Can a house be a home? Or is it the people who are our home? Perhaps it is the climate and the culture that are home to some people. There are memories: sites and sounds and smells that make us feel at home. And there are spiritual homecomings that become wonderful cathartic moments for some. These experiences are all "home" in their own way.

I have fond memories of a house I grew up in. I lived there for 18 years with my mom and dad and three brothers. But that home now belongs to someone else. It seems foreign to me and strange when I stop a moment as I pass by on the street. The people I knew there are not there, and so it is empty to me.

Now I have lived with a wonderful gentle woman for 30 years. We've lived in about 20 different places including some that I can hardly remember. Each of them was our home when we lived there, but what made them home is that we were together there. We once bought a home together and lived there for 10 years. Yet that home was not our home because we owned it. Our home is where we are together.

There are some intangable things that tug at my heart and appear in my dreams. I recognize the things that still tie me to places in the past. Fresh fallen snow at night, the nuns from the college where I first lived away from home, the smell of lavender, and the taste of warm yeast rolls all bring me back to comfortable times that have nurtured me.

Countless times as a Christian minister I have seen people in tears come home to the community of believers. This spiritual homecoming often comes after stressful times of conflict. The ability to return to the faith of our youth is a powerful experience of home.

It must be like that with people who have been lonely for a long time. When they find a person who loves and nurtures them they must feel like they have come home to a place they have sought all their lives.

Home, then is a connection to people and experiences. Some people find it at grave sites, and some in old neighborhoods. There comes a time in life, as our bodies and mind begin to fail, when home is in our memories. Don't be impatient when your grandmother wants to tell you the same stories over again. She is just trying to share her home with you!

Learn more about this author, Susan Kliebenstein.
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