The Chicks (formerly known as Dixie) recorded a song called Wide Open Spaces, told from the
point of view of a young woman striking off on her own, chasing dreams and taking the test of
life’s lessons. There’s a line in the song that puts a lump in my throat every time I hear it,
because I can also hear the voices of my own parents:
And as her folks drive away, her dad yells, “Check the oil!”
Mom stares out the window and says, “I’m leavin’ my girl”
I’ve spent the last two years in a constant state of travel. There’s a sense of contentment that
settles over me when I’ve got good vibes on the playlist and a windshield filled with road in
front of me. The anticipation of the sights and surprises that lay ahead. In writing this devotion,
I reflected on why people leave home, and it made me think of two friends in particular.
Leonie left Germany in her early 20s—she was young and had family in the US to help her get
settled and life in NYC and later DC was a big adventure. She eventually returned to Berlin
where she married and is raising a family. Elena was at a different point in her life when she
decided to emigrate from Russia. It was the early 90s, Boris Yeltsin was in Moscow standing on
a tank in defiance of a coup, and Elena was walking out of St. Petersburg with her husband and
young son. A rumor had swept the city that tanks were en route, and hundreds of people were
seeking refuge in the forests outside the city. Elena later said she remembered thinking, “We
have to get out of this country.”
I imagine that some of the people we meet while in Lesbos will have a similar story to tell. One
described by British-Somali writer and teacher Warsan Shire in her poem, “Home”,
no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here