Homeward Bound

Last week I revisited my Simon & Garfunkel CDs. They contain many favourite songs from my teenage years – including ‘Homeward Bound’. I bought the music and learnt to play it on my guitar. It’s said Paul Simon wrote whilst he was in England whist waiting at Widnes railway station. He’s alone, longing to be back home…

I’m sitting in the railway station
Got a ticket for my destination, mm-mm
On a tour of one-night stands
My suitcase and guitar in hand
And every stop is neatly planned
For a poet and a one-man band

Homeward-bound
I wish I was homeward-bound
Home where my thought’s escapin’
Home where my music’s playing
Home where my love lies waiting silently for me

Paul Simon is writing about home, the place where he is secure, accepted and loved. It’s the familiar place where he belongs. Home is also the people that create those feelings, those who create consistent, dependable, loving relationships.

‘Home’ is usually seen as relating to family; I’ve seen it in a local pub, in our ‘Men’s Shed’, in church, at a football ground, in school, at our community theatre. It’s about where folks are accepted, where there are loving relationships, where individuals can find identity and be themselves.

Every day’s an endless stream of cigarettes and magazines
And each town looks the same to me
The movies and the factories
And every stranger’s face I see
Reminds me that I long to be Homeward-bound…
Although this was written sixty years ago it, the picture of loneliness, insecurity and home-lessness is still resonates today. Life’s tough. I’m isolated, searching for reality and reliability, surrounded by unfamiliar strangers. But there is something better somewhere. I’m on a journey to that place that I call home, where problems may not be resolved, but I can live with them. It’s a place I stop can running and fighting; I can be still and find peace.

Tonight I’ll sing my songs again
I’ll play the game and pretend, mm-mm
But all my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity
Like emptiness in harmony
I need someone to comfort me

Homeward-bound
I wish I was homeward-bound
Home where my thought’s escapin’
Home where my music’s playing
Home where my love lies waiting silently for me
I hear ‘Homeward Bound’ through my Christian filter. Currently reading the story of Job… Job lost his possessions, family and status. What he lost most of all was home. His wife and friends turned against him. Arguing with people and with his God he was isolated and alone.

The Old Testament temple was to be a spiritual home for God’s people ‘Even the sparrow has found a home…’. In the New Testament we’re presented with church not as a place but as a community of diversity, inclusion and unity where all can find their home and feel at home.

And as I get older, as I talk to elderly Christian friends, I’m thinking more of heaven, the place that Jesus has prepared for me, where there’s no loneliness and insecurity. It’s my eternal home – I’m Homeward Bound.