Home has always been important to me. When I was growing up fourth in a vibrant family of five children in a small Virginia town, home was a white house with green shutters, a drainage ditch where stray kittens frequently played, and pink dogwood trees. Later, when I was one of only two teenagers left in the house, home was a quiet place in an Arizona desert oasis.

It wasn't until I was first on my own that home became an arena for self-expression and for the opportunity to extend hospitality. After we married, my husband and I called several places home. Each was centered on nurturing our daughter and an extended stepfamily—and each had trees that bloomed pink in the spring.

Then, change came into my life with early widowhood. I found a lovely condo, adapted to my need to manage financial and household affairs alone. It didn't surprise me to find that it, too, had a pink, blooming tree. It was a gentle reminder that the changes in my life didn't have to mean a loss of the good, but that these changes were simply new opportunities to be conscious of God's ideas taking shape in my life.

Today, once again, I find myself planted in a new spot. Recently remarried, I sit in one of the tiniest places I've ever called home—a lovely little apartment in a village outside of Paris.

The joys and challenges accompanying each new address have demanded a deepening spiritual awareness of what Mary Baker Eddy defined as home. "Home is the dearest spot on earth," she wrote, "and it should be the centre, though not the boundary, of the affections" (Science and Health, p. 58).

So what constitutes your home, really? While you may consider it the physical place where you live—a house, apartment, boat, tent, hut, motor home, a temporary shelter, or even a cave—in reality, we all reside in Spirit, the realm of Mind, in God, where the consciousness of divine goodness dwells. Put simply, our home consists of the substantial spiritual ideas of good we live and companion with. These ideas are what produce an atmosphere of well-being. Home, therefore, is nonlocal. It isn't bounded by a particular address. Home is centered in consciousness, in our individual awareness of good. We can each feel at home anywhere, because in truth, we take our consciousness of God's presence with us everywhere.

Have you ever felt completely comfortable in a new place? These moments of feeling "at home," even when away from your familiar surroundings, indicate an abiding truth. Home is spiritual, nonmaterial. In fact, existing in divine consciousness, real home is virtually indestructible. Since we each have the ability to companion with, be conscious of, good, no matter what may be going on around us, changes in human circumstances never put our true home at risk. This makes home infinitely more substantial and permanent than any temporary material structure. Psalm 23 is a gentle reminder of this sentiment: "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever" (verse 6). The solid consciousness of companionship with divine goodness gives assurance that real home is safe and secure.

One of my homes was near a flood plain in a small New Jersey town. Since no floods had occurred there for many decades, it was not a great concern. However, when the "100 year flood" hit, it destroyed the lower level of my home and all its contents. I suffered for three years with the fear that my home was vulnerable to devastating destruction, and this made the restoration process slow and laborious. But at the end of three years, everything was eventually in order.

Then came the "500 year flood." This one filled the lower level of the house, and brought raw sewage with it. At first, I was emotionally flattened. My great fear had come to pass, and there seemed to be nothing I could do to stop the flood. I retreated to an upstairs room to pray.

One might think that home is simply the physical manifestation of spiritual understanding. But in an absolute sense, home can never be physical, since that would imply that it could be invaded or destroyed. In my case, I thought that if something bad happened to my house, the flaw was in me—that I didn't know enough or have a deep enough faith. This undermined my security and fostered the fear that my home, though often beautiful, was inherently material and thus at risk for loss or destruction. It also suggested that something had the power to wipe out the actual presence of divine good in my life.

But prayer led to different conclusions and to a broader, deeper sense of what constitutes home.

I started with questions. What does it mean to live in the Lord's house? Who owns it and is responsible for its upkeep? Who protects it? I reasoned that if, as that Scripture explains, goodness and mercy follow me everywhere all the time, this constitutes my unchangeable divine consciousness and true inviolate home. I always dwell in the house (the consciousness) of the Lord's goodness and mercy (see Science and Health, p. 578). Real home is permanently and safely fixed in Spirit, is owned and responsibly maintained by the all-intelligent Mind that is God. Living in a conscious awareness of divine power and inviolate goodness, I am safe from external, material forces. I saw that this is an eternal fact that cannot be changed—even at my weakest point on my worst day.

But what was this so-called evil force, called a flood, that was attacking my home? That question led me to think about the hypnotic nature of what Mary Baker Eddy called animal magnetism—the illusion of a power opposed to God. For the first time, I entertained the possibility that this destructive flood was not a fixed fact, but was rather illusion, a magnified fear with no real spiritual authority. I did not have to give my consent to this fear. I could deny it any power to control my experience and interfere with my God-given consciousness of home. Fear is not power or presence; it is a hypnotic suggestion that undermines confidence in the eternal unfolding of good. And we can choose not to be hypnotized.

I made my choice, then and there. My home was intact, I concluded, because it was spiritual and safe in my conscious awareness of God. My home was always filled with spiritual light. In fact, if my true home (my consciousness) could be flooded, it could only be flooded with the light of the Christ, the spiritual idea of God, which illuminates and sustains only good.

I came out of this prayer fearless and clear. Acting on the basis that my real home had never been touched, I endeavored to express dominion and joy in the cleanup process. Unlike the first flood, which required several years of restoration, all traces of what appeared to be a far more physically damaging event were completely erased within a matter of weeks, and that property has been watertight ever since.

Early this past spring, I took a long walk in the forest near our new French apartment. I'd been feeling a bit out of place, and found the quiet of the forest provided me a sanctuary to look deep into consciousness and find the peace where I normally reside.

Feeling more like myself, I turned the corner on our street and observed something I'd overlooked. Apparently during the previous night, a tree in front of the building had started to blossom with pink flowers. I hadn't even realized there were buds waiting to open. And I smiled. It was another tender reminder that all was as it should be. The tree symbolized the constancy of unfolding good, the ever-presence of home, and the continuity of divine Love's care for all my needs. I had a renewed awareness that we are always right where we belong. We are always at home in God.

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