NYE 2023 and thinking of home

New York City, New Year’s Eve 2023; a surging restless tsunami-like tide of humanity. All of them heading toward Times Square. Amongst it all I feel like a cork on the ocean, struggling to stay afloat as a million bodies jostle about.

At last I make landfall on a small island of calm, the Galaxy Diner on W46th Street. They are playing Michael Bublé. The lyric of his hit single “Home” reverberates in my ears. “Surrounded by a million people I still feel all alone. I want to go home.”

There in that diner I realise home is not a place at all, it’s a feeling.

Burt Bacharach eluded to this feeling too: A house is not a home, he wrote. Nor are the possessions that fill it. These things can be snatched away from us in an instant. On the other hand, it occurs to me that home is something far more permanent.

What is home?

Home is when we feel we are one with those we love and those who love us. I believe we are most at home when we feel most complete in ourselves. Buddhists call it a state of Nirvana. Jesus called it the kingdom of God. Mohamed referred to it as paradise. It’s not a place, it’s a metaphor.

In fact, the Irish-American scholar and historian John Dominic Crossan said home is one of the most powerful metaphors. He insists the idea of ‘a home’ drives our very existence.

Can you own a home?

Alas, coveting a physical sense of place as ‘home’ only encourages violence and destruction.

Since the beginnings of time humanity has fought over the homes or homelands they want to possess. Alas we can’t ever own them.

Where to find home

We all yearn for that sense of home. A time when our existential loneliness will end and we feel belonging.

Home is where the heart is. It is inside each and every one of us. However, finding it takes courage. It takes being brave enough to surrender to love. We all need one another and the answers we seek lie in loving one another.

That’s where we find home; in surrendering to the power of love. What’s more, that’s where home finds us.