Longing for a Homeland
Lynn Anderson
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 Howard Publishing
ISBN: 1582293538

Discover the Place You Belong.

All of us are wanderers. Seeking the place we belong. Longing for a land called home. Our souls feeling homesick.

Now I've been homesick since I was sent away to boarding school. Homesick even before the bus left the station. At age 9 I had to learn what leaving home meant & how to survive the ache of separation from my family, from the only people I knew who loved me. So the metaphor Lynn Anderson uses to describe our souls' search for family & home, resonates.

When I discovered I was adopted 3 years later, another kind of homesickness crept into my soul. No matter how many houses of worship I entered, how many sermons I listened to, how many prayers I uttered, it wasn't until decades later & on another continent that I found my path Home.

Longing for a Homeland is a delightful guide to finding your way home, no matter who your soul's parents are, or from which land you have wandered. Based on Lynn Anderson's personal experiences of his family's wanderings from Sweden to the prairies of Canada; his memories of stone circles near his father's farm where Chief Sitting Bull had sojourned before returning across the border to surrender & how the First Nations lost their homelands as Europeans flooded in seeking theirs.

Lynn Anderson weaves stories & journal entries of his search into a blanket of comfort & direction. He is a fine storyteller with a light touch, a humor & a perspicacity, that is gentle, lyrical & charming. He makes friends with you, walking a while beside you, quoting from the adventures of his life, of this vast American continent, from Ellis Island, from Moses' wanderings in the Bible, the creation of modern Israel, from singers of songs, writers of books, & the people he has met along the way.

& then the wandering takes a focus: the purpose of being alive. What were we sent here for? Explaining through Jesus' friends' stories of his teachings, Lynn Anderson begins to take us home ... to God.

Longing for a Homeland: Discover the Place You Belong is a keeper! A fascinating memoir of a prairie minister's sentimental journeys, teachings, wanderings & discoveries. I enjoyed his insights into the despair of our souls which can take no comfort from material things, only from the embrace of the light of spirit, purpose & affection.

Highly recommended! I could not put it down!

More from Lynn Anderson: They Smell Like Sheep: Spiritual Leadership for the 21st Century.
(08/29/04)

Rebecca