The Oborne Place

One morning on my walk I stopped to chat with a neighbor who lives down where the road splits and crosses over the Ditch. I’ve talked with him before, one of those times being to ask for help in identifying a flat, very dead snake in the middle of the road. It looked like a little rattler to me, but he was sure it was a gopher snake. He was probably right, since I’ve never seen a gopher snake before, at least knowingly, and it didn’t have a rattle at the end.

I wasn’t sure if he remembered me, so I reintroduced myself as Kathy-who-lives-at-the-end-of-the-road-in-the-blue-house, done with an elegant wave of my hand in the direction of Sanctuary.

“Ah,” he said. “The Oborne place. I thought that was you, but I wasn’t sure.”

I simply nodded in consent.

It doesn’t seem to matter that we’ve owned Sanctuary for over two years now. Or that the Obornes hadn’t lived there for quite some time before we bought it. In the neighborhood, Sanctuary is still The Oborne Place.

I didn’t even bother to tell him that it is not The Oborne Place any longer, that it is The Broersma Place now, and that for short, we call it Sanctuary. It seemed, well, like it just wouldn’t be appropriate in a casual neighborly conversation where the purpose was to build friendship, not to irritate. But it did make me wonder how long it would take before we will have put in enough living - working and playing and laughing and crying and celebrating and mourning and planting and harvesting – before it will become The Broersma Place, the-one-they-call-Sanctuary.

Names are an interesting thing. Names are important. We don't like it when someone addresses us by the wrong name, or misspells our names (which, let me tell ya, has happened over a million trillion times with a name like ‘Broersma’). Names begin as a label that is given to us by our parents so they can tell us apart from our siblings, and then somehow they morph into an important part of our personal identity. Think about it. If your credit card gets hacked, they don’t call it name theft. They call it identity theft, which is serious indeed.

I bristle less and less when Sanctuary is identified as The Obourne Place. I would love for it to become known as Sanctuary, with, perhaps the further identifier of “you know, Ron and Kathy’s place.” I’m okay with skipping 'Broersma,' having determined from years of experience that only one out of a hundred can actually pronounce it (unless they are Ron’s relatives, of course) and less than one in two thousand can actually remember it.

But, when neighbors refer to The Oborne Place, I am reminded that I am a pilgrim in this world, a sojourner. God’s caretaker of the things He has entrusted to me for a specified time, whether they are people or houses or fruit trees or pets. And for some, probably most, of these things, I have taken on the role of caretaker after those who have come before me have moved on, or passed them on to me, or been called into eternity.

Sanctuary has a history that predates us. Perhaps it is fitting to be reminded of that from time to time. One day (hopefully in the distant future) it will be our turn to pass it on. Maybe by then, when the new caretakers walk the neighborhood and stop to chat, people will say, “Ah, you live at Sanctuary, Ron and Kathy's place down there at the end of the road!”