Film Friday Christopher Nolan’s latest film is based on Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, in which Odysseus, weary after ten years fighting the Trojan war, just wants to get back to his wife Penelope, and family. His journey is difficult and calamitous, as he encounters monsters, distractions, enemies and extremely bad weather. At times, coming close to home, he is then blown in the wrong direction and has to set his face towards home once more and begin all over. But he won’t give up, he is determined to make it home.
I once wrote a book called Runaway Boy about the prodigal son’s attempts to get home, it was a reimagining of a long and difficult journey. In Jesus’s original parable the young son leaves home having demanded his inheritance way too early, and then spends far too little time wasting it all. It’s only when he is lost and empty that he realises what he truly longs for. Home. His journeying took him to far places (and there’s nothing wrong with travelling of course), but it made him realise that all the time he was longing for the welcome of his father and a sense of belonging. For a place where he is truly known and understand.
It reminds me of another poem – TS Elliot’s Little Gidding – in which Elliot assures us that, when our adventuring and exploring are over, we come back to that place where we began, and understand it for the first time. We see it differently because of our adventures. And the voice calling us home is, he suggests, an epic of voice of Compassion and Meaning. A voice of Welcome and Hope.
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