It’s not just that the past is with us, but that it persists in ways that grate against our present. This is why you can’t go home again:8 because the you that arrives is not the you that left, and the home you left is not the home to which you return. The raucous welcome-home party for the prodigal won’t immediately undo the habits formed in a distant country. But pieces of home went with the prodigal into that distant country, and it was that embedded history that served as his wake-up call to who he was, pulling him homeward.
