If you attended the Annual Meeting of The Mother Church on June 5 or watched the broadcast on the internet, you would have heard how Robert Witney, a recent college graduate, returned to his family home only to feel what he called “displacement”—his term to describe a feeling of not belonging there.
Robert tells of turning to prayer beginning with a poem called “Home” by Rosemary Cobham’s. “Home,” first appeared in the October 15, 1938 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel and, most recently, as an addition (number 497) to the Christian Science Hymnal. The simple, three-verse poem is set to the music of a memorable Scottish folk song.
The first verse of “Home” reads:
“Home is the consciousness of good
That holds us in its wide embrace;
The steady light that comforts us
In every path our footsteps trace.”
Robert realized that his home was not a physical structure, but a mental one…the consciousness of good. It’s a consciousness that lifts and gives comfort wherever his footsteps take him—in all places. In recognizing this, he tells of making the whole world his home and feeling that he belonged there. We can do the same.
Robert lives in Boston.