Little pink houses

What is it that attracts us toward one another, that brings us together?

The downtown streets of any city, patching together various neighborhoods, teach how differently that question can be answered, and yet how similarly.  We all scrape things together to cloister ourselves away-- from the elements, from the unknown, from each other.  Yet, created for relationship, we each rely on a circle of people and exchanges in order to survive. Some are primitive, some sophisticated, irregardless these circles start from our first social habitat, and thus can always be drawn concentrically from the nucleus that is the home.

Our homes reflect that which we deem as important.  Gated driveways, mulch and shrubbery, spacious rooms furnished with rich fabrics and inviting hues -- some speak to ambition, success, stability -- questions answered well.  For others, the choice seems to have been removed from the equation, and the aesthetics are a result either of what was most available or comfortable.  Mismatched, plastic to-go cups line the cupboards and serve up the various libations to accompany emotionally-fragile meals, Little Debbie snacks, and an evening's hard-earned lottery ticket. The foundations may be shaky, and the trimmings slipshod, but the "Beware of Dog" sign precariously placed in the snagged and bulging screen door of a home in the East end communicates a sense of ownership just as much as the security system of the home in the Highlands.

Today being the rainy day it was, I roamed the streets in a car, instead of on foot and with company, instead of alone.  Things look different that way.  Looking out of the window, I noticed the skepticism I normally adopt when venturing outside of my fixed walls giving way to something less weighty.  People live in these places, big and small -- people populate society, no matter how misled it seems.  Families, like any of God's basic building matter, adopt and survive, even under constant pressure.

Sometimes the light that radiates from a home is a kind of florescent -- transmitted by shared consumption and frenzied activity.  Around others, there is something more natural, more warm. Those are the homes where practices of listening and sharing are being learned.  Where people, strong and weak, can share a story with each other, and the looking into each others' eyes that is such a vital part of the process doesn't live in constant danger of being uninterrupted by the glow of some screen, or a lull in the plot.  That is a home.