Babylon as Exile

God is everywhere, even among the concrete ribbons of Babylon. But I am not here; that is, when I am here, I am not being. I am not supposed to be here anymore, maybe never again. Babylon is my hometown; it is not my home.

Home now is Boston. Once it was Baltimore. Once it was Ithaca. Once and again it was Long Island. One day, maybe, none of these places or any other in this world will be home.

Any place can become a home and later cease to be a home. Homes change, even if the places do not. Homes change, even if the people you know in those places do not. All it takes for home to change is a change in the person led to wander. A person can have a home in many places or in none at all. Both may be true at the same time for some persons. You call such persons nomads, pilgrims, or sojourners. If you believe some people are meant to be sent away from every and any home to every and any home, you can call them apostles in a secular sense. Or maybe you just call them homeless.

Babylon is a home for many others, but it is no longer the place where I belong. Living here in Babylon, I am immobilized. I have no car and I do not drive, and public transportation is shamefully inadequate. You cannot live in community when you cannot easily reach out to find your community. The immobilization is thus also figurative and spiritual. Few friends do I have left here in this neighborhood. There are three places left for me here in which the presence of the holy dissolves the barrier between sacred and profane: the church, the library, and (believe it or not) the public schools, which I visit from time to time. But one does not live in these places; the home must also be such a place, and if it is not, you wither, because the rest of these places cannot sustain your being. In my parents’ home, secularism prevails, and I suffocate whenever I visit. Other homes my brother and I have visited in this neighborhood are little different. I am pessimistic about the prospect of making an independent home for myself anywhere on Long Island that uncovers the presence of the holy that I have realized in experiences elsewhere. In his own way, my brother, newly graduated from Ithaca College and returned to Babylon, is apprehensive about the project of living authentically, dodging Scylla and Charybdis while sailing on the brackish waters of the stinking suburban seas.

Three times I have moved out of Babylon, and each time I left, I left less of me behind me. Twice I have returned, and I each time I stayed, I felt like I was losing more of me. Even to visit for several days, as I do now, is to feel increasingly constricted every day. It is time to go for good. So long, Babylon, and hello, Boston.

This post demands a companion piece, lest I come across as ungrateful toward the place that was a home for twenty years and more, and the people who made that home. Though I have grown out of Babylon, I grew up in Babylon. Of those formative years in the home that was Babylon before it became a place of exile, I hope to write more later. Until then, happy new year, friends.