Believe it and not

With holy moments, as the clip from Waking Life says, there's layers: being in the moment, trying to be in the moment and just being. You can't deliberately choose not to be self-conscious. So then maybe the best prayers aren't conscious decisions to be aware of God, but are best experienced out of the corner of one eye, like seeing the stars at night. 

The same applies to feeling 'at home'. If you look directly at it, it melts away. Being an immigrant of three-plus years, I have been discovering the intangible aspects of what it means to be at home. Intangible because I have no historical connection to this land; my ancestors did not name the rocks and rivers. On the other hand, as a member of the human race, what I have in common with those who are native here is more than what separates us, and buying a house with land - becoming native in that way in as much as I can - is one of my dreams.

I have been thinking and learning about the spiritual and communal side to 'home'. At home in my skin. At home in my soul. At home with both my weaknesses and my strengths with the people around me and their weaknesses and strengths. It's a settling down of the soul, a deep breath of acceptance, belonging and safety. When you undergo a major transition, it's like running fast, so that when you stop, there's a moment when you feel like you're still moving. It takes a while to realize you're not hovering over thin air like wily coyote but that you can stand on the real and metaphorical land where you find yourself.

I mistrust a feeling of 'home' when it depends on things staying exactly the same, on constancy or predictability, because with the best will in the world, people and places shift and change, they come and go. W.E.H. Stanner describes a feeling of homelessness among aboriginal Australians as "a kind of vertigo in living" (cited here, as is the title of this post), for people who had invested their identity and spirits in their seemingly permanent landscape. I am not an aboriginal person so I've never expected to have my identity tied to a particular piece of land. While I envy that connection, I don't envy its loss, and I recognize the vertigo that intense transition and uprooting can bring.

I am a nomad and I am a settler. For me, being at home means agreeing to be nomadic together with the people and places I have chosen to be with, and seeking to be settled in my soul. 

No-one can take that home away.

(On a nostalgic and less cultured note, feeling at home is also exactly like the noise the littlest ball makes at the end of this vintage sesame street video)