One sunny spring morning, I was walking my daughter Maggie
to pre-school (she was four at the time) when she began to weep. I put my hand on her
shoulder, and asked, "Honey, what is wrong?" Her reply was to be expected from a young
child on her way to pre-school, but not for the reasons we usually expect. "I
want to go home," she said. "You want to
go back to our house?" I asked, thinking she simply did not feel like going to
school that day. "No," she said, "I want
to go home."
Now I was confused.
"Maggie, our house is right there, (pointing to our lavender cottage with
purple trim.)" "I want to go home," she
repeated between sniffles and tears.
"Maggie, this is your home," I
tried to assure her, "this is where
you belong." "No, mama, I want to go to
my heaven home!" she explained in exasperation.
This response caught me totally by
surprise. Not wanting to create any
fear-based ideas about heaven or hell, we had never used these words in our
home. We had never talked about a
"place" where God lives or a "place" where we go when we die. We had simply
talked about it as "returning to God".
Now I was the student. "What do
you mean your heaven home?" I asked.
"Mama, you know - the place we were before we came
here. The place I was with my heaven
family." (She seemed to expect me to know all about this.) "I know you miss your heaven family and your
heaven home, but this is your home now and we are your family," I attempted to
reason. She was still crying and was
really missing something that her heaven home had that this one did not. "Maggie, what is different about your heaven
home than being here?" Her reply taught
me one of the most important lessons of my life, "Mama, in heaven there is no
fear."
I was reminded of this story as I struggled this week with the
reality of the human condition. At
times, it seems our lives are filled with an endless stream of suffering,
conflict, loss and anxiousness. When
peace and joy seem to elude us, we sometimes feel compelled to scream,
"I do not belong here! I am not
from here!
I WANT TO GO HOME!"
There is something deep within us that knows that suffering,
conflict and fear are not our true nature.
This leaves us with the feeling that we do not belong here, that we are
not from here. We find ourselves longing
to return to some place or state of being that is peaceful and free from
suffering. We long to go home - our
"Heaven Home" as Maggie would call it.
The recollection of a "place" where life is peaceful and
free, I believe, is at once a gift and a calling from God. For whatever reason, we made a choice to take
on human form so that we could have a human experience (however masochistic
that choice may be). This is
not, however, our true nature. Deep
within us is a memory of love and joy and a desire to return to that persistent
state of Oneness with God and with all that is.
It is this longing that compels us to search for meaning, to search for
peace, to search for God. It is an
invitation to look for opportunities to remember this peace and love in the
midst of the insanity of the human experience.
The good news is that it is here,
in our very midst. Through prayer,
meditation, creative endeavors, nature, relationships and our life experience,
we have an infinite number of opportunities to pause and remember that we are
already home. It is only our false
perception that causes us to believe that we have been separated from God,
love, peace and joy. As we take the time
to reconnect with the Oneness that already is, we can then remember,
There is no place like home!
