There's No Place Like Home

Since Tuesday, I have been awash in homesickness for Brno. I am especially feeling the lack of the serenity I felt at Smidkova, in the little dining room where I used to study, write, and say my prayers. I felt close to God there, where the eastern light slashed through the high windows to light the tiny cross I had made one fidgety morning from an olive twig brought from Tunisia. When I lifted my head from my work, I could calculate the weather by the number and colors of the rising chimney smoke against the sky. I knew that if I stood up, and the day were cold enough, I could see that haunting Dormitory where Nazis tortured and executed Jews and other enemies of the Reich, jailed behind the pale gray bars of smoke and time. It isn't a threatening place now, though it will always loom.
In my sanctuary, I could anticipate the upstairs mid-morning coffee routine and track the sounds of wooden chairs scraping lightly across the ceramic floor, the muffle of conversation, and hearing these things, feel safe and comfortable, at peace and unalone.
This is all in contrast to the peace and security I now lack. I am betrayed and heartsick, longing to click my heels like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, of returning to a better time and better place, both literally and figuratively. There' no place like home...there's no place like home...