Marines


News

Base Logo
Official U.S. Marine Corps Website
Crossroads of the Marine Corps

Home Sweet Home

13 Jan 2016 | Lt. Curtiss P. Dwyer; CHC, USN, Command Chaplain, The Basic School Marine Corps Base Quantico

“There’s no place like home.” — Dorothy

As I write this, the Twelve Days of Christmas, traditionally ending with the Epiphany on Jan. 6, are over. Another holiday season has passed, and, if you are like most people, your experience of the season was…mixed.

We cannot think about major holidays without thinking of family and our memories are filled with family traditions. In my house, we all participated in decorating the Christmas tree, but we weren’t done until Dad put the angel on top. So-and-so always does such-and-such. There is something in us that longs for the continuity with the past and connectedness with others that the Christmas or Holiday Season promises. This fast-moving, ever-changing, sometimes cruel world makes us want stability and it only takes a cherished carol to make us float into childhood recollections of warmth and belonging. We want it so much that we can build the season up beyond its ability to deliver. And then, with our sky-high expectations, we’re prime candidates for disappointment.

“There’s no place like home for the holidays…if you want to be happy in a million ways, for the holidays you can’t beat home sweet home.” — Popular Christmas song

By seeing our friends and families, we are brought face to face with the people who have known us longer than anyone else, who know our buttons, who know what makes us…us. That may stir in us interpersonal discontent that otherwise lies dormant. All of a sudden, so-and-so doing such-and-such is painful, irritating, or just plain tough. “Why does she always have to say that?” “He’s been like that since he was a kid.” “Why did he have to bring her?” “I’ll apologize to him when he apologizes to me first…” etc.

Most religious traditions have a notion of our earthly journeys being an attempt to return home. That we came from somewhere, and are engaged in a struggle to return to that place of perfect belonging, a place where we fit. “Home” is deeply imprinted in our hearts. My Christian faith teaches that heaven is so good that it cannot even be imagined, but compares it to a wedding banquet. What could be more joyful than to be surrounded by friends and family, limitless food and drink, enjoying ourselves in an occasion of fantastic rejoicing? To have the guarantee of never being lonely, isolated, misunderstood or an “outsider” again? We are all trying to get home. Home is in our hearts.

We should understand and embrace our desire for a perfect homecoming, without expecting our smaller earthly homecomings to be fully satisfying. When we consider realistically that our homes on earth are but a shadow of the eternal home that awaits us, it helps us better understand how we can, on the one hand long for home, and on the other avoid disappointment when we encounter its imperfections and difficulties.

May you have a blessed 2016!



Marine Corps Base Quantico