Affluent countries are focussed on housing shortages; and many poorer countries have always had that focus. Many Australians can’t buy a house; and many overseas want to make Australia their home.
What’s the deal with homes and houses?
Claiming exclusive use over part of the earth’s surface for your people, and subdividing that up into homes for our families, communities, and now singles, is an ancient drive within us. We are bodily and so we need a place to be. We cultivate that space, care for it, and claim at least some occupancy rights over it. We then tell ourselves’ there’s no place like home’, ‘home is where the heart is’, ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’ and other phrases that mark our sense of special connection.
A great sadness for many is being separated from home (land, town, village, street, building…). A great joy is inviting others into your home (land, town…). And one of the great fears is home invasion, whether of your territory as in Ukraine or your apartment as happens across Sydney daily.
Part of living in the consumer economy is being tempted to see everything as possessions and then becoming over-possessive. So we might think of home as the house we live in and focus on its property value. We’re taught home-ownership is a dream (though renting often makes for a happy home, and is normal even for very wealthy people overseas). But home-making is an even higher dream, and reminds us that the grandest private house may not be much of a home.
How we live as individuals might help explain how the whole country sees itself: either as a home that welcomes strangers, or a possession that represents national wealth. So, we should all take an interest in how people think of their homes and houses, for it affects how we regard the rest of the world.
A test for house-or-home is how we regard something like the ocean. Many people aspire to live close by the sea. This could be for beauty, tranquillity, leisure, curiosity, exercise. But there’s a risk that it’s just for ‘ocean view’, ie an extra feature adding another half mill to the asking price.
Nature’s great monuments are the oceans and mountains, and many of us do want to live close by these, in safe valleys or secure bays. Christians recall God the Father met his servants on mountain tops, and his Son gathered up the first Christians by the water. And neither hills nor beaches are ever completely quiet – there’s always a breeze, the natural element we associate with the Holy Spirit.
Still today, during our secular holy-days we divide between mountain people and ocean people. There’s a deep human inclination to find God, and often to seek him in natural environments. People don’t usually build on the tops of mountains or edges of the surf and so we can be alone there with our thoughts and without distraction. I’ve often felt at home on Scottish mountains and Aussie beaches. They’re not a house, they’ve no walls, I’ve no exclusive rights – but I don’t want to leave them! I’m at home.
Home is more than house, and though we should support the dream of home ownership, it’s best if the inner dream of a home guides the outer dream of the grand possession. A real home never goes down in value.
But what about the homeless person I see every day – really. He is as far from a bed as Jesus and his disciples were. Where there is homelessness there’s loneliness, and the vast task of housing the homeless often begins with noticing and then offering to ease the loneliness. The almost unimaginable journey from homelessness to a house begins with showing people we share a common home. The homeless person I see every day lives on our beautiful beach, and that’s as much his home as mine.
