| For me, home is not so much where I am in the world but where I am
internally with myself. If I am expressing God at the highest level I
am capable of in my life then it doesn't seem to matter to me where I
am physically, I feel at home. If I'm being the person and living the
life and expressing the joy that God intended for me then I am at home.
I admit that expressing God in that way is much harder for me to do
without the support and nurturing of a solid spiritual community and
emotional support from friends. Ideally, though, I think I ought to be
able to feel at home without anybody but me and God. :-)
Nanci
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| Mike,
I lived 38 years in Phoenix, Arizona. I went into a period of
depression about a month after moving to Colorado Springs, which was over
6 years ago.
About that time, "Raising Arizona" came out on video cassette.
That movie, at least for me, captured a high degree of the culture and color
peculiar to Southern Arizona. I must've watched that movie 5 times within 6
months, purely out of need to have fed the ache I felt for my "familiar home".
Now I get weepy just thinking about this movie - and it's a comedy!!
I yearned for those long, lingering sunsets which I'd become
accustomed to. And though the sky is a deeper blue here, the sunlight casts
shadows much harsher than in Phoenix.
For the longest time after moving here, I felt like a raft that been
cast adrift on a dark, empty ocean with no anchor and no direction. Time
and familiarity with my new home's environment helped to heal my "transplant
shock". Establishing new friends and new memories took time, but was well
worth the deliberate effort I made. I truly believe that this was one of
those periods in my life that God was carrying me and, like in "Footprints,"
it felt liked I was walking alone. I grieved for my former home for the
first 12-13 months after moving.
I now occassionally think about moving back to the Sun Belt, but not
necessarily Phoenix. I know Phoenix has changed so much in the last 6 years
that moving there would be like moving to a place I'd never lived before.
Peace,
Richard
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| I heard someone once say that for him, home is where most of your
clothes are.
My mother's grave stone says "Not here but home." For me life here
seems so temporary. Home is, in a very real sense, for me, with God.
Until heaven "where most of my clothes are" will do I guess.
I've lived in the city (NY - are there others? :-)), the midwest
(Indiana), and for the last 12-13 years New Hampshire. They're all
about the same in many ways though they are of course very different
in others. They all have things going for and against them.
I've traveled through quite a few states (many on bicycle so I saw them
close up). Visited a small number of countries. Other than Seattle
Washington I haven't found a place I didn't think I could live in and
call home. (The sun comes out too seldom in Seattle. I *need* sunlight.
Perhaps I could get buy with special lamps but why bother.) It's nice,
I guess, for people who have a stronger tie to some place but it's
never happened to me.
Alfred
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