How many of you rode a bus back and forth from school? I did, from second grade on through highschool. To this day, I can hear the brakes squealing at a stop, the gears groaning up a hill, the exhaust firing, and the engine idling as more children piled in.

However, it’s the actual journey on the ever so familiar winding mountain road leading up  from our school on the Mediterranean coastline  to the foothills of Lebanon’s first range of mountains that sticks with me. After a mind-stretching, body-taxing school day, I would slink down in my blue, plastic upholstered bus seat, perch my knobby knees on the rigid back of the seat in front of me, nestle my books in my lap, close my eyes, and with a huge sigh nap off and on till the final stop. . . home!

The chatter and smattering of occasional tunes from the smaller kids bouncing on the extended back seat melded into a lullaby for my heavy eyes. I could “sense” my way home by the salty, humid, sea air mixed with the citrus blossom smells of the shoreline. As we meandered through Beirut traffic, the spicy zaatar bread of the street vendors triggered my growling stomach. I knew when we bumped over the railroad tracks and dipped down to cross the river. We called it the stinky river from all the garbage washed ashore. The bus gears changed as we climbed up and out of the city into the cleansing smell of the pine trees foresting the mountain passes. The hints of sweet wild flowers mixed with the dusty sharp smell of olive groves told me we were getting close. I would sit up, knowing that one last low-gear climb to the crest of the hill was home. But best of all, as we juped out, the tantalizing aroma of supper greeted us.  Home!.

Home can be a place, a heartfelt conviction, a person, or a community. Think about your journey home. Our journeys home to our inner selves are not a walk in the park. Nevertheless, it is through the trials, obstacles, twists, turns, and detours that we recognize arriving “Home.”

How do you sense your journey home?