The World is Thy Ship

Since I was a young girl I had an unsettling feeling, that as beautiful and secure as my home was it was not my true home. My true home was somewhere else, just beyond the horizon, out of sight; but it was there, and waiting for me to find it. In my Journal I wrote about this in the context of a letter, written by a 15th century Franciscan Friar named Giovanni Giocondo.

In it, he writes: “The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see. … Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath it covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. … We are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country home.” I was fourteen or fifteen when I first read this letter, and it made my heart sing. I felt like he was writing directly to me, from across space and time.

St. Therese wrote that “the world is our ship and not our home.” This echoes the sense of homesickness that I have felt all of my life. It took Christ, somehow, mercifully and miraculously, to show me where my true home is: with him and his Church; with the communion of saints; and in the beauty and wonder of the Sacraments. Heaven still looms, enchanting and beyond all conceivable imagination. But home is also in my heart, right here and now, where I abide in Christ.

This postcard is made with a photograph, mixed papers, ink, paint, textures, patterns, and vintage elements.

Reference: Fra Giovanni Giocondo (c.1435–1515). Letter to to Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi on Christmas Eve, 1513.