You may be familiar with the words of Augustine of Hippo in his ‘Confessions’ where he says, ‘Our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you’. There is much truth to ponder in these words, but I was surprised to come across them recently and discovered I had actually remembered them incorrectly as, ‘…until they find their home in you’. My error may stem from the similarity of the essence of home and somewhere I can be totally at rest. For home, at its best, is a place of deep comfort and satisfaction, a place of safety where we are understood. It is what we long for. It is not necessarily a building or even where we live; it may have a geographical location, it may not.
Where do you feel at home, safe, at ease with life? What characterises it? Do you visit or do you carry it with you? Could you describe or draw it? If you don’t feel you have such a ‘home’, how would you imagine it?
The following poem by Jane Travis, a fellow Elder, activist and dear friend, was composed by the shores of Derwent water, pondering on the concept of home.
Home
Here is home, that place
which anchors a restless ache
into a still wide view
Where mountains embrace
the silky lake
And I am safe in my skin
as the geese break
their arrow head
and slide in to rest
in the falling sun
As the night draws in
I am close to the one
where the swallow has her nest.
Jane Travis