It turns out you can go back after all

LOUISVILLE — When author Christy Berghoef took to the “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” microphone for an episode that dropped Thursday, hosts Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe asked her what it was like for her to return to a place she once lived with “a different worldview and faith than the one you were raised in? How do we redefine ourselves when returning to places we call home?”

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That’s at the center of Berghoef’s most recent book, “Rooted: A Spiritual Memoir of Homecoming.” Her engaging conversation with Catoe and Doong can be heard here.

During the 59-minute podcast, Berghoef described the small town she was raised in, including being raised “in a pretty small container within that small town.”

“When I moved away, I was stretched in a number of ways,” that are described in her first memoir, “Cracking the Pot.”

“This book focuses on coming home,” she said. “Coming back has been grounding and very disorienting at the same time. It’s a bit like coming into a room and all the furniture has been rearranged.”

“It’s brought a mixture of grief and gratitude,” Berghoef said, “and a new kind of clarity.”

The grief came from mourning the loss “of shared language with the people at home, a shared identity, a shared understanding. It’s tough to come back and realize I just don’t fit anymore.”

Feelings of gratitude came from “the sense that my journey and my experience has brought me to a deeper kind of joy and freedom and compassion and, hopefully, humility,” she said. “Clarity, because when you step back and then step into it again, you can see it with new eyes, at least in my case.”

“I saw these are systems that shaped my beliefs and I can also see why I had to let some of those things go because of the realities I encountered outside of that small container I grew up in.”

Berghoef said she still clings “to the same values I was handed. But the expression of those values has shifted tremendously because of what I encountered in the world, because of people’s hardships and because of the human struggle that I’ve seen.”

“it’s hard for me to say I’m not this person anymore,” she told the hosts. “It’s about showing up with a kind of honesty about who I am, and also showing up with a love that envelops all perspectives — and also a new kind of humility and integrity about what I believe. It’s learning to hold space for others but not shrinking away from who I am.”

She said in returning to her small town, “I had to resist this urge to ether run away in fear … and I had to resist the urge to come back like a crusader, saying, ‘no, let me tell you how it is. You should all be like me! Look how enlightened I am.’”

Instead, she returned to the place “with the mentality of a pilgrim,” she said. “I am here with open hands. Those open hands represent my willingness to give of who I am and also to receive other people and their journeys.” Reciprocal respect and mutuality were not values she learned growing up “in my small container, and so in that way it’s a different way of expressing the faith,” she said. “I think home is where we can show up with grace despite our differences.”

“That’s when I know I’m home,” she said, “when I can be who I am and they can be who they are and we have grace for each other and we try to understand each other. That’s become home for me.”

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In her book, Berghoef differentiates between being in the world and in the Earth.

“When I refer to the world, I’m talking about the people and systems, all this chaos,” she said. “When I talk about the Earth, I’m talking about the natural world. I have found it’s so important for me to have one foot in the Earth at all times and one foot in the world at all times.”

She used to find herself vacillating. “I would be in the world working hard and fighting for justice, right-sizing systems that are upside-down and harming people, all in, and then I would get burned out, exhausted, angry and frustrated,” she told the hosts. “Then I would leave all of it and retreat to the Earth, and for me that’s the literal ground.” Berghoef grew up on a 40-acre flower farm, “this lovely, magical space” where she felt renewed and strengthened as she worked the soil.

However, “I find I can be in the Earth for only so long,” she said. “I know what’s going on out in the world. The beauty ceases to be beautiful for me because I know there’s so much suffering.” When she strikes the balance she seeks, “I’m receiving wisdom and instruction from the Earth on how we ought to be living in the world, and I can also be working in the world in a balanced way.”

While backpacking in Scotland, Berghoef found herself watching big snails that carried their home on their back. “Everywhere they go, they’re home,” she said. “I thought I could learn something from those snails.”

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“We could talk about home and rootedness all day,” Catoe told her, inviting Berhhoef to say a little more about her book.

Finding that balance is “woven throughout the book,” she said, and “there is a thread of ‘I’m coming home, I’m different, I’m terrified, I don’t fit in, I know I’m going to be condemned — and all that did happen.”

“But I also rediscovered the good things about home and I showed people I still cling to those values. … This is who we [she and her husband] believe Jesus calls us to be, and this is the way we’re going to try to live, come what may. That’s woven throughout the book — trying to take seriously the life and teachings of Jesus.”

New editions of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop every Thursday. Watch previous episodes here.