another quote

If you are interested in the notion of home, place, and identity- read no further than Wendell Berry. He talks extensively in both his fiction and non fiction about the notion of home, having a place, being from a place. I first started thinking about these things when I moved to St. Louis. It was the first place that I lived that was so culturally different than my world. I would have days where I just missed the South so much- and I had equal days where the South was unveiled to me, and I saw things that I didn't like- but at the end of that journey, I really embraced by "place" and owned it- and knew that being from Georgia was in me, as familiar as my own heart beat.

Oklahoma has been similar in a lot of ways- it is actually culturally fairly familiar- almost a hybrid of Southern and midwestern- but it's the landscape that has taken me so far from my home. In St Louis I never felt so "far" from home. But for the first years,I would drive around like a person in a Walker Percy novel, not sure of where I was. I think another thing that has struck me here, is that people LOVE Oklahoma. They love this place. This has been in a strange way alienating and comforting.

This Summer we will have lived here 5 years. I can't really get my head around that, but I will say, that I am- like this quote- learning to be at home. I suppose all this longing for home is rooted in things that we cherish, things that shaped us, things that made us feel safe. I think about Macon, I have no idea what is north, south, east, or west. I just know how to get from here to there, because every road is so familiar. As you grow older, you long for familiar roads. I think I will always remember Oklahoma as the place that really got a hold of my heart, and shook it to its core. I think it will be the place where I arrived at the ground of my own feet, and learned to be at home.


* and by that I mean, to accept and embrace that it is God who has ordered our steps, led us to this place at this time.