Today in class we talked of Dante’s Paradiso and what it means to be Home.

Obviously it relates somehow to being in your proper place, but what does that mean? The part of the answer we came upon was that necessary and sufficient aspects of Home include comfort, familiarity, order, and security. This seems like a good answer, but it is lacking something.

It’s been a long time since I had a home. I haven’t lived in a single place for longer than 18 months since I was fifteen. Even then, the home I had didn’t really fit me. In Indonesia I was a stranger in a strange land; somehow at once at home and not at home. I’ve been quite happy with that fact, yet it leaves me wondering what I missed out on. How important is it to have a home?

Alisha and I talked about things, and it seems the part of home our definition was missing was memory. Theory: it’s only when memories of a place outweigh memories of any other place that a place can truly be felt to be home. Another key aspect of Home is permanence. (Perhaps this is a part of security. Hmmm.) I’ve never been at home at Biola because I have always lived with the knowledge that I’d live in a room for a maximum of nine months. I knew I couldn’t get too attached to the place.

All the same, what is the importance of a strong sense of being at home? What do I lack? More importantly, how will this affect my own children? I think the key here is being able to understand our ultimate end. If you’ve never felt a sense of permanence at a home, our final destiny will probably not sound as glorious and meet as it could.

As far as familiarity and memory, I think C.S. Lewis explains it beautifully in The Last Battle. As the children go “further up and further in,” they are awed not by the sense of discovering new territories, but at the way in which the New Narnia brings to mind the old, only gloriously remade anew. (“It’s all in Plato, all in Plato, bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?”) I can’t try to retell Lewis’s masterful account, but I encourage you to reread the final few chapters of The Last Battle; it’s one of the most powerful passages in fantasy.

Is that what it means to be home? I’m almost sure of it.