My Dream House

What is a home?

Is it the building,

Or the people living in the building?

Is it where you live now,

Or the place where you come from,

That you call home?

My dream house is more than bricks and mortar.

It is more than wood,

…and paint,

…than windows

...and aluminum siding.

It is more than all of the amenities that come with a house

Such as our two-car garage,

Or the man-made pond around which we gather

During the lazy, hazy days of summer,

In our repose.

My dream house is more spiritual than physical.

More emotional,

Than corporeal.

It has more in common with nostalgia

Than it shall ever have

With the building where I take my evening slumber.

The difference between a house and a home

Was something that confused me as a child,

Until my older sister explained it to me thusly:

“A house is where you live,

And a home, is how you live.”

And it is about how we live

That I wish to speak with you today….

We all live in some form of dwelling,

And we depend upon that dwelling

For a myriad of things vital to our well-being.

Without a house, we would be vulnerable to the elements

And suffer both physically,

And emotionally.

Without a safe place to lay our heads,

…to care for ourselves,

…and to store up the necessities of life,

We would find life to be one seemingly

Never-ending hardship.

Similarly, we all live in some form of spiritual dwelling,

And we depend on that dwelling

To educate and inspire us, and to make life worth living.

Without a spiritual house, we are vulnerable to our disappointments;

We suffer emotionally, and psychologically,

And become enemies to ourselves.

We act against our best interests,

We obsess about what is wrong,

And we lose the ability to appreciate what is right.

Life becomes

One seemingly never-ending hardship.

My dream house, therefore,

Is a house of the spirit–

It is the dwelling place of all my most precious memories,

And experiences,

And adventures,

And acquaintanceships.

It is built on the principles of the people

And the places where I was raised.

Its load-bearing columns run deep,

And its support beams are strong

To carry the load of a wounded soul.

It is a safe place,

And it is large– for it must shelter my massive insecurities.

But it is also a well-spring of tremendous joy!

Where even small efforts at something worthwhile

Invite celebration.

It is colored vibrant with opportunity,

And bejeweled

With what survives of my childhood dreams.

It needs no lawns, for there we see beauty in appreciating things as they truly are–

And we accept the entire world

Through our very doors.

There, we focus on the good, and not the greedy.

On the helpless, and the needy.

There, will you always find a hand up,

Instead of a hard time.

In my dream house, you are valued for being your authentic “self”;

Without trappings, or titles, or the litany of other vanities

People use

To tear each other down.

There we live what we are,

Instead of lamenting what we are not.

For in my dream house, self-love and self-acceptance are a way of life:

And everyone receives what he needs

Until he is whole again.