Home to the Heart

I was recently at a dinner party, and being the person not from the region, I was asked where I called home. Without missing a beat I replied, “Where my heart is, for the moment it is here with friends.” The person asking the question who I later nicknamed ‘the Griller’, was in no way pleased with my response. The people next to me, one to my right and left, understood right away, on my left, a hand came up laid itself on mine. A soft – “Good answer, Thank you.” ; it came with a warm smile and eyes that danced. To my right well, we both continued to smile as, ‘the Griller’ continued on his path of interrogation till I said at the moment I reside in Maine. Which I had previously informed him, for he had said he has friends in Bar Harbour, Cape Elizabeth, and Harpswell;

Thought most of that is not what’s important it is a setting for the stage of what came up for me later on my returning drive toward ‘home’. As some of you know I moved around a lot as a small person it was the nature of the beast for my family. When I had a child to raise, I choose to stay in the same small town, though I will admit we still moved a fair amount – I wasn’t used to staying put.

On my trip to see my friend who sat to my right, I had found myself caught in a vortex of being lost and taking the wrong; yet not so badly placed turns on a very dark, very rainy road, called the Saw Mill Parkway – this was supposed to be a short-cut. Ah, only when one knows the way. I did not use this way home.

Yet, all of this got me to wondering, if we all find the path to our Heart, a winding road, a difficult meandering. To find ourselves, does it always take longer? And how is it that we come so far away from the core of who we are that this road back to us, must even be traveled? What is it in our humanness that we set out to seek? How is it that we lose parts of us, along our life path, that then we drive hundreds of miles away from ourselves looking to find who we are? That we make relationships with people, who may or may not look or seem like us on the outside, yet inwardly we know that some of these friends will be with us till the end.

That there is no need to be other then us? [Come now – we have all found ourselves acting a part to fit in, at some point –remember being a teen.] That we are perfectly – imperfection!

So, I find that I am still holding space, a Sacred Space within that is my HeartHome. I find it most often with others that are close enough to know all the prismatic parts of me and alone. Those moments of Being, connected in ways that have no words, a rightness. I give Thanks that I am have been able to live a life full of traveling toward this adventure of knowing me. Of having the luxury to make time to seek and find the HeartHome of me. To fully take in the gift that is me. And yes, there are days I am still driving to find that person. I am so very Grateful for friends, who are real, with patches worn thin, filled with a curiousness to know more of life and themselves and me. I hope I gift that back in a way that they know what I mean.

I invite each one of us to take this journey, I will again note that it seems to be a road with many funny turns. Some full of laughter so deep tears run down your checks, roads that seem to be full of the ‘mundane’; the everyday-ness of being that we wonder could this be all there is? Then there are the roads marked with Grace. Others so painful we cry rivers of tears till we find ourselves laughing with a stitch in our side. And yes, some roads simply are. We find ourselves traveling in certain sets of circles, is this our HeartHome? I wonder, I turn this question over to you. Travel safe and wild on the road to you. I will keep the fire warm, the candle lit waiting for your return. I hold you, friends in my HeartHome, wrapped in warmth and laughter.






photo taken in Bethleham, PA Nov '09 by me just down from 'Cupcake G's'