Homecoming
Homecoming Podcast
The Motion Toward Restoration
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The Motion Toward Restoration

Nashville, Tennessee

It’s the knowing that’s the hardest part, and it doesn’t happen all at once. It comes in like that soft flurry of snow before bed and when you wake up it’s all there in the morning. The deep, powdery, white. Each flake of snow whirling in the wind reflects the light from the street lamp, and for a moment it seems light is pouring down from the heavens. Endless, endless, particles of light, delicate, honest and pure. Today started with rain, heaps of rain, and then the sun went down, and then came the snow. Our first snow.

It’s the knowing that’s the hardest part and it doesn’t happen all at once. Your body knows right away but your mind must put it together like the fitting of puzzle pieces on the dining room table. Start with the edges, then make your way inward. Your mind may deny for some time, but it’s your body that pushes the truth in slowly until your mind catches up. But to deny the truth. To refuse the knowing. That’s where the illness comes from, because your body wants to come out with it but your mind insists on holding it in.

But I promise, the knowing is the hardest part, cause once the knowing is over, you can begin the motion toward restoration, and back to center. Sometimes slowly, but always in the motion toward restoration.

The tops of the trees are caked with soft, powdery white. It will likely snow all night.

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Homecoming
Homecoming Podcast
Homecoming is a newsletter of short essays and poems, exploring the meaning of home through a journey across America.
Homecoming is a cry for a world in the midst of a meaning crisis. In a time when identity is being fought for by advertisers and campaigners; when we’ve traded in family and place-based community and the tech that’s supposed to connect us only makes us more disconnected; when God has been discarded and what’s put in place simply cannot hold, it can be hard to know what's real and true. What does it really mean to be home? And what does it take to find it?
These essays may not read in chronological order. Some names, dates & places have been changed from the otherwise non-fictional stories.
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Emily Clibourn