by Brian Carpenter
I've always craved security and stability in my life. I don't know why. Maybe it has to do with my childhood. Maybe it's just the way I was put together by God. Probably a little of both.

 There are many good things about this, I think. It means that I'm not easily bored. I do not find it difficult at all to delight in the mundane and the ordinary. It means that in one way I am very easily satisfied. All I need is a good book and a comfortable, quiet place. If there's good coffee or tea available, so much the better. It means I can look forward to Fall each year with exactly the same level of anticipation as I did the year before.


It also means I hate vacations. When I go somewhere else, even for a few days, I inevitably find that the only place I really want to be is my own home. I like my own bed and my own pillows. I like the blue earthenware coffee mugs that belonged to my Grandfather. I like my worn leather chair with the perfect Brian-shaped dent in the cushion. If I have to go somewhere else, I prefer to go visit family. If I can't have my own comforts, at least I can have the comforts of someone I love.


I love the charm of the familiar. The streets of Hayti, Missouri, where my grandparents lived, are poured concrete with sticky tar in the joints between the concrete pads. When you drive down those streets at 25 miles an hour there is a rhythmic thump, thump, thump as your tires roll over the tar-filled joints. It's almost like a heartbeat. When I was a child in the backseat of my Grandparent's Buick Electra 225, that sound meant that we were almost home.
In June of 2007 I went to the PCA's General Assembly in Memphis, and I drove past Hayti. I had to get off the interstate and drive down South Fourth Street past their old house just to hear the thumps again. It was delightful. Don't tell my Aunt Diane or my cousin David, though. My Aunt lives in my Grandparent's old house, and my cousin lives in her old house, two doors down. I simply didn't have any time to visit, so I didn't tell them I was coming. I feel bad about that, but there it is.


Mostly what this craving means that if you leave me in one place long enough, and allow me to get comfortable, I will seek out and find its peculiar charms and pleasures, however humble they may be, and I will begin to thrust my roots down into the local soil. I will walk its streets and memorize them. I will seek out the architectural pleasures to be found there. I'll find the little shops and the out-of-the way patches of wooded ground or meadow. I'll know which of the old mainline churches in town has the prettiest woodwork, and where all the backroads lead...
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