Elul Day 19
I am lucky to call many places home. There's where I'm from (where I grew up), and where I live now. Even my office is a kind of home for me, as well as the many places I call my spiritual homes. I have been thinking about the names of these many homes and the feelings they convey:
Refuge
Community
Sunset
Mercy
Wisdom of the heart
St. Francis
Brotherly love
Faith
Places we can make mistakes and still feel worthy, people who offer kindness and hospitality; love. May I have the willingness to receive it, and give it back with compassion and kindness.
The month of Elul is a time of spiritual housecleaning, looking inward with radical honesty and bringing those deeply held truths out of hiding. Home is a place we can do that.
"Our spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, expecting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination or prediction. This, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.”
–Henri Nouwen, from Finding My Way Home: Pathways to Life and Spirit