Home is both a beginning and the end. Home is not a sentimental concept at all, but an inner compass and a North Star at the same time. It is a metaphor for the soul. – Richard Rohr
I’m thinking about home this month. My kids were away from home for their first time at a two-week sleep-away camp. While they were gone, I had big and varied ambitions. I was able to do one of the big things on my list: clearing things out of our home and preparing it to be photographed. Over the past few years, as we’ve transitioned from elementary kids to middle and high schoolers, the creative wheels around real estate have started spinning in me again, asking what home will fit us best.
Incommunicado kids and emptying my house both took an emotional toll, but I am always curious about any deeper meaning behind my sadness or unsettledness. In both my waking and dream life it is always clear to me that the house is a metaphor for the body. I’ve also been thinking about what Rohr says, that home is a metaphor for the soul.
I admit I don’t feel very at home in my body right now, which I have heard is about right on track for those in middle age. What does it mean to feel like myself when at least the external version is changing? These changes feel less welcome and less easy to tweak than they used to. My impulse is to take care of my external self but simultaneously identify less with it. I am also enough a product of our culture that I have a deep fear of lack of relevancy and power should I disidentify with the physical too much.
In our culture we are taught to put Band-Aids on this discomfort (cosmetic enhancements) but as always rather than seeking a quick fix, I am here to learn. What does disidentifying with what I thought was “ME” have to teach me? Here, I may have to be dragged kicking and screaming to class (I keep making and canceling Botox appointments).
I’m also thinking of my home in this country. The current administration’s attack on the birthright citizenship guarantee in the 14th Amendment to our Constitution could make thousands of American children stateless – homeless – at the end of July. As a child the fourth of July was supersweet to me: picnic blankets, fireflies, and awe; as an adult the fourth of July always feels bittersweet. I know so much more, which right now always feels like both too much and not enough. And yet there is no other home for me, there never has been. The part of me who is a scrappy fierce fighter for my ideals is very American.
Dorothy’s journey home in the The Wizard of Oz has been discussed in countless ways; the piece I want to highlight today is that although Dorothy learns she had the power all along to return home (and maybe somewhere within her knew it), she had to go through the journey and be in beloved community with her companions to actually believe it. There’s a surface immature part of me that thinks one day I’ll get strong and steady enough to not need people so much. A deeper and wiser part of me knows that one of the truest things about life is that while only I can do it, I can’t do it alone. Letting myself, my life, unfold into this truth is a terrifying and necessary experience. If I don’t learn it along the way, surely the lesson will be waiting for me on the deathbed. I want to learn these lessons during the living years, so that I can have the benefit of them in this lifetime. That is part of why we engage in spiritual life.
My questions for you this month are 1) What do you need to do to be on your way home and 2) Who do you need to companion you in doing it? If those aren’t the right questions, tell me about home. What is home to you – not just the sights and smells but the meaning behind what feels like home? I look forward to hearing from you, always.
