Making a home in exile

Here’s a paradox about human nature: we look for home in a world where we never feel fully and restfully at home. That paradox explains why even the most settled and contented people have moments when they wonder if they will ever arrive where they most want to be. It’s why everyone can imagine what it would be like to be an exile—how it would feel to live in a place that seems a long way from home.

Almost all of us ache for a truer experience of being known, welcomed, and loved—a greater sense of being home. That ache has important lessons to teach us. As C. S. Lewis said, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in the world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” Or as literary critic George Steiner put it, “We are creatures of a great thirst, bent on coming home to a place we have never known.”

We’ve all been parched by that great thirst, and we know about unmet desire, unsatisfied longing, and unfulfilled yearning. There’s a refugee in all of us. We want to go home.