I had a lovely week away visiting places that used to be 'home' in past seasons of my life and am really happy now to be home in the place that for the foreseeable future is home.  I did find myself wondering though, would I, will I, visit those places when those I know no longer live there (or anywhere), and what it is that defines 'home'.

I think the older I get the more my 'wandering Aramean' genes show themselves... I am happy and content to 'bloom where I'm (trans)planted' but with less and less sense of overall rootedness.

I have a suspicion that's why I find some aspects of identity, especially national/patrioitic identity, confusing and bewildering.

Home, so the saying goes, is where the heart is... which in my case is pretty much always where I happen to live, even if bits of it (heart not home) get left behind when I move on.

Now, lest anyone is unsettled by this waffle, I have no more intention of moving from where I am now than of flying to Jupiter... I think it's more a growing realisation that there are places I now visit that will one day be off the 'list' because the home-ness for me is defined not by place but by people.  And within that, not be races or groups but by individuals...

Perhaps this is something of what it means to be 'in the world but not of it'?