Searching for Home : A New Book and Patreon Project.
Dear readers. It’s been a while since I highlighted my Patreon Page, so today I wanted to give you a taste of a project that I’ve started over there. This is the first newsletter in a series that I’ll be sending out each month for Patrons, and it’s easy for you to join in. Here it is!
Dear beautiful, beloved one,
I have been thinking about home a lot lately. Oh, who am I kidding? I’ve been thinking about home for my whole life. Here’s the evidence:
I’ve been writing about home (and my search for it) on my blog for fourteen years.
I titled a book of blog posts, “A Home as Wide as the Earth.”
In my novels, people fight being displaced from their home, flee the dangers of home to find new ones, ponder the meaning of home and roots in a globalized world, and find comfort in homes they make for themselves.
I am fairly obsessed.
A writer on creativity (and I can’t remember who it is for the life of me) writes that every artist has a life message, or messages. These are things that the artist returns to again and again, weaving them throughout her work. It seems that home and belonging might be one of my life messages.
I’m also going through an interesting season. For now—because who knows how long any of it will last—I am living in the most beautiful space I have ever inhabited. It comes with a lot of caveats, of course: Landlords who like to visit without warning (we love them, but I still sometimes sigh as I see their car and put aside whatever I was planning to do), snakes, spiders, rats, fire ants and mosquitoes, roofs that leak. A pig farm next door, with a not-so-delightful fragrance that wafts over to us periodically. Our home is a house in the tropics, which is always full of life, not always the kind you invited.
But we’re okay with all of that. We Fords don’t mind uninvited guests— animal, person, or fungus. We’re used to them. Our eyes are filled with the beauty. My landlady lived here before we did, and over the years she planted every kind of tree she loved. There are canna lilies and roses. Rice fields and a large vegetable garden. Who cares about mosquitoes?
I have landed among this bounty. And at the same time, I feel rootless and drifty, as though a breeze might blow me away. Even after four months, I haven’t put paintings on the walls. I keep waiting for a door to slam, the earth to tilt, for us to slide off. I am like a bird frantically flapping, without a place to rest, in my real life or in my heart. I wander through my house like a ghost, rarely sitting down in one place (unless it is my desk.) I still don't know how to inhabit my life or my house.
I want to understand how to come home. I want to dig in, dig deep. And I think it’s time that I research and write a book about home.
I feel inspired to do this as a long, shared project, with a series of newsletters sent out to my patrons. I want to hear your thoughts about home and to know your recommendations. I often write about what I do not understand, so that I can understand it better. I want to peer into the depths of this topic, to find art about home, theology around the concept of home, poets and writers who have written on this topic, and even the very practical parts of making a home. (Current trends of decluttering, hygge, and minimalization would seem to suggest that we’re all a bit obsessed.) I want to explore physical home, psychological home, and spiritual home.
It’s a big project. I think it will be a book, at least, that’s the plan, but here at the beginning, I’m scanning the horizon and I’m not exactly sure what will come of these thoughts, words, and ideas. I do know that this Home Project feels inspiring, that I have that spark of excitement that makes it feel worth pursuing.
I know that I will write about being at home in the soul, home in the body, and about a home in God. I will write about roots and about home culture. About restlessness and tending a home, and about Anne of Green Gables. (There will be a whole chapter about Anne of Green Gables.)
I will research, write, and draw, and send out monthly newsletters for you to follow along and give your feedback. Let’s have a conversation about this. Feel free to comment in the comments beneath the Patreon posts (so others can see what you say), reply to these messages, or connect however feels best. If you have recommendations of writers I should read on this topic, be sure to let me know!
Thank you for being with me. It means the world.
Love,
Rae
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If you’re interested in supporting this project and my other writing, you can head over to Patreon and sign up at any tier. You’ll automatically get the newsletters in your inbox, and I’ve already begun compiling thoughts and comments from others to spur me on my way. A lot of what you’ve already read from me is, in part, thanks to my Patrons.