Feeling at Home

Have you ever gone somewhere and after a few minutes of being there you realize that you just don’t fit in? I’ve been in that situation a few times in my life and it is not a pleasant feeling to be sure.

The year was 1992. Nannette and I had married in late 1991. She was working in Athens as a manger for a national clothing store chain. Nannette managed her store but she was also a training manager, meaning that she would train new managers for the company, either by traveling to their store, or by having them come work with her.

Nannette also had an assistant manager by the name of Karo. Karo had come to the University of Georgia from somewhere out of state and was an art major. She was married to a fellow who had come to the University of Georgia from somewhere out of state and was also an art major.

I know some very nice folks who were art majors and I know some folks who were very strange that are art majors. Karo and her husband fell into the latter category, although they were very nice.

One evening Karo invited Nannette and I to an art show featuring her husband’s work that was on display in a gallery in downtown Athens. An art show isn’t exactly my cup of tea but I knew that my wife should support her employee and that I should support my wife so we set out for Athens from our home in Metropolitan Sparta. (We actually lived in Devereux, a suburb of Sparta.)

I thought that an art show was some sort of high cultural event so I dressed in what I believe was an appropriate manner, blue blazer, starched khakis, blue shirt with buttoned down collar, matching tie, matching socks, and penny loafers.

We arrived at the art show and I immediately realized I was over dressed. It was my belief that the hippie-movement had died in the late sixties or early seventies and I supposed it had. What I did not know at the time was that it had been replaced by the grunge movement. The grunge movement was started out in Seattle where a company called Starbucks had invented the five dollar cup of coffee.

Grunge folks also had their own genre of music called grunge music. I won’t say grunge music was depressing but the lead singer of the best known grunge band committed suicide.

Grunge people displayed their affiliation by dressing, imagine this, grungy. Basically grunge people dressed like the hippies from the sixties and seventies which means that I did not meet the dress code in my blue blazer, khakis, button down, and penny loafers.

I walked around the gallery and looked at some of the paintings.

Most of the paintings looked the same to me. There were no

discernable scenes in the paintings. Most of them simply looked like a possum that had been hit a few times by a Greyhound bus.

I walked over to one of the paintings and Karo’s husband was telling everyone that this painting revealed the inner anguish he felt the night the first Gulf War began. I suppose inner anguish looks like a possum that had been hit a few times by a Greyhound bus.

I looked over in a corner of the room and there were few folks passing around a cigarette. I thought to myself, “These folks are making so little money of this bad art that they each can’t afford their own pack of cigarettes.” I then realized that they weren’t smoking the kind of cigarettes that come in packs but rather the kind of cigarettes that will get one arrested.

So here I am, a buttoned down, United Methodist minister in a room full of grunge people with all of their “inner anguish” and illegal cigarettes. Though it was early February I started to sweat. I found Nannette and said, “We’ve got to get out of here.” I was not at home to say the least.

A few minutes later I found myself at The Varsity with a couple of chili dogs, an order of French fries and a Varsity orange drink. Then I felt at home.

Yet, as I wonder about that evening I wondered where Jesus would have felt at home. Would he have been at home with the grunge people or would he have been at home at the Varsity?

The answer to that question is that he would have been at home at both places. Jesus during his time on earth was someone who met folks at their point of need. When people were sick he cured them.

When they were hungry he fed them. When they needed preaching he preached to them. Whatever the need was Jesus sought to meet it.

He was one who was comfortable in most settings. He was comfortable with the elites of his community and he was comfortable with those on the margins of society.

In life some of us are blue blazer people, some of us are grunge folks and some of us fall into other places. Some of us are Varsity people and some of are art show folks. We are who we are and we are probably going to associate with folks like ourselves. There is nothing wrong with that.

The call for us is to remember that our Lord is the Lord of all people. Jesus came to offer salvation to all persons and he meets all of us at our point of need.