On Home: A Conversation with Christina Crook
On unmooring, leaning in, and heart expansion.
1. What can you tell me about your relationship with the word ‘home’?
Home is a complicated word for me. There’s the childhood home on Third in Queens Park, New Westminster, BC. The cherry red trampoline. The annual Hyack parade. Sitting cross-legged beneath the park’s leafy canopy, my brothers and I prying open chestnuts, sharp shells giving way to smooth treasures in our hands.
Then, there was the sea of vacant houses. Temporary “homes” that served as landing places as my mother - now my sole primary caregiver - navigated single parenthood — by choice. Visits back to my dad and older brothers every other weekend served as an anchor in those unmoored years.
I’m not sure anywhere has ever felt as right as that first home.
2. Over time, you have called many different cities home. Is there one that you feel had an outsized impact on your formation as a person.
I have lived in numerous cities — New Westminster, Vancouver, Burnaby, Queenstown (New Zealand,) Bowen Island, a short stint in Chiswick (London, UK) and now Toronto.
In university, I lived in a variety of shared accommodations in Vancouver but the “Tea House” as lovingly called it stands out from the pack. Nestled on the south end of the city between Main and Fraser, we packed up to eleven girls into that two floor home. Here, we studied, cooked (terribly,) prayed, spurred one another on in faith and shared more mugs of tea than we could count, “tea grannies” that we were.
Vancouver, the Terminal City, has had an outsized impact on my personal and spiritual formation — it’s water is in my blood, bones.
—-
One damp January day, perched in English Bay, I pencilled this in my journal:
I want to write a poem
because this is who I am:
a sea creature.
the surface
just a cover
waiting to be turned.
inside:
legions, life.
Here, on these waters
the tankers sit patient
the rowing shells, kayaks,
small ferries, dragon boats
coast along with ease:
one point to another
courses marked but
not rigid
these little ships
i learned from this sea
how to move like these vessels
with purpose and with pleasure
the union of body
mind, heart
holy trinity
moving in concert,
upon, within.
—-
Open water swimming across Sasamat Lake. Running along the Pacific Ocean in Stanley Park. Rowing across the liquid black of the inlet— sun dawning over the mountains. Vancouver will forever be home.
And, now, so is Toronto.
3. What keeps you in the present city you call home?
We moved to Toronto when our daughter Madeleine was one and her first little brother was on the way —prompted mainly by the necessity of work but also the thrill of adventure. Canadians who live outside T.O. love to hate on the city due to its outsized influence on the country but, even at a young age, I had a hunch there must be something to this growing metropolis — 3 million and growing strong.
Around the age of 20, I booked a weeklong trip to help a friend — a rising fashion designer — during Toronto Fashion Week. I booked myself into a hostel downtown and explored the wilds of the city on foot. The eclecticism of Kensington and Roncesvalles and St Lawrence Market impressed me. The pulse of the city left a mark.
I looked forward to joining that heartbeat when I moved ten years later.
We chose the West Side because my only friend — Annie — and her family lived near High Park, the city’s largest green space. We quickly discovered that Toronto is a city of neighbourhoods — much more so than Vancouver. Torontonians define themselves by their pocket of city: their home. And we do today in our neighbourhood of The Junction. Though our home is in one of the biggest urban centres in the world, our children roam freely, we hardly drive and a green canopy covers our street.
We’ve leaned in — opening up our backyard for a neighbourhood pumpkin carving party (an idea cooked up with our church home group.) The party has been running for 8 years strong, now in our neighbourhood parkette. I’ve helped form a social committee for our street — hosting potlucks and an annual block party. Together, we do this, holding close to Ursula Franklin’s belief that "The dream of a peaceful society to me is still the dream of a potluck supper. The society in which all can contribute, and all can find friendship.”
For a long time, I feared the day when Toronto would feel as much like home as Vancouver. In large part because the majority of our family remains in British Columbia. I was afraid that an equal love for Toronto would feel like it a betrayal —like I betrayed my own heart.
But what I’ve found is something different.
My heart has expanded.
Like a mother to her children, my heart has made room. Love finds room. I now have two homes, and my life — our life as a family —is the better for it.
4. As an expert in digital health and wholeness, you spend quite a bit of time unpacking our addiction to the distraction of online life. How do you think that has shaped our contemporary understanding of home?
In my recent book, Good Burdens: How to Live Joyfully in the Digital Age, I talk a lot about the false promises of Big Tech (the Amazon’s, Meta’s and Uber’s of the world.) Through our constant digital interaction with these platforms, we are being formed in the belief that the path to the good life is through convenience, comfort and control. There is no vulnerability in these exchanges.
At our core, you and I are after one thing: love. But here’s the thing: love is the opposite of control. Laziness is the opposite of love. The way we experience love is through the inconvenient joys of relationship.
Warm relationships are our greatest source of happiness and relationships aren’t easy, they’re effortful.
Comfort, control, and convenience, the promises of our tech-obsessed world, aren’t going to get us where we want to go.
[Read Unfriending Convenience by Christina Crook in CT]
I believe this impacts our understanding of home because many of us are spending very little time cultivating our home and even less face to face with our neighbours. We’re too busy. It’s inconvenient. “Wasting time” at home and nurturing relationships in our local neighbourhood doesn’t feed the bottom line. There is no direct “ROI” for our bank accounts or social status. The only upside is belonging.
But belonging is what we need. More than ever. [Reference these news stories:]
- Modern parenting is so stressful that the U.S. issued a health advisory. Isolation and loneliness play a large part in this Isolation and Loneliness)
5. What notion of home is precious to you?
A place of peace, beauty, and rest.
6. What notion of home is painful for you?
It’s something that can be stolen away.
7. If you could return to only one address you’ve previously lived at, which would it be and why?
There is a clear winner: Grafton Bay, Bowen Island. An old family cabin sheltered on a hill, in a bay, on a small gulf island off British Columbia’s coast — the slowest place I’ve known.
Thinkers who have shaped my understanding of home:
Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, A Philosophical Inquiry
Eric Brende, Better Off
Kathleen Norris, Quotidian Mysteries
Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture
To learn more about Christina’s work supporting students, teachers, and families on their digital wellness journey, visit her site: https://www.jomocampus.com/
Welcome Christina to Substack as well! To read her publication, visit here:
