Leaving Home for the Wider World
Ruth Ann Stites, Staff Writer
As you have no doubt guessed, I like unusual words. Here’s a good one anthropomorphism defined as “the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities.” In literature this usually means stories with talking animals. One of the classics of the genre is the children’s book Wind in the Willows written by Kenneth Graham and published in 1908.
In chapter five, “Dulce Domum,” Rat and Mole are out on a cold winter’s day and Mole catches a scent of home.[1]
Why, it must be quite close by him at that moment, his old home that he had hurriedly forsaken and never sought again, that day when he first found the river! And now it was sending out its scouts and its messengers to capture him and bring him in. Since his escape on that bright morning he had hardly given it a thought, so absorbed had he been in his new life, in all its pleasures, its surprises, its fresh and captivating experiences. Now, with a rush of old memories, how clearly it stood up before him, in the darkness! Shabby indeed, and small and poorly furnished, and yet his, the home he had made for himself, the home he had been so happy to get back to after his day’s work. And the home had been happy with him, too, evidently, and was missing him, and wanted him back, and was telling him so, through his nose, sorrowfully, reproachfully, but with no bitterness or anger; only with plaintive reminder that it was there, and wanted him.
The Water Rat agrees to pay a visit to his distraught friend’s old abode. And, while they have to make-do, they spend an agreeable evening there including a visit from some Yule tide carolers, a group of hopeful fieldmice children. Yet this place has become too small for Mole for:
He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage.
Just like Mole, Cross Disciples can find themselves drawn back to the familiar, comforting warmth of an “old home” once they have set out on the great adventure of “new life and its splendid spaces.” If, like Mole, that old place in the world was comfortable, like our comfortable church lives before we discovered the “more” of Cross Discipleship, paying a visit is not debilitating, in fact it may even be a productive respite. But we do not linger there. Rather we soon return to the “upper world” for more adventures.
Far more problematic is a return to the haunts of the old human nature we are seeking to put to death (Rom. 6:6, 12; Gal. 5:24; Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:5). It’s than that we most need to put on the Mind of Christ:
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father (Eph. 2:1-11).
(Photo credit: Ruth Ann Stites, Stream near Tahlequah, OK, 2021)
[1] Dulce Domum is Latin and means “Sweet Home.”
