“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” –Saint Augustine
We travel through life, looking for new experiences, new feelings, new studies, new acquisitions. Then one day, we just might be sitting in a moment of quiet silence, when it finally hits us: We Are Far From Home.
In the movie “Lion,” a five-year-old Indian boy named Saroo accidently falls asleep on a train and gets off two days later in Calcutta. Unable to remember the name of his village, he gets adopted by an Austrailian couple and moves to Tasmania. Twenty years later, at a party in Melbourne, he comes across an Indian sweet called jalebi and has a flashback.
“What is it?,” his friends ask.
“I’m lost,” he says, suddenly remembering everything.
He then spends the next two years sleeping on a couch, combing Google Earth images of India for important landmarks based on what he remembers from his home town. He doesn’t want to study, party, or enjoy himself. He must get home. Friends worry about him, but he cannot be deterred. Combing through his memories daily, he eventually recognizes rock formations in a satellite photo along a massive arc of two-day train rides from Calcutta. At the end of the film, Saroo is finally riunited with his mother, who had never moved from her small village, waiting all these years for the return of her lost son.
Now, the word “religion” comes from the latin word religare, to “re-bind together”. In sanscrit the word for “waking up” is smritti: to remember.
Once we “remember” (by some sort of Grace, I’m sure), we get confused. What is this power calling me, we ask? And here we thought we already were at home….
Nobody can understand us. We become strangers even to ourselves. Nothing satisfies us anymore except the idea of returning. We feel desperate, yet incredibly alive.
I believe all of us are called to remember. But for some reason, not many answer the call.
Will you be willing to drop everything… when you get the call?
Joy Biscuits 