“They hadn’t laid down when the folks in the city of Sodom surrounded the house—from the youngest to the oldest” (Genesis 19.4).
The screaming from the basement starts, as does the blood that seeps from the wall behind the headboard and runs down the stairs, the ghostly little boy who’ll bite anyone that comes too close, and the ghosts who keep reminding Margaret, fingers pointed to the boarded-up basement door, that “he’s down there.” It’s September, you see.
And it’s enough to make you consider leaving, perhaps even grabbing a suitcase and running for anyplace else. But, for Margaret, this is home, and why would you give up your home?
In the 2024 novel The September House by Christina Orlando, Margaret and her husband Hal found the perfect house a few years ago: a old, Victorian that they fell in love with. It’s got charm and character. And, outside the month of September, it’s a quiet, pleasant place to live.
I was lucky to pick up this book when it was released; so, I went in (as you should) knowing nothing about what lay between its covers. It’s since become an annual September read for me. Margaret’s almost deadpan narration of the strange goings-on inside her home during the first month of fall are equal parts absurd and mysterious.
Margaret notes a few times, in reaction to her bizarre living conditions, that you can get used to anything. And, she’s right. With time and choice, we can grow accustomed to about anything: from unexplained phenomenon to a pilot light that continues to go out.
This choice is, in my experience, pointed to as a detriment in the case of Lot and his life in the twin city of Sodom. It’s a place, you remember, so bad that God up and decides one afternoon to level the place. And, based upon its rather lacking hospitality toward Lot’s Divine visitors, you can kind of see why.
I can remember, particularly from High School Chapel sermons, hearing that Lot was an example of moral concession and compromise. He allowed himself to grow numb to the decadence and immorality of the city that surrounded him rather than pack up his family and get out of town.
And there is something to this interpretation. The story of Lot and his family can be read as a caution against growing numb to the world around us. It can be read as a warning against how easily a dehumanizing culture can become normal, and can draw us to become complacent.
I’ve seen, like you have, videos and photographs of life under oppressive regimes. Be it tanks in the streets of Tiananmen Square, or the murder of citizens in countries embroiled in civil war, or profiles of people living in countries where the government has turned against some portion of its people. And as I looked at those scenes and read the stories, I couldn’t help but wonder why they stayed. Why didn’t they leave?
It’s the question that sits in the background of the story of Lot and of Margaret. Why, amidst such chaos, don’t they just pull up stakes and move?
On some level I knew the answer to those questions, but it was The September House that brought them (forgive the pun) home.
Margaret and Hal’s house is not at all what any of us would want to experience. Be it screams in the night, unpredictable ghosts hiding in the rooms, or the flocks of birds that fling themselves into the house. The most logical response to its strangeness is to load the car and drive far, far away.
But what Margaret reminds us of in the story is the same thing that Lot and his family would have said: this is home. And home is worth holding onto, even when it isn’t ideal.
Certainly, there’s a financial side to this. Homes are places that are one of if not the biggest investments we make. But our investments are more than money. It’s about belonging to a place even as that place belongs to us. It’s knowing or at least recognizing the people on the streets that surround you. It’s knowing how the shade falls in the middle of summer and where the sun sets on the coldest days of winter.
These and many of reasons make them places that are sacred, that are worth fighting for—be that against supernatural forces or the ugly, human ones. It means understanding how others within our neighborhoods or across the globe feel the same way with the place they have come to call home, whether that’s a single-family dwelling or in a cluster of apartments.
Because that understanding reminds us that most of the people on this earth want only a place to sit down for dinner, to sleep in the cool night, and wake to find the people they know and love. And that understanding keeps us working for our part of the world and theirs for a world that all of us can call home.
Jesus, for a time you called this earth home, and you promised to return to it, aid us in transforming it into the place you dreamt of. We pray for the places we live—the buildings, neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries—and ask your aid in renewing them, transforming them into places all can call home.