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A few weeks ago, I moved from the peninsula of Florida to mountainous Maine, as far as I could travel northward and remain in the United States. I sensed a comfort about the move prior and an enthusiasm on the drive up. I had never visited Maine or any of the states in the Northeast. The person I am renting a cottage from invited me up many weeks prior to the move, to see the cottage I inquired into renting. I declined. I sent her a deposit. Then, weeks later, I loaded my pickup truck up and began the trek to a place I did not know anyone. I had no fear of being alone, no anticipating being lonely. The thought of getting homesick never entered my mind. I was simply going Home.
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See, there is nowhere you cannot not be Home, for Home is wherever you go, anywhere anyone can go. Home is where we leave, where we go, and where we are during the going from one place to another. And so is it when the physical body stops functioning, so releasing us from its hospitality.
Yes, the body and mind adjust to places. Yet, you never have any need to adjust to Home, once you live in union with Home, as Home. And this adjustment to place is facilitated by simple openness, unclouded as much as possible by past experience. One finds joy when being receptive to experiencing place free from memory, so place is able to reveal itself in innocence, freshness. Being-with, or communion, arises in this innocence of silent, embodied welcome.
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Entering a place, where you live or shop or work, anywhere, in simple, innocent openness allows finding a practical sense of being-with, allows, actually, place and self to enter a communion arising from Home. In Home, you find you are never out-of-place.
This is the Contemplative act of hospitality. In Spirit, one discovers place as welcoming him or her, and the response is a like welcome. Even as in spiritual Contemplation, one relaxes, not trying to attain a special state called "mystical" or "holy" or "spiritual," so rests in Grace, likewise with this we speak of today. Allow place to receive you, receive place. One receptivity. Sweet communion. Lovely togetherness! Place being an invitation to become aware, to see, Home, for you live in the embrace of Home already, always, and eternally.
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Seeing Home
You and the Love you seek ~ One...
So, why seek?
You and the Treasure you think you lost ~ One...
So, why this sadness of loss?
Why live
in such ache of heart?
You were born inside this Ocean,
yet cry out, "Where's the water?!"
Why such longing for the sweet
intoxication of Grace?
You are the Beloved's Wine Chalice, from which
your Lover and you, Together, drink.
You are like
a lonely bird in flight,
calling out, desperately,
"Where! Where! is the Sky?"
Quiet! simply open the eyes of the Heart
to see you are already Home ~
and Celebrate!
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Already Home." Oct.9.12.17
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