1402

What ought to have been the most memorable event of this week for me was attending the Samoan Nazarene church yesterday. I didn’t take any pictures there, so I just grabbed this one off the internet so you’d know what Samoans look like (and not confuse them with Somalians like Karen did). It’s a South Pacific island and they have a significant group of immigrants in Brisbane. The Somalian church is the largest church on the district. They had a lot of children and young adults, which set it apart from the other Nazarene churches I’ve visited. Like all the churches we’ve visited, the people were warm and sweet.

Weirdly, though, the most memorable moment of the week was Friday evening at home. For some reason, Karen, Emmy, Roland, Kaylah and I wound up all sitting on the stairs just talking. It reminded me of “1402”. My great-grandmother owned a home at 1402 E. Washington Avenue in North Little Rock, Arkansas. I’ve just always referred to it as “1402” and it represents the idea of home to me. My grandmother lived and died there, and my father lived there for most of the first 30 years of his life. I lived there off and on for the first 7 years of my life, attending the same next-door elementary school my father and grandmother attended. It was a big house and we were poor by the time I came along, so the two outside wings of the house were rented out, one to a family of 5 and one to a family of 3. In the middle were the 7 of us – me, my sister, my parents, grandparents and great-grandmother. The house was also the gathering place for the more extended family and the neighborhood. You never knew how many people would show up for dinner, and all the adults seemed to have parental rights and responsibilities for me.

Whatever you grow up with in your earliest years seems normal to you, no matter how odd it may actually be. That arrangement at 1402 has always, at an emotional level at the back of my mind, represented home to me. I took in stray people throughout our marriage, much to my wife’s chagrin. She and I lived with my cousin and his wife early in our marriage and it still seemed like a good arrangement to me long after it had driven both women to distraction. I’ve always fantasized about being able to afford some big boarding house in which my whole extended family lived.

So as we all sat there on the stairs talking, the physical and relational closeness felt like that childhood idea of normal. My kids talk to Roland or Emmy when they aren’t comfortable talking to us about a problem. Karen ferries Hearn kids to work and school. Tylah plopped down beside me this week for help with her homework. Roland and Emmy and Karen and I sit out on the patio in the cool of the evening with a cup of tea and it’s just relaxed and comfortable and good.

I’d still love to have a huge mansion big enough to add my parents, siblings and dearest friends to the mix. I’m sure it’s no one else’s idea of normal, but it feels like home to me.

I imagine that some glorified version is what heaven will be like, when everyone really loves their father with everything they are, and loves their neighbor as themselves. My mansion in the sky will be filled with people I love, and by whom I am loved, and with the sound of their laughter.