Homecomings

What makes a house a home?

An almost straightforward question, right?

But, dig deep, and it reveals a mystery.

Home isn’t a structure. It isn’t relationships. It isn’t even family.

No, home speaks to yearnings, desires, fulfillments, feelings of safety and security.

When these are absent, we might call a place home–but is it . . . really?

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Often in the spiritual life, people talk about being at home with themselves. A strange metaphor, in many ways.

But consider the opposite, and we catch a glimpse of what it means.

Who hasn’t lived through embarrassment? Who hasn’t felt shame? Who hasn’t agonized in moments when conversation or relationships just seem impossible?

It takes supreme comfort to come through such moments and emerge relatively unscathed.

Who possesses such quality!?

Can a person simply be at home, no matter where they are, no matter who they meet?

Can a person give others a sense of home, no matter who they are, no matter where they meet?

(Many of us have met at least one person who sets us so at ease that somehow we tell them things we’ve never told anyone else before)

It’s a quality, something about how such people engage life, something about how they bring life, something about . . .

. . . and there it goes again . . .

. . . the glimmer, the glimpse, it all comes in fragments, in moments, in something beyond . . .

Beyond . . .?

Yes, beyond. Beyond the humdrum day to day monotony of dishes and children and laundry and errands and work and play and learning and earning, giving and forgiving.

It’s beyond all those things because it’s in all those things.

Home lives in and through us and grows around us. It’s for us and against us, nurturing and challenging, fertilizing and pruning us.

Home pushes and pulls, it laughs, it cries, it smooths, it storms, it brings, it removes.

Home stays with all of this, because it is all of this . . . and more.

At some point, we all need to come home.

Who, where, and what is yours?

Disclaimer: The advice and suggestions offered on this site are not substitutes for consultation with qualified mental or spiritual health professionals. The perspectives offered here are those of the author, not of those professionals with whom readers might have relationships as clients or patients. In crisis situations, readers are encouraged to contact these professionals for appropriate support and treatment if needed.