There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like…

This week, I got to leave work early on Friday. Know what I did? Nothing. That’s right. My houseguests for the upcoming weekend had canceled their trip. I found myself at home in the late afternoon with lots of sunlight pouring in the windows and hours of unscheduled time in front of me.

Outrageous! Inconceivable! Frankly, pretty darned surprising.

My first order of business was to dismiss the To Do List as it muscled its way to the front of my thoughts. “Back off!” I growled. “This is FOUND TIME. You’re not welcome here.”

Then I stretched out on the couch and did nothing. I didn’t even knit, or listen to an audiobook. I didn’t fiddle with anything that could use “doing”. I watched the dust play around in the streaks of sunlight. I looked at the books starting to fill the living room shelves — books, by the way, that I’ve been looking at since I was a child. My parents accrued an incredible library. It is slowly migrating north from their house in Albuquerque to this one in Santa Fe. I pulled out my notebooks full of music cds and played some. Cat Stevens, Supertramp, Neil Young. Albums that are so closely tied into chapters of my life, I can tell you where I was when each became popular. “Benny and the Jets?” I roll my eyes back a bit to recall the scene. “Montgomery, Alabama, circa 1973-4. I went to Peter W. Crump Elementary School and picked blackberries and collected tiny, green tree frogs and remember the color of the sky just before a tornado.”

I listened and I looked around at all the objects that give my living room comfort and meaning. My dog jumped up and lay down across my chest. I rubbed her ears, her neck, the bridge of her nose. Nothing else needed doing, so why not spend an outrageously long time petting my dog? I thought about how soft her fur is and how deep the thoughts in her eyes are. (As opposed to Riley. Love him, but not much thought going on there.)

Essentially, I loafed around for hours enjoying my home. Its warmth. Its comfort. Its collection of items that reflect so much of my life back to me. Its serenity and safety and light. “My god,” I thought to myself over and over. “I love being home.”

Ever notice how home so often serves as a launching pad? It rests, feeds, cleans and clothes us, then sends us out into the world to do all we have to do. What a luxury to stop, look around, and appreciate the absolute goodness of home. I highly recommend doing just that. Soon.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite poems by David Whyte. It captures my feeling about this home so well.

I awoke

this morning

in the gold light

turning this way

and that

thinking for

a moment

it was one

day

like any other.

—–

But

the veil had gone

from my

darkened heart

and

I thought

it must have been the quiet

candlelight

that filled my room,

it must have been

the first

easy rhythm

with which I breathed

myself to sleep,

it must have been

the prayer I said

speaking to the otherness

of the night.

—–

And

I thought

this is the good day

you could

meet your love,

this is the gray day

someone close

to you could die.

—–

This is the day

you realize

how easily the thread

is broken

between this world

and the next

and I found myself

sitting up

in the quiet pathway

of light,

the tawny

close grained cedar

burning round

me like fire

and all the angels of this housely

heaven ascending

through the first

roof of light

the sun has made.

—–

This is the bright home

in which I live,

this is where

I ask

my friends

to come,

this is where I want

to love all the things

it has taken me so long

to learn to love.

—–

This is the temple

of my adult aloneness

and I belong

to that aloneness

as I belong to my life.

—–

There is no house

like the house of belonging.

– David Whyte c. 1996