Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Reflection - A Sense of Place

Dave Weber
August 8, 2004
Palo Alto, CA

I grew up in Ohio. As a child, it was the only place I knew. The gently rolling green mid-western landscapes were normality. So were the grey and brown winters, the dirty slush, the polluted air of heavy industry, and the opaque waters of Lake Erie. But I gained perspective in college and I soon lost track of childhood friends who now appeared shallow. I thankfully kept a few close friends from college, but only one still lives in Ohio. I visit him and the land of my youth every couple years and the scenery is still familiar. But I have been gone too long and there is no family or community there with a shared history to welcome me. It is no longer my home.

I attended grad school in Minnesota, a beautiful place of woods and lakes, and for me a land filled with memories of friends and lovers and all-night discussions on life. Yet those of us I once believed would be lifelong friends all went our separate ways and when I returned a decade later, the place had a ring of familiarity, but was empty and unfulfilling. I've not gone back again. I remember also the mosquitoes, and temperatures that hovered near 30 below. I would not want to move back. It too is no longer home.

After grad school I moved to Michigan and became one of four adventuring soul mates who trooped about together. Cross country skiing got into my blood along with long bicycle rides. I even almost got married. But while my love of skiing lives on, I lost contact two decades ago with the last of the people who shared that place with me. I returned to Michigan two years ago and stood in front of the apartment building where I once resided. Only distant memories remained of another place that was home for a moment but is no more.

I did marry in LA. I climbed the Hollywood Hills, spruced up an overpriced fixer-upper, and watched the crazies on Venice Beach. I sat in traffic jams at 2AM and inhaled smog. LA was never my home.

I became a Unitarian Universalist in Utah. I was part of South Valley UU Society, a new and growing church of mostly young adults, and it became part of me. I hiked through incredible wildflowers and fantastic red rock canyons under dark blue skies. But the Mormons own the place and conservative Utah never felt quite right. When my marriage collapsed, it was time to move on. I still get the church e-mails but the messages, mostly about how to put up with the Mormons, no longer concern me. Many of my old friends from those years have also moved away. I have not returned to Utah now for five years and feel no burning desire to do so. My connections to the state, the church, and the people grow weak. Utah was never really my home either.

And finally I arrived in Northern California, a land of ideal climate, abundant organic veggies, beautiful coastlines, funky Berkeley, and San Francisco. Although I spend more time in heavy traffic than at cultural events in the city and there's over-consumption, high-tech mania, and neighborhoods of strangers, I live well and have many friends. This may be as close to paradise as I get, but you know it doesn't really feel like home to me any more than the other places did.

Some among you have spent most or all of your lives here on the Peninsula. Some of you have lived 30 or more years in the same house, and raised families here. Your roots are deep. But what of those of us wanderers who have for whatever reasons followed crooked paths to get here; whose closest family and lifelong friends are hundreds of miles away; whose unstable professions may at any moment lead us elsewhere? How do we make this place feel like home?

Maybe I'm just asking for too much. No place is perfect and the feeling of home may take a lifetime of shared experiences with family and close friends. Had I stayed in one place, I guess I'd have roots too. It's too late now to speculate on what might have been. In reality my life has been enriched by my travels. I'm a tourist on an unending journey, drinking in the best and worst of each stop on the itinerary before traveling on to the next. Yet as a result, I am the only constant in my life, and I carry my home with me. Still, I long to feel part of a landscape, to belong to the land, to establish a sense of place, to finally come to rest and feel truly at home.