Homesick

Some have described spiritual longing as a kind of “homesickness”, a yearning for comfort, caregiving, belonging.  This time of year, in growing darkness, trees bursting in reds, oranges, and yellows, morning frost on the stone wall in front of my house, I feel a homesickness for my childhood.  For that time of innocence, playfulness, my young mother and father surrounding me with protection.  Although it was not always so safe in my house, my longing is for a return to those moments when I could let go freely into play and imagination, grounded in the shelter and celebration of my family.  In this time and place apart, I am unencumbered by burdens, time pressures, fear, or overwhelm.  I am free to walk in the forest, sit by leaf strewn streams, climb mountains that elevate my spirit.  

But if we are to be touched by the world, we cannot be innocent of or stand apart from what is happening to and around us.  If we are to take in another’s joy, we must also necessarily ache when our beloveds ache. And there is no participating in the world through loving, working, caring without also experiencing failures, betrayals, and sometimes fear and shame.  While I long for a place apart from the suffering in the world, I also know that it is only through intimacy with this inner and outer pain that have I learned what is real.  The humility and compassion that comes from the touch of suffering gives us a better chance of being useful in the world rather than destructive.

Spiritual practices and healing have made me more tender towards my own and other’s suffering. When through practice I have the chance to slow things way down, I can take in the beauty of the lake, darkening and cool this time of year, and surrounded by the flashes of Autumnal glory.  I give over my aching heart to the lake who has held my prayers for many decades now, as welcoming and receptive to my longings as she is to the ducks resting in the golden light of sunset. And with my mind more settled inside, I begin to sense the possibility for a kind of homecoming in the homesickness, a belonging in the longing, a heart as open as the lake that can hold both the joy and the sorrow of life’s unfolding.  I get a sense of the presence beyond and within all of life sustaining us as we beat like one heart, our completeness and incompleteness, giving and taking, longing and belonging, yearning and returning a place apart, a homecoming, a journey.