Home and All That it Means :Creative Journal #4

Together we hold these rocks

connected we feel

to the earth, what we call home

and all that it means

something we can offer

learning together

While beginning to reflect on a homemade ceremony the last line in Robin Wall Kimmerers story kept replaying in my head “A homemade ceremony, a ceremony that makes a home”. My partner and I through the years have used the word home to describe one another. To me, home is not a place, it is not a bed with a roof over heads, it is not the kitchen where we do our cooking and it is not the comfort of a couch. Home for me is a feeling of security, warmth, acceptance, and respect. As I have gone on the journey of reflection, learning and unlearning throughout this course these feelings of home have become more prevalent as I stop to appreciate the environment around me. This course has disrupted the underlying feeling that was hidden within me that nature was separate from human. I have always felt connected to nature but prior to this course, I had felt I could only be connected and appreciate it from a distance. When I would be submerged in the mountains with green trees and moss all around me I felt as though it wasn’t right for me to call it ‘home’ or to say that I felt connected nature. Taking time to reflect and go through the unlearning process it has become apparent to me that we as humans should not feel this binary or feel as though the earth and all its creatures need humans to save them. I am in the state of being as Ho stated “between embodied feeling and making sense” (p.6).

For my homemade ceremony, I grew deeper upon something that my partner and I already take part in. While he and I were walking through an uncharted trail in the mountains of Banff national park to find a quiet spot where we could enjoy watching the snow melt into the river I came across a beautiful rock. I held the rock between my fingers and thumb feeling every curve and ridge upon it. My partner came up next to me with a rock in his hand and said, “this rock I found reminds me of you”.  I looked at the rock in his hand and I could not believe it. His rock was almost identical to the rock still sitting in my hand. We pocketed the rocks and went on with our exploration. He has kept that rock he found in his car every since and mine has gone with me to every place I have lived sitting where I can see it the most. When I thought of a “ceremony that makes a home” I instantly thought of these rocks. My partner and I took one another’s rock last night and spent time with it writing little messages, drawings, and carvings. We also stopped to acknowledge that the rocks do not belong to us and that we need to refrain from using the word “mine”, as these rocks came from the earth. We agreed to carry the rocks as our own small ceremony to feel connected to what we call home, earth and each other.

I personally felt that a picture of the rocks did not do our story justice so I decided to write a poem. You can find that at the beginning of this post.