HOME creation:On beauty, goodness, and the big questions

”What IS home?”

While this question isn’t necessarily about art, beauty, or goodness, I’m convinced it is a question about an act of CREATION.

We were gathered in the back yard on a cool fall evening. Pumpkins were being carved. The tree swing was gleefully employed. Party music wafted through the air as the glowing sun hung low on the horizon. We adults enjoyed the fire pit and conversation was easy. A friend expressed a tangible knowing in her bones that Peace presided here.

In the 90’s I was a singer in a music missions group for six years that traveled full-time around the country and the world. We were in a new town almost every night, (except for Mondays), and we stayed in people’s homes. I have slept in many a bed in many a home. I've done the math: Say we traveled 300 days a year x 6 years = 1800 homes! (Side note: Though retroactive worry is totally unproductive, I sometimes think about how crazy dangerous that could have been! Ack!) As time went by, I became very attuned to the fact that, whether humble or fanciful, each home had a feeling. Each home had a “spirit about it”.

How does this making of “home” come about?

A renowned Jewish theologian named Abraham Joshua Heschel teaches about the power of words - “Words create worlds, ” he says. To me, this succinct phrase describes perfectly the invisible reality we live every day. In Jewish tradition, words are believed to have weight, substance. There’s a “thing-ness” to them. We carry words around. We wear them as shrouds or as crowns. Our words shape environments. Whether for peace or for strife, public or private, our words CREATE WORLDS, homes.

During that pretty evening in our back yard, I reminisced about how truly exhausted and confused we were when we first moved in. At the start, this place not "home". But, after several miraculous happenings and encouraging words, we set about planting our feet. We chose, purposefully, to live here in this house, as we have in other houses, and we created “home” - a God-breathed oasis in physical space.

And so, I’ve come to think that “home” is a spiritual act of creation housed in a physical place. It can be CREATED ANYWHERE where love and peace are spoken, where wonder and wholeness are encouraged, and where an environment of trust is nurtured.

“Words create worlds”….

Let our creative energies be used to create peaceful, wholehearted homes.

And may that Peace spill into the world around us.

“On Earth, as it is in Heaven…”

-Sarah