What we speak becomes the house we live in.
This is the bright home
In which I live,
This is where
I ask
My friends
To come,
This is where I want to love all the things
It has taken me so long
To learn to love.
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.
As ruined as my house is,
You live there.
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.
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.
The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
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!
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.