c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) Two months after the deadline, I fill out forms for attending my high school reunion in August.

Why so late? I decided months ago to attend. But filling out the forms seems tedious. More than tedious, in fact, the forms raise disconcerting questions about “home.”

Name your “Spouse/Partner/Friend,” says the form, a reminder of how much our world has changed since the mythical 1960s. I applaud the sensitivity of reunion planners and am sad that “family” has become a political football.

Name your “Mailing Address,” says the form. Easy to do, and yet a reminder of how many “homes” I have occupied since leaving “home.” Who would have thought such an odyssey would ensue?

Searching for some link to permanence, the firm asks for cell phone _ a “mobile” number that is portable and therefore durable _ and for an e-mail address, which could safely remain permanent if slimy spammers would leave us alone.

I name my latest “occupation” and remember former occupations. I name my college and graduate schools, even though those experiences seem like distant resume chits to me. I name my children and their ages, as if ages would last.

Even this burst of form-filling energy expires, however, when I get to “Tell us about yourself.” Where do I begin? Should I be clever, or seek a perfect pre-death epitaph, or lay it all out, as if classmates wanted to know?

Like other classmates, I want to be known. I would love to think that childhood friends were curious about me. I’m not looking for long-overdue validation or for a rekindling of former intimacy. I just need to keep a stream of identity flowing. I once was a child, and while I am glad to be an adult, I want my childhood to continue mattering.

Dances under the stars at Westlake, long summer walks, cruises around the Ron-D-Vu, double dates, concerts, long-abandoned quests like bowling and miniature golf _ they are parts of who I am, and I need some people to remember those moments, for they are too complicated to explain today.

But there are risks to going home. There are risks to telling one’s story in its full updating. There are risks to building a bridge between today and yesterday. It is the risk Jesus faced when he returned to his hometown of Nazareth: the risk of rejection.

Not being allowed to grow up, not being allowed to change, not being allowed to show both new and bruised wings _ such risks keep many away. Discovering that some friends are “former” and aren’t deeply interested, discovering that some perceptions are frozen in time and unlikely to thaw _ such risks make “home” less than alluring to many.

How much did it break Jesus’ heart to return to Nazareth, filled with new power and a message to share, and then to be rejected, to be dismissed, to be locked into old labels, and to be rendered powerless? “Where did he get all this?” they asked, as if a world of empowerment which lay beyond their sight had to be bogus. “Is not this the carpenter?” they asked, as if an identity formed at 18 was the last identity allowed.

We remember Jesus weeping over Jerusalem and outside Lazarus’ tomb, but what tears fell when he came “home” and found that he had no “home”?

Jesus said such rejection happened to “prophets.” But it isn’t just prophets. It is all of us, when we try to claim the full span of our years and discover that some sections of the chain won’t accept being linked.

We need to see the mileposts and to know how each moment _ the sad and awkward, the happy and fulfilling _ made us who we are today. Schools make the mistake of thinking it is about them, and they exploit reunions for fund-raising. Yet it is about us and our yearning to be whole _ not a yearning to have lived perfect childhoods, or to have avoided every pimply gaffe, but a yearning to have lived, to have endured, to have tested the waters of first love, to have taken the risk of leaving home, and to have been shaped and reshaped by life.

DEA END EHRICH