Home…is a physical space, and it is something that extends beyond that physical space. Our physical homes have foundations. Our minds and hearts can have their foundational homes too—the values and ideas that shape our actions. The mind is the foundation of our behavior that has formed through our lifetimes. One could also say that there is the home of community.
Physical homes provide the four walls offering shelter and comfort, corresponding with our home of family.
The spirit of home— in how we treat others, provides us the foundation in how we create community, the feeling of home, manifested by what we hold in our hearts and minds. A place that we can return to again and again.
And we can also see how our spirits have their own foundations. We nurture our experiences in feeling and intuition that correspond to the values that we hold and arise in our minds. How often do we return to our spiritual base as a place of comfort and solidity? Is it a place that is familiar and nurturing?
Anatoly Liberman, also known as the Oxford Etymologist, has looked at varying origins of the word “home”, which includes the Irish word for home being pleasant or in Greek the word means village.
Liberman states that the Slavic word for home “means both ‘world’ and ‘peace’.” He continues “we… understand that, contrary to the dream of privacy in today’s…overcrowded world, in the past being together, in a place open to the members of the community…, [home] was the source of peace and pleasure.”
This translation is in line with the idea we consider our homes to be places we find comfort—maybe it is a bad day and we don’t want to get out of bed, or we just want to cuddle up to a pet, or we go to a friend’s house because we need a shoulder to cry on. Maybe it is being able to visit a sibling, parent, or grandparents’ home, knowing that this is literally our home, or maybe we know deep down that if our physical homes disappear for whatever reason—fire, foreclosure, or an unforeseen move, that these places of our loved ones can always be considered our home also. Places to return again and again. Can we find this sense of home with our spirits?
Every time I go to a beach I feel “at home.” Mostly because of my connection to nature—the smell of the sea, the sound of waves, listening to the sea birds, the feeling of the sand, the delight in engaging with the natural world—when I am there, I am always home. I also feel at home among women who have faced obstacles and struggled to overcome them. The #metoo movement showed that women were not alone in experiences of abuse, sexism, and consistently being on the bottom of power dynamics.
My care for other women not only guides my actions, but something from deep within me gives me the foundation to want to care, beyond just thought. My soul feels connected to a wider universe—I am in communion with others and the Earth.
I have felt at home, or in communion with others, when I was in seminary studying and working side-by-side with those who are as passionate about social justice, as well as the ethics of Buddhist teachings. That’s why it’s common to hear congregants say their Church is home—it is not just the building, but our relations with each other and the deep connections we build with each other, and the space for our own reflections.
A place where we feel nourished and a place that we can return to again and again to help nourish our own spirits, as well as each other through connection.
For many of us, our manifestation of our inner-selves may look a bit different—it can take the form of prayer, meditation, social justice work, leading others in martial arts, or gardening and communing in nature. My spirit is nourished in nature, community, church.
Whether we are at our church, houses, gardens, or a forest that we consider home—they are places that whether we are feeling okay or not, we can find solace, rooted in the ground with a stabilizing force.
We also have our spiritual being to tap into. Amidst the despair, we have community, we have the Earth upon which we walk, and we have our inner spirit as our reference point, where we can get the feeling and spirit of home with a foundation that we have built, or are building.
If we see our spiritual homes as gardens we nurture, how do we grow these gardens from this spiritual center? What nourishes our spirits that give us a stable foundation when our outer lives are unstable and sometimes beyond our control?
As Unitarian Universalists, not only do we hold values such as liberty, equality, and justice for all, as well as the belief in compassion, but something deeper directs and supports us in these values. Our experiences in the secular and spiritual world form our views and values that often have a deep spiritual base. These nurturing experiences are places that can feed our spirits and places we can return to again and again to build familiarity with this aspect of ourselves that we often have a tendency to overlook.
For me, I know through my own experience and as a witness, that there is suffering in this world. I know that if I hold the values of equality, justice, and compassion, where my faith in these values is solid, hardships can be withstood. When life is difficult or challenging, the divinity within all of us—a place where hope remains and where the ideals of beauty reside, can be unshakable. And when I feel a little unsteady, how do I remain confident and faithful to my foundational spirit? How steady and unshakeable is it?
Like with any other foundation, I wonder how one goes about mending, strengthening, or repairing, once seemingly unshakeable foundations, when cracks begin to form. Our communities are broken with racism, fear, environmental destruction, the devastation that Covid has brought, and increased homelessness.
Perseverance, diligence, attention, and the constant returning to the inner fire of our being—that light, our inner-self, our inner-home, that is always burning that gives us fuel to act with compassion and fortitude in difficult times. We return to love. We return to caring for one another, we return to our spirit that has the light to shine love.
Foundations (figuratively and literally) are important places of solace—we return to our families after a long day of work (or maybe never leave due to Covid). Our children now go to school in our homes due to Covid. Our physical homes are important.
To see where we can steady our spiritual homes, we can take guidance in how our other forms of home become steady—a place that is nurtured, where we want to return time and time again.
Brick and mortar homes, community as home, spirit as home–How do we create some sense of home for ourselves and each other? A favorite example for me of someone who is creating a home with no current brick and mortar, is Ahmed.
I met Ahmed my first night working at an inter-faith soup kitchen in NYC as a student chaplain. There were Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian leaders that helped to run this weekly soup kitchen—serving up to 100 people on Wednesday evenings. Ahmed is Muslim and I assumed he had an official role with his calm and centered presence, as we dished out food side by side to the homeless that we served.
After a couple of weeks working side-by-side, we shared a meal together, and I learned more about his story. In his late teen years in the 60s in a predominantly white town, he was picked up out of a line-up of a likely “black man” shooting a white victim. He was given a life sentence and after 50 years of serving in prison, he was released with recognition that he was falsely accused.
During his years of imprisonment, he took up practicing Tai Chi as a daily spiritual practice. His family died while in prison without any support upon leaving prison. He connected with an Iman, a Muslim spiritual leader within Islam. This Iman helped him, as Ahmed settled in a half-way house. How does someone in their late sixties with no support network, in a world that has changed dramatically during his long incarceration, begin to navigate life? Like many in this scenario, Ahmed became houseless.
Ahmed was fortunate enough to have spiritual guidance, including his Tai Chi practice. His Iman suggested that he not just volunteer once a week at a soup kitchen, but every day, twice a day. This was his way of creating community for himself and others. It was a way of not just giving to others, but to himself, recognizing the interdependent web of life.
This conversation was profound for me. Regardless of the reasons for someone going to prison, it raised a question: How do we treat men and women who re-enter into our communities after being incarcerated? How do we hold them, support them, to be able to thrive in society? And how does this gentle man find community when so much has been robbed from him? The halfway house is shelter, but not a home. He has to leave his place of shelter to find and create his “community home.” In an ideal world we have both. But with the state of the world throughout our globe, we aren’t all fortunate enough to have physical homes.
Ahmed, since engaging with soup kitchens, began networking and becoming friends with congregants, ministers, religious lay leaders, and fellow homeless folks. This gave him access to other ways of engaging, such as researching grant and funding opportunities, in hopes of building a more nurturing home for people he saw suffering within his communities—more meaningful homes than a half-way house—building beloved community with others, who want to create a home for themselves and others with the foundation of their own being.
This project is not yet complete, but he has a vision, he has support of community, he has spiritual guidance, and a spiritual center he taps to give himself energy and extend that energy outward. His faith in his relation to God and his foundational spiritual center that Tai Chi provides (helping to synchronize body, mind and spirit), helps to build a stable center for him, which he can return to again and again when the outer world is chaotic.
Maybe ideally we have a brick and mortar home as a stable base to operate from, but there is no “right” or “wrong” order. For Ahmed, it began as a spiritual foundational home to discover his other “homes.” Then community. And now on to a physical home to be able to return to.
In Buddhism, meditation translates into Tibetan “to be familiar with” from the word “gonpa”—it is the foundational experience of openness that we can refer back to when our minds (or actions) wander. Being familiar with the stability (or lack of) our minds allows a bigger (or deeper) view to emerge—where our spirit can arise and be seen that otherwise might be clouded. We return again and again to the neutrality of the breath—a place that can support us when the outer uneasiness of life takes a grip on our minds.
How do we, as a congregation, show up as a community to bring a sense of home to our neighbors, to feel welcomed and nurtured, so that everyone feels they belong, arising from the deep foundation of our spiritual being and values?
How do we rebuild, heal, redefine, and reconcile our broken, or cracked, homes, whether physical, mental, or spiritual? This could mean our immediate families, our community, our Earth, even our democracy. Part of this process of strengthening is to build that strong foundation of spirit to extend outward.
Physical homes, community homes, spiritual homes—they are all important. Our church home, we can’t gather in right now, so how are we creating home without our four walls? Without a physical place, we don’t have the ability to commune and meet one another in-person. So we realize the importance of the physical place, but in the meantime we can strengthen what we are doing “virtually” with one another, so that when the day we can physically come together, we can tap into strengthening what we are solidifying now. We are creating together virtually right now in these moments—as this can be a place, where we not only gather virtually, but a time to reflect on what is possible for us to do with our spiritual homes, building beloved community.
How do we take care of our congregation, our poor, our Earth, our families, our civil liberties, our LGBTQ+ community, people of color in our communities, our collective homes? Do we dare for a bigger vision?
In the place where spirit resides, there is love—boundless, inclusive, nurturing, transcendent–A base (or foundation) in which arise our deepest beliefs.
The spirit of love is always residing within us. A place if continually supported, we can return to again and again, just as any other nurturing home, such as what community and family does. Only by paying attention to this center, can we see where it has its natural strength and where we can strengthen that base if need be.
Our Unitarian Universalist 1st Source states “Direct experience in the transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life.” This source is our own teaching that can guide us in bringing about a more solid foundation to our spiritual centers.
To be more fully familiar with this source teaching, we can look back at the Tibetan word “gonpa” for meditation, which means to be familiar with, which also means a return to the breath over and over again. This requires diligence if we want to become familiar enough with our spirit to continually return again and again as a place that we call home. I have said the words “over and over again” frequently, because this is what we need to do to be familiar with anything that we attempt to know more fully.
Our spirits glow with the light of love—we have our basic goodness, our compassion, our passion for justice, our UU principles and sources, and our love as the light that guides us. Let’s show up for each other and ourselves to honor our spiritual lives. Let’s support each other in tapping into our spiritual homes. What are the things that nourish your spirit so that you enjoy residing in your home of spirit?
Our pledges help to nurture our physical home and for now a “virtual” home for our congregation. We naturally show up for each other as we build our beloved community home.
Homes can be transformational places, in particular our spirits. Let’s transform and build our spiritual homes as foundations too and support one another on our unique spiritual journeys. Our spirit can shine outward into a broken world that now needs our love.
Amen
Topics: Home