The imminent occasion of what will be the 20th move in my adult life set me thinking about both the impermanence of what we call home, and our need to have a place we think of as our true home. It may not be where we live, in fact, it is often a place we hold in a special place apart from our normal surroundings. At the risk of calling this place heavenly, that is in a way what home represents—a place of peace and lightness of spirit. The place we can fully be ourselves—without the cares of the world pressing on us.

I have had a few such places in my life. Some were of brief duration—a place that despite the circumstances of my life at the time was a happy respite. So, I asked myself why this was, how it was possible to feel at peace with the Universe even in the midst of great difficulties. In those instances, I remember being infused with a tremendous sense of optimism despite all indications to the contrary. Where this benign equanimity came from, I cannot truly say. But I can say that it was not generated from within—decidedly not. Nevertheless, my inner conviction that all was going to be fine was palpable and resisted even the gloomiest of days.

Here is where I confess that I have always been troubled by the Christian concept of the Holy Spirit. Like most of my species I have some difficulty with the unseen, the manifested but ephemeral seems a contradiction to me. Yet, I have no better way to describe this sense of an other worldly presence conspiring to calm the malevolent forces surrounding me. In the New Testament, John tells us what we know intuitively. We will have trouble in this world—it’s coming and we cannot dodge it. But, he says, take heart, because, the spirit has overtaken the things of this world. And that comes as close as I can describe the feeling that while faced with an array of trying circumstances I felt entirely at peace, I was home.

You get my drift, home is not, at least for me, a place as much as it is an alignment of the heart. When we are in this attitude, we are home—a place that exists not in physical space as much as in our hearts and minds. Here we are safe, guarded from the harms and cares that assail us, and able to breathe that deep sigh of the weary upon reaching a place of rest. Call it heaven, if that suits you, or call it home—the name we give it does not matter.

So, as I move once again to new surroundings, I am mindful that how I will fare has as much to do with the Spirit that guards me as it does with my own disposition. Whether this will be home again or not remains to be seen—but I know it is where I should be