Oprah, moving and the radio silence…

first sunset in laguna beach, from our living room patio

Hi gang.
Sorry for the radio silence. I’ve been without my laptop and access to the Interweb for more than two weeks. In fact, I’m writing this from a coffee house in downtown Laguna Beach, California – where we moved last week and where our house is (still) a mountain of boxes.

Anyhoodle, wanted to say hey and to catch up on a few things. First of all, yesterday the episode of Oprah’s Soul Series I taped earlier this summer with the (fabulous and lovely) Rev. Ed Bacon aired on XM and Sirius radio yesterday. You can listen to a 10-minute clip of the hourlong episode HERE. The whole episode was filmed as well and that video should be available online soon. Stay tuned …

Also, here is my column from last week. I’ll be back this Friday with an new one.

Cheers from the happiest place on Earth,
GG

GODSTUFF

MOVING IS ABOUT MORE THAN PACKING BOXES

Joining about 20 million other Americans who will move into a new home this summer, my family has just moved.

I’ve heard it said that moving is one of life’s most emotionally stressful events, right behind marriage and divorce. Moving can be spiritually stressful, as well.

Along with figuring out where to hang the artwork, power-washing the decks and deciding whether to go with blinds or drapes (or both) in the sun-soaked living room, I’ve been thinking about what I want our new home to look like spiritually.

A haven. A sanctuary. A place of love with an open-door (and open-heart) policy.

Warm. Welcoming. Safe.

Some time over the next weeks and months, we’ll have our pastor and our rabbi come in and formally bless the house, with all the liturgical bells and whistles. But as we unloaded the moving truck and started to set up a new household these last few days, I wanted to be spiritually, as well as aesthetically, intentional about how thing should be.

In most spiritual traditions, there are prayers, rituals and even liturgies for blessing a new home. There also are plenty of superstitions about what to do when moving to a new home.

According to British folklore, the first visitor to the new home (or on the new year) is an important harbinger of things to come. That visitor, known as the quaaltagh, or “first foot,” should be a tall, dark-haired man who brings gifts, such as a coin, bread, salt, coal or whisky, thereby ensuring prosperity, sustenance, flavor, warmth and mirth.

While we didn’t plan it, the first visitor at the new house was our old friend David, who, luckily, is tall with a shock of black, curly hair. When David turned up to say welcome, he didn’t bring anything, but he was wearing flip-flops with sand in the treads. I figure that counts as salt, so at the very least our new place should be flavorful (and, given the flip-flops, laid-back, too.)

In some parts of India, the traditional Hindu ritual for blessing a new house involves reciting mantras while a cow is led through all the rooms of the house, followed by boiling some of the cow’s milk in the new kitchen.

We don’t have a cow, but our cat Cleo is pretty hefty. She was the first one to trot through all the rooms in the house and the first “meal” prepared in our new kitchen was a bowl of kitty kibble. So . . .

In all seriousness, though, in spiritually preparing our new home, I knew that prayer would be the most important part of the process. What should we pray? How could we best articulate our spiritual hopes for this new, hopefully sacred, space?

I did some research and found a number of beautiful prayers, some ancient, others newfangled but no less powerful, that will be on our minds as we unpack our boxes — all 237 of them.

The traditional Jewish prayer for a new home — Baruch ata A-do-nai Elo-heinu melech haolam she-hech-e-ya-nu v’ki-ma-nu v’hi-gi-ya-nu lazman hazeh — begins by thanking the Almighty for sustaining us and bringing us to this (new) place.

In Catholicism, one of the prayers in the house-blessing ritual recalls Jesus’ birth to the Virgin Mary. Through her, Christian tradition teaches, Jesus made his new home amidst the human race. I thought about that for a long time — the idea that Jesus’ incarnation was perhaps the biggest and most emotionally stressful relocation ever. The Christian faith tells us that Jesus experienced all that the rest of us do, including, it would seem, the drama involved with moving into a house.

The Irish have a wonderfully eloquent gift for crafting blessings. One Irish house-blessing in particular struck a chord with me. It prays for, in part, walls to shelter us from the wind, a roof to keep the rain from our heads, tea by the fire to comfort us, and laughter and the company of friends to cheer us. “May you have warm words on a cold evening,” it says, “a full moon on a dark night, and the road downhill all the way to your door.”

The prayer I chose to pray as we crossed the threshold of our new home was one I discovered on the Web site of St. Mary’s Hospital and Medical Center in Evansville, Ind., called “Prayer for New Beginnings.”

It is beautiful and simple and clear, touching on the anxieties and hopes that come with a new home. If you’re one of the millions of stressed-out, sweaty folks packing up and starting afresh in a new place, perhaps it will be a comfort to you, too.

God of new beginnings, we are walking into mystery.

We face the future, not knowing what the days and months will bring us or how we will respond.

Be love in us as we journey.

May we welcome all who come our way.

Deepen our faith to see all life through your eyes.

Fill us with hope and an abiding trust that you dwell in us amidst all our joys and sorrows.

Thank you for the treasure of our faith life.

Thank you for the gift of being able to rise each day with the assurance of your walking through the day with us.

God of our past and future, we praise you.

Amen.