Story for all Ages: "Town Mouse and Country Mouse" as told by Kimi Riegel
One morning the town mouse woke up shivering from a dream about the kitchen cat who prowled the house.  "I need a vacation," he said to his wife. "Let me take you to see the.  Life is quiet and peaceful there.  "Let’s go right away!" she said.  So the town mouse and his wife packed a picnic and set off for the country.

The country mouse and her husband were at their tree-stump house, exhausted from searching for food and avoiding the hungry owl.  "Sometimes I wish we lived in town where all the food you could eat is right there in the pantry," she said.  They country mice heard voices outside their house and when they looked out they saw the town mouse putting a huge chuck of cheese in the middle of their picnic cloth.  They heard the town mice exclaim:  "This is the life! Wildflowers, spring peepers.  If only we lived here!" The country mice crept out.  "You like it here?" they asked.  "We’ve always wanted to live in a town."  Without too much more conversation they agreed to trade houses.  As they said good-bye each of the mice thought that they had the better part of the bargain.

The town mouse and his wife were up with the birds ready to gather wild berries for breakfast.  They could smell them.  They just couldn’t find them.  As the town mouse’s wife turned to remind her husband to remember the way home, she felt a large wet drop on her head. "What is that?" she asked. "Is the bathtub leaking?" Just then lightening lit up the sky, and rain poured down as the two drenched mice ran wildly for the tree-stump house.

The country mice were now looking for their first splendid meal from the pantry.  There were so many good smells, but the best ones seemed to come from an open box up high.  "I’ll climb on your shoulders." The country mouse told her husband.  But she couldn’t quite reach it.  "Stand on you toes," she called down.  Just then her husband lost his balance, the top slammed down and she was left hanging by her tail.  "Help me!"

 Back in the country, the town mouse had put on dry clothes. He was especially proud of his bright new jacket.  "So colorful and eye-catching," he said to his wife.  They set out to stroll in the forest, but their walk was soon interrupted. The town mouse’s coat was so eye-catching that it caught the eye of a curious black bird, and if his wife hadn’t held him by the foot, he would have been carried off.

 Not far away in town, the country mouse felt his wife’s tail and thankfully nothing was broken.  Together they climbed higher on the shelves. When they reached the top he rubbed the shoot from the window and they looked out at a piece of blue sky. "Doesn’t it look like home?" the country mouse asked his wife.

 The town mice were standing quietly together after their awful black bird scare.  They looked around.  How still and peaceful it was now.  "It is beautiful here," she said. "But I miss the sound of the town – all the hustle and bustle.  Here I feel so alone."  "And in our town house, we knew what to expect," her husband added.

 The country mice knew to stay home in a thunderstorm, but they soon found out that there were different dangers here. Just as they discovered a tasty morsel of cheese the town mouse’s foot slipped and he heard a whoosh, followed by an enormous snap, and he was thrown clear across the room.  He landed in something soft and furry.  It was then that his wife noticed that the bundle on which her husband landed was moving. It was alive.  "Run!" she cried. "It’s and owl with teeth!"

 The town mice knew how to avoid mousetraps but they soon found more perils as they explored the woods. They heard an animal crashing toward them.  " I can’t take this anymore!" the town mouse quaked and she race for the nearest tree with her husband right behind her.  From the tree, they could see the town lights blink on as the sun went down and the stars came out one by one.  "What shall we do?" the town mouse asked his wife.  But before she could answer she saw a pair of glowering eyes right beside them and they were face to face with the most terrifying creature of all.  "A cat with wings!" shrieked the town mouse.  "That’s it for me!" his wife cried and they ran down the tree and toward the town as fast as their legs could take them.

 As the town mice headed frantically along the road, the country mice were fleeing in terror toward the country. Their paths crossed, but neither saw the other, they were so frightened.

The town mice kept running until they reached their town home, and the country mice atop their cozy tree-stump house sighed happily as they watched the full moon rise.

Back on the road the cat and the owl had knocked into each other. The cat touched his bruised head. He looked up to see the owl brushing himself off.  It was then that the cat had an idea. "Owl, how would you like to trade places with me?  I’ve always wanted to try the simple life in the country!"

Readings:
"Chicago Waters" Susan Power
"Like Home" Robert R. Walsh

Sermon: "A House becomes a Home"
Listen!  Do you hear that whooshing sound! That’s the rush of the holidays. They are upon us. And home becomes the center of the entire whirlwind.  We are either going home for the holidays or providing a home for the holidays.

What does the word home conjure up for you? Maybe it’s a batch of happy, noisy, kids and plentiful, good, food.  Maybe it’s quiet nights and simple gifts.  Maybe its sad memories of what might have been or should be.

For many of us this is the time of year when we struggle with what does home mean.  Young people are returning from college, relatives are visiting from distant places, maybe we are spending the first holiday without a significant person with whom we felt at home, or maybe we are traveling to places that were once home or we still wish felt like home, or maybe we are reminded at this time of year how what should have been the home of our childhood is tangled with memories of pain.

The word home brings out in all of us a mixture of happy and sad feelings.  The sense of "home" is all about feelings and very little about logic or reason.  To understand home, to heal what may have been wounded about home, or to make more home we have to stick with those messy complicated feelings.

We are all familiar with the Thomas Wolfe’s quote:

"You can’t go back home to your family-
to a young man’s dream of fame and glory
to the country cottage away from strife and conflict
to the father you have lost
to the old forms and systems of things which seemed everlasting but are changing all the time."

The dream that I carried with me, when I went away, that I would return and receive a heroines welcome was not accurate. Oh they were glad to see me, but their lives had gone on.  After a few days we fell into the old sibling patterns of getting in each other’s way.  My dream that some how my absence would have made a difference in our on going conflict was just that, a dream.  I was disappointed, disillusioned and lonely.  Coming home certainly is a mixed bag.

Wolfe is right we can’t go home at least to that home.  But when I think of home now it’s not about the same furniture or the same food.  It’s not about a heroine’s welcome.  It’s not about trying to keep things the same.  It’s about feelings.  It’s about familiarity, but not sameness.  It’s about comfort and security.  It’s about feeling the connections.  It’s about being welcomed and accepted.  Those things we can go home to.

Home is about feeling comfort.  I don’t know how many of you watch the TV show Frasier.  Frasier is a successful radio psychiatrist who lives in a fancy condo.  He invites he dad to come live with him.  All dad brings with him is his easy chair.  Now this chair is lime green, and held together with duct tape.  To say the least it really doesn’t fit into Frasier’s décor.  So Frasier decides to do dad a favor and buy him a new chair.  Even if you didn’t see the show you know what happens.  Of course, dad doesn’t like the new chair, it doesn’t feel the same as old one. It’s not comfortable.  But it’s more than a creature, physical, comfort.  That was the chair dad sat in when his favorite baseball team won the pennant, that was the chair he sat in when he heard that Kennedy had been shot, that’s was the chair he was sitting in the first time he held his newborn son.  It’s not about the furniture but about the feelings, the comfort, in the furniture.  The chair made an otherwise lonely place feel comfortable.  The chair made Frasier’s place feel like home to dad. Home is about feeling comfortable.

Still feeling at home is more than comfort.  It’s complicated, a feeling of being at home is tangled up in memories and history, familiarity, and knowing ones way around.  No one of these creates the feeling of at homeness but they are each parts of feeling at home. This was made clear to me sometime during that first week in our new house. Ariana, my daughter, and I were driving home from church.  She said, "Where are you going mom – this isn’t the way home."  We were in fact headed for our house in Framingham but it wasn’t familiar to us yet, it wasn’t home.  Even the road to get there seemed strange. We haven’t had experiences that build a sense of home in this new place.  We don’t know the neighbors yet, we haven’t built traditions that with the memories will tie us to the space. It isn’t home yet.

Feeling at ease and sure of one’s way around a place makes it a home.  I remember traveling in Europe and the adventure of it all eventually wore thin.  After a while I longed for the familiar and accustomed.  Perhaps as James Hart suggests "’home’ is a place where one’s language fits and references make sense."  One of the ways I know when I am beginning to feeling at home is I can finally understand the morning traffic report.  For those of you who grew up here in the Boston area it may seem strange, but when one finally knows what the Allston/Brighton Tolls are and what they mean when they say "The" expressway one begins to feel at least familiar with the place. Although I still don’t know what or where the Hood plant is I am beginning to feel at home.

Feeling at home takes time.  Even coming home after being away takes time.  It takes time to fit into the routines again, to remember where the dishes go, to remember just how to move in the space.  Feeling at home is comfortable, it’s history and it’s an easiness. Feelings take time to develop and grow.

One of the feelings that develop over time is a feeling of welcome and acceptance. In time, in a place we call home, there is a feeling of understanding that at its best is expressed beyond words.  It’s a recognition that here in this place I fit. This is where I belong.  These are my people, my surroundings, this is my home.  I get that feeling most strongly in the north woods of this country, particularly Michigan. There is a sense in those woods that I am sufficient to the place.  I needn’t be more than I am.  I needn’t do more than I do.  The woods and I are sufficient to each other.  I feel at home in those woods.  I am accepted and welcome.  The little chickadees laugh at me and I know their song.  The trees stand there and simply greet me. In those north woods I feel grounded.  I feel the connections and I remember. I remember who I am and what is important. Being connected is part of feeling at home.

Feeling at home is the sense that who I am, and what happens is all right.  It may not be good in the "makes me smile" kind of sense but its all right. Thus people too can be a home. A home-like person is someone for whom you needn’t keep up your walls.  You can let them in and they are home.  There is a rightness; a connection at the cell level in those cases.  With the north woods its like the very air I breathe in centers and connects me.  With people, there is something in the quality of their voices that centers me.  They remind me of what is important. In those places where we feel "at home" or with those certain people we are transported from the other than me to the grounded in me.

 I remember when my great-grandfather died.  My mother was away and so it fell to me, at 15, to go be with my grandfather at the funeral home.  I remember that look in his eyes when I walked into the room.  He felt at home, more at peace, his eyes said from here on out even though things are really tough it is going to be ok.  Together we remembered what is important.  We grounded each other. That’s the kind of grounding in the here and now that is part of feeling at home.  Its not trapped on the ground but secure in oneself within the space.

We are lucky to be graced with those times in our lives when instantaneous home is there for us but for most of us it happens over time and it only happens again and again with a great deal of intentionally.  We feel the longing for what has been or what should have been and we are presented with the task of creating it once again. Like Robby Walsh suggested in this morning’s reading the world is both a scary, dangerous place and a homelike place.  Its up to us to create more of the home-like feel.  We can create that at home feeling by paying attention to what makes it feel like home to us. What makes us feel at home?  Build in more comfort, more ease and acceptance.  Pay attention to what helps us feel safe and welcome and do more of it.

We can create home each time we gather. Familiarity and acceptance create home and it happens over time as we build connections and memories.  While we can never go back, but we are each the makers of our own homes.  I would wish for all of us a home for the holidays, a place to feel safe, and healed; a place of familiarity and acceptance.  May you find the strength to create it one memory at a time.
 
 
 
 

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