The Dignity of Home 2

I wrote the second part of The Dignity of Home before the first part but wanted to introduce the topic differently so re-wrote it from scratch. I was only planning on posting one version but I like them both so here you go... 

Some years ago images of women from various countries around the world wearing supposedly traditional clothing was popularly being shared on the internet. The photos contrasted the beautifully colored and unique ethnic apparel with the dress these woman allegedly all wear in their countries today: all black with veils and face coverings. With the women's faces obscured and their unique ethnic expression reduced to the same drab clothing there was absolutely no distinction in their uniformity. Muslims were ostensibly incensed because the apparent purpose of the images was to point out that the radical Islamification of these particular countries didn't exactly lead to cultural enrichment for their citizens. What it showed was just the opposite and that the unique manifestation of these people's particular heritage has been erased.

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ” (1 Corinthians 12). So the members of our physical bodies including the eyes, fingers, and legs may be separate from the core housing the heart, liver, and lungs but they are united in one organism. This is, of course, self evident. Despite their different characteristics and functions they work in unison for the benefit of all, and C.S. Lewis expands on this in one of his writings when he says, “Those who are members of one another become as diverse as the hand and the ear. That is why the worldlings are so monotonously alike compared with the almost fantastic variety of the saints. Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality” (from “Membership” in The Weight of Glory).

So, diversity is good as long as works in unison with the whole, but as I watch and listen to the diverse people in my community it strikes me that they have rejected their bodies and their parts are being grafted onto that of another. The parts of the body are no longer working as one. The body is really not just a physical thing but is tied to the culture and soil that nourished it. I can move to Sudan but it doesn't make me Sudanese because I have no roots in the country. I do not know their language, I do not know their history, I do not know their land, I do not look like them and have no blood ties, and we do not share a common religious heritage. In other words, Sudan could not be more foreign to me and I would always look like, feel like, and be an outsider. I have no doubt that traveling there would be an extraordinarily eye-opening and educational experience, but I would be in an alien world. Obviously the reverse is true as well: you can take the boy out of Sudan but not the Sudanese out of the boy.

Home just isn't where the heart is, but where the dead of your family are buried. I think this helps explain the geographical schizophrenia that modern Americans and others in developed countries have experienced for many decades. Pre-industrialization used to see extended families on small farms near their relatives in small towns with their dead all buried on the grounds of their small church. When they went to visit God on Sunday they were also, in a sense, attending Mass with grandma, Aunt Helen, and baby Anthony permanently resting in the cemetery outside the church walls. Industrialization changed all that. Rural life was hard and is still hard, particularly if you are trying to live off the land and are subjected to the whims of Mother Earth who is alternatively gracious and stingy, nurturing and punitive. So when an escape route was offered to get off the farm many took it and our cities blossomed...or rather, in many cases, grew like cancerous cells in the body. Farm work was traded for factory work. The bounty or withholding of nature was supplanted by the generosity or miserliness of the company. Instead of working the soil and nurturing plants they worked in the plant to separate themselves from the soil.

My family – at least the part with my surname – came from Luxembourg. When I visited the country over a decade ago I went to a church cemetery where my family resided. I didn't know who these Wolff's were except for the information provided by my Luxembourgian relative and host. I became emotional in that graveyard because this was my family. Sometimes we are physically separated from our family. Sometimes we are estranged from our family. But their blood is our blood. Their land is our land. Hard times and wanderlust cause people to scatter. This is always how it has been and is part of our nature, but we are all from somewhere. That somewhere has a distinctive language, culture, and identity. Hard times caused my great grandfather to leave his homeland in hopes of building a better life in the United States, and for that reason I do not view the gently rolling hills of Luxembourg as my home but the rugged Rocky Mountains. Great grandfather met an immigrant from Germany, married her, opened up a saloon, and became an American. His roots and those of his descendants mingled with the roots of other (mostly) European immigrants in their new land to create a country envied for its freedom, innovation, wealth, and generosity.

It is because of our generosity that many people around the world have rejected their bodies. As the story of my family - and yours - indicates, there has always been immigration. People have always moved do to wanderlust or need, but the motive for the mass relocation of people from around the world that we have seen in recent years demonstrates a contempt for their heritage. And those who facilitate mass migrations demonstrate a contempt for their own heritage. Instead of remaining at home with their living and dead relatives in the land that nurtured them and the culture that sustained them, those seeking new ground have fled to embrace foreign people to provide for them.

And I think that is the difference. For the vast majority of those fleeing their lands en mass, it is not a temporary relocation due to war or persecution but a permanent desire to take flight from their ancestors. When they come to these new lands they proudly fly the flags of their homelands but are terrified of being sent back. They could act as members of one body to build their nations, but year after year, decade after decade, they have cannibalized themselves so that they have to feed on another body: and one cannot have a history of cannibalizing oneself without also cannibalizing a new host.

Charities and governmental organizations in the west who – perhaps for different reasons – encourage or help create our national bodies now composed of disjointed parts, have in their paternalistic arrogance determined that the right of peoples is not to remain at home to embrace their land, their ancestors, and their traditional and unique ways in order to unite them as a people and to build economies to benefit their nations, but to reject their homelands for a life of Netflix and welfare in distant lands. The diversity we should embrace is not that of a stew where the ingredients are haphazardly thrown in but a banquet in which delicacies are laid out to savor.