I was nominated by the wonderful wisdom keeper and seanchaí Ali Isaac Ali Isaac to participate in a three day, three quote challenge.
The terms are as follows:
First, you thank the person who’s nominated you.
Then, you post a quote you love.
Finally, on each of the three days you post a different quote, you choose another unsuspecting victim–I mean awesome blogger friend–to carry on.
My first quote comes from author, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit who I currently still know too little about, a fact I will have to remedy immediately. Though I currently know little about her, her words are transformative. I am not only moved by them, but live them, resonate with them from somewhere beyond knowledge or understanding. Her words speak a truth that is mine, that calls to me in every moment. So, of course, I had to share.
The desire to go home that is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to tame the animal, to let the soul go wild, to shelter in darkness and blaze with light, to cease to speak and be perfectly understood.
I nominate the enigmatic poet, photographer, and seeker of mysteries, Sue Vincent, Sue Vincent to take up this challenge.
The Sound of What Happens 
Beautiful quote, Éilis! I think I will have to read it a few more times to fully absorb it all, though…
LOL! Well I’ve had this quote for months, and I always find myself rereading it a few times. It feels to me as simple and complicated and beautiful and challenging as life, as if the core of living were just summed up. I have my interpretations, but they’re so intertwined with my personal experiences, the one seeming to illuminate the other, it would be too hard to parce out, and may not make sense to anyone but me. 🙂 Interpretations change as I do, and I’m always surprised! But I can tell you, waking up, balancing opposites, wordlessness, being, I stopped trying to understand a while ago– I just am, become these things, and there are few words for that.
I wish I could learn to be a bit more accepting and peaceful as you! You are an inspiration…
You’re too kind, Ali! In all fairness, you haven’t been around when I’m totally overwhelmed or a bit panicked, I have some interesting moments! Comes with being a person who feels strongly, I guess. 🙂
Well that’s just part of being human, we all have moments like that.
You can sense the words, absorb them, feel their magic!
That happens to me too, every time I reread them! 🙂
Lovely sentiment and admirable goal. It’s so hard to find home though.
Thanks, Jane. That’s so true, about struggling to find home. Actually, for the longest time I just felt like a wanderer. I didn’t do a lot of physical wandering, I’m directionally challenged :-), but I often felt like I was a stranger in a strange land. Occasionally I still feel like that, when I believe I’m separate from everyone and everything around me. It might sound dangerously like a platitude but is not in practice, I stopped searching when I realized home was an internal state of being, a way of relating, an inner journey that orients you to the world “out there,” it’s within you, and when I came home to myself, perhaps paradoxically, I began to feel I belonged more with others. As long as I kept looking in landscapes and regions, nothing would happen. That’s been my experience which is all I can share… and I hope there might be something meaningful in it for you, I feel you also long for that peace of being at home, it is possible to return, to step through the doorway no one can close. How that is done, I think, differs for each of us, as unique as we are.
I think you’re perfectly right. Home is the nest we build, where we feel safe and in the right place. It can be anywhere as long as that feeling of peace comes with it. When I’m lucid, I can see that the longing to sink back into the spiritual arms of an ancestral home is, in large part, a longing to get away from its antithesis. When you live in a city, even a slow, laid-back sort of city, you are surrounded by thousands of people, cars, shops, an ocean of noise, smell, and anti-social behaviour. It’s easy to feel drawn to the peace and emptiness of green hills. I know I don’t need to go ‘back home’ to feel ‘at home’ but I do need a minimum of external peace and quiet.
I think we all need peace and quiet, Jane. At least for me, too much noise and goingson and antisocial people is disconnecting, and isolating. Trying to stay centered through that is a huge challenge, and I’m not even sure it’s a challenge we as human beings are meant to succeed with as often as our modern world demands it of us that we do. I’m not sure that coming home to yourself is an equivalent replacement for satiating a longing to once again return to a place in this world you love and calls to you. They are very different sorts of peace and orientation. Again, I can only speak to my experience, in finding belonging at the center of my own being in the world, a strange thing happened: I stopped feeling lonely. I’m by myself… a lot.. well at least physically. I rarely feel or even actually believe anymore that I am alone. . I am realizing that, like home and belonging, lonely is a state of being, you can feel lonely in crouds or by yourself, with family, anywhere. When I went to Ireland there were times I felt displaced, and that surprised me– I thought for sure that feeling would vanish once I was actually there. It only vanished when I felt I was interconnected with my self and with everything else, and had nothing to do with my physical geography, even in tranquility. The connection I feel is an ultimate oneness, that my existence is a testament to belonging, as is the case for everyone. Maybe that makes sense.
I think I understand what you’re saying. When you look for something, it’s easy to miss it. When you just accept what’s around you, it’s easier to slip into the flow. I know when we went back to ireland on holiday, it never occurred to me to look for anything. I loved the place and I loved the atmosphere. We all did. Yet now, I know that one of my sisters thinks of Ireland as a foreign country. another considers it home as naturally as breathing. We won’t ever go back to live there. My husband has no attachment to Ireland, and I have a condition that is only alleviated by living in a constant, warm climate. There are lots of things I love about the south, and France has been my adopted home for so long now I have put down new roots here. It won’t take much, a grandchild maybe, and I’ll accept that this is home from now on.
Thank you kindly, Eilis…
🙂
Loved this quote, Ellis. Happy I stopped by to read your blog. Will follow. Check out my blog about my quote challenge. I did it in one day due to my busy schedule and vacation time. https://jemsbooks.wordpress.com/2015/06/21/three-quotes-for-the-day-blog-tag/
I know what you mean about feeling at home with oneself. When I am writing I feel my happiest as the words flow out of my fingertips and onto the screen of my laptop. It is through HIM that all things come. I don’t like the hustle bustle of crowds and find joy in peace and quiet and the love of my husband and family. One must look deep inside to find one’s home wherever one resides.
Blessings of peace and joy to you!