This quote, “We’re all just walking each other home.”

A lady I follow on Instagram posted the quote and shared, “Such a great reminder that we need each other. Are you surrounded by a community that reminds you who you are, that supports you and loves you, that you support and love?” 

In the book Beginner’s Pluck by Liz Bohannon the title of the last chapter is “Walk One Another Home.” She says, “We’re all just walking each other home. Sometimes we are in seasons of giving. Other in times of receiving. Usually some of both. Always just walking one another home.” She tells a story of traveling to Ethiopia by herself then getting incredibly sick upon her arrival and not knowing anyone other than the owner of the guest room she was staying in. He takes her to the hospital, stay with her through her treatment, returns her to the guest house, pays for everything, brings her food.  She said when she left, she wrote him a thank you note and put some money in it and slid it under his office door. He sent her an email that said, “Liz, I was sad that you left your money in order to settle your debts. I thought you are my good friend and so no need to bother to pay at all.” She says, “Here I was trying to settle the bill, make it right and get myself back up to ‘even’ when all he wanted to do was walk me home.”

A Jesus Calling says, “Sometimes My children hesitate to receive My good gifts with open hand. Feelings of false guilt creep in, telling them they don’t deserve to be so richly blessed. This is nonsense-thinking because no one deserves anything from Me. My kingdom is not about earning and deserving; it’s about believing and receiving.” 

Yes! Believing and receiving!!! Being able to assume the posture of open hands. Being able to give and receive without expecting anything in return. Acceptance.

We are created to receive God’s love for us and then share His love that flows through us with others. We must learn to be “at home” in ourselves. “At home” with God in us. From the place of knowing we are loved; we exemplify God goodness and grace here on earth with each other. We give to each other and receive from each other. From a place of love, not fear.

In the devotional Life of the Beloved Henri Nouwen says, “Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other, but does not create true intimacy. … Fear makes us move away from each other to a ‘safe’ distance or move toward each other to a ‘safe’ closeness, but fear does not create the space where true intimacy can exist….

To those who are tortured by inner and outer fear, and who desperately look for the house of love where they can find the intimacy their hearts desire, Jesus says: ‘You have a home…I am your home…claim me as your home…you will find it to be the intimate place where I have found my home…it is right where you are…in your innermost being…in your heart.’ The more attentive we are to such words the more we realize that we do not have to go far to find what we are searching for. The tragedy is that we are so possessed by fear that we do not trust our innermost self as an intimate place but anxiously wander around hoping to find it where we are not. We try to find the intimate place in knowledge, competence, notoriety, success, friends, sensations, pleasure, dreams, or artificially induced states of consciousness. Thus we become strangers to ourselves, people who have an address but are never home and hence cannot be addressed by the true voice of love.”

I googled “we’re all just walking each other home,” and found this article, https://transformationalpresence.org/alan-seale-blog/walking-each-other-home/, it says, 

“The verb ‘to heal’ comes from the old English word hælen meaning ‘wholeness.’ Healing is not about being sick and getting well. That’s called ‘curing.’ To heal is to come to wholeness – as an individual, as a family, as a company, as a society, as a country, or even as the world. It was Ram Dass who first helped me understand this true meaning of healing and its distinction from curing.

Transformational work often involves healing at some level. It’s about helping people and/or societal systems become whole again. Or, perhaps better said in today’s rapidly changing world, helping them become whole in a new way. Or helping them discover and experience a kind of wholeness that they have never known before.

When the subject of healing comes up, I often share two particular teachings that have been with me for many years. The first came from Stephen Levine, a wonderful poet, author, and teacher who we just lost in January. Years ago at an Omega Institute Conference in New York City, Stephen defined healing as ‘entering with intention and awareness that which you have avoided and run away from.’

…. It’s as if he was daring us to just go there – to step into whatever it is within ourselves that we have avoided so that we might come into our own wholeness.

The second teaching is from Ram Dass, who, in his book Still Here, defined healing as letting “what is” take you closer to God.

…….. A few weeks ago, I came across some other words of Ram Dass. It’s a quote that I had long ago forgotten, yet now won’t leave me alone:

We’re all just walking each other home.

… I know these words are about more than traveling and coming home. Ram Dass was talking about coming home inside of ourselves. He was talking about finding our wholeness – knowing who we are at the deepest and most profound levels of our being and building our lives upon that foundation.

We’re all just walking each other home.

We need each other. Certainly, we need time alone to know who we are, yet there are some things about ourselves that we can only learn in interaction with others. We need to be with other people and to experience life out in the world in order to know ourselves fully – to become “whole” persons. We provide the fodder for one another’s journeys. We take on various roles in one another’s plays on the great stage of life. And we create some amazing theater!

….. And so lately I’m asking myself: What if the people I encounter in daily life are all, in their own way, walking me home? Probably very few of them have any conscious awareness of the roles they are playing in my life script. Yet what if they are just playing their part in helping me come home to who I really am? What if they are helping me find out what it means to be whole?

In the same way, what if I’m also walking them home? What if I’m playing a role in their homeward journey? What role might I choose to play for them?

And how might I choose to be with them if I consider that, at least for the moment, we are walking our homeward journeys side by side?”

Galatians 5:6 says, “what is important is faith expressing itself in love.”

So, I wonder, who am I walking home? How is my faith being expressed in love? Specifically, what am I doing to love others, especially the people close to me? What is the evidence? Are people feeling loved by my words and actions?

So, friends, take a firm stand, feet on the ground and head high. Keep a tight grip on what you were taught, whether in personal conversation or by our letter. May Jesus himself and God our Father, who reached out in love and surprised you with gifts of unending help and confidence, put a fresh heart in you, invigorate your work, enliven your speech.  

2 Thessalonians 2:15-17 MSG

May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together—spirit, soul, and body—and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ. The One who called you is completely dependable. If he said it, he’ll do it! 

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 MSG

Who are you walking home? Who is walking you home?

May we walk with intention and awareness! 

Amen.