Home

Mindfulness means being at home in the deepest part of yourself. Finding over and over -- cultivating -- a deep sense of home within yourself, exactly as you are, exactly where you are.

I am in a season of home in my life.  After a lifetime of constant moving (29 living spaces in my first 35 years), I have now lived in the same house for over 8 years.  This is a phenomenal record for me.  It feels great.  I am learning my town and neighborhood in ways one can only do by spending lots of time here.  I have gotten to know people – I run into friends and acquaintances unexpectedly when I go out.  I feel an evolving sense of belonging and fit.  Now when I see someone loading up a U-Haul truck, my instinctual response is repulsion and compassion – I am so sorry that they have to go through that.  My days of perpetual restless moving are over.  I have a home.

What feels like home for you?  Is it a house?  Or a person?  A certain neck of the woods, or a favorite song?  Is it a treasured wall hanging, a familiar meal, or a worn-out sweatshirt? 
 
What do you go to when you’re sad, frightened, or displaced to get you back in touch with yourself?  What grounds you?  What is home?

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This is the feeling of mindfulness – a sense of home.  But a sense of home grounded deep within ourselves.  The only way I know to get to this deep feeling of home is to meditate.  Sitting quietly, observing nonjudgmentally, being curious, allowing the fog to clear – this helps me to know myself and to love myself.  To care for myself and settle in.

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When I meditate, I am opening up this pathway to home within myself.  This makes it easier to walk that path informally during each day – to find my way home in the midst of feeling sad, frightened, or displaced.  To get back in touch with myself, to be grounded.  To be at home right here, right now.  In this home, God is present – love thrives, and I am open to receive it.

It’s the same feeling I have when I remember an untouched, remote piece of nature from a backpacking trip.  Or my young son’s affectionate snuggles with me after he returns from an adventure-packed sleepover at Grandma’s.  Or the BFF talks that I share with my husband but no one else.  Home. 

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Have you had this experience of home?  If not, mindfulness meditation is for you.  God is waiting to lead you through the chaos of thoughts and feelings, through the uncomfortable physical sensations, through the blinding fog of life… into a quiet and still place deep within you that is home.  A quiet place that you carry within you every day in every moment.  Home.