This past weekend, I went “home”, back to Roanoke,Virginia, where I lived for 30 years. My son, who moved up to Vermont to live with me this past summer, was going to the senior prom at his old high school.

I laughed as I called it home. When I was married, my ex-wife used to tease me about all the places I called “home”. There was our home of course. And when I went to see my parents in Richmond, Va, I was going home. Home was also my dad’s parents’ farm in Surry County, Virginia, and my other grandparents home in Bertie County, North Carolina. It was my great grandmother’s tiny home with the wood cookstove in Boykins, Virginia.

Home, it appeared, was where ever people I love live.

Those places are not home of course, and I notice it when I go to those places. They are familiar, but I am no longer plugged into the life and energy of any of those places. What they are is familiar. They are beloved.

There are people in each of these places that I love dearly, and I feel comfortable being with. This weekend, for instance, I had dinner with two wonderful friends I have known since they were teenagers. I had coffee with a group of men I used to breakfast with nearly every day. I went to my old church and had a hugfest with so many friends. And after church, it was lunch with two more before driving the eleven hours home to Vermont.

I have been in Vermont for 7 years now. It’s hard to believe. Coming here, for a Virginian born and bred seemed a strange thing to do in some ways. I came for love, and for the potential I believe that love had. As life so often does, however, it did not work out as I had thought it might. A little over two years ago that relationship ended.

I could have gone back to Virginia. I thought about it. For about 30 seconds. And then I realized something. Vermont had become home. It had become my safe place. Not because it was familiar like Virginia (I still know more about Virginia than Vermont, but I am learning). Not because all the people I love are here. Most live in different places by now.

No, it was my safe place because the energy and spirit of Vermont gave me a place to heal. It gave me a place to reclaim the best of myself, and to let go of the worst. A place to be judged by the now, not the past. A place to be who I am without preconceived notions of a history.  It was a place I could try new things and grow in ways that I could not have done in a place where the history and expectations were established. I could change, and still can change, without anyone saying “Has that man gone nuts?” or “Where did that come from?”.

Or at least if they say it, I don’t care.

This weekend when I was in Roanoke. I stayed at the Sheraton. A bit higher class hotel than is my norm, but it was what was available.  As we began to unload my car, I was greeted by Xavier Lafayette Fox. Mr. Fox was the bellman, and a more cheerful, joy-filled man I do not think I have ever met.

Mr Fox was from DC. An older man about my age. He had come to Roanoke from DC when he could not find work in DC during the recession. We talked off and on all weekend and I learned that he could not find the sort of work he had done in DC in Roanoke, so he looked for anything he could find, and the bellman’s job was it.

He loves the work. Loves it. And it shows. “I get to help people all day long.” He says. “I give them little snippets of joy. It’s not just my job, it’s my ministry. And I don’t care what people think.”. As it turned out, he too is a Methodist, and we talked about everything from cars to faith to work. As I left Sunday, I felt like I had made a friend. We hugged and said our goodbyes.

Like me, he moved to a place for one reason, and found something unexpected there – Joy.

And that has become my new definition of home. Home is where our Joy is. It can be where we are from, if there was joy there. Or it can be where we are, if there is joy in it. Or even a new place, if it brings us joy.

Or even a new place, if it brings us joy. I have only spent a week of my life in Venice, but it was a week of such sublime joy that I consider Venice a spiritual home. I so hope I get to go back. Heck even at my age, I’d consider moving there if I found a way to make a living.

It’s one of the places my joy lives. It’s home.

So claim your homes, all of them. There’s no need to pick just one. There’s no need to call a place that makes or made you sad or broken or struggling home, if another place or situation is where your joy is, claim IT asa home.

Because that’s what we want in a home, isn’t it? It’s not about the building or the town or the place. It’s joy.

Be well. Travel wisely,

Tom