Home by Another Way
Read Home by Another Way Online
Authors: Robert Benson
Praise for
Robert Benson
“In looking at his own life with candor and hope, Robert Benson helps us to look at our own. His words have the ring of truth.”
—F
REDERICK
B
UECHNER
, award-winning author of more than thirty books, including
Wishful Thinking
“Again and again, Robert Benson speaks to my heart.”
—L
UCI
S
HAW
, writer-in-residence, Regent College, and author of
Water Lines
Praise for
The Body Broken
“The pathos of God for the torn and tearing body of Christ has seized the heart of Robert Benson. This book is a pure, passionate, and prophetic cry to transcend all division and discord into reverence of one another in obedience to the Master.”
—B
RENNAN
M
ANNING
, author of
A Glimpse of Jesus
“The
Body Broken
takes us on a journey for the sake of the journey itself, and in the process, it teaches us about loving one another, not by imperative, but by example.”
—from the foreword by J
OHN
F
ISCHER
, author of
Love Him in the Morning
“In a thoughtful and beautifully written volume, Benson challenges each of us to reexamine what it means to be a follower of Jesus in the diverse body of Christ.”
—D
AVE
B
URCHETT
, author of
Bring ’Em Back Alive
and
When Bad Christians Happen to Good People
“It is a great irony that all of us who love Jesus and know that he prays for us, even now, that we ‘may all be one,’ have such a difficult time loving one another. Robert Benson doesn’t exactly tell us how to do it, but he does tell an honest story about the ways that Jesus’s prayer is getting worked out in his life.”
—E
UGENE
P
ETERSON
, professor emeritus of spiritual theology, Regent college
LSO BY
R
OBERT
B
ENSON
Between the Dreaming and the Coming True
Living Prayer
Venite: A Book of Daily Prayer
The Night of the Child
The Game: One Man, Nine Innings, A Love Affair with Baseball
That We May Perfectly Love Thee
A Good Life
The Body Broken
H
OME BY
A
NOTHER
W
AY
P
UBLISHED BY
W
ATERBROOK
P
RESS
12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921
A division of Random House, Inc
.
While this is a work of nonfiction, some proper names have been changed at the discretion of the author.
Copyright © 2006 by Robert Benson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
W
ATER
B
ROOK
and its deer design logo are registered trademarks of WaterBrook Press, a division of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Benson, R. (Robert), 1952-
Home by another way : notes from the Caribbean / Robert Benson. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-49978-3
1. Spirituality. 2. Vacations—Caribbean Area. 3. Benson, R. (Robert), 1952- I. Title.
BV4501.3.B465 2006
248.4—dc22
2005034964
v3.1
This book is for Miss Jones,
originally of Merigold, currently of Sunnyside,
and of St. Peter’s Parish as often as she can be.
Wherever she is going next, I shall be beside her.
And it is, as always,
for the Friends of Silence and of the Poor,
wherever and whoever you may be.
It is a place for being, not doing.
For the most part you just watch.
You feel the sun on your skin.
You do the things God intended.
—H
ELEN
S
TEVENSON
OneThe first cold wind of winter
is flapping in my clothes,
showing me the way with the
direction that it blows.
—J
AMES
T
AYLOR
T
he first time we came to this part of the world, the man who was supposed to meet us at the airport was not actually at the airport when we arrived.
It was raining and it was dark. Our luggage was trapped in customs because it was so late. The customs man had evidently gone to get something to eat. There was a person or two trying to be helpful to us in a language the guidebook had promised was going to be English but turned out to be unlike the sort of English we had heard before.
We had been traveling for fourteen hours by then, and the fifteenth hour did not look promising. Especially to a couple of folks who were trying to celebrate a wedding anniversary.
We were married in the month of October on a bright and sunny afternoon. To celebrate our wedding, we
made the long drive from our home in Tennessee to the coast of Carolina. We spent a week together in a cottage on an island in the Outer Banks, doing not much more all week than reading books and taking naps and lying in the sand.
When our first anniversary came around, we talked it through and decided that rather than buy each other gifts every year to mark the occasion, we would give each other the week off and head for the beach again. It has been a dozen or so years now, and the amount of time has gone from a week to ten days to two weeks, more if we can pull it off. Travel times and weather and last-minute business that had to be done have weighed in on our carefully laid plans from time to time, so we have had to change beaches a time or two over the years. But whenever late October comes around now, we are ready for the beach and the company of just each other.
We still do not do much while we are at the beach—we eat, we read, we take naps, we play cards, we watch the sun set in the evenings, we sit in the water
and have long conversations, except for when we sit in the water and do not say anything for hours at a time. We do some other stuff too, but I will not mention those things here. My kids might read this, and the thought of such things with their parents involved is enough to drive them screaming from the room. I have learned over the years how easy it is to empty a room of teenagers at the drop of a hint. They are happy with the concept of their parents being in love; they are not happy with the thought of their parents expressing that love in certain ways.
Because of the kind of work we do, our summers can be too busy for a vacation.
Vacation
is the term applied to a trip that involves just the two of us. Family trips are not really vacations, except in the strict sense that we have vacated one set of premises and moved the general hullabaloo right along with us.
When we can squeeze in some time for some time
away in the summer, we take the children and several of their friends, and sometimes even other folks we know will come and join us. It can be difficult in the summer months for us to get all of the planets aligned so the two of us can go somewhere alone together and actually vacation in the full sense of the word.