No Place Like Home

I attend the Universalist Unitarian Church of Haverhill, which is right down the street from my house. I mention that it is right down the street from my house because that matters. A lot. It offers a resolution – in metaphor form - for the searching I have always done. I’ve searched for something outside of myself, something that exists in another person or another community or even another realm. For me, this comes from a deeply stored belief that that which is most important or valuable or wise or brilliant lies somewhere outside of us, or far away, or is unattainable. After a lifetime of consciously and unconsciously searching for a spiritual community, finding this church home so effortlessly located in my neighborhood, has inadvertently forced me to accept my own inimitable beauty and to pause the interminable search for what I already have. I second guessed (and still kind of do) that such a connected open church community is in MY neighborhood. Shouldn’t I have to travel to India? Or at least Boston to find what is of such deep and resonant value? To find a place where I feel accepted and seen and am put to use? Every Sunday I channel my inner (albeit middle-aged) Judy Garland as I tap my comfortable shoes together and realize that my spiritual home has never been lost and has lived within me all the time.