Category Archives: Home

Heat

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This summer has been a hot one on our farm in East Tennessee.  Most of the country experienced a big heat wave the at end of June and the beginning of July. Our “neck of the woods” was no exception.  I watered the flower pots daily and every few days moved around the sprinklers for a deep watering of the flower gardens and newly planted trees.  It isn’t unusual for us to have long hot months with lots of humidity and over the years I got used to it.  The hot humid days make the spring and fall weather even lovelier in contrast.

But this summer we got to really experience the heat as our oldest air-conditioning unit decided to die in the midst of the heat wave—with company in the house.  Ahhh, isn’t that the way it always goes.  This started a long odyssey with the HVAC company and a long wait for we weren’t the only ones who had an untimely demise of their AC. We were fortunate that we had another unit on the main floor that was working so our kitchen and family room were perfectly comfortable.  But as I walked up the stairs to the bedrooms the hot, wet air was pretty intense despite open windows and about a dozen fans continuously blowing.  It was even more curious when I walked downstairs and I would first feel the cool air on my ankles and then slowly up my whole body until I was back in the artificially controlled environment.

We had concerned friends that offered their air-conditioned guest rooms for the three-week wait until a new unit could be installed. But we like our own bed and decided to lean into the experience.  If you remember we live in a very old house, especially for the United States.  Our 1840’s farmhouse was without air-conditioning until the late 1960’s.  Yes, that is over 120 years without the cooling technology that we have all become so dependent upon to the point that we can’t imagine life without it.  So, Hamilton and I decided to live like it was 1845 and sleep with the windows open—although we did have the luxury of fans.  I had a couple of early mornings in the recliner on the cooler floor but otherwise we just adjusted.  I did have to do my upstairs office work, laundry and housework very early in the morning but other than that we were fine. I was grateful we were not experimenting with 1845 laundry and 1845 cooking—that might have been a bridge too far.  And thank goodness no horses were involved with our “throwback” experience.

The old house made the new unit installation a big challenge.  There were modifications to the attic entrance, removal of a storage closet to get the old unit down and several overheated installers. But finally, we were up and running again.  There were more difficulties with the condensation pan leading to a water fountain flowing from the ceiling below and an unexpected attic closet remodel.  Anyone who thinks living in an old house is romantic just needs to experience old house problems to get a clearer picture of the less than romantic challenges. No job is straight forward or easy when working with vintage buildings. I’m always expecting the unexpected for charming comes with problems to be solved.

remodeled attic closet

We are so use to our modern world that the ways of our ancestors seem almost unimaginable.  I often think of the many women who tended my house for the generations before me and wonder what their life was like in this comforting old house.  Occasionally I glimpse at their lives when I clean the old fireplaces and light candles, sleep in the summer heat and feel the winter chill of walls without insulation.  I also like to lean into the uncomfortable and inconvenient to find new gratitude for how comfortable life has become with electricity and hot running water.  I’m not talking about miserable or dangerous but the stepping out of the easy and secure to shake things up a bit and push the edges of life.  So when our modern conveniences fail us—and they inevitable will at times- think of it as a chance to lean into a different time and space and a chance to find gratitude, maybe a bit of space to breath.  You will be fine, I promise.

ceiling repair

Front Door

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They come in many sizes and shapes, colors and materials but front doors all have something in common: they are the moveable boundary between the outside and the inside of our home, a portal into our personal space. This is a liminal space, a place of transition, between interior and exterior, public and personal, nature and shelter. This is the space the welcomes us and our friends and defends against unwanted intruders and harsh weather.

Let’s imagine we are coming to our house for the first time. You imagine your home while I describe mine.  My house is all white, very white painted brick with a tall front porch with six columns. The door is white painted wood with inset panels and a brass door knocker shaped like an American eagle.  On either side of the door are narrow window with another line of windows over the door. The windows bring in light to the front hall and lets me peek at who is knocking at the door.  The windows give the door a greater presence and a grander entrance. I do have a doorbell that mostly works but sometimes my guest must text me to let me know they have arrived.  There is a mat in front of the door on the teal blue tiles of the porch.  In the morning my western facing porch is cool and shaded but by afternoon it is sunny and hot, sometimes too hot, but on beautiful evenings I can go out and watch the sunset through the trees and listen to the evening bird songs.  Just in view of the front porch are three growing dogwoods that I planted in memory of my father and my father-in-law.  My current house has a grand entrance but I’ve had all types of front doors over the years. Maybe your home has a simpler door, one that quietly invites you in.

My front door represents my choice of what comes into my life or what I choose to keep out.   Some things that come to my door I want to go away immediately—a firm “that is not for me”.  Other times I might want to crack the door just a bit to see what is there but then close it knowing it is not right for me at this time.  But when a dear friend or beloved relative comes to the door, I open the door wide and greet them with a hug and joyful exuberance, ushering them into the safety and love of my home. 

The front door is safety. The closed lock assures me that no intruder can just walk in, that I have control over who or what enters my life. This security allows me to relax about the dangers and difficulties of the outside world and instead pay attention to my personal and family life that lies inside this clear boundary. The lock on the front door is also part of safety and boundaries. A lock gives only the people who live in the home access to this private world when they want but everyone else, even friends, need permission to enter.

But the front door is welcoming too, and our door should reflect what we show to the world.  Most people that pass your home will not be welcomed in, but our front door still makes an impression. Unwelcoming homes have overgrown bushes, unmown lawn, fading paint, and a deteriorating front step.  Welcoming front doors make a positive impression with tidy house numbers, cheerful lighting, possibly a plant on the stoop and a bell or knocker for the guests. 

The front door is both arrival and departure.  The arrival home after a long day of work or trip to a foreign land. The door is there to welcome you, familiar and comforting, it is the opening to where you belong. After a long journey the front door can be that first sigh of relief that the long way home is over and your warm, comfortable bed is waiting on the other side. You find your keys and they then make that familiar click in your lock as the door opens and you are met by the smell and feel of your home. But arrivals also necessitate departures back out into the world or off for an adventure.

We need good boundaries between our private life and our public life. In this age of social media, we tend to let too much of our lives be seen, like having a front door open to the world for anyone to take our things and intrude in our lives.  The boundaries between us and others have smudged and weakened and this can lead to a loss of self. Firm up those boundaries to make your private life more private, not in a secret-keeping way but in a way that holds your life dear to your heart, not displayed for all to see, take or judge. The front door is symbolic of the face we show to the world. It holds us a bit apart so that the lines of public and private, safety and vulnerability, ourselves and what is not ourselves become more clear, more defined.  I know I’m too easily drawn into other worlds that distract me from my own life and my priorities. But we need to remember that it is a door that can open or close, not a wall that permanently seals you off from the world. That is as unbalanced as a constantly open door.  Closing our homes and hearts, walling ourselves off to the world, can keep us from living life. The front door helps us find that balance between too much of the outside world and too little.

Over time we have become a much more casual culture/society and the back door is often the way our friends enter the home.  And in the advent of garages, my usual way of entering the house is through the garage, a decidedly plain entry to my home. There I go past the lawn equipment and big packages of paper towels with my arms full of groceries—all the necessities of day to day living.   I can go quite a while without even seeing my front door since I drive around a back drive to enter the garage. Why do we need this formal space in an informal world? The front door represents and physically holds those lines and makes a strict demarcation between me and you in the most positive way. When I have good boundaries around my personal and psychic safety then I respect that of those outside of my home. I think a type of formality needs to be part of your home and yourself, so that personal life has those soft spots of inner delight and caring—a world just for you and those that our your closest and dearest.

The front door is the first step into the home, your world within the world, how do you want to be greeted?  What do you want to be your first impression to the world? What boundaries do you need to tighten or loosen to make your life happier and more peaceful?

This blog is the second in the series on Home. Here is a link to the first post.

My family and our pandemic front porch photo, October 2020.

Home

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As much as I love to travel-and I do travel a lot- I’m really a homebody. Over the last 10 years I’ve written mostly about sacred and intentional travel. I long to go and see and experience the vast world around me. But a pilgrimage is never complete until you return home and bring the wisdom of the pilgrimage to your everyday life. Home is the ultimate goal of a pilgrimage. After a journey into the world, I just want to be home. I want vast stretches of time to be home just reading, cooking and keeping everything tidy. I love to be home. I need to be home. And my home needs me.

I’ve always been a house person. I like to look at houses, read about houses, and visit historical houses. I was very young when I started preferring house magazines to fashion and gossip magazines. When I was a girl, my family would visit homes of famous people and writers. My first mystical experiences in my early 20’s were at famous homes. I could feel the life and consciousness of the place and that is where I learned that houses are people too. Houses have a life of their own enlivened by the people who live there that grows with the house’s history.

Before you decide I’ve totally lost touch with reality, let’s talk about home. Over the last three years, home has taken on a new meaning as we spent much more time sheltering at home from the difficulties of the world. Many different experiences came from so much forced time at home: hardship, loneliness, overwhelm, but also a new appreciation for our private space. As a homebody who could safely gather my family with me, home was exactly where I wanted to be, and I reveled in the expanse of time in my little world.

Home is where we come to rest, nurture ourselves and our family, a safe shelter from the world. Our possessions and memories are stored at home and we gather these things to give us comfort and security. Without these warm and friendly emotions, our home is just a house without love and life. Ten years ago this month, I lost my feeling of home. Yes, I had a roof over my head and a bed to sleep in, but my place of comfort and security was lost to me. My father-in-law had just died after a brief illness and Hamilton and I had one week to move in to the old family farm to take care of his mother who had advanced dementia. We knew this move was coming and were as prepared as we could be but I wasn’t prepared for the suddenness of the move and the emotional upheaval it would cause.

I had a raging case of empty nest and was struggling to adapt to my empty home. When I had to suddenly move from my home of 18 years where I raised my daughters. I knew that my life of motherhood and childhood was completely over and I wasn’t fully ready to move on yet.  So my new home, filled with other people’s lives and processions, came as a deep shock and my feeling of home and refuge had completely disappeared. As a person that loves routines, my comforting routines were gone.

The first weekend we moved to my in-law’s home, it was the first of March and it was still cold and dark and the wind was howling and I was in complete emotional meltdown. My world had turned upside down overnight and I felt I had nothing to cling to.  I was also unprepared to have such a strong reaction to the move. It didn’t help my mother-in-law and her caregivers were always in the kitchen and so I also lost my privacy and autonomy.  It was a hard few month as we settled into our new home.  I moved out my in-law’s personal items, repainted and recarpeted, moved in my things and slowly started to feel better.  It was quite a few months before I felt like myself again and could make the old house my own. I can look back that experience 10 years ago and still feel how hard that was. But now I love my home so deeply that I see that it was just time that I needed to build a relationship with my new space and move on from the life that I had finished. I gave myself that time and grace—really I had no choice as there was no going back.

Because of this intense experience of moving and rebuilding home, I cherish my home more than ever. My in-law’s left of a legacy of a beautiful old home that has been in the family and deeply loved for 70 years. That kind of love and care builds an energy, an aura, to a house that brings it to life though our love.  The family has been in the house 7 decades but the home is over 170 years old and has had a long life before we even arrived. I am just one of its many caretakers and there will be more after me, but I feel the house chose me and I in turn chose the house. We have a deep relationship that nurtures one another every day.  Our homes are a reflection of ourselves and we then imprint our lives on the energy of the home and land. Winston Churchill once said, “we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us”.

Over the course of this year, I’m going to be writing about the ways that our home is a reflection of self and how we can help our homes nurture our lives and we in turn nurture the home and land.  We will wander our home and see our external world reflects our internal world and find the places we can foster our lives more deeply and wholly (and holy).  There will still be plenty of travel but home is where we return and live our expanding lives—one sacred step at a time.

Please visit my new blog for two new posts. www.thetimelesstarot.com