Home Sweet Home

Home Game    Home Field Advantage     Sweet Home.   I’m Home  Coming Home

My home…. Never has the idea of home become so important and omnipresent in our culture.  Homeless has become a seemingly unsolvable and growing problem.  Staying at home because of a pandemic has focused us on the quality of our home life.  We teach from home; we work from home; we create from home, we sleep, eat and stay at home -----

I have been fortunate when it comes to a home or being at home.  I arrived recently in an airplane and headed to a home but not my home.  Until now I have always had a home.  A place to put my stuff.  Sometimes I owned a home, sometimes I was living at home or I rented a home.  But I always had a home.  Currently I do not.  I am living in a home due to another person’s incredible generosity.  But it is not my home.  The drawers are full of their stuff – not mine.  It is different when traveling.  I was just staying at a hotel for the last three weeks.  I never sensed any discomfort.  The drawers were empty.  I wasn’t concerned about storing extra stuff because I had brought just the things I needed.  I knew where my things were going because there was empty space for it.  Whether I had one suitcase or ten, my stuff was manageable because I controlled the space.  I am not complaining as the home I am staying in is beautiful and in a lovely area.  It was the realization that my things were in multiple suitcases and that underscored the transitory nature of my existence.  Although comfortable, I was not at home.

When I travelled, which was a lot, I would unpack when I came home.  I think it was a subconscious attempt to secure my territory.  To comfort myself in knowing that my stuff belonged in certain places. I was reaffirming that it was my place and a place for my things.  In this era of home and the importance of home, recognizing that home also affirms your presence in the universe as your things are not scattered -- they belong.  In a season that focuses on the home it is a good time to think about its importance.  Some people will have large homes; modest homes; beautiful homes; just barely homes but they are home regardless of size or quality. Many people will not have a home.  For those that do, all of their stuff will have a place and that place is just for those things.  Some people will never have a chance to experience the security of having that place, that home.  Recognizing the insecurity of living out of a suitcase or a car or any other transitory place is an assault on one’s understanding that place in the world comes from the fact that we belong in a place and that place holds our things.  When you take that away it brings insecurity and doubt. Helping others establish a place for their things is giving them the confidence and the safety to extend beyond the home to grow and succeed.

This holiday season, more than ever I will be thinking about home.  Perhaps we should all be thinking about how fortunate we are to be at home- to be stuck at home- to not be able to leave home.  For too many of us there is not that opportunity to exam or experience the security of knowing that our stuff has a place.

“Our house is very, very fine house with two cats in the yard life used to be so hard. Now everything is easy ‘cause of you and our house” — Crosby, Stills & Nash

Merry Christmas…