Learning to be at home....

Wendell Berry, in The Unforeseen Wilderness, tells us the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful by which we arrive at the ground of our feet, and learn to be at home.  

As I stumble through the spiritual journey of life inch by inch I have begun to ask myself if home is a place or a feeling.  As a feeling, home could include being safe, comfortable, joyful, peaceful  and accepted as we are.   These feelings are not something you find outside of yourself,  they are something you bring with you wherever you go, so perhaps home is an attitude we have within ourselves.    Home is wherever we are, or as Berry says "at the ground of our feet", the place where we learn to be comfortable with ourselves.  It takes a long time for us to get there and notice that we are at home. 

Home is a place inside of ourselves where we’re brave enough to  bring our insecurities, our quirks, our fears, and our strengths and feel comfortable with them.  Sometime we walk past home because we’re going too fast and don’t take the time to notice where we are.  Other times, we take the time to notice that we are home and that alone transforms our day.   I was on retreat last week and I noticed that I was AT HOME but as the time came to an end there was a deep sadness about having to leave home.    Although I believe home is in my heart there are the people who help us feel most accepting of ourselves.  They enhance our awareness of being AT HOME, leaving them sometime feels like leaving home.

We often think of home as where we come from, or the place we know best, or the people we love most, where we stay each night or perhaps where we long to be.  Home may be all of this or none of this.  But we all know home is important and we recognize it when we feel it.  There is a longing in our hearts to be AT HOME.   Home can be a mixed bag for many of us and for some , where there is domestic violence, home is a dangerous and unsettling place.  Yet, even in those situations, the human spirit finds a way to create a safe haven within our hearts, a place that becomes like home.  Our dreams and fantasies of home may give us direction and calm our anxieties as we continually look for ways of satisfying our longing for home.

If we are blessed enough, home is also a place where those we love and those who love us wait for us and, as we come home to them, we are nourished and our life becomes fuller and warmer and more tender then we could ask or imagine.   

Our greatest gift and our greatest challenge is to be at home within ourselves but also to make for others a dwelling place where they are comfortable and “at home”. 

Welcome yourself home!  But also let your spirit look at others and whisper in their ear – Welcome home my friend, welcome home!

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