What is pain, and how can it be measured? Is the person living in the desert with no food or water worse off than the person stuck in a valley with flooding and tornadoes? Both suffer…both experience pain.

 We often feel we can quantify pain….mine is worse than yours, or, mine couldn’t ever match yours. Truth be told, the pain of losing a home is probably not as bad as the pain of being molested…a pain that involves the soul. A building can be rebuilt….a damaged soul can take a lifetime to repair. And yet many of us feel that if we appear to visibly have more than others, we don’t have as much pain as someone who visibly has less. But it’s all about what’s going on inside of us.

 When we lose someone we care about, that is a pain of the soul. All the money in the world can’t bring them back, so we feel the loss. If we lose something materially, we can often replace it. And even if we can’t, we can often move on, and get the help to do so. Where do we get the help to fix a damaged soul? And how does anybody see the cracks, to help in the first place?

 We come into this world naked, and we go out naked, whether we like it or not. We bring nothing with us into this life but our bodies and souls, and, I believe, we leave with the same….but with the imprints of those we have loved, and who have loved us, with us…..in our souls. That is all the treasure we can take with us….and the more we have of that, the richer we are….no clothes, no houses, no bank accounts…just Love. The pain of life gone….

 So what really is pain? The lack of Love…demonstrated by those who hurt us, sometimes including ourselves. When a flood or tornado hits, there are often neighbors who demonstrate real Love….when a soul is damaged, there are people who can help also. The trick is to recognize that pain is pain, no matter where it comes from….and only Love can cure it.

 With Love,

 Jennifer Avalon

© 2011 Jennifer Avalon

 Where is home? As the eternal question asks, is it where the heart is? Is it where you have to be because of work? Is it where you grew up, but left behind? Or is it somewhere in our imaginations…a place that we all long for, but can never quite seem to be fully satisfied with, on earth.

We buy or rent a house…after a while it seems like “old hat.” Been there, done that….what’s around the corner, on the other side of the wall? Does a vacation take care of the wanderlust in each of us, or does it spur us to want to continue the search for “home.” For some, home is where they grew up, went to school, made friends. And even if most of their friends move away, they still consider their plot of land and four walls to be “home.” Nothing wrong with that.

For others, “home” is truly wherever they hang their hat….can be for many years, can be for only a few. They get to know some folks, and keep in touch with them after they move out of the area, via internet or phone. They fix up or decorate each new place with vim and vigor, but when they leave it looks as if they have never quite been there. It’s quite interesting to see how each of us views “home.”

Some people need to be near water….be it a lake in the mountains, or an actual seaside place. Others can do just fine in the plains, or the desert, or on a farm. But each of us does need to be in a certain environment to feel more “at home.” Have you ever noticed that when you visit a friend in a cabin or house in the mountains, they will have a picture, almost always, of the beach, hanging somewhere in their home? The same goes for the beach folks…somewhere you will find, even if it’s in the bathroom, a print or photo of the mountains. This is what makes me wonder about human nature…are we really forever wanderers on this planet, until we finally go to our “true home,” which is, of course, Heaven. Finding “Heaven on earth” is very difficult, and I think that’s why we long to, or do, dust off our shoes sometimes and “move on.”

Sometimes it is only a vacation we need, just to recharge and come back refreshed, to enjoy our lives. Other times it is a wake-up call that we need to find a new job, a new place, or a better way of living. Life affords opportunities for those things to happen, especially during these times, when so much is in flux. But the strangest part of all is, when things are in “flux,” we feel we need “home” more than ever….

Go Home,

Jennifer Avalon

© 2011 Jennifer Avalon