My vacation this summer included a week in Maine, and part of the adventure was driving there and back with my wife. Going to Maine we travelled through Ontario and Quebec, including a night in an inn with French-speaking hosts. On the way home we took a different route, down through New Hampshire and across Massachusetts. At the end of a long day driving on interstates, we got off the highway just over the state line into New York and followed a small road for the last 5 or 10 miles to our place for the night. As the road went up and down gentle rises, around many curves and past small houses and farms, I felt something: a sense of being home.
Something about the contours of the land and the character of the houses was very familiar to me, although I had never been to that particular town. It was subtly different from Maine, from Ohio, and from Michigan, in a way that was felt rather than known. I lived in western Massachusetts for 16 years, and this area felt just the same. I was home.
We only stayed one night in that Air BnB. We didn’t have time to take up the host on his invitation to walk around the property and into the woods, where he said he had recently seen a mother bear and her cub. But one night was long enough to let the familiarity sink in. Long enough to reflect on a chapter in my life when I went to college and grad school, bought my first house, and when my kids were born. This was that place: I knew the geography.
I believe that geography imprints on us as we live our lives: the natural land as well as the built landscape; the plants and animals of a place, the people and the weather—they all seep into us when we spend time somewhere, and this adds up to a feeling of belonging and a feeling of home. Travelling for me reminds me of where I have been home and where I feel home now. May we all know that sense of home, and may we open our senses to it.
PRAYER:
Spirit of Life and Love, energy that dwells in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, I honor you. Divine Energy of the coast of Maine, I welcome you. Breath of Life that rustles the trees outside my window right now in central Michigan, may you bring love and peace.
May the spirit of each place bring life and peace to those who dwell there and to those who pass through. Blessed be.
Rev. Drew Frantz
July 20, 2022
Something about the contours of the land and the character of the houses was very familiar to me, although I had never been to that particular town. It was subtly different from Maine, from Ohio, and from Michigan, in a way that was felt rather than known. I lived in western Massachusetts for 16 years, and this area felt just the same. I was home.
We only stayed one night in that Air BnB. We didn’t have time to take up the host on his invitation to walk around the property and into the woods, where he said he had recently seen a mother bear and her cub. But one night was long enough to let the familiarity sink in. Long enough to reflect on a chapter in my life when I went to college and grad school, bought my first house, and when my kids were born. This was that place: I knew the geography.
I believe that geography imprints on us as we live our lives: the natural land as well as the built landscape; the plants and animals of a place, the people and the weather—they all seep into us when we spend time somewhere, and this adds up to a feeling of belonging and a feeling of home. Travelling for me reminds me of where I have been home and where I feel home now. May we all know that sense of home, and may we open our senses to it.
PRAYER:
Spirit of Life and Love, energy that dwells in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, I honor you. Divine Energy of the coast of Maine, I welcome you. Breath of Life that rustles the trees outside my window right now in central Michigan, may you bring love and peace.
May the spirit of each place bring life and peace to those who dwell there and to those who pass through. Blessed be.
Rev. Drew Frantz
July 20, 2022
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