Home Is Where the Spirit Is
Photo by Lorna Tedder
My home is sacred, a symbol of my relationship with Deity. And I don’t really care if anyone else thinks so, but it’s my temple and a reflection of all who live and love and sleep within its walls.
I don’t defend what’s in my house. And I won’t defend it. I never even considered that I’d be expected to until something Aislinn mentioned to me a few days ago. I found it both amusing and enlightening.
She tells me her dad’s mother and her dad had made derogatory comments about how I’ve decorated, even though my ex-mother-in-law has not been in my house in…what?…a year and a half? Two years? Longer? Back when it looked much different. My ex has been inside my front door only once this calendar year that I can remember, and then uninvited and for less than 30 seconds. That’s rather observant for such a narrow visit, not to mention visibility.
But then, maybe they’re psychic.
Let’s pretend they have the gift of sight. Let’s say they can see the crosses on the wall of the dining room or Chinese paintings in the hallway for TRANQUILITY and PROSPERITY or the antique thistle church rail imported from Scotland or the framed Sanskrit Proverb over the statue of an angel or the display of wands on the foyer wall or the framed cross on the wall and the calligraphy that says:
“Ask and it will be given; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened.”
-Matthew 7.7
All right. Yay, Matthew!
But let’s say they can see it all. So what? Why do they care?”
“Look at my walls and tell me what religion I am,” asked my former mother-in-law, according to Aislinn.
“Um, pure white?” she tells me she responded.
The point was, a guest in her home couldn’t tell her religion by what she kept on her walls and in her house.
The comment made me think, then it made me laugh. It was almost as if keeping her home devoid of any obvious spirituality was a good and appropriate thing. I’d never once considered that point of view. Ever.
The sacred spaces I’ve created are not for outsiders, house guests, repairmen, and least of all my ex and his family. They’re for me. My home is a reflection of me from the inside out, not the other way around. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
It made me realize that I love the fact that I’ve decorated my house in eclectic spirituality. I love how my spirituality in all its facets is represented throughout my home and I hope I represent it as well through the way I live.
A young man once said to me, as he visited my house, ..”this house looks as if no one lives here.”
I really did not quite know how to take his comment. He would add later he felt “scared to actually move anything out of place in fear I might get upset.” All of these impressions, all of these comments were made without my having ever to have said a thing.
He would continue to say how he’d grown up in a home that looked “lived in…like someone actually lived in the house. Not like this one…this is crazy!”
Well, I would visit that young man’s home and find clothes, toys, and just about every piece of junk mail ever recieved filling up just about every open space available. Stepping over this or that was reminescent of the moves I’d made training for a high school football team. THIS PLACE definitely looked lived in.
While I am no Felix Unger, of Odd Couple fame, I am most certainly not an Oscar Madison either. I do have a friend of the “Unger” type where the home is prestine in appearance. And, as described above I do know one who is comfortable being Oscar.
I have always said a home pretty much defines, in part, how the person sees their Self and the world they would want to lie comfortably within. As I explained to my young friend, “I had always wanted to own a home where I could simply walk into any room and lay anywhere in the room and not have to worry about being comfortable.
So…yes….Home is where the Spirit of your Life lives.
AngllHugnU2
Author of IM with God