They say that when you’re about to die your life flashes before you, you see those you love…I need no private cinematic bursts of my life and my loved ones. I can see them already and they are about to be murdered by the gun of a Zairian child soldier who stands at the doorway watching us.
Miguel began a ceremony to help me let go of these possessions. First he filled a small container with herbs and lit it, releasing a sweet and pungent fragrance in the smoke wafting in the air. I drifted into a kind of reverie.
Physicist and Emmy-award winning filmmaker Brian Swimme explores our place in the cosmos and the role of chaos, awe, and wonder in the birth of the universe. Drawing on discoveries in astronomy, geology, biology and the humanities, he tells how we came to call this planet home.
“I’ve had many kinds of jobs, but have never considered the level of labor to be the measure of myself (or) placed the security of a job above the value of home.”
“When you visit someone at home, the door into the house…is rich with the textures of presence from all the welcomes and valedictions that have occurred on that threshold.”
We devour books like The Magical Art of Tidying Up because they teach us how to groom our homes and keep them free from clutter. Yet we hunger for a rich and sensuous affair with home that makes us want to hunker down and never leave it.
What does home mean in a culture that feeds on instant gratification? How does it provide a safe haven in a world that moves too fast and demands too much? Learn how to get centered as you create your own domestic rituals.