Home: safety, surety, stability; a place to rest and renew one’s energy, a place in which to be rewarded, responsible, creative; a place that brings some sense to the ‘crazy world out there’ and makes things okay. When we think of “home” we usually think of the house or apartment in which we live. If we’re traveling, we may think of “home” as the state or province or country that we’re not in at the moment.

GBPI asks us to think of home globally, i.e., the world is our home. To do this, GBPI suggests thinking of home not as a stationary place, but as a portable place, as the presence that exists in whatever place we are. “Home” becomes wherever we are when we are aware of presence, or, simply, when we are present. This change means to feel at home, to be at home, wherever. What comes out of this change of approach is a practical way to see the whole world, every place, as our home. If this is not your current concept of home, try it on for a moment now. Just say: “Home: wherever I am right now.”

‘My home’ and ‘her home’ are the same home -- not because they are the same physical structure, maybe they are different houses. They are the same home because the same Divine presence is in every place and in every person, and it is the Divine presence and its love that is what we feel as ‘home’, where things are as they should be, in place. This may be radical, but it is also traditional. In the Hebrew language another word for the Divine is “Hamakom”, “The Place”.

With this change of viewpoint from physical home to a portable presence, our world stands a better chance for survival. To paraphrase the great Abraham Lincoln, a world divided unto itself cannot stand. This newsletter deals with the topic of ‘home’ from GBPI’s home perspective: Divine Love.

Leaning against the doorpost, looking out to the evening rain as it pitter-patters to its rest on the dirt road in front of my house. All is quiet. A woman walks between the puddles and continues homeward. A horn honks in the distance as a cool moist breeze briefly brushes my face and runs on. Leaning against the doorpost, I am.

Paul Revere and the Raiders’ 1971 song, “Indian Reservation” contains the painful lament: “and all the beads we made by hand are nowadays made in Japan.” They poignantly catch the essence of lost glory, the pain of change from what was once beautiful, unique, mine. At the time, “Made in Japan” was not a thing over which many Americans rejoiced. “Made in Japan” meant to many people “cheap”, not as good as “Made in America”. Coincidentally, it represented a wound to the collective self image of the U.S. as the unrivaled manufacturing giant of the world.

Nevertheless, we (North) Americans were purchasing the “Made in Japan” goods in large numbers, and were also mass-producing items ourselves. Clearly Japanese products – largely electronics – were good, and ‘Made in America’ did not mean ‘mass produced and inferior’. Something was up. Looking at American-made goods as being higher quality was – and still is – a natural patriotic reaction to the loss of hegemony, i.e., control. The person saying, “oh, it’s made in Japan” could still feel the status that comes with being part of the biggest, strongest, most advanced group. And so he feels safe. Oversimplified it might sound something like: “Okay, if I can’t have unchallenged market dominance, at least I can still feel superior by remembering that my quality is better. I am better after all; I’m not making that made-in-Japan stuff.” But if we look at this from a global perspective, if we all say that about each other… you see the problem.

Time has turned and a product that has the stamp “Made in Japan” is now esteemed and preferred over other places of manufacturing, for instance China, India or Indonesia. (Recently I bought a Japanese camera and was informed that I would be very lucky if it was actually made in Japan because then the quality would be superior. As it happened, the camera was made in Thailand and the camera is itself a work of art.) So we adapt. As an esteem-boosting mantra we replaced “Made in Japan” with “Made in China.” The U.S., and to some extent the E.U., is concerned that China will use its growing economic power to become more powerful than the U.S.A. and Europe.

This “Made in China” syndrome, keeping my part of the world dominant over their part so as to keep my part of the world safe from what I believe about them in their part of the world, raises a question: where is our home? Where are we living? Is our home in a place of noise and “us vs them” or in a place of simple quiet and “us”? Do we have the strength to be quiet? Do we have the heart to be inclusive? Can we share? Does “a position of strength” have to mean dominance? Our freedom and peace depend on our answers to these questions. For the world to change, each of us must change, following Mahatma Ghandi’s oft-quoted dictum: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” So I must ask myself, where is my home? Where do I rest and feel safe? Take a moment and ask yourself: Where do I rest and feel safe?

For most of us there are always the four walls to return to, but there is a more inclusive definition of home that needs to be adopted if we are to have world safety. Let us place alongside our definition of “home” the four or forty-four walls, a simple, perhaps spiritual, definition: home is presence. Home is where we are. Home as awareness from a place of non-judgmental noticing. Home is that place inside ourselves from which we look out. Home as where we are when we can say: “this is it, this is just right” or when we aren’t even saying anything. Where we are when we don’t need this or that to change in order to accept a situation. Then there is brother rather than other.

The trick to this? Remembering. Remembering and noticing the beautiful feminine touch and holding that is quietly all around us and in us every moment. Remembering, bringing our parts together again. One part of us might have been in the dream of I’m Better while another part might have been in the dream of They’re Not As Good. Or they’re better and I’m not as good. Either way, those are lands of make-belief, of mind split from the true presence of reality, and coming home is a relief. Like water in the desert.

So next time I hear “Made in China”, rather than immediately focus my thoughts on the human rights violations, environmental violations, or impending economic takeover of which the media remind me, instead of continuing to think “uh-oh, it’s them,” I am going to re-member, to take a moment and come home. “Oh yes, how cool to be made in China, so many people in China, such life, presence there too, Divine Love there too, and striving, the Divine Play, that is home too. How wonderful that now I can make more than thirty dollars a month. Very good, very good.”

And from here I might just have more energy for other things useful and pleasing.

“Holy, holy, holy, the Lord of Hosts, the world is full of His glory. And the doorposts moved.”

-- Isaiah 21:12