I remember going to the drive-in with my family and falling asleep to the sound of The Wiz streaming through the car speaker. It was a big deal to be able to see the broadway production on film in an affordable way that my family could enjoy. Perhaps, the excitement was too much for me to bear. Up until then, the only rendition of the 1900s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz[1] I had access to was Judy Garland on TV clicking her red heels repeating, “There’s no place like home.”[2] Home. I tend to favor the The Wiz’ finale of “Home,” because its composer and songwriter Charlie Smalls wrote lines that grip me even now:
If you're list'ning God
Please don't make it hard to know
If we should believe in the things that we see
Tell us, should we run away
Should we try and stay
Or would it be better just to let things be?[3]
This voices my own existential search for home or even belonging. In this song, Dorothy believes that home is where love is abundant. She wants to go back to that place with her newfound, matured understanding of the world. The world in which she’s been chased, attacked, displaced, and lied to. How should she reconcile home or love with what she’s seeing? Is home a place to return to? Is it something that is outgrown? Can she slow down time enough to savor the feeling of home? I feel this wrestling like waves lapping the shore gently still shifting the seascape.
As a listener, I’m relieved of this dynamic tension in the song. Dorothy relieves me with her wisdom that home is a return to the heart where love chooses to live to the degree I allow.
I lost a friend a few days ago. Her mother texted me and my spouse saying that her daughter, our friend, was free from suffering and had “gone home to be with the Lord.” Home. Could it be that home is the landing place?
A soft meditation I land on because the world doesn’t always make sense, is sometimes disorienting, occasionally filled with grief, and can appear to have little place for me:
God is home.
God is love.
Love is home.
*breathe*
God is home.
God is love.
Love is home.
*soften breath*
Could it be that home isn’t a place but the absolute presence of God that no matter “where” I am, God is with me, loving me, home?
You’re welcome to listen to the version of “Home” I fell asleep to below ;^).
[1] L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (United States: George M. Hill Company, 1900).
[2] “The Wizard of Oz,” film (United States: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, August 25, 1939).
[3] Charles Emanuel Smalls, Home, Album, The Wiz [Original Cast Recording] Original Cast (New York, NY: A&R Studios, 1975).