What makes you feel at home?
What is home? We talk a lot about ‘being at home’, ‘feeling at home’, ‘going home’ of what are we speaking? It is that feeling that we need not be anyone other than who we are. We are accepted, we are at our best without thinking about it.
If you live in another place, a distance from where you grew up, ‘going home’ speaks of a familiarity with a place, a people and a way of being. I am in Portadown, County Armagh, N Ireland as I write. This is the place I grew up and its people influenced me more than any other. There is a way of being that I am not sure I would ever understand if I hadn't grown up here. This also means I will not fully understand St Albans district even though I have lived in and around it for 28 years.
Then there are the homes of family members especially ‘the family home’ the place that you most occupied. An emotional memory hits you at every turn, that photo, that piece of furniture. I often speak of being like a ghost returning when I am jolted by such memories. I can walk from ‘home’ to town and see ghosts of myself at almost every age. One I see most often is myself aged 5 driving a Go-Kart around what was then a new estate.
A child needs to be nourished to strive. That includes the ability to make themselves at home and make a home for themselves. We often see these as externals, the building, the furniture. What manifests on the outside begins inside.
It is how we greet people, about what groups we seek out to join. This all flows from who we are as people. The tools we use in one place are likely to be the tools we use in another.
The first letter to the Corinthians states that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit ( if you believe it) which reminds us that our bodies are a home perhaps not only for the Holy Spirit but also our spirit.
Jesus said as he left his disciples that he went to prepare a place for them ‘ ….for in my father’s house there are many mansions’. Perhaps as we prepare ourselves here to ‘be at home’ it is also preparing us for the place of residence for our spirits after this body ceases. How we live here is how we may live there.
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