ABSTRACT
A Greek myth, “Baucis and Philemon,” illuminates the home mode of experience. Old and poor, a couple welcomed two traveling strangers and shared their food with them. They were astonished when their meal turned out to be the best they ever tasted – and never ran out. The strangers were Zeus and Hermes who praised the couple for their hospitality. They transformed the couple’s hut into a magnificent temple and offered to grant them anything they wished for. The old couple conferred and then asked only to live together as they had, and when the time came, to die simultaneously, so neither was left bereaved. Some years later, they became two beautiful trees with intertwined branches, giving shelter to all who arrived.
Crucial to the experience of home for the old couple is the practice of home, which arises from cherishing their life just as it is – making their home story their favorite story. This is what Erik Erickson called ego-integrity, an ideal outcome of later life. When the gods turned their hut into a temple, they reveal what home is – a temple to the Olympian goddess of hearth and fire, Hestia, bringing the numinous into the mundane.
