Homeward Bond

On Thursday, 4 days after the half marathon, I got on a train to Exmouth and ran home. From my previous post you might remember that the Great West Run was about getting ready to run further not faster, I wanted to get out and see if I had ten miles in my legs and the only way I could get my head around it was to force myself, to literally run home.

Robin Harvie in his book 'Why we run:a story of obsession' presents his whole thesis on the inbuilt desire we have to return to a place of comfort, safety and familiarity. As he trained for increasingly long distances he found that the only way he could persuade his body to continue was to give it a goal - going home.

Paul Simon's evocative and poignant song 'Homeward Bound' Full lyrics eloquently tells, in words and music, of a longing for resolution, it reminds the traveller that there is a disconnectedness with that which satisfies, comforts and sustains as long as we are away from home. The language he chooses tells of that dissatisfied dislocation, his journeying is articulated as endless, mediocre, strangers, emptiness and lacking in comfort - his wish and resolution is a return to that which is known, that which is home.

I do hope that Paul Simon won't sue me for my changing of his masterpiece of longing, removing 'u' from 'bound' reminded me of this innate, intuitive and instinctive pull within each of us to return; indeed a 'bond', much like elastic, stretched away from its source, that longs to be let go, pinging back to its origins.

This week amidst the many good things that have happened there have been two points of great sadness: I learnt of the death of my brother-in-law's mum, 'Val' and also  'Ada', a long standing member of my church at Wonford. Both had been ill for some time, both in many senses were expected to die yet the shock and the loss so heartfelt, not least to the families left behind to grieve.

As a minister, people often make assumptions of my beliefs, often in times of loss people talk of loved ones being 'reunited in heaven' or 'looking down on us', heaven has been characterised in many ways and although I will not say these characterisations are wrong this is not the language I would choose.

If you will excuse the rather crude analogy, it seems that from the moment of our conception we are on an elastic band stretched out over our 'three score years and ten', or however long we get; and one day there will be a 'ping' and the lives that we live will end, there should be no shock in this. Might it be that our 'pinging' is a 'back to' and the place we go back to is 'home'; that as we die we are drawn back into that which created us, that conceived us, that imagined us before we were born Psalm 139:13. That all the striving and strangeness and emptiness and aching that Paul Simon articulates so eloquently is resolved in returning to the place of comfort, of laughter, of peace and love when we are truly 'at home'.

My prayers are with the friends and families of Val and Ada over these coming days. When I ran from Exmouth on Thursday my phone temporarily broke, no music, my usual companions, no idea how fast I was running, or what the time was. That sense of 'disconnectedness' from the norm gave me time to, think, to pray, to reflect on 'journeying' as I ran towards my destination - 'Home'.