"Home Sweet Home"
All of us carry in our minds the image of our ideal home realized or not. It is a place where we feel we belong, a rightness, at-homeness, a knitting together of self and world. Home is a place to become yourself, to rest and surrender all pretense. As dear Mother used to say, "Home is the place to restore mind, body, and soul." It is a source of emotional nourishment. It's where you can close a door and open your heart.
If there is any meaning to existence, we are surely closest to it there. We often take our homes for granted. But when we steep ourselves in our home, a deep sense of place begins to emerge. Life becomes more meaningful. We begin to have a greater spiritual awareness of what our home is and should be.
Perhaps our most inspiring thought is that if our homes, if we are to live well in them, require and deserve a lifetime of the most careful attention. A home absorbs caretakeing like a sponge. All the hours we spend tending to it are never in vain, for everything we give to our home, is in turn, given back to us. Our homes will only be as generous and nurturing as the effort we invest in them.
--Miriam Lukken, Mrs. Dunwoody's Excellent Instructions for Homekeeping
