March 2009 (Vol. XXII, No. 3)

Winter blessings, dear friends! Home evokes a unique image and feeling for each individual: home is an origin, a place of belonging, a family or familial abode for everyone in every possible state, from humble hovels to rich mansions. For many of us, home is where our heart is, be it a haven of comfort or a challenging place endured. For all too many, home is on a bench, over a ventilator, under a bridge, or even with thousands of refugees in make-shift areas in the desert. To be homeless is a suffering, sorrow, and great unjust imbalance in the world. Home is often associated with our body. To be at home with who you are—body, mind, and soul—is pure blessing creating confidence and self-esteem. To remember that wherever we dwell, our true Home is in the Heart of Love ... we can never truly be alone, for Love is our eternal Home—here now or in Life beyond the Veil. And, one day, as the world recognizes that we are all interrelated, One in Being, Love will lead the way for individuals to share so that everyone will have a home to "nest" in.

In that moment, wherever it was became home

Sue Bender The Power of Prayer

A friend once told me about the "home" he and his father had as refugees in Europe during World War II. He, his mother, and his younger brother moved constantly from place to place. . . . Each time they arrived in a new place, his mother would open the small suitcase that held all their belongings and bring out the lace tablecloth she had used for their Friday night meals in Poland, before they were forced to leave and begin their flight. In each place the ritual was exactly the same. She would place the suitcase on a table, carefully drape the tablecloth over the suitcase, light a candle, and in that moment, wherever it was became home. This ritual was their prayer.

You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest

Li-Po

You ask why I make my home
in the mountain forest,
and I smile, and am silent,
and even my soul remains quiet:
it lives in the other world
which no one owns.

The peach trees blossom.
The water flows.

Coming home to one's Self

George Fowler Dance of a Fallen Monk

Home is a context that includes values, emotions, thoughts, special persons. Coming home to one’s Self in developed spirituality means something similar: a returning to renewed familiarity with oneness, to conscious union with a love from everyone and everything. Being consciously in touch with the One is to be immediately in touch with all things. This touch is not academic or abstract. It’s a light in the mind, but also a feeling in the heart. It’s an experience of the Spirit of all that is.

In the beginning of every silent meditative period

Flower A. Newhouse Silence

In the beginning of every silent meditative period, we send forth a glad call to the Eternal. It is so good to be able to go Home, even for a few moments! As our thoughts calmly turn from the outer to the inner world, we soar into communion with a joyful salutation addressing the Eternal as though standing on a high cliff with arms outflung to the heavens. By degrees we are included in the silence of the Infinite.

Our outward-going passion for that Eternity which is our home

Evelyn Underhill
The springs of the truest prayer and the deepest poetry, twin expressions of our outward-going passion for that Eternity which is our home, rise very near together in the heart.

In the womb of God we can both be and be born

F. Jerry Fraser

Our first home was in the womb of our earthly mother, but the womb of God is our "forever" home. It is a place in which we can live both now and forever--an "at home" place of rest. In the womb of God we can both be and be born, over and over again--constantly birthed into new being: new hope, renewed faith, and forgiving love.

When one is with God, there is nowhere else to go

Eileen F. Oster
God is love. God is unspeakable inner joy and bliss. To be with God is to be without needs, for all is fullness and union. When one is with God, there is nowhere else to go, for one is home. One rests in an inner cascade of peace and light. All yearning comes from our desire to join with God, to be full, at peace, joyous, and home. May you know Love in your heart!

The ache for home lives in all of us

Maya Angelou

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon

Edgar Mitchell

Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon in long, slow motion movements of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is the earth -- home.

As ruined as my house is

Thomas Merton

As ruined as my house is,
You live there.

When you rest in God, you just go home to yourself

Thich Nhat Hanh

When you rest in God, you just go home to yourself like the wave on the water. If the wave continues to search, she will never find the water. The only way to find the water is to go home to herself. When she realizes that she is water, she has peace. She practices resting in God in the here and the now. Although she continues to rise and fall, she is peaceful. We can practice Love as the ground of our being: Home.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting

William Wadsworth

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

In this life we are to become heaven

Meister Eckhart

In this life we are to become heaven
So that God might find a home here in us.

Even as the sparrow finds a home

Nan Merrill Psalms for Praying

Even as the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nesting place,
where its young are raised within
your majestic creation,
You invite us to dwell within your Heart.
Blessed are they whose hearts are filled with love...

They go from strength to strength
and live with integrity.