Sunrise in the Sangres
Home is the nicest word there is. Laura Ingalls Wilder, American author
There’s no place like home! Dorothy
I was delighted to discover Laura Ingalls Wilder’s quote this morning as ‘home’ is a word that I love, representing a place I love as well as anywhere that I feel a sense of belonging.
When and wherever I roam, I aim to make ‘home’ and to experience feeling at home. We each have our own ways of doing so. For me it’s maintaining my morning practice of sipping warm lemon water (now with a pinch or two of mineral rich Celtic salt) as I reflect and write in my journal. Feeling gratitude, I look ahead to the day before me. What will the day bring? How will I BE with whatever that is? Is something lingering from yesterday that needs my attention?
This ritual has come to anchor my day, grounding me at the start of each day’s dance.
And so it was on the short, four-day road trip to visit an elder friend who I hadn’t seen in 17 years and to meet up with my stepson and his family, meeting his beautiful children for the first time. Laughs, curiosities, creativity, exploration, love, hugs, and more were shared with all. Home away from the home where I dwell.
Love makes any place be like home – the love we bring and the love we discover is there awaiting our recognition and receptivity. That was my experience on this entire journey.
As Dorothy says to Toto, “There’s no place like home!” With this adventure on the yellow brick road behind me, today finds me feeling deeply satisfied as I ease back into life in these woods. Watching as the day dawns and the sun makes its way over the peaks on this day before the Summer Solstice, my heart is filled with awe and gratitude for the beauty, the abundance, and the peace of this sacred place that I’m blessed to occupy.
How often after a journey do we give ourselves the gift of time to simply feel satisfied? Perhaps we find it challenging to embrace satisfaction in a world that constantly emits messages that there isn’t enough, that life is a mess, and that we need to do more and have more to be satisfied.
Certainly life is messy and chaotic and uncertain, with discord easily found in all directions. Yet we need not allow that world to keep us from experiencing a sense of satisfaction, for that world is not the only world available to us.
These thoughts and queries rise in me as I settle in here at home after a satisfying and joyful journey. So often we don’t give ourselves the gift of inviting satisfaction and then resting in its joy if only for a few moments.
As the sun begins to break through early morning clouds over the peaks of the Sangres, I linger in that gift and carry it with me as I move into the day.
Early Morning Clouds