Ask any New Yorker what their least favorite activity is \u2013 ask nearly\u00a0anyone\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 and \u201cmoving\u201d will come up pretty high on the list. All that packing and hunting and handing over money and resettling is rough.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just the work, though: it\u2019s the feeling of rootlessness that comes from not having a home, from feeling dislocated and disconnected from reality. Something about having a place (a \u201croom of one\u2019s own,\u201d as Virginia Woolf might have put it) makes you feel more at home in the\u00a0world<\/em>, too. Even if you\u2019re not at home, you know where you\u2019re going, and where you will rest your head.<\/p>\n I was thinking about this recently because I am moving this weekend, for the second time this year (this time into a place that my husband and I hope we can stay in for a long time, though in New York you never know what will happen next year), and I hate the feeling of dislocation. And I was also thinking about it because it struck me once again that Jesus, technically, was homeless:<\/p>\n \u00a0As they were going\u00a0along the road,\u00a0someone said to him, \u201cI will follow you wherever you go.\u201d And Jesus said to him,\u00a0\u201cFoxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.\u201d (Luke 9:57-58)<\/p>\n I see a lot of homeless people on my daily commute through Brooklyn and Manhattan, and I\u2019ve pitched in with church initiatives to help provide meals, but I hadn\u2019t thought too much about the kind of rootlessness homeless people experience that\u2019s more than just not having anywhere to put your stuff. And the fact that Jesus was human, and didn\u2019t have a home of his own, means he experienced this feeling as well.<\/p>\n So I am feeling grateful to have a home, and also thinking about how to help people feel less dislocated when they are in my home. Hospitality, I suppose, might be partially just helping people feel at home for a little while. Seems like a tall order, but I\u2019m glad I have the privilege of doing that.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ask any New Yorker what their least favorite activity is \u2013 ask nearly\u00a0anyone\u00a0\u2013 and \u201cmoving\u201d will come up pretty high on the list. All that packing and hunting and handing over money and resettling is rough. It\u2019s not just the work, though: it\u2019s the feeling of rootlessness that comes from not having a home, from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1478,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16792,9937],"tags":[17308,17307,16501],"class_list":["post-5313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ruminations","category-something-to-think-about","tag-home","tag-homelessness","tag-new-york-city"],"yoast_head":"\n