Home

“For outlandish creatures like us, on our way to a heart, a brain, and courage, Bethlehem is not the end of our journey but only the beginning–not home but the place through which we must pass if ever we are to reach home at last.”

―Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat

My wife and I are compatible in every way possible. We share the same political convictions and religious convictions; we love the same football team, the Auburn Tigers. We share the same grief when Auburn loses--like they did yesterday. We enjoy the same food and restaurants. For the most part we have the same friends. Considering that we are, indeed, “the opposite sex”, it’s quite amazing how alike we are. But of all the things we have in common, the most significant thing is how both of us prefer being at home. Of all the places on earth, the place we like the most is in Ringgold, Georgia on Timber Ridge Trail.

I wrote this blog post several days ago. In my opinion it was one of my best. However, Blogspot, from time to time does something very strange. As I’m writing, all of a sudden all that I have written simply disappears. Even though I’ve “saved” it, the words just vanish into cyberspace. Because of this, I usually write to a Word document, save the document and copy and paste it to Blogspot. This works very well. The only thing, sometimes I decide to take my chances by writing on Blogspot. In this case, it was a bad gamble. Those words are gone.

This particular post called “Home” I thought was particularly personal and particularly good. So good that except for what I wrote above, I’m not going to try to write it again. Well, like the Capital One credit card commercial, “One more thing…” What did Buechner mean when he wrote that we must pass through “Bethlehem” if we are ever to reach home? I don’t know; you’d have to ask Frederick Buechner. But what it means to me is that we were all born somewhere and it’s important to never forget where we were born, how and where we were raised and how grateful we need to be to the person who birthed us and the people who kept us alive until we gained survival skills on our own. I think too that he is suggesting that in spite of the fact that Mary and Joseph had no good reason to be in Bethlehem, because of what happened there, now 2000 years later it is one of the most visited and revered of all cities on earth. Maybe 2000 years from now people will visit your city because of you?

What you are reading here was born as a Word document. It then was copied and pasted here. And here, for better or for worse, is where these words will grow up and live.