Ηome and homecoming Edited
Home and domicile; country and place of origin; migrations and homecomings; homecoming and belonging
PART ONE
Throughout our lives our domicile, our home, our home country ies, our migrations, our many homecomings, our homecoming and belonging are all negotiated within our own self, in relationships and the broader cultural and geographic contexts we find ourselves in. I have lived in two countries, in many houses, in several places, and I have travelled a bit to places in Greece and abroad. I now live in a tiny scenic place, a speck on the map, not visible on the globe lamp I have in my sitting room, an island I planned to stay for a year or two, but instead built a home and dropped anchor there.
Depending on whether we’ve lived in one place all our lives or not the felt sense of home or homecoming can include a sense of weaving a net between all the places we’ve been or made a home. Wherever we may find ourselves our remembrances are with us. Home could be experienced as the sum of our experiences that in some sense sculpt our remembrance of all the homes we’ve created and the houses we’ve lived in.
Home is not only an architectural construction, but a psychological one. Juhani Pallasmaa [Finnish architect and writer] claims that “Home is an individualized dwelling, and the means of this subtle personalization seem to be outside our notion of architecture….. Home is an expression of personality and family and their very unique patterns of life. Consequently, the essence of home is closer to life itself than to artifacts.” Pallasmaa also describes how our body is not separate from its domicile and how the elements of architecture are encounters that interact with memory. Our bodies and movements are in interaction with our environment, and the world and the self inform and redefine each other constantly. He writes: “The inhumanity of contemporary architecture and cities can be understood as the consequence of the neglect of the body and the senses, and an imbalance in our sensory system.”
Many books essays and articles have been written, and much research has been conducted, on the concepts in the title of this post. The concepts can be viewed through different lens and each concept can mean so much. This post today is mostly a loose thread of ideas and lived experience of others’ and my own.
Maya Angelou has said that “You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all.” Both belonging to ourselves and being grounded in the truth of also belonging here, living with the salient awareness that the planet is our home allows us to better negotiate both belonging and home. Brené Brown has interpreted this quote as follows: “We confuse belonging with fitting in, but the truth is that belonging is just in our heart, and when we belong to ourselves and believe in ourselves above all else, we belong everywhere and nowhere.” In her book, Braving the Wilderness, Brown writes: “Belonging is being accepted for you. Fitting in is being accepted for being like everyone else.
Homecoming can also be felt as touching something that is not necessarily linked to our origins, or the places we reside in, but simply our human essence. As we go about negotiating and exploring our sense of home, our homecomings and belonging I think it is important to remember that we are all an intrinsic part of this planet, the world, the Universe, but the Universe and the planet do not belong to us.
1973
I was born in Australia to Greek immigrant parents. I spent my childhood there and in 1973 we moved to Greece.
2004
I think it was in 2004 that I visited an art gallery in Athens. Can’t say I can recall details of what it was about, but I bought a booklet with the title Home Coming by Hilde Aagaard. It is a collection of different things related to the concepts of home, country and homecoming by artists, writers and other people. I recently had a look at it. Below are some ideas and thoughts about home and homecoming from the book. I’m not quoting, but rather providing the gist of the various pieces:
A suggestion is included in the book for an activity that I have engaged with myself, and if I recall correctly, have in the past used as a writing prompt for my students.
My somewhat adapted version:
Write about the first memory of a place, the first house that you remember in which you lived… focus on the façade, the interior, the ambience, a favourite nook or room, the garden or balcony, welcome any incidents, memories [or emotions] that might arise
Someone focused on being caught between two languages… This is something I can relate to. Being bilingual has brought me much joy and ease, for many years an income, as well as, some pain
Like Hansel and Gretel and other fairy tale characters we often try to find our way back home following breadcrumbs
Memories of houses and dreams of houses… I too often ask myself what can real houses or our homes tell us about our dreams and what are the houses in our dreams telling us about our real life, our psychic structure
The theme of escaping from homes and making homes somewhere or anywhere
An extract from the book referring to the film by Christian Jacque, La Loi c’est la Loi / The Law is the Law: “He cannot take a step to one country or the other without the risk of being beaten up as a foreigner; he is unable to move in either direction”
One contributor to the book expressed the sentiment of being / feeling rooted somewhere despite his many displacements
Someone else wrote: “When I was small I used to hug the house on my return from holidays… stretched out my arms and touched the walls…” When my father decided it was time to sell our house and move to Greece there were tears. I wanted to take a little soil from our Australian garden with me.
Another person describes how despite having lived in many houses in childhood, there is one experiential home in childhood which moves with him as he has moved and travelled. It is transformed along the way
In a poem about homecoming the poet introduces the themes of mother tongue, of familiar skies and places, of loved ones, and on how on our returning home the places that we have visited become unreal, they feel flat on our return, and we need to fit back into our old skin.
Someone describes how when we return we have both changed and remained the same and the place we have returned to has changed and is also the same…. We vacillate between familiarity and unfamiliarity.
One person wrote about how returning to a childhood house can feel overwhelming. He writes: “the house became a rocking box of terror….”
For some people home was many places
And someone asserted that home is love, but it still needs a place and time to unfold
2006
In 2006 I read John Bradshaw’s popular book, at the time, Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child, on coming home to oneself through revisiting our childhood, reparenting ourselves and restoring the truth
Quote from the book:
“In fantasy and myth homecoming is a dramatic event….In reality exile is frequently ended gradually, with no dramatic external events to mark its passing. The haze in the air evaporates and the world comes into focus…” Sam Keen
Recent decade
In her book, Letter to My Daughter, Maya Angelou wrote: “Thomas Wolfe warned in the title of America’s great novel that ‘You Can’t Go Home Again.’ I enjoyed the book but I never agreed with the title. I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe. Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors, are mysterious apparitions, who come, go, and do strange unfathomable things in and around the child, the region’s only enfranchised citizen. We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do…”
“Attuning inwardly felt like a welcome home celebration.” Daniel J. Siegel
Homecoming is also a returning to our body senses and emotions, and to where we are right now. Sometimes we achieve this through meditation or other mindfulness practices
Experiencing homecoming through or during meditation by Tara Brach:
This meditation focuses on the breath as an anchor for homecoming. We begin with an intentional breath and then establish the natural breath as a home base. The instructions are to rest in the breath. Other waves of sensation or emotion are included when they ask for attention as we cultivate an open and full mindful presence. Our freedom arises as we recognize the formless awareness that is our home, and the natural and ever-changing waves that live through us.
In at least three of his books, Hardwiring Happiness, Resilient and Neurodharma, Rick Hanson writes about the reactive and the responsive mode, which he calls the green zone, where we feel safe, content and a sense of belonging or connection. He believes this is our home base and that we can access this state throughout the day.
June 2023
As I was considering today’s topic I purchased “The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise”, by the non-fiction writer Pico Iyer, who has travelled extensively and written about his travels. I have not read it yet, but I’ve been exploring his work a bit through listening to his talks.
In a talk on identity he discussed how some people are embedded in one culture and some live in the intersection of many cultures either through travelling and migration or diverse ethnic origins. It is also a fact that more and more people find themselves in a refugee status and there are more interacial couples and families. Iyer claims thta being in the intersection of many cultures can give us more lens to see the world. Through travelling and experiencing other cultures we can confront the world, our common humanity and our differences from a place of better understanding and acceptance. Iyer notes that the world is richer than our beliefs and what we know, and that ideas xenophobia and toxic populism can to some extent be overcome by travelling or / and coming into contact with other cultures.