HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

out here on the rim, when it's cold like this there's not much to do beyond read and drink. drinking is easy. surfing the intertubes comes close enough to reading to qualify, but for real sport it's the good old fashioned solid material that cuts best. the latest issue of newsweek arrived yesterday, or it may have been monday, and the writer I first spend time with is lisa miller.

her religion column this week (www.newsweek.com/id/228722) ends with a blanket statement that I think encapsulates a whole range of thinking, not only of the homeworship pre- and postmillenials she's writing about, but of most everyone born in the past 50 years: "they're yearning for a church that's more homemade." my experience both as a seeker and a religious leader has been that ity's some sense of the real that turns people on, even more than routine or veracity. when I was eating with the krishnas, our conversations didn't revolve around the truth as much as around the authentic.

the questioners of brad roberts' "god shuffled his feet" (http://espanol.video.yahoo.com/watch/2853050/v2152554) aren't looking for absolution or ultimate truth. they're asking what their experience is going to be like and will it be anything like what they're already familiar with. that seems to be what we respond to best, the sincere and the real. if not ultimate reality, then the closest we can understand to it. for most people, the homey is the most familiar and the center of our lives: it's here we're anchored. that's why dorothy wants to go back to kansas and charlie pride wants to leave detroit city.