Can you go home again?

A number of years ago, I left my home in northeastern Tennessee. I am, after all, a member of the clergy and one either goes where the churches are or one plants and pioneers a new church. In those days, I went where the opportunity presented itself which, in 1980, was in Colorado and, in 1983, to Georgia.

Author Thomas Wolfe once wrote, “You can’t go home again.” Recently, however, I spent the better part of a week in Kingsport, the hometown of my youth. I found myself driving around the area remembering, reflecting, and rediscovering the hills and valleys of the first two decades of life.

I had forgotten how breathtakingly beautiful the land really is. The first thing that strikes one about the area in which I was raised is color. The dominant color is green — green of all shades from a thousand varieties of lush vegetation. In the springtime, wildflowers, blossoming trees, and carefully cultivated plants in well-tended lawns add to the beauty in an explosion of rainbows of color.

As I drove through the outlying areas, farmhouses that have served several generations stood near ancient barns and fields that were still homes for horses and cows who grazed on the seemingly endless supply of grass.

I rediscovered how much water was hidden by the trees in Tennessee. It seems that nearly every country church is erected next to or near a stream, creek, or brook. Some were so slow-moving as to appear utterly still. In others, the water flowed so rapidly that the rocks under the surface had all been smoothed and rounded by eons of relentless pressure. Life teemed in and near these streams.

I could imagine generation after generation of believers making the joyful walk from the church sanctuary to the flowing water near the property and reverently, yet with songs and expressions of prayer and praise, stepping into and being placed under the waters to receive the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.

One also notices the churches — thousands of churches — ranging from Roman Catholic to Methodist, to 17 different shades of Baptists, to the more recent charismatic fellowships — and everything in between.

Sunday, for the most part, is still a holy day, reserved for God and family, with a little pro football and NASCAR thrown in during the afternoons. County radio stations still outnumber rock and roll stations, although there is also an ample offering of both Christian and public radio.

And the mountains! It is small wonder that the ancient Israelites often sought God on the mountains. But in eastern Tennessee, the mountains are bursting with trees and foliage. Look in any direction, and the mountains are there.

The mountains are rich with the history of the Cherokees and other tribes, the Colonial settlers, the battles of the War Between the States, the immigrant Scots, English, Irish, and others. But these hills and valleys also are home to a unique culture that is not so much “Southern” as it is “mountain.”

“My people” do not really have a drawling Southern accent. It is, instead, a distinctive, slightly twangy, mode of speech that starts around Knoxville, travels eastward toward Asheville, and heads north to Roanoke.

I can be anywhere and instantly recognize the dialect of home before four words are spoken. But do not underestimate these people. They are bright, hard-working, tough, canny, innovative, hospitable, patriotic, and God-fearing folk.

The area is home to a number of colleges and universities but, regardless of where or if one went to college, on Saturdays in the fall, the region turns from green to orange and white as the rabid fans of the University of Tennessee Volunteers pack one of the largest stadiums in the country and, in homes, the TV is tuned in to watch the vaunted Vols seek the championship of, arguably, the toughest football conference in the nation, The Southeastern Conference.

The fans stand when the national anthem is played and give near equal reverence to the Tennessee fight song, “Rocky Top.”

Tennesseans are proud of the fact that more Tennesseans than Texans died in the Alamo and that Sgt. Alvin York and Davy Crockett are native sons.

I am a product of these hills and of these people and that fact fills me with both pride and humility. Once in a while, we really do need to go home again. Thomas Wolfe was wrong.