We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes... Our homesickness is alleviated only by love, the love that transcends our self-centeredness, our pettiness... When we are truly in love, not in the sense of romantic, erotic love, but in the sense of God's love for all that the Power of Love created, then our homesickness is alleviated. When we are in love we are no longer homesick, for Love is home.
For me, the question is whether my encounter with death has freed me enough from the addictions of the world that I can be true to my vocation as I now see it "sent" from above. It clearly involves a call to prayer, contemplation, silence, solitude, and inner detachment. I have to keep choosing my "not belonging" in order to belong, my not being from below in order to be from above. For, the taste of God's unconditional love quickly disappears when the addictive powers of everyday existence make their presence felt again.