Longing for Home

What we do know, “we” meaning anyone reading these words, is that, without our consent, we have all shown up on the planet at roughly the same time in the history of the world and although the world has been turning with humans on it for millennium, we are still asking why we are here and why it is so hard to be here. The animals do not ask this question, nor do the angels. It is our burden to wrestle with the question, generation after generation, and although we look to the ancients and the ancestors for wisdom, there is no consensus. Whether by accident or design, again, no consensus there, we are born into different stories and know not how to see beyond them. We each must make the lonely journey to find what is true. It is a start over with every human soul.

In my story, there is a kingdom, a kingdom in but not of this world, in which we all might access the true essence of being which supersedes all of our narrow and biased perceptions. Sometimes we come near to it, or it to us, typically not via any prescribed formulas, of which there are many, but we know without a doubt when we have touched it. But in the between times, we grope to capture it, to define it. Instinctively, we know this essence is love. But what is love? We know it when it comes to us or flows out from us, a larger presence than what resides within the borders of our small skin. In those moments, we are stripped of pretense, questions, the fearful static of our rational brains, and the ache we are born with, or born into, relents. We catch a glimpse of Eden, its unconditional welcome, its warm homecoming, that inhabits us while paradoxically eluding us. In those inklings, stories melt away and we see each other as ourselves, frail and needy humans, longing deeply for the same home.