HOME: There's No Place Like It in the World!

[There is so much to say about HOME! But here are some of my thoughts on the subject, and some other people's thoughts as well. I wrote this post back in the fall -- thus the autumn decor.]

As a child, I moved a lot, always in the same metro area, because, as the Temptations song says, "Papa was a rolling stone." (My "papa" is 79 now and still restless, wanting to move every few months. I now understand the vagabond nature of my childhood.)

Our family lived in various apartments, townhomes, duplexes, regular houses, and farmhouses in and around Kansas City (both sides of the state line). We lived in the city, the suburbs, and the countryside. In the fourth grade, I attended three different schools, for example, in three different school districts. By necessity, I learned to adapt.

The Temptations song continues: "Wherever he laid his hat was his home."

Home is wherever you are -- wherever the people you love and the people who love you are -- regardless of the home's shape, size, cost, decor, etc. I have even felt at home in hotel rooms while traveling -- the sanctuary of a secure, designated place to rest and regroup.

Home is a special place by virtue of the fact that you belong there.

Who hasn't come in from bad weather or from a difficult day and felt the contentment of arriving at home?

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. -- John Howard Payne, 1823

Some quotes about home:

To us our house was not an unsentient matter – it had a heart and soul and eyes to see us with, and approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies. It was of us and we were in its confidence and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction. We never came home from an absence that its face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome – and we could not enter it unmoved. -- Mark Twain on his mansion in Hartford, Connecticut

If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. – William Morris, English designer and philosopher

This is the true nature of home — it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home; so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of that outer world which you have roofed over, and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before those faces none may come but those whom they can receive with love, — so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light, — ...so far it vindicates the name, and fulfills the praise, of home. – John Ruskin

The reality of the house is order / The blessing of the house is community / The glory of the house is hospitality / The crown of the house is godliness. – Frank Lloyd Wright

His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking, best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. -- J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit

There is a mystical virtue in right angles. There is an unspoken morality in seeking the level and the pumb. A house will stand, a table will bear weight, the sides of a box will hold together only if the joints are square and the members upright. When a bubble is lined up between the two marks etched in the glass tube of the level, you have aligned yourself with the forces that hold the universe together. -- Scott Russell Sanders, The Paradise of Bombs, University of Georgia Press:

If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person. If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world. – Chinese Proverb

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition. – Samuel Johnson

Home should be an anchor, a port in a storm, a refuge, a happy place in which to dwell.  Home should be where life’s greatest lessons are taught and learned.  Home can be the center of one’s earthly faith, where love and responsibility are appropriately blended.  – Marvin J. Ashton, L.D.S. General Authority

He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The righteous woman may save the home, which may be the last and only sanctuary…in the midst of storm and strife. – Spencer W. Kimball, L.D.S. Church President

The affection and thoughtfulness required in the HOME are no abstract exercises in love, no mere rhetoric concerning some distant human cause. Family life is an encounter with raw selfishness, with the need for civility, of taking turns, of being hurt and yet forgiving, and of being at the mercy of others’ moods. Family life is a constant challenge, not a periodic performance we can render on a stage and then run for the privacy of the dressing room to be alone with ourselves. The HOME gives us our greatest chance, however, to align our public and private behavior, to reduce the hypocrisy of our lives – to become more congruent with Christ. – Neal A. Maxwell, L.D.S. General Authority 

Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a HOUSE of PRAYER, a house of FASTING, a house of FAITH, a house of LEARNING, a house of GLORY, a house of ORDER, a house of GOD. -- L.D.S. Doctrine & Covenants 109:8