Homecoming

I love how dancing can be a shared expression, and I'm intrigued by how that tradition is kept from culture to culture and in different contexts. In reading Jeremiah 31:13 and reflecting on mourning traditions, I wanted to explore how music and dance can draw us out of grief and isolation, into joy and community.

While it is a focal point at a funeral, the human body has often been considered irrelevant to—or even the enemy of—a person's spiritual life. As I see it, the physical and the spiritual are closely connected and the body also deserves to be honored, so I wanted to acknowledge in this poem some of the ways we experience both grief and joy through our bodies.

In choosing the title, I was interested in the different meanings of the word "Homecoming." Within the African American church, it can refer to a funeral service (also called a Homegoing Celebration), based on the belief that earth is only a temporary residence and the deceased is going home to be with God; space is held for mourning a loss as well as for celebrating a life. Then there is the entirely separate tradition of schools welcoming alumni during Homecoming Weekend, the culmination of which is a dance. And of course, the reasons we go home to be with family are as varied as the emotions that accompany our returning. But to me, homecoming always carries a sense of reunion, as much as dancing in a communal way evokes an emergence of joy.