Periphery of Home

Periphery of Home

A Reflection and Guided Meditation by Aaron Schultz

Can you recall a time, with longing in your heart, when you recited the familiar phrase:

“I just want to be home”

Home is a reality as diverse as the inhabitants of such a place.

The definition of home exists in memory, experience, imagination.

It vacillates in between past, present, future.

Now, in wake of a global pandemic,

Home is changing.

The virus has displaced the welcome of home

into a peripheral state of confusion.

Home as a prison of unemployment.

Home as an incubator for fear to freely roam.

Home as isolation. Home as school.

Home as chaos. Home as loneliness.

Home as unaffordable. Home as temporary.

Home as a chamber of unresolved tension.

What is it that makes us feel safe?

Predictability? Knowledge? Familiarity? Belonging?

No state of emergency, ferocity of fear, uncertainty of mind, or degradation of health
can keep us away from the home we find in God’s embrace.

Instead of being scattered to the periphery of the places we inhabit,

we are called to the center of Presence;

the center of God and the center of our being.

A Presence containing within Godself the safety we are all searching for.

The fear and chaos are not dismantled in Presence;

rather, they are contextualized in the companionship of Love.

The fear and the chaos together are unsubstantiated in the glory of God's love within us.

They exist in submission to Love,

are swallowed up by Love,

and are resurrected into experiences of encountering the purity of Love;

the real essence of home.

Guided Meditation

I invite you to sit in a comfortable position and bring to mind a word or phrase from the meditation above.

Be patient with yourself as the word or phrase makes its way into your consciousness.

Connect with your breath, breathing in this word or phrase

and breathing out the Presence of God.

Pay attention to how your body feels as you contemplate this word or phrase.

Locate this feeling, give thanks for it, and let it drift from your imagination.

Connect again with your breath, and sit in this state of connectedness for as long as you desire.

As you transition out of this meditation, you are invited to sing out loud

or in the silence of your heart the following verse from "Be Still, My Soul":

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on your side;

bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;

leave to your God to order and provide;

in ev'ry change God faithful will remain.

Be still, my soul: your best, your heav'nly Friend

through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Amen.