The Feel of Home

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

The new Beatles film, “Get Back” has led me down a rabbit hole of learning more about Paul McCartney and his late-Beatle years. I just finished a very long biography of him, and was moved by one small story.

At the height of his popularity as a Beatle in 1967, Paul decided to buy a large mansion outside of London. His first real home.

He hired one of Britain’s more esteemed and trendy decorators to redo the entire place top to bottom. The decorator met the future “Sir Paul” to try and get an idea of what Paul wanted in a home.

The counter-culture is at its height. The decorator assumed Paul would want modernists furniture and art….bold designs that reflected the bold and modern times. (And the house most certainly ended up with lots of this…)

But Paul McCartney had one bit of very strange instruction for his interior decorator. He said he wanted the house to feel like the kind of house that has fresh cabbage wafting up from the basement.

That’s right…cabbage.
The vegetable.

What in the bloody WHAT….?!

What’s going on here? Some crazy drug fueled fog?

Not at all.

Once upon a time, way before Beatlemania, before anyone else knew his name, little boy Paul McCartney was raised by a single father in a small, modest Liverpool house. 

And Paul’s father, Jim McCartney, was a masterful gardener. Every year, Jim McCartney would take the tiny plots of dirt…just a few feet…behind their home, and turn it into verdant gardens brimming with fresh vegetables and…of course…cabbage.

As Paul McCartney prepared to move into his own mansion, he wanted *that* feel of home…fresh cabbage that reminded him of that safe home his Father had once made for him.
He wanted his new home to remind him of his most sacred home of childhood.

You identify with this, yes?

I would bet that in your home…this very week…you have put out some Christmas decorations. I would bet that some of them are quite old…and maybe belonged to your parents and grandparents. Or maybe you bought them when your children were young…or maybe you remember your parents buying them for you.

In my case, we put up this little table top display of three Santas…they’re about six inches high…and made of felt like you’d find in a Kindergarten classroom.

The Santas are a small rock group. They actually look like they could be the early Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show…playing drums, guitar….and, very strangely, French Horn. (Who knows…)

The point is that I have a memory of that display being up either in my house or my parent’s house for every year of my life.

It brings me great comfort and memory to see it every year.
It reminds me of home all the way back to my very beginning.

When we feel truly connected to God, it should feel like that sense of home.
It should feel like a safe place…a comforting place….a place where we are known and that we have always known….and where we FEEL known.

Thanks be to God that we at Kessler Park believe that ALL are welcome in God’s home.
All human beings —regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or economic circumstances— deserve the Hope, Peace, Love and Joy of this holy season.

Maybe some of you just don’t feel that sense of home at Church. Maybe it’s been months since you’ve visited us at Kessler Park.

Please know that you are most welcome to “come home” this Christmas. We are planning some beautiful in-person Christmas Eve services this year that should help remind you of God’s spiritual home inside your heart.

However confusing your path may feel…however unsure the year 2022 seems at this moment…know that God leaves the home light on for us.

This Christmas, God welcomes you home to a place that God has always had waiting for you.

Come celebrate God’s Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love with all the Kessler Park family.

Grace and Peace,

Eric Folkerth