[Garden Memories - IV]
The front of my childhood home has evolved since I lived there. Trees are much taller, ground covers and other basic landscapes have been overhauled, and even an entire garage was constructed where once stood a fig tree and weeds. There are, however, a few components that look now, regardless of the passage of time and the change in landscape, as I remember them.
The lichen covered stones Mom framed the driveway with in the 80s hold true to their original purpose all these years later. The small island in the center of the round-a-bout hasn’t moved. The huge iron bell used to call us home for dinner stands dignified at the corner of the parking pad near the main garage. The basketball hoop bears the expected signs of 30 years of age, but it still invites me to shoot a few jumpers as it did long ago.
The rocks, bell, and hoop are a type of nostalgic braid, woven together to tether me to positive memories of home. But I think there is more going on here. Deep within me—in all of us—is a "nostalgic longing” that we tether to familiar “landmarks” of our past. Often those landmarks are associated to our childhood home because that’s the closest object to the archetypal home we desire. We long for deep union and shalom, which, if we look far enough, is the wombs of our mothers, bassinets our fathers rocked, and yards we learned to walk in.
Beneath this longing—or, I should say, in the center of this longing—is a hunger for union with the *womb of the world*. With God. With creation (God’s first incarnation). With ourself (God’s image).
Sure, it’s nostalgia, but it’s also a critical part of our spiritual journey toward Union.
