“We shall not cease from exploration,
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Eliot
After twelve years of nomadic life, our family has learned that to return is never to retrace. Every departure alters us, every homecoming folds time into itself as the people we were when we left meet the people we’ve become on the way back.
This season, we find ourselves returning once more, not to the same place, but to a sense of place. Our new home base in the Alps holds the soft promise of a pillowy white Christmas. Soon, our older children will cross borders and train lines to fill this space with their familiar laughter. Yet alongside the joy of reunion, there is the ache of absence, and the deep knowledge of the impossibility of gathering everyone who has shaped our story across the years and continents.
This year, the word each month has been a waypoint, a small light cast along the map of our journey. Our greatest wish is that these words have also had a unifying force in your lives that you were able to RETURN to again and again…
ANEW: January
“One definition of ANEW is beginning in a transformed way…”
MARCH: February
“As we have traversed the globe for the past 4,200 days, we have seen countless demonstrations and people MARCHing toward a different future…”
LIGHT: March
“Cultures around the world have traditions for chasing away the darkness and at the same time fanning the LIGHT as a reminder of the brighter days to come…”
SPIRIT: April
“The word ‘spirit’ is most likely derived from the Latin spiritus, meaning ‘breathing’ or ‘breath,’ and also the ‘breath of life,’ as in the force that animates people; the force that gives them life.”
PLANT: May
“Growing where we are planted is not an ending; it is a beginning that only looks like stillness to the naked eye…”
SAIL: June
“The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.” -Henry David Thoreau
DRIFT: July
“July is a time to practice being awake to the world without pressing against it. The only goal is to DRIFT back to ourselves…”
DONE: August
“Let DONE be not a final sound, but a pulse that circles back around. Where struggle thins and silence grows, the edge of all becoming glows.”
NOTE: September
“And remember, there is no such thing as a wrong NOTE. An ingredient splattered recipe, or a list found in the attic someday, may be a message to future generations about who we are today, in this moment…”
TURN: October
“To TURN toward letting go. To TURN toward the beauty in the ache. To trust that in every TURN, love does not diminish; it deepens, expands, and carries us forward…”
CARRY: November
“To CARRY one another is the oldest and most enduring form of hope. To CARRY is to lift and to move, to bear and to bring… To bridge this state to a future state. It is the simple act that connects one moment to the next, one life to another. It is everything…”
RETURN: December
And so, we RETURN, arriving again and again at the center of our own becoming. To RETURN is to reconcile the paradox of belonging everywhere and to no single place. It is to understand that the ones we miss are present in the shape of who we are now, and that home is not defined by walls or coordinates but by the pulse of the familiar when we stand still long enough to feel it. And when we pause and listen, perhaps we will find that returning isn’t a destination at all but the quiet recognition that we were home the whole time.
To RETURN is to remember the path we’ve traced through a year of becoming and to begin ANEW. It is to MARCH through both shadow and LIGHT, to let SPIRIT root and PLANT itself where it’s needed most. It is to SAIL and DRIFT, to know what is DONE and NOTE what remains, and then TURN toward what endures and CARRY others gently forward. In the end, every word, every season, has been a quiet rehearsal for this ONE as we arrive where we began and “know the place for the first time.”
This season, we wish you many happy RETURNS…
