Thoughts & Quotes on HOME

I was thinking about the solidity and security of a home this morning as I sat anticipating the next aftershock from last week’s earthquake. (I do this a lot – especially when I’m lying in bed at night ready to fall asleep.) When will the next one come?

We’ve had over 300 tremors since Wednesday morning’s 5.7, most undetectable without a seismograph, but some jolting. One seemed to tilt our house suddenly before settling it again into a new groove. 

A lot of homes in Utah are settling into a new groove this week. All schools and many businesses are closed due to the coronavirus. Parents are overseeing homework like never before while trying to work from home themselves. Colleagues on video conference calls do not look like themselves. The hair on their heads and faces has grown out unrecognizably. They’ve dressed down. I haven’t worn jewelry or make-up for at least a week. Who knows how long really? I’ve lost all track of time. 

But while I was sitting there, trying to sense a tremor, the wind of an approaching storm buffeted the house. Soon it will be raining, and the roof will protect us from the rain. The foundation, the walls, and the roof of the house are all protecting us as the people inside  “shelter in place.” 

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of the home, literally and figuratively. I know not everyone has one. I think about our homeless population and the women and children in domestic violence shelters across the state. Not having a home at a time like this, or any time, makes you more vulnerable to viruses like Covid-19 and to natural phenomena like earthquakes and late winter storms. 

But because most of us are home much more than usual right now, we have an opportunity to focus our attention on the place we live in and how we live in it. What would make it a better refuge? How do we safeguard it from physical and emotional contamination as the world outside our four walls undulates in unpredictable waves? What can we do to make our homes happier, healthier, safer places to live? 

The answers to these questions will be unique to every home, because every home is unique. There are things every family and individual can do during this Covid-19 pause to make their homes stronger in every sense of the word. No one can tell you what those things are, but while we have a little more time to think about things and focus, we can do them. 

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Below is the text of a blog piece I wrote praising HOME in the fall of 2016 along with some favorite quotes on this favorite subject: 

HOME: There’s No Place Like It in the World!

[There is so much I could say about HOME! But here are some of my thoughts on the subject, and some other people’s thoughts as well.]

 As a child, I moved a lot, always in the same metro area, because, as the Temptation song says, “Papa was a rolling stone.” (My “papa” is 79 now and still restless, wanting to move every few months. I now understand the vagabond nature of my childhood.) 

Our family lived in various apartments, town homes, duplexes, regular houses, and farm houses in and around Kansas City on both sides of the state line. We lived in the city, in the suburbs, and the countryside. In the fourth grade, I attended three different schools, for example, in three different school districts. By necessity, I learned to adapt.

The Temptations song continues: “Wherever he laid his hat was his home.” 

Home is wherever you are – wherever the people you love and the people who love you are – regardless of the home’s shape, size, cost, décor, etc. I have even felt at home in hotel rooms while traveling – the sanctuary of a secure, designated place to rest and regroup. 

Home is a special place by virtue of the fact that you belong there. 

Who hasn’t come in from bad weather or from a difficult day and felt the contentment of arriving at home? 

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

 Some quotes about home(the last three are religious in nature): 

To us our house was not an unsentient matter – it had a heart and soul and eyes to see us with, and approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies. It was of us and we were in its confidence and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction. We never came home from an absence that its face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome – and we could not enter it unmoved. – Mark Twain, on his home in Hartford, Connecticut

If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. – William Morris, English designer and philosopher 

This is the true nature of home — it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home; so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of that outer world which you have roofed over, and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place…so far it vindicates the name, and fulfills the praise, of home. – John Ruskin

The reality of the house is order. The blessing of the house is community.  The glory of the house is hospitality. The crown of the house is godliness. – Frank Lloyd Wright 

His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking, best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

There is a mystical virtue in right angles. There is an unspoken morality in seeking the level and the plumb. A house will stand, a table will bear weight, the sides of a box will hold together only if the joints are square and the members upright. When a bubble is lined up between the two marks etched in the glass tube of the level, you have aligned yourself with the forces that hold the universe together. – Scott Russell Sanders, The Paradise of Bombs, University of Georgia Press

If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person. If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world. – Chinese Proverb

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition. – Samuel Johnson

Home should be an anchor, a port in a storm, a refuge, a happy place in which to dwell.  Home should be where life’s greatest lessons are taught and learned.  Home can be the center of one’s earthly faith, where love and responsibility are appropriately blended.  – Marvin J. Ashton

 He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home. – Johann Woldgang von Goethe 

I discovered the value of four walls and a roof. Something about containment that at the same time offers escape….What they had kept safe was more than our possessions; our houses had concealed ourselves that one else ever saw. – from the book Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones 

The righteous woman may save the home, which may be the last and only sanctuary…in the midst of storm and strife. – Spencer W. Kimball 

The affection and thoughtfulness required in the home are no abstract exercises in love, no mere rhetoric concerning some distant human cause. Family life is an encounter with raw selfishness, with the need for civility, of taking turns, of being hurt and yet forgiving, and of being at the mercy of others’ moods. Family life is a constant challenge, not a periodic performance we can render on a stage and then run for the privacy of the dressing room to be alone with ourselves. The home gives us our greatest chance, however, to align our public and private behavior, to reduce the hypocrisy of our lives – to become more congruent with Christ. – Neal A. Maxwell

Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a HOUSE of PRAYER, a house of FASTING, a house of FAITH, a house of LEARNING, a house of GLORY, a house of ORDER, a house of GOD. – Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Doctrine & Covenants 109:8