"Seek the beginnings, learn from whence you came, and know the various earth of which you are made."
                                        Edwin Muir, Scottish poet from ‘The Journey’

Is there a place you long for, a literal place where you seem more at home than any other? Have you ever arrived in a new town or a place in the country and had that feeling of having come ‘home’? Is there a lake or a mountain that floats into your consciousness during the day, at the oddest of times, and brings you deep connection, deep peace?

There is an older movie, "A Trip to Bountiful", in which a woman longs so for her childhood farm that rests near the town of Bountiful that she makes a pilgrimage there. She takes off, without the knowledge of her doting children, and makes her way back to Bountiful and the land that was permanently imprinted in her memory, in her body, in her cells. She moves about the house and the land with a deep reverence, touching with gratitude all that is around her.In her waning years, she knew she must make a reconnection with the ground where she was shaped, the ground that held her life.

If we allow ourselves, we can become aware of those places that call to us….those that connect in deeper ways than others…to the very heart of our being. Sometimes these places are literally the home where we were born, our birthplace, and sometimes it is the land of our ancestors. If we have the privilege to travel we can often see how our ancestors that came to this country settled in areas that looked a great deal like those they left behind. The first time I traveled to Wales I was struck with how much the countryside in southern Ohio, my birthplace, looked like the Welsh hills. When I traveled to Norway, I was aware of the similarities between northern Minnesota and the lush, yet rugged, land of that Scandinavian country.

Where is your Bountiful? Where is the place that calls to your heart over and over? Where is your true Earth Home? Perhaps these places call to us in the way they do because we most fully experience the Holy there. Perhaps these places are our memory of Eden…..that place where we knew the true blessings of our home with God.

May this day bring you the experience of your true Earth Home…if not literally….then in  rich memory.

"Yet still from Eden springs the root, as clean as on the starting day."  Edwin Muir