Thursday, August 30, 2007

Finding Home -


Within each and every one of us, there lies a place called “Home”. It may look and feel different at various points in our lives. There are times, perhaps long ones, in which Home seems to be absent. Did it move away and forget to tell us, or did we wander off from it? It is there none the less and if we are not presently aware of living in it, we are necessarily engaged in the search for it. Home is that place where we feel the greatest inner warmth, where we can go to be ourselves, and it is where we must go if we are to fulfill our purpose in the world.
Home is an inner place, not an outer one. It is important for us to know that, and to know it for sure. Numerous people and influences in our lives will merrily assure us that Home is somewhere on the outside. People spend lifetimes, fortunes and much, much energy trying to find it or create it outside of themselves. But until Home is found on the inside, all our best efforts to build it on the outside eventually come to naught.
Contrary to appearances and to common belief, Home is not something that can be lost. Certainly, there are times in life when we feel rootless, Homeless, sitting among the ruins of shattered lives and broken dreams. In those times, everything in our experience tells us that all is lost, that we are lost. The truth goes otherwise. No matter how discombobulated our lives seem to be, there is still that inward place to which we may turn for solace.
The illusion that we have nowhere to turn, that we might lose our Home, is the basis of fear. When someone or something threatens to take away our security, our life, our domicile, our means of support, or people that we love, we become afraid and often panic. The basis of that fear is our belief that our very roots can be taken away. Our enemies will have us believe that they have the ability to destroy us. All their power over us lies in their assuring us of the truth of that belief. No matter how sever, or sudden or unforeseen something is it cannot destroy the foundations of Home.
Home is where we know we were always meant to be. It is an inner experience of belonging, but belonging not to something outside of ourselves, but rather of belonging within ourselves.
Because Home has only to do with having a certain job, or a certain amount of money or a certain type of friends or furniture, good luck or even an unblemished moral record. Being Home has only to do with being Home. The door is always open!
Father Paul Keenan – Beyond the Blue Snow

When we have no words of our own – sometimes we can find comfort in the words of others.

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