Sunday
The archetypal idea of ‘‘home’’ points in two directions at once. Somehow, the end is in the beginning, and the beginning points toward the end. The One Great Mystery is revealed at the beginning and forever beckons us forward toward its full realization.
—Richard Rohr
Monday
In the metaphor of life as a journey, I think it’s finally about coming back home to where we started. As I approach death, I think the best way to describe what’s coming next is not “I’m dying,” but “I’m finally going home.”
—Richard Rohr
Tuesday
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Wednesday
Spiritual homesickness has become an almost daily dulling grief. It’s not depression or exhaustion. It’s an uncomfortable knowing that I’m coming to the end of one thing and the beginning of the next. I’m leaving and arriving. There’s fear, but there’s also joyful anticipation.
—Brené Brown
Thursday
Experiences of homecoming and depth become the pledge, guarantee, hint, and promise of an eternal something. Once we touch upon the Real, there is an inner insistence that the Real, if it is the Real, has to be forever.
—Richard Rohr
Friday
At home, there’s no need to guess whether we’re in or out, welcomed or not. Home always prepares a place with us in mind. How are you preparing a home of unconditional acceptance for yourself?
—Felicia Murrell
Week Nineteen Practice
Finding Home in Ourselves
Author Kaitlin Curtice writes about the sacred legacy of home:
I believe some of the most powerful places on earth are the rocking chairs on front porches, the benches nestled around dinner tables, the stones set up around firepits, and the rug at the base of a child’s bed. They are the places where we tell stories, where we examine what it means to be human and decide how much kindness we will show ourselves and one another.
Those are the places where we learn who God is and who God isn’t, where we are taught what kind of lives to live, where we learn about how the children and the elders are connected and find the Sacred in their everyday experiences because they are leaning in and listening with their whole beings.
May we always return to the places where the stories begin, to challenge them, to accept and honor them, and to whisper to ourselves and one another that we are always, always arriving.
Don’t forget,
my love,
to live.
Don’t forget
to bury
your toes in sand
and leave the car keys
and laugh at oddities.
Don’t forget to marvel
and feel despair,
to sense danger
and run from it.
Don’t forget
to take chances,
to climb mountains
that no one believed
you could climb.
Don’t forget
to love yourself,
all of you,
from every season
and every place,
because you never know
when they will
come knocking for
a cup of coffee
and an overdue hug.
Don’t forget
that you are alive
right now
until you won’t be,
and even then,
don’t forget
how beautiful
it was to
call yourself Home.
Reference:
Kaitlin B. Curtice, “What Our Seasons Teach Us,” Oneing 11, no. 2, Falling Upward (Fall 2023): 95–96. Available in print and PDF download.
Image credit and inspiration: Esther Avdokhina, Untitled (detail), Russia, 2020, photo, used with permission. Click here to enlarge image. Each of us has the capacity to create home within and for ourselves.
