This week I received a postcard from writer Anne-Sophie Balzer in Germany – a current project of hers, asking a hundred of us:
where are you at home and what makes this place home to you? is it your beloved, your zip code, your community, your garden, the tasks in life? is the alchemy of home a call and response between you and a place? if you have no home right now, what is your ideal of home?
Wondering how I might answer her questions (paint me a picture. describe it to me. you can respond in whatever form and language you wish) I’m writing this at my desk, looking out on the field thick with frost, -7° last night and still not past zero. The hard frost softens the green of the grass and the dark brown of the ever-growing metropolis of molehills. The sun bright and the sky a clear blue, the wheelie bin is waiting for the men in their orange and white lorry to come and collect. In direct line with it, about fifty metres ahead, the single sycamore rises, leafless and valiant, below the far horizon. This year I’ll have looked at the same view in different seasons for thirty years, the longest I’ve lived anywhere.
In the feudal system still common in Northumberland, I rent this cottage that used to be a gamekeeper’s house on a large estate. Apart from the special place where my children were born (another cottage, off-grid, on a slightly smaller estate), where we lived for nearly twelve years, this is as near to ‘home’ as I’ve ever been. Time seems to play a part as well as people and place.
The reason I’ve been here so long is because it suits me – I like its airiness and isolation, open to the sky and the countryside all around it, near and far. The gates at either end of the field are a pain, especially in winter, when you have to wade through a muddy lake to open and close them when you’re driving through. If there’s no stock in the field, the gates are open for a week or two and the sense of freedom is wildly exhilarating.
The house is set between mixed woodland to one side and behind it and these quite rough, scrubby areas are more precious to me than the house itself, which like many old country houses is draughty and leaky, hard to heat. However, I am grateful to have a roof over my head and feel very lucky to live on this raw, beautiful debateable land. I visit the woods as often as I can, breathing in the trees’ goodness and the changes in the seasons. I notice the birds, insects and flowers, who live here too, after all these years still learning about the natural history and deep ecology of this place as the world shifts about us.
All these things matter and they are ‘home’ for me. And yet, staying with Anne-Sophie’s question, I know there’s more in the layers of soil beneath the surface.
I’ve written a couple of versions of this poem (this one’s from Startling, 2022), which draws on the image attributed to the historical Buddha that we’re all living in a burning house (sparked by life’s general difficulties, apart from those great levellers old age, sickness and death) yet we go about our days as though the flames aren’t closing in around us.
When a person makes a commitment to Buddhist practice, they ‘go for refuge’. Recognising that every single thing in the universe comes and goes, the only place it makes sense to find rest are the three refuges of the buddha, the dhamma and the sangha – what is awake in you, the truth of the way things really are and the community of all beings who want to be free from suffering.
On the front of Anne-Sophie’s postcard is a beautiful ink drawing of a starling (by Carina Schlager) – because these birds mimic my own migratory behaviour. gregarious, ubiquitous and notoriously unpopular, they were present in all the places I have lived in all the countries on all the continents.
Refuge means ‘to fly back’, to return, to come home.
We imagine we will find love, safety, refuge out there somewhere. But Buddhist practice teaches us that true refuge is always and already right here. Right where we are, just as we are.
Susan Weiss
I’ve been trying to trust living with this sort of refuge for the past twenty years or so – though I knew its inevitability in my bones almost all my life but wasn’t able to bring myself to the challenges of the task until it seemed there really was no choice. Now, in this late stage of my life, I feel myself flying back, against the current of our culture, returning, within sight of home at last.
Another ‘dwelling place’ that Buddhist practice makes possible is the Brahmaviharas – ‘the sublime abodes’ or ‘divine dwellings’. These are four qualities to be cultivated, nurtured on behalf of others as well as for oneself: metta – friendliness, or lovingkindness; karuna – compassion; mudita – appreciation and joy; upekkha – equanimity, inclusiveness.
There is a story that at one time the Buddha’s followers were living in a forest where they were tormented by the wild spirits of the place, unsettled during the day, their piercing cries keeping them awake at night. The followers were so frightened they couldn’t sit to meditate, were never at ease. When they told the Buddha what was happening, he gave them instructions on how to practise loving kindness and taught them to chant the Metta Sutta, as an antidote to fear. His followers found new courage and knew they had the resources to keep on keeping on, choosing to live for the benefit of all beings.
From Plum Village – The Metta Sutta, chanted in English, translated by Thich Nhat Hanh
So often just now, while the world spins in chaos, I find myself calling on my metta practice, to create an in-the-moment home for myself there and wish others well. Like a muscle strengthened with exercise, I feel my courage return, enough resilience to continue trying to be the change I want to see. Maverick teacher Ram Dass said that’s what practice is: We’re all just walking each other home.
I’m no evangelist and have no definitive answers for where we find ourselves in our broken world, which for too many people doesn’t feel like home, physically, emotionally or spiritually, but if you’re privileged enough to have time and space, there’s a lot to be said for flying against the current, towards your north star, gathering your flock around you, finding places of stillness amidst the constant motion.
Thank you for reading this far. I hope it might feed your own reflections as we watch this month’s Stay-at-Home Moon fatten in the sky.
L
x
Mm, much food for thought, thank you. I'm certain my 'own good place' is within my authentic self -
Having discovered Buddhist practice about six years ago, I'm just now extricating myself from Triratna, local and national...I consider myself a Buddhist, and still want to practise meditation and the precepts - but was finding myself increasingly bogged down by the things that have bogged me down all my life. The 'religious' side, the hierarchy, patriarchy, jargon...
I've been reading about Stoic philosophy, which is promising, but am feeling a little like alone out on a cold and windswept hillside 🙄
Beautifully written and I can't believe you've been there for 30 years, though I suppose it makes sense when I realise that we have now been in Tynedale for 40 years! And nearly 39 years in our increasingly damp house!