Meditation #13 The Gift of a Home to Call my Own
It has taken me so long to focus my mind and sit down and write this meditation, and I can only blame it on the avalanche of feelings it has precipitated. It is introduced by the words:
Let your Heart be sincere.
Be Steadfast.
Don't fall apart when disaster comes.
I tried a week ago, as I was traveling back home, at the Panamá airport, when my h
eart was torn between the loves I left behind and the ones that missed me terribly and couldn't wait to have me back at home. I also watched as thousands of people saw their own homes under water, the certainties of their routines blown away by a monster storm, and I started my week-long untangling of the mystery of what Home means. The meditation invites us to look back at that first departure from home, to the challenging environment of school, where rules were different, new grown-ups abounded and little ones who dealt with the first day of school in so many different ways were all around.
For me this image immediately related to what I have been experiencing with my daughter, who just left home to go to school, but this time it took her far away, and she is still trying to cope with her homesickness. Yet, I saw how she was overwhelmed by a feeling of inadequacy as she came back home and visited with friends and even us, the people she so terribly missed. Interestingly, she felt she did not belong here either. Home is such an abstract idea, and yet we assign its weight to concrete things. Being an immigrant makes you realize that home can be a divided place in your heart, the homeland where you leave your beloved roots, but also can be re-crafted in the new location you have chosen to plant new dreams and hopes. Then, as life in its never ceasing flow of experiences, uproots you and sometimes takes everything away from you, you realize home is more related to a myriad of feelings of safety, of comfort, of familiarity and belonging. I am watching the victims of Sandy's wrath bracing for yet another threat, and how their lack of basic services is severely affecting their sense of being provided for and acknowledged. I can only pray that the misery is not compounded by the new storm, and realize how frail our certainties, however solid they seem, really are. Nature has a way of humbling our arrogance that nothing else achieves, and the lesson within the tragedy is the urgent need to cherish and value every little comfort and develop resilience and most importantly: an ever-present sense of gratitude for the daily miracles that surround us.
With love,
Lina.
For me this image immediately related to what I have been experiencing with my daughter, who just left home to go to school, but this time it took her far away, and she is still trying to cope with her homesickness. Yet, I saw how she was overwhelmed by a feeling of inadequacy as she came back home and visited with friends and even us, the people she so terribly missed. Interestingly, she felt she did not belong here either. Home is such an abstract idea, and yet we assign its weight to concrete things. Being an immigrant makes you realize that home can be a divided place in your heart, the homeland where you leave your beloved roots, but also can be re-crafted in the new location you have chosen to plant new dreams and hopes. Then, as life in its never ceasing flow of experiences, uproots you and sometimes takes everything away from you, you realize home is more related to a myriad of feelings of safety, of comfort, of familiarity and belonging. I am watching the victims of Sandy's wrath bracing for yet another threat, and how their lack of basic services is severely affecting their sense of being provided for and acknowledged. I can only pray that the misery is not compounded by the new storm, and realize how frail our certainties, however solid they seem, really are. Nature has a way of humbling our arrogance that nothing else achieves, and the lesson within the tragedy is the urgent need to cherish and value every little comfort and develop resilience and most importantly: an ever-present sense of gratitude for the daily miracles that surround us.
With love,
Lina.
No comments:
Post a Comment