Derived from Sharon Daloz Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams (Pages 34-35)

Reflecting on the political cynicism of American society and the ironic detachment that characterizes many in his generation, twenty-four-year-old Jedediah Purdy writes: “We doubt the possibility of being at home in the world, yet we desire that home above all else.”

It has been said that the home is the most powerful word in the English language. It is where we start from. It is what we aspire to. To be at home is to have a place in the scheme of life—a place in the scheme of life—a place where we are comfortable; know that we belong; can be who we are; and can honor, protect, and create what we truly love.

To be at home within one’s self, place, community, and the cosmos is to feel whole and centered in a way that yields a sense of power and participation. Parker Palmer has described his experience in midlife of contending with the ill-fitting dreams of his future and toxic expectations of self he had carried for many years. This journey took him through the slough of depression.  When asked how it felt to emerge from depression with, as he put it, “a firmer and fuller sense of self,” he responded, “I felt at home in my own skin, and at home then, is a quality of human living. At its best, it has taken the form of… a quiet confidence and joy which enable one to feel at home in the universe…” To be at home is to be able to make meaning of one’s own life and of one’s surroundings in a manner that holds, regardless of what may happen at the level of immediate events. To be deeply at home in this world is to dwell in a worthy faith.

Young adulthood has much to do with big questions about home: Where do I live? Whom do I live with? Where and with whom do I belong? What can I honor? What is worthy of shelter and protection? Where can I be creative? If Robert Frost was right that “home is the place where they have to take you in”, young adults do indeed also ask: “Does my society have a place for me? Am I invited in?”

These are questions of meaning, purpose, and faith; they are asked not just on the immediate horizon of where to spend the night. In young adulthood, as we step beyond the home that has sheltered us and look into the night sky, we can begin in more conscious ways to ask the ancient questions: Who am I under these stars? Does my life have place and purpose? Are we—am I—alone?

(Pages 51-52)

Again, it has become increasingly clear that there is value and healing in incorporating into our understanding of human development an imagination of becoming at home. A part of becoming at home in the universe is discovering our place within it, in the new global commons in which we now find ourselves. We are beginning to recognize that this becoming is not so much a matter of leaving home as it is undergoing a series of transformations in the meaning of home. We grow and become both by letting go and holding on, leaving and staying, journeying and abiding—whether we are speaking geographically, socially, intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually. A good life and the cultivation of wisdom require a balance of home and pilgrimage.

In this sway of seeing, though we may move from geographical location to another the growth of the self and the development of faith may be understood as transformation of the boundaries that have defined home. These boundaries may be continually revised outward to embrace the neighborhood, the community, the society, the world, and even the inexhaustible universe in which we dwell. While we make this journey of transformation in which our sense of inclusiveness and ultimacy is continuously expanded, we experience home as a familiar center surrounded by a permeable membrane that makes it possible both to sustain and enlarge our sense of self and other, self and world. Our imagination of development becomes not only a ladder but also a series of concentric circles, or perhaps a spiral that honors both.