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Have you ever been homesick? Maybe you were away at camp, or maybe your family moved to a new place that didn’t feel like home. Maybe you were at someone else’s house, where all the food tasted different, and the smells were different, and you couldn’t quite make sense of the rules for behavior. Whatever was going on, you wanted only to go home!

But what if you were already at home and you were still homesick? Has that ever happened to you? I remember, for instance, when I was a kid and I did something that I knew I was going to get in trouble for when my parents figured it out. Then I was homesick for someplace else! Another way we might be home and still feel homesick is when something there makes us upset—someone we love is sick, or people we care about are fighting with each other, or our parent has lost a job. We feel kind of sick to our stomachs at these times, and wish that we could go to a different home where everything was OK.

And I think most of us feel homesick for a different world we might imagine, where people are kinder and life is fairer, where everyone is safe and happy. The truth is, on our planet most everyone has some kind of trouble in our lives. Not having a job is trouble, and workplaces have trouble. Schools have trouble, and polar ice caps have trouble. That perfect place we’re homesick for really only exists in our imagination.

So, we could spend our days grumbling to ourselves about just how bad things are, and worrying that they will get worse. We could all be miserable, comparing our dream life to the messier reality we actually experience. But we’ll be happier if we can figure out ways to be at home right in the middle of the big mess, to allow ourselves to know that we are still OK even though life is not now and won’t ever be perfect.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t spend our days on earth trying to make things a little better for ourselves and for everyone. We do! At the same time, we might as well face it that life will always hold pain and suffering. That’s why this month’s Quest is celebrating the reality that—right in the middle of the whole big mess, and sometimes for no reason at all—a sense of well-being comes upon us, and we know we’re OK. We know we’re more than OK, in fact. We know we’re GREAT. We’re great, we’re at peace, we’re part of something that’s big and wonderful that connects everything together.

When that feeling of being OK-no-matter-what comes upon us, it is a huge blessing. We can’t predict when it will happen. Some people use the word ‘grace’ to describe that sense of being one with everything, being at home no matter where we are. (Grace is also used to describe blessings we offer before we eat, but that is a different use of the word.) Grace is a gift that comes to us in its own time. We might (or might not) experience grace when we see a beautiful full moon, hear music that unexpectedly lifts up our spirits, wake up happy from a dream we can’t quite remember, or snuggle with a person or a pet and feel the deep joy of their kinship. Suddenly we just know we are blessed and lucky to be right here on earth, even with all of its troubles!

But grace isn’t something you control: that’s the tricky part! We can look at a beautiful moon while listening to our favorite music and holding the hand of the person we love most in the world, and we might feel mildly happy but not at one with everything. Grace is a gift, and it’s fleeting. When it comes, drop everything and savor it!

We can’t control when we will receive the gift of grace, but we can create opportunities in our life that are most likely to help us let go of everything so that we can feel grace rush in.

Different people may experience it in different ways. My favorite way to experience grace, personally, is through laughing. Nothing helps me to feel like I am at home in the world more than laughing with someone. And sometimes laughing right in the middle of trouble can make the trouble seem not quite as large.

Years ago, when my Mom was dying of cancer, my family felt really awkward together. It was a sad time and we all felt kind of lost—homesick for the family we used to be. Then my brother put a very silly movie on, and by the time we had all watched it and laughed loudly together, we knew that life was OK, even though at the same time it wasn’t. My mom was going to die, and things were still going to be funny even without her laughing there beside us.

So, people mean a lot of different things when they talk about grace, but here’s my image: a circle of people, laughing so hard we are almost crying, sharing the sense of connection and joy and loose bones that comes when you let everything fall off of you except the experience of the laughter.

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Rev. Meg Riley

Senior Minister at Church of the Larger Fellowship

Meg has been a Unitarian Universalist minister for more than twenty years. As a UU kid in West Virginia, she quickly learned to enjoy being "different," which has served her well in a "different" life. Meg lives in Minneapolis, where she enjoys walking by lakes, gardening, reading and writing. She also lives online, where she enjoys hanging out, keeping up with people, and playing the occasional game of Scrabble. She is the parent of a teenager, and the companion of a number of four legged friends.

Latest posts by Rev. Meg Riley (see all)

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