“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here…” (Jewel the unicorn, The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis)

With just a quick google for ‘home quotes’ it throws up lots of quote suggestions. I’m sure a few come to mind as I mention the word. But in reality, each person defines home slightly differently and perhaps different places are called ‘home’ for different reasons and/or in different seasons.

So how do you define home?

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It was about five years ago when I was first seriously asked this question. Other follow up questions included, can you name 10 trees or animals that are in the place you call home? It was challenging, stretching, but in a good way. At this time I was with others on a retreat on one of the beautiful islands between mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island. As someone who loves being out in nature, it was an indescribable place to be pondering ‘home’.

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This quote, one of my many favourite quotes from the Narnia series by C. S. Lewis by Jewel the unicorn, perhaps epitomises home for me.

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!”

Jewel the unicorn, The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis

For me, I have had and do have the privilege of calling many different places home and often for different reasons and/or in different seasons. Sometimes there is something almost innate and undefinable in the feeling of being home in a place and as Jewel says, sometimes you don’t even realise you are searching for home until you find it, or it finds you.

Having left my home in Cardiff and my home in Cornwall, I have now been back on the islet for almost three weeks. It has been a very busy, full on few weeks, but through the haze and insanity, it has been a privilege to have several friends join me and walk alongside me as I continue this crazy venture.

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It has been a delight to show my friends around ‘my’ islet, to see their delight at the fluffy pom-pom chicks with beaks, the laughter/incredulity at the quirky calls of the different birds and to see them settle into the ‘so close and yet so far’ lifestyle that islet life is. It has brought me back out of myself and made the islet feel more like home to me than I previously perceived. My friends – thank you!

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In the last few weeks we’ve witnessed chicks hatching, eggs being lost, adult pairs sheltering in nests for the day, Cory’s shearwaters rafting at sea and soaring very close to our heads, heading in land to their nests at night and glimpses of the milkyway on a clear night. These nights, just sitting watching the stars and dark shapes of the birds soaring and flitting around our heads are indescribably magical.

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As I cross the bridge between the ‘egg incubating’ part to the ‘chick hatching/rearing’ part of this summer research season I am incredibly thankful to my supervisors and all my assistants who have supported me and got me this far in the research and also to my friends and family who, though only a few have made it here (so far), I know are also supporting me from afar.

As I move forward this poem comes to mind…

One night I had a dream.

I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord..

Across the sky flashed scenes from my life.. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to me, and the other to the Lord..

When the last scene of my life flashed before me, I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that many times along the path of my life
there was only one set of footprints.
I also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in my life.

This really bothered me and I questioned the Lord about it: “Lord, you said that once I decided to follow you, you’d walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life 
there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why when I need you most you would leave me.” 

The Lord replied:
“My precious child, I love you and would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

Footprints in the sand, Mary Stevenson

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So what does your home look like?

Whom, or what, defines home for you?

For me, out here in the mid-Atlantic, with the starts of increasingly stormy weather…

“I’m gonna sing, in the middle of the storm.

Louder and louder, you’re gonna hear my praises roar.

Up from the ashes, hope will arise.

Death is defeated, the King is alive!”

Raise a Hallelujah, Bethel Music

Until next time!

Hannah 🙂