Please, celebrate me home, Give me a number,
Please, celebrate me home, Play me one more song,
That I’ll always remember, And I can recall,
Whenever I find myself too all alone, I can sing me home.
Kenny Loggins
Those of a particular generation will remember Kenny Loggin’s song, Please Celebrate Me Home. Haunting and filled with yearning, the song speaks of the hunger that is within us all to come home. Home, such an evocative word that carries with it a powerful mix of emotions. How many of us yearn for home in this time of Covid-19?
Home and Call
For me, Connecticut holds strong roots. While my husband grew up in Houston and I in New York, Connecticut was our first home together. We met, courted, married, and had our first home in Connecticut. Our daughter Elizabeth was born in Connecticut. We never planned to leave, until the journey became our home.
From Connecticut to Pittsburgh, to San Diego, to Amish Country, to Chicago, the journey was our home. Yet, through it all the tug to return home remained. In words of the poet:
We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
TS Eliot
We are now back in Connecticut. We have arrived where we started. But we are not the same people who left. Nor is Connecticut the same place.
We are coming to know the place for the first time. To do so, we have had to reclaim parts of ourselves. We have also had to release expectations of what we had once known. It has been for us an invitation to participate anew in the ancient cycle of call toward the flourishing of people and planet.
The Cycle of Call
Marjorie Zoet Bankson in The Call of Soul defines “call as an invitation to wholeness, a spiritual prompting to complete the work of love that we are here to do.” She invites us to explore call through a sixfold cycle:
- Resistance What are the patterns of resistance in your life right now? What do these patterns have to tell you about your person, your relationship with people and planet, and your work (in that order!)?
- Reclaiming In reclaiming, we seek the form behind our skills, the original seed of call, the DNA of our souls. Reclaiming is not simply a process of reminiscence but of observation and action. What essential part of self are you being called to reclaim?
- Revelation happens in the cusp between kairos and chronos time. It brings ambivalence and uncertainty, possibility and potential danger. This is the way new vision is born. What is being revealed to your heart?
- Crossing Over True revelation demands a response. It demands a crossing over, coupled with a willingness to be changed, healed, and expanded as we confront the barriers between belief and embodiment. To cross over we must confront our fears. To what must you attend, in order to cross over?
- Risk Deep within us is planted the seed of new creation, dreams for a better world and the hope that our vision for a new tomorrow can be realized. We need to act to make our dreams real. Risk is the courage to change; it requires that we be willing to fail as well as succeed. How are you being called to risk?
- Relate Call cannot be fully manifested without community. Community that takes seriously the call to shared purpose. Yet dwelling in community is neither easy nor orderly. To whom do you relate?
- Release Completing a cycle of soulwork means integration, endings, and release. Release calls for generativity as we give our call away and begin the cycle anew. Release is a stage of rest and listening. It involves learning to let go in order that the future might emerge. What aspect of your present life do you need to release in order to live forward?
Coming Home
There is a tendency to want to return to simpler times. In truth, I don’t believe there ever were simpler times, just different. Each generation must reclaim and risk. Each individual must relate and release. There will always be resistance to letting go. Receiving revelation will always require crossing over to the new. Yet when we dare to be changed, healed, and grown, we come home to ourselves and our world. We come to know our place for the first time. No wonder the thought of home brings such yearning.
We are not the first to live in challenging times. The question is how will we respond? May we commit to celebrating one another home… for the sake of people and planet!
#poetsprophets #pivotprojects #consciousleadership