When the shell you live in has taken on the savor of your love … then your house is a home.Scott Russell Sanders, Staying Put
A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.Joan Didion, The White Album
Let us not love the roadway rather than the homeland lest we lose our eternal home; for we have such a home that we ought to love it.St. Columbanus, Sancti Columbani Opera, G. S. M. Walker, trans.
Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.Mary Catherine Bateson, quoted at QuoteWorld.org
We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.T. S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets
To be an american is to move on, as if we could outrun change. To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it.Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk
One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.Jane Austen, Persuasion
Space has a spiritual equivalent and can heal what is divided and burdensome in us. … [W]e might also learn how to carry space inside ourselves in the effortless way we carry our skins.Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces
So jacob called the place Peniel [face of God], saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”Genesis 32:30 (NRSV)
In this place of which you say, “It is a waste without human beings or animals,” … there shall once more be heard the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voices of those who sing … Jeremiah 33:10-11 (NRSV)
Desert and mountain places located on the margins of society are locations of choice in luring God’s people to a deeper understanding of who they are.Belden Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes
How filled with awe is this place and we did not know it.Gates of Prayer: The New Union Prayer Book
Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Related Elsewhere
Past Reflections columns include:- Friendship (May 17, 2001)
- The Cross (Apr. 12, 2001)
- The Quotable Stott (Apr. 27, 2001)
- Overcoming Addiction (Mar. 12, 2001)
- African-American Voices (Feb. 1, 2001)
- Forgiveness (Jan. 25, 2001)
- Incarnation (Dec. 4, 2000)
- Listening (Nov. 30, 2000)
- Death and Eternity (Oct. 24, 2000)
- Quotations of Time and Eternity (Oct. 11, 2000)
- Quotations to Contemplate (Sept. 21, 2000)
- Christian virtues (Aug. 22, 2000)
- Beauty, Prayer and Loving God (Aug. 1, 2000)
- Prayer, Silence and Other Topics (June 31, 2000)
- Getting, Giving, and Generosity (June 13,2000)
- Easter Sunday (Apr. 3, 2000)
- Good Friday (Apr. 3, 2000)
