I have been thinking about home lately and about what it means to me. As I write this to you, I am in Japan. It will be two months before I am home again in the Rocky Mountains that I love so much. I wonder why I do this to myself and to the people I love. I have been thinking about home lately and about what it means to me. As I write this to you, I am in Japan. It will be two months before I am home again in the Rocky Mountains that I love so much. I wonder why I do this to myself and to the people I love. And yet I know it is who I am to be at home anywhere in the world. I know it is who I am, to share through my music, my vision of the world that we can create together - a world of peace, a world of joy, a world of love.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t get lonely. It doesn’t mean that I don’t miss those special places where I am more at home than anywhere I know. It doesn’t mean that I don’t miss those special people who are more dear to me than I can find words to say.
So, as much as I travel, I often think of being at home with heartache and loneliness. Although I am clear about my own purpose, I still ask myself what I am doing here when there is nowhere in the world I would rather be than around a campfire with my family and friends under the clear, bright starlit skies of a Rocky Mountain night.
There is no one place more special to me than my home in Colorado. Its beauty and peace are nourishing to me. It is the place I have created as shelter for myself, my family and all that I aspire to be. It is the birthplace of so many dreams and songs and the family that is so precious to me. I can see the trees in the evening light and the spot where I throw horseshoes in the backyard. I cherish the glorious view of the Rocky Mountains that I see to the west where the sun moves to let go of each passing day.
There are no moments more special than when I am there with my family and we are sharing our love for each other. I do what I can to find those images within me. My whole body aches to hold those memories.
At these moments, I remind myself that I am the one who chooses this intense pace. I think about ways to keep myself from going crazy. I start by remembering that home is in my heart. I believe that the sense of peace that each of us holds within our hearts is the beginning of our capacity to be at home with ourselves, with others, and with the Earth itself.
- Each one of us needs to find our own personal and unique balance. So, in thinking about this, I start being at home with myself. Part of what drives me to travel and sing with all my heart for the people of the world is my commitment to every person’s dignity, to every person’s right to a home where they are nourished and sheltered.
My heart fills with the eyes of starving children I have seen in the deserts of Africa. My song, My heart fills with the eyes of starving children I have seen in the deserts of Africa. My song, “Falling Leaves,” is for the refugees -- the people of the world without a home. Day after day, streets are filled with more and more people who are displaced. (Link to song in photo caption.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBL5Z7KDt4kThe face of human poverty on this planet is more tragic that anything I can imagine. There is a cruelty and despair in the slums of Bombay, and other places where I have been where there is nothing alive other than a mass of suffering humanity.
A part of how we will know when we have matured as humans is when we will decide together that no human deserves to live in that way, and we will do something about it.
From the needs of humans to have a home where they can be sheltered and nourished, I think of the fact that all living things need a home. And finally, I remember that the Earth is home to us all. Every home needs care.
So again, I remind myself that I carry home within my heart. I try to share a sense of peace, beginning with myself, with others wherever I go. Throughout my travels, I remember to look around me at the home that sustains us all.
I look especially for the wild places - for they are the source of continuing life. If we don’t care for the wild living places on Earth, we will destroy the home that sustains us all. Then all of us will join the homeless. In this decade, more than ever, we need to remember that Earth is home to us all.
