, to go away to university. My old school had been 
> demolished, leaving holes in the old city walls where corridors had 
> passed through, and while much remained it had a different feel. I had 
> moved on and so had the city.
>
> When retirement beckoned, and with it the need to find somewhere else 
> to live as I had to leave the Vicarage, I had to decide where my new 
> home would be. It didn't take long. I was coming up to 15 years in 
> Bedford, the longest period I had ever spent in any place in my life 
> by a considerable margin. I also knew that I would need to build a new 
> life apart from the parish and I already had the basis of that here 
> with non-Church activities. My parents had died, so there was nothing 
> attracting me back to Rochester. I was not going to move to be closer 
> to my son and his family who might well move (they have) and my older 
> brother lives half an hour away, not that we are close because we had 
> not been in the same part of the country since he went to university 
> in 1961 when I was 14.
>
> Basically it was a no-brainer, possibly helped by the number of times 
> I have moved. This is my 19th, and hopefully last, home on this earth. 
> Joan was similarly loosely attached to any concept of "home", defining 
> it as where you could put the kettle on. This has been a bit of a 
> stream of consciousness but are we not, as Christians, called to sit 
> lightly to the things of this world while we focus our hopes on what 
> is yet to be? We are called to be in the world but not of it.
>
> Roger
>