Seeking the Same Homeland

That still, light room in that house - and whatever that room represents of stillness and light and the possibility of faith, of Yes, in your own lives - is a room to find healing and hope in, but it is also a room with a view. It is a room that looks out, like the window of the train, on a landscape full of desolation - that looks out on Forty-Second Street with its crowds of hungry ones, lonely ones, sick ones, all the strangers who turn out not to be strangers after all because we are all of us seeking the same homeland together whether we know it or not, even the mad ones and lost ones who scare us half to death because in so many ways they are so much like ourselves.

• from Secrets in the Dark