Many are familiar with the fantastic financial benefits of owning your own home: equity for long-term financial solvency, tax benefits, excellent credit, and leverage for unexpected needs as life changes for you and your family.
What about the many other benefits of not only owning, but caring for and thriving in a home? “A quality home is more than just a roof and walls,” said Renée Glover, chair of Habitat for Humanity International’s board of directors. “It provides homeowners with feelings of stability and pride, as well as generating measurable results such as decreased doctor visits and increased high school graduation rates. Academic research and surveys point to one inescapable conclusion: that owning one’s home enhances quality of life in a variety of specific, verifiable ways." (Beneficial Impacts of Homeownership: A Research Summary; https://www.habitatbuilds.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Benefits-of-Homeownership-Research-Summary.pdf)
There is even more to celebrate about home-ownership after the monthly mortgage principle, interest, taxes, and insurance are paid - even beyond financial and physical health benefits.
Home is our primary rooting place, our sacred space for dreaming our boldest dreams and rallying our family members in times of trial. It provides a safe harbor to return to day after day, providing our space-time-rhythm with a natural cadence for our identity, communal celebrations, and family rituals. It provides a sanctuary for all the rites of passage as our children mature and grow. It stands as a place of welcome and hospitality for annual holidays and seasonal celebrations. And more, it becomes an extension of our family ethos, our family emblem, taking on our collective personality and energy. "If these walls could talk..." they would say, "All is right with the world. We're home."
When we are returning home every day, we are touching base with what we most love about life, including nourishment, refreshment, and enjoyment. We are allowing ourselves the permission to act whacky, to play, and to laugh heartily. We can rest in this space because we feel loved and wanted, nurtured, affirmed, and teased and prodded in the ways only family members and close friends have the privilege of doing. Being home is like a sacred balm for the soul, like constant running water over the wounds of life that we experience every day. Coming home means finding our way back to the center, back to where love holds the universe in place, swirling and majestic, grounded and familiar.
Home can be our happiest place because it is where we live among our loved ones, our creature-kin, and our beloved trees and plant-kin. If we spend time not just improving and decorating it, but living deeply, intentionally, in our homing space, the experience launches us into our big "Yeses," our life mission. It makes us more compassionate and hospitable to all life around us because we know the walls and roof are only a microcosm of our true home, which is this beautiful blue biosphere spinning around a star. And we share it with all living beings in the planet. It's our big family, our wide,
wide "We."
What we do when we come home is sacred: we touch base with our own soul. If we keep coming back home, we find ourselves in love with a much wider "We" beyond our immediate family and circle of friends. We find ourselves at home in the universe.
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