In Andrei Tarkovsky’s beautiful film Nostalghia, a Russian poet is seeking inspiration in Italy. In the midst of his creative struggles, he longs, aches for the homeland. He is homesick. The question is, “Where is home?” He may be longing for something much deeper than a city, a street or an address.

Ronald Rolheiser offers a Chestertonian meditation on the question of home, that I found inspiring.

Home is a place in the heart, not a bloodline, building, city or ethnicity. Home is that deep, fragile place where we hold and guard what’s most precious to us. It’s that place where, in some dark way, we remember that once, before we came to awareness, we were caressed by hands far gentler than any we’ve met in this life and where we were once kissed by a truth and a beauty so perfect that they are now the unconscious standard by which we measure everything. Home is where things “ring true,” where what’s most precious to us is cherished, the place of tender conscience, of intimacy.