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Living SoulFully as an Oblate of St. Benedict

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Homecoming: A SoulFully You Retreat

We long for the acceptance of home, a place of peace where we can be truly ourselves–seen and heard, loved and believed, held and yet free. Our longing is the existential homesickness that THIS isn’t all there is and that when we get a taste of unconditional acceptance and love, we want more. Our longings are good and holy—it is our Divine inheritance to experience all that it means to feel at home.

Inspired by the lyrics of Homesick, a song by friend Jana West, my annual Advent retreat was titled Homecoming: A SoulFully You Retreat. We explored how the Divine accompanies us, making a home within, and what it means to feel homesick or “at home” with ourselves and others. I offer some of our reflections so you, too, can take part:

“Love is home. Home is both an external dwelling and an internal abode. Home is the place where we belong, our place of acceptance and welcome. There, in this shame and judgment-free embryonic cocoon of love, we practice unconditional acceptance; we learn to relate to ourselves and the world around us.

And home is a soft place for the body to land, a safe place for the soul to fully disrobe. Home is the place where our failures don’t kill, our sins can’t crush, and even when we are at our worst, we’re safe. Home is a place where we are free to take our deepest, fullest, least encumbered breath.

At home, there’s no need to guess whether we’re in or out, welcomed or not. Home always prepares a place with us in mind.” (Center for Action and Contemplation, Home, 5/10/2024, Felicia Murrel)


What words or phrases resonate with you? Indeed, our personal experiences of home can bring a spectrum of feelings, from warm and fuzzy to sadness or terror, when we consider what being “at home” means. The ideal is what we seek and long for, both within ourselves and with others.

Continue reading “Homecoming: A SoulFully You Retreat” →
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Home Is The Nicest Word There Is

Home is where the heart is.

Home is not a place, it’s a feeling.

A house is made of walls and beams, a home is built with love and dreams.

(And, of course) Home sweet home.

home is the nicest

Platitudes? Perhaps. But what may seem overly sentimental is what we yearn for in a home—a place of comfort, expression, warmth, understanding, love, hope, and shelter. An ideal home is a refuge, a haven, a sanctuary that provides safety and protection, a shelter in more ways than one. Our home can be an expression of our personality and values. We bring our whole self into a house and make it a home.

On day 50-something of “sheltering at home,” I am grateful for the roof over our head and all that our home provides us. Our current home is the result of “packing lightly” and “crossing the threshold”, themes from The Soul of a Pilgrim by Christine Valters Paintner.

“The journey of pilgrimage is about returning home with a new awareness of what home really means.”—The Soul of a Pilgrim

The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within ...

Five years ago, my husband and I put our house up for sale with no idea what we were going to do when it sold. It was an adventure—kind of exciting, a little scary, but certainly a threshold opportunity to see what our next step would be. We went through a process of considering what we really needed, what we would keep, what would be given away or sold, what might be tucked away in storage until we knew more decisively what we would do.

Some essential questions to consider in “The Practice of Packing Lightly” are: What would create more lightness in your life? What can you let go of to pack more lightly?

We knew the home we had lived in for nine years was not the place we wanted to be forever. Coming to that decision did not happen overnight. We had tossed it around, tabled it, brought it back up…but finally decided that we had been standing at the threshold of this decision for far too long. For us it came down to two issues: we did not need as much space or stuff and we wanted to have more free time to spend on things we loved, not just working on, or thinking about, household projects.

It felt right to let go of an attachment to our house and our things to see what might be in store for us. We were brought to a threshold, a clearing out of the old, and were ready to move into the uncertainty that lied ahead.

A voice comes to your soul saying,

Lift your foot. Cross over.

Move into emptiness of question and answer and question.

—Rumi, The Glance

witnessA
Card Name: Witness    I am one who is Witness to self.
I am one who stands tall
Upright, resilient, longsuffering
Despite winds of change.
I am one who, with the pace of a praying monk,
Glides gently through breeze and shadow, clouds and sea.
I stand centered
I move with purpose
I am one who is Witness to self
It is time
The door is open.

“The LORD said to Abram: Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I WILL show you. I WILL make of you a great nation, and I WILL bless you; I WILL make your name great, so that you WILL be a blessing.”—Genesis 12:1-3

In the story of Abram and Sarai (Genesis 12:1-9; The Soul of a Pilgrim, Chapter 2), they are guided to a new life in an unknown and distant land. When practicing Lectio Divina with this story, I imagine the couple had a sense of loss at leaving their familiar home, but that they also desired an adventure, something new. Despite mixed feelings, they were open to hearing the blessings God promised, they trusted God’s will. Continue reading “Home Is The Nicest Word There Is” →

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Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ: Hospitality and The Holy Trinity

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” he began, as we made the Sign of the Cross.

A few months after we had moved into our new home, one of my favorite monks, Fr. Thomas Leitner joined us for a special dinner and house blessing. After the introductory prayers and Scripture readings, Fr. Thomas sprinkled Holy Water that had been blessed at the Easter Vigil in each of our rooms—the living room, bedrooms, kitchen, upstairs, downstairs and even next door at Al and Beth’s house, our townhouse roofmates—and a little extra splash for our loyal Dachsy-Poo, Bailey. Our daughter, who was finishing her last year in college, would spend a few months living in our new home, but mostly it would become our empty nest. This blessing for our home was also a blessing for the next chapter in our lives.

Building Hacienda Drive.jpg

Fr. Thomas also gave us a special gift, a replica of Andrei Rublev’s Holy Trinity Icon. An icon, an image or religious picture, communicates a deeper spiritual meaning often used in prayer and meditation for Christians throughout the world. It was a special image for him, used as the holy card for his ordination and First Mass in 1992.*  He enthusiastically shared with us why he also felt it represented how we would welcome those who entered as guests and the hospitality we would extend in our new home. Continue reading “Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ: Hospitality and The Holy Trinity” →

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