I am sitting backstage in the Johnny Carson Theater at the Lied Center for the Performing Arts in Lincoln, Nebraska. Beyond the stage doors the cast of Home Land is performing for a full house. Already, we are halfway through the mutual journey we’re sharing. Tomorrow will be the last performance of Home Land, and on Saturday we’ll all return to the places we came from. But until that time the journey continues.
It’s a loaded word, “journey.” Over the past two days all of us have come to recognize a mutuality to our current situation—that, yes, we are all on our own journey, but together we are experiencing a collective one. I’ve sat and watched over the past two days, and I’ve seen how all of us have come together in a way that, with a tight and headstrong assurance, we are meant to be here.
Today, Annie, Maria, Teddy, LeRoy and I were sitting in local coffee shop called The Mill. I’ve come to learn quickly, despite any true knowledge of Lincoln, that The Mill is indeed what Christopher calls, “Lincoln’s coffee Mecca.” As we were sitting in the coffee shop Maria approached a young woman to ask about the local scene: the shopping, dining, and all the frontier kitsch we can get our “hailing-from-the-Big-City” hands on. As Maria and the rest of us talk to this woman we learn that she is working with a woman who is both working on a project about Sudanese refugees and writing a play about the same subject. Our eyes are fixed, but I glance at my friends around the table and see mouths open with flickers of amazement and recognition. Christopher’s play involves a Sudanese refugee who finds placement in a Lincoln home via the Heartland Resettlement Project. The woman wants to spend time with us, to talk to Christopher, to weave the paths of separate journey into a single walk. We are bringing people together, the people involved are mutually putting ideas into the world, and we laugh at the idea that it could ever be anything as benign as coincidence.
It doesn’t end there. Annie tells us a story of a dream she had that saves her infant son’s life. Over the past two days she has come forward as the one who would not write off the events of our days together as coincidence. The word “random” is stricken from vocabulary, and we all take that to heart as we look for signs that prove we are meant to be just where we are.
Jeremy, the only current Lincolnite among the cast, will be moving to a new home next Monday in another state, and he finds himself, just before leaving to redefine his notion of home, acting out Christopher’s words about home, about their shared homeland of Nebraska. I can’t speak for Jeremy, but how must it feel to act out an ode to his home, just before he gives a final bow to this home? This journey is for Jeremy
After a matinee performance for a local high school, Christopher tells us that a young girl approaches him and tells him that before seeing his play she was unsure of her choice of college, and after witnessing the performance she no longer questions that her home is Nebraska, and she no longer questions that she wants to spend her college years in her homeland. I can’t speak for that young girl, but how must it feel to gain an assurance in her place in the world. This journey is for that girl who no longer has to question.
As for me? This past Monday I finished my undergraduate career at New York University, and on Tuesday morning I came here, to this place. I’ll be leaving New York to head back to my home state of Mississippi next week. This week spent in Nebraska, between my home of three years in New York, and the home I come from, Mississippi, has forced me to think about home as well. After experiencing the events of this week I too, like the young Nebraskan girl, can finally recognize what home means to me. And for once my fears and reservations of finding a home between my two worlds are quelled, knowing that I can find home if I am willing to be brave enough to ask the questions, and remember to listen for the answers. This journey is for me.
As Christopher ends his nights with an audience, I say to you, Safe Home Everyone.
