Homesick
The theologian Richard Rohr has described spiritual longing as a kind of “homesickness”. It is a strange way to describe the stirrings of the soul. I have felt homesickness as a longing for a place where I could be known and comforted, safe and beloved, cared for and sheltered. It came when I felt myself a stranger in a place outside the bounds of family, community, security. My grandfather Nunzio left his home in Sicily when he was only 20 to escape imprisonment by the fascist forces taking over his country. He traveled in Europe for several years finding work and shelter where he could. A few times his mother sent him packages of the sweet tart Sicilian lemons from the family orchard something he told me about sixty years later with reverence and gratitude for the sweetness and love in the giving, for the fragrance of the lemons that transported him back home. He made his way to New Orleans as a stowaway i...