Homeless In A House
The facts need to be faced today. Money can buy you everything from basic food and shelter, to luxury food and shelter, but money cannot buy you the most basic sustenance and shelter of human living –– authentic relational affinity and deep intimate belonging. Money can buy you houses to shelter your bones but money cannot buy you homes to shelter your heart. And a home is what each and every human wants –– whether they are conscious of that fact or not.
Unbeknownst to many, a 'home' and a 'house' are two dramatically separate and distinct things. As concepts, their meanings are as far away from one another as Pluto is from the Sun.
However, millions today, commonly mistake their houses for homes. And our modern use of the English language reinforces the socially acceptable mistake, interchangeably using these words, daily.
You may be one of the countless millions who are completely unaware of their destitute living status of being homeless in a house. If so, you may be deeply lonely, but far from alone.
Why is it that when we see a man or woman living out-of-doors on the street, we rush to a conclusion, often describing them as 'homeless.' But we really don't know that. We do not know if they are truly 'home'-less. The only thing we likely know for sure is that they are 'house-less.'
It all displays our fundamental misunderstanding of the two concepts and the two words we use to represent them. Homes cannot be purchased or sold. Only houses. Homes can only be built or destroyed.
Again, homes cannot be purchased. Regardless of the amount of zeroes behind the numerals in your bank balance, your money will do you no good in the matter. Homes are a non-financial matter. They're not financially acquired, only spiritually acquired.
Think about it.
What makes a home a home versus a house? At best, a house can provide the opportunity for a home to be constructed in the midst of it. A house is simply a series of erected walls sharing a common roof. That is it. Houses are simply walls built around open spaces to protect the occupant from the outdoor elements. But if certain indoor elements are not present in those encased spaces, there will be no home to speak of nor experience for an occupant. Homes are about what occupies the hearts of the individuals around you in the dwellings of your life –– and what occupies your own.
After houses are built, homes must be built within them. Houses shelter the exteriors of human beings. Homes shelter the interior of human beings –– if you're lucky enough to have one. Home is a space of rejuvenation, love, nurturing, care, comfort and revitalization of the soul. It is a power-center where a beleaguered human can return from the world to get re-powered and re-centered. Home is a place of gentle repair.
If your house, and the elements within it, are not doing this, there is no home in your house. For some, it is literally what goes on in their very houses that causes them the most fragmentation, damage and inner destruction –– no matter how palatial their castles, and the many acres upon which that castle sits. Homes are about a different kind of safety than what houses provide.
Homes are not about physical structures. Homes are about relational structures and emotional structures to shelter and feed the soul of you. Your home could be a special friend and friendship, a relationship with a beloved spouse, a beloved parent, a beloved pet, a sacred book collection, a shrine or place of worship of The Beloved –– but a home is a bundles of elements that make you feel 'at home, welcomed, understood, accepted' on this earth –– no matter where you are on this earth.
You could have a home even when you have no walls to house you. Two so-called homeless persons who share such a bond, a connection, an honoring friendship could have more of a home than a billionaire living alone in a cold 42-room mansion.
There are sometimes people in your life, that if they are by your side on the frozen Tundra, you are warmed, sheltered and feel completely at home –– all because they are there. They are your touchstone in life. They are that place and space which gives you orientation to the engagement of living and makes it all worth it. They are your home.
When you have built this kind of relationship, this kind of communion with someone, some beloved, you have built the essence of what a home truly is. You have not just a place of physical safety, but a place of emotional safety and protection –– sheltered from the cold and challenging elements of life.
Simply buying houses to dwell within is not enough for your families. That is not what they truly long for. Your work is to build homes within homes for your families –– the critically important inner shelters for which a human being's soul thirsts –– and upon finding it, thrives.
In the most optimum of circumstances, your family should already have a home before moving into a house –– by BEING a home. A home is what you bring to every space you inhabit. Being a home is when your shared presence becomes a shelter of unerring, unfaltering love, acceptance, guidance and nurturing wherever you dwell –– even under a bridge.
Be not satisfied with your houses until they become homes. Forever be under construction expanding the rooms in the mansions of love you share and co-build with whomever is your safe place to be-loved –– your beloved –– your beloveds, of all forms.
Never be "home"-less, whether you're in a house or without one. Give your soul the shelter it long's for. And be an unerring shelter to someone else's. We all need a True North in the wilderness of life.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
