Family

Heart is where the home is

I sincerely wish you peace, joy, and prosperity. May you have a home to live in every day of your life. It’s not such a strange wish to offer these days, is it? Such difficult times. So many suffering, out of doors, at home and abroad. Take a moment and whisper a prayer for their safety and shelter…or, if needed, for yourself.

Acting is just a way of making a living; the family is life.
Denzel Washington 

As I wrote this chapter in our cozy dining room, a steaming cup of liquid inspiration (coffee) close at hand and a beautiful blanket of snow draping the house, my wife was sympathizing on the phone with a lady who would soon be officially homeless. My wife, a living saint who is incapable of turning her back on any stray (yours truly included), would be “plussing up” by three cats our current stock of canines, felines and assorted rodentia. This, so three beloved pets won’t go under the needle when this lady would be evicted the next day…in the days before Christmas. While the lady herself would be able to move into a shelter, animals would not be welcome at her next residence.

I pray that you will have a home to live in for the next 365 days.

Across Iraq and Afghanistan, my own alternate homes for many years, the vast majority of houses are built of stone and mortar. In most of the cities (outside of the universal, sprawling slums housing the poor), dwellings are tidy, spare reflections of the generally barren landscape seen for miles around. Yet these austere buildings hold some of the warmest, most loving families to be found anywhere on our planet.

Therefore it is not “What” the home is, in my opinion, but “Who.”

Once during a year living in the north of Turkey, I visited the simple, brick-and-concrete house of my dear friend Hayri (you’ll remember him from the chapter on Understanding.) His mother welcomed me as a new son, sparing no expense. And this is identical, by the way, to the generosity I’ve received in the homes of Americans, Russians, Omanis, Afghans, Japanese, Iraqis, and a host of other good people worldwide.

On this particular visit, I made the amateur mistake of admiring a simple, orange doily that Hayri’s mother had crocheted. In less than one minute I was the proud, if somewhat perplexed, owner of that same orange doily, now neatly wrapped for transport. This was my first of many experiences with OMEH (Overwhelming Middle Eastern Hospitality). Resistance was futile; Hayri later told me I’m lucky I hadn’t admired his Mom’s furniture first.

The home can be a place of startling kindness, or it can contain staggering cruelty. Don’t judge a nook by its cover.

The most civilized of properties sometimes host the most unimaginable evil. Witness Josef Fritzl, the Austrian father who shackled, enslaved, raped, and seven times impregnated his own daughter over an uninterrupted, twenty-four year stay in his private basement dungeon. Researching this story, I was astounded to learn that he even incinerated the corpse of one of his own infant children/grandchildren to avoid discovery.

Contrast this horror to the boundless sacrifice of countless parents in famine-stricken nations, who sometimes starve to death themselves in order to share the tiniest crumbs of food and save their children.

It ain’t what—it’s who.

In Powerful Peace, you’ve read about the importance of seeking out common ground in the quest to reduce conflict and violence. What more common ground is there than the home itself? Whether snow-blanketed like mine, or shaken by war like those of my friends, this simple societal framework (literally and rhetorically speaking) has commonality written on it from Santa’s workshop to Admiral Byrd’s porta-potty on the South Pole.

In millions of homes on every continent, husbands and wives celebrate their blissful union…and quickly discover things to fight about. Children of every hue are born into homes on every terrain. Loved ones die, family cultures are renewed, and there’s almost never enough money to do everything we want.

Through it all, the calendar trudges faithfully along. Seasons come and go. Life in the home, ever dynamic, remains fundamentally and appreciably unchanged, forever. I’ve long heard it said that “home is where the heart is,” and as a man who’s been everywhere else I know it to be true for me. But I also know that whoever I meet, wherever I meet him, remembers some special place, too. It might have looked, sounded and felt very different from mine. It might have been on the other side of the planet.

Home is a piece of dirt, somewhere in the world. But it is also a very real, very lasting piece of a person’s life. If I disdain this person’s home, I have disdained him. When I honor his unique origins, I have honored him…and I have made some little step of progress for both our lives.

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