You know the feeling, I'm sure, of unlocking the front door and easing across the threshold. Your luggage contains more dirty than clean clothes, and you feel road weary or mileage mangled. Yes, you have had a great time away, being with family or friends or seeing new sights or even just putting up your feet in a new location. But it is time to be home.
I expect to feel that sigh of relief when I return home from a trip, just as I did recently, but what about the routine returns? How do you feel when you pull up in front of your house after a Target run or maybe after a pleasant dinner out with friends or even just a walk in the neighborhood?
When we lived at Sweetwater Farm in Ohio I felt my heart lift each time I turned onto our road, even before spotting our early 1800's farmhouse. Every single time, whether I had been gone for a week or so or just to the grocery store. My heart had found home.
Sweetwater Farm was my soul place. For this pilgrim, Sweetwater Farm was my sacred destination, but eventually it was time to return home.
Getting here took a few years--some pilgrimages are like that. We had good years along the way. Our life in Madison was full of many riches and our large foursquare style home with its welcoming front porch house suited us well.
Now, however, I am home. Really home, and each time, each time, I return to our small home on a tree lined-urban street I feel that same lift of my heart I felt when I approached my beloved Sweetwater Farm. There is a difference, however, for now I know I carry home with me wherever I am.
I am home.
An Invitation
Where is your soul place? Have you returned home? I would love to know.
Dorothy had it right—there really is "no place like home." Like many people, over the years I've had to adapt where home exactly is for me. I once had a place perhaps not unlike your Sweetwater Farm. In some ways, it remains a home away from home, even though I have not been there for many years.
ReplyDeleteI must confess that I feel "at home" in our current residence in St. Paul (as well as our faith community at Gloria Dei). However, there is a certain part of me yearning to go elsewhere. Maybe we'll never go. That's why I believe "home" is where I make it . . . and I leave the yearning to reside in the parousia and the hereafter.
Nice post!
- DDM
Thanks for reflecting on your "home." And for reading the post. I so agree about Gloria Dei, by the way.
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