Anam Cara

Home Is Where You Belong

The word “home” has a wonderful resonance. Home is where you belong. It is your shelter and place of rest, the place where you can be yourself. Nature offers wonderful images of home. It is fascinating in springtime to watch the birds build their nests. They gather the twigs and weave them into a nest. The floor and walls of the nest are padded with wool, moss, or fur. In the wall of a shed near my house, a swallow returns from Africa every year and finds her way back into the opening between the same two stones under the side wall. There she builds her nest and hatches out her young. No journey is too long when you are coming home. In Irish we say, “Níl aon tinnteán mar do thinnteán féin,” i.e., There is no hearth like the hearth at home.

There is such wisdom in Nature. Often it carries out its most miraculous work quietly under the veil of the ordinary. Sometimes we achieve the most wonderful things when we are not even aware of what we are doing. If we did know it, we might only paralyze ourselves and ruin the flow of natural creativity. If parents were fully aware of their effect, they could never act. If they could see the secret work of mind formation in the home and the harvest it will eventually bring, they could never achieve the neutrality that allows normal home life to happen in a natural way. Parents are generally wonderful people who give all their hearts and energy to the little people they have called into the universe. Parents must act in good faith—without excessive anxiety or self-rebuke. They must induct their children into the larger community.