The Notion of Home

My childhood home.

It’s a bittersweet thing, to have the means and ability to travel on borrowed wings (and buses) to visit with people I love. It’s bittersweet to fill up with deep moments of words and stillness, of hugs and held hands, to have all of that and then to move on, leaving it behind. It’s bittersweet because it aches as much as it heals.

I think about the history we have on our ancestors, knowing that they lived in small groups in cities until someone was the first to leave their family behind, and start over somewhere new. And I know how it feels to move away and not have that support next door, or across the city. How must it have been before the automobile? Before the train, when five hundred miles meant a greater distance from one house to another?

Life is a series of flights, of migrations away from love while still moving towards it. We are always moving forward in spiraling circles, and when the love runs deep, we find ourselves returning to it to visit, even as we move away from it. Springs, coils, spirals. I am blessed to have left bits of my heart in so many beautiful places.

I am on my way home, on a bus, writing these words in a small notebook I carry with me. I was visiting home and I am on my way home. People get confused when I use that word for my destinations. When camping, I often call my cabin, tent or site home as well. Who does that? The truth is, I am home in me. Home is me. Home is where I am and who I love. I am on my way home and I am leaving home behind me, all at the same time.

When both things are true, when you accept that both things are true, the deeper notion of truth opens up worlds in your universe. I can be right without it having to mean that you are wrong. I can remember that what is known was once unknown and I can stare into the voids without fear, but with wonder and curiosity.

Across this threshold, possibility becomes hope and hope becomes the light I chase as it traverses the sky. Wherever I am, wherever we are, whatever home I inhabit, I mark time by the rising and setting of the sun. And yet, I know there is more to life than what I can see in my daily experiences. I can’t see it, I don’t see it, but I know it.

The light I watch makes a full revolution as the earth turns around the sun. Even when I can’t see it, I know it is still there, on the other side of the darkness. On the other side of the globe, someone else is watching that light when I am not. I don’t know them but I know they’re there. They also call it hope.

What else don’t we know? What else, and how much, lies beyond what we know?

“Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.”

~Yoda, Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back

Our flesh is what’s known to us, binding what we call spirit in the edges of our skin. We spend our lives exploring them, discovering their purpose. And when we are satisfied with the flesh, we wonder at all that lays beyond it.

We gaze at the stars and we dream of their seemingly boundless space. And as our thoughts drift into the void, we find their reflection pulling us deeper within ourselves to our center, our original self… our origin story. There is so much life there, so much promise lies within us. No matter how far we find ourselves from our path, we can always touch it again and open the way.

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

~George MacDonald, Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood

No matter how far we find ourselves from our path, we are never far from ourselves. Both things are true. We are the only home we will ever need. We carry it with us.

The earth rotates around the sun, the light in the sky I call hope. Be your own sun and shine. Share your light. Tell the people you love that they are your family. Breathe in. Let love be your greatest legacy. Let kindness be the only calling card you need. Every breath counts. Every choice matters. Every moment becomes part of your history. What story will you write?