Flourishing consists of positive emotion, meaning, engagement, healthy relationships, and accomplishment – the success of a life well lived. The acronym is “PERMA”. This is the characterizing feature of Nettle’s third and ultimate level of happiness. Don’t focus on negative things; focus on the positive, and you will flourish. [attributed to Alek Wek] Human well-being is not a random phenomenon….
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Value for Sunday of Week 41 in the season of Assessing
Home and Our Debt to the Past
Home is where we were during our formative years. In large measure, home made us what we are.
- . . . where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts . . . [Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]
- The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. [Maya Angelou]
- One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night. [attributed to Margaret Mead]
Home refers to the place, physical and spiritual, where we spent our formative years. For some of us, the experience was a great joy and brings back marvelous feelings and memories; for others, not so much. Making peace with our home of origin is very important. That is our focus this week.
Real
True Narratives
Book narratives:
- Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America (Little, Brown & Company, 2011): “This final, literal moment of fight to get back to her home in Harlem is most certainly a metaphor for the homecoming journeys of all those for whom Harlem was and is the only place to be.”
- Edmund de Waal, Letters to Camondo (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021): “Composed of a series of intimate letters to the long-dead count, the book follows de Waal as he wanders from room to room in the museum, commenting on its treasures and offering quietly profound reflections on French Jewish history, the nature of collectiing and the vicissitudes of memory”.
- Jeremy Atherton Lin, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out (Little, Brown & Company, 2021): “. . . a toast for the gay bars that shaped queer identity, both personal and collective.”
- Maud Newton, Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation (Random House, 2022): “Who am I? is the question troubling Maud Newton in her extraordinary and wide-ranging book . . . Because ancestors are trouble: locating them, understanding our connections to them, reconciling facts about them with myths we’ve been told, and reckoning with the impact of those distortions and deceits — all of which Newton seeks to do.”
Technical and Analytical Readings
- Catherine A. Lutz, Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll & Their Challenge to Western Theory (University of Chicago Press, 1988).
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
Novels and stories:
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861): “It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but, that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.” (from Chapter 14)
- Cynthia Voigt, Homecoming: A Novel (Aladdin, 2003): “A first novel about a family of four abandoned children, ages 6 to 13, who, with little money or adult help, journey from Rhode Island to Maryland in search of a home.” “The parental abandonment is the obvious point, but it also explores poverty and living with an outcast status prior to the book’s events.”
- Eric Nguyen, Things We Lost to the Water: A Novel (Knopf, 2021): “The question of how to define home persists throughout. Is it a place? A person? A state of mind?”
- Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Songs for the Flames: Stories (Riverhead Books, 2021): “The protagonists of these stories don’t know one another but the writer-narrator knows all of them, and he seeks, through their lives and his own acts of archival imagination, something crucial about himself and the long, troubled past of his homeland, Colombia.”
- Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois: A Novel (Harper, 2021): “. . . a young Black woman has to figure how to craft a life that is joyful and whole against the backdrop of the American South, where the land is a minefield of treasures and tragedy.”
- Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street: A Novel (Arte Público Press, 1984): the main character is “Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. ‘In English my name means hope,’ she says. ‘In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting.’”
- Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing: A Novel (Knopf, 2016): “The book tells the story of two half sisters unknown to each other and of the six generations that follow, their lineages broken by enslavement and cursed by premonitions that condemned those who were captured, those who were spared and those who sold hostages to the Europeans.”
- Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake: A Novel (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004): “It is a novel about two generations of the Ganguli family, and at the same time it is a novel about exile and its discontents, a novel that is as affecting in its Chekhovian exploration of fathers and sons, parents and children, as it is resonant in its exploration of what is acquired and lost by immigrants and their children in pursuit of the American Dream.”
- Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing: A Novel (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018): “. . . Owens here surveys the desolate marshlands of the North Carolina coast through the eyes of an abandoned child. And in her isolation that child makes us open our own eyes to the secret wonders — and dangers — of her private world.”
Poetry
Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born, / Well-begotten, and rais'd by a perfect mother, /After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements, / Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern savannas, / Or a soldier camp'd or carrying my knapsack and gun, or a miner in California, / Or rude in my home in Dakota's woods, my diet meat, my drink from the spring, /. Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess, / Far from the clank of crowds intervals passing rapt and happy, Aware of the fresh free giver the flowing Missouri, aware of mighty Niagara, / Aware of the buffalo herds grazing the plains, the hirsute and strong-breasted bull, / Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers experienced, stars, rain, snow, my amaze, / Having studied the mocking-bird's tones and the flight of the mountain-hawk, / And heard at dawn the unrivall'd one, the hermit thrush from the swamp-cedars, / Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.
[Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1891-92), Book II: Starting from Paumanok.]
Other poems:
- Pablo Neruda, “Lost in the Forest”
- Seamus Heaney, “Anahorish”
- John Keats, “Happy Is England”
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Many popular music groups emphasize their roots. Notable among these are:
- Clannad, from Ireland, with its releases and its playlists; and
- Celtic Woman, from Ireland, with its releases and its playlists.
Heilung is an experimental folk music band, with musicians from Germany, Denmark and Norway. Their music draws on ancient cultures, including Vikings, Pagans, and Shamans. “Combining ancient melodies with otherworldly vocals, field recordings, dark ambient soundscapes, and shamanic rhythms, German, Norwegian, and Danish pagan folk act Heilung create a trance-inducing blend that evokes the very dawn of civilization.” “Evading all conventional genre tags and the confines of any specific labels, the group aptly self-describes their sound as ‘amplified history,’ emphasizing their ability to connect modern society with the rudiments of humanity’s beginnings through music.” Here is a link to their releases.
The works under this heading are about home as a personal experience.
- Antonín Dvořák, Czech Suite in D Major, Op. 39, B. 93 (1881) (approx. 23-24’) (list of recorded performances)
- Dvořák, My Home Overture, Op. 62, B. 125a (1881) (approx. 9-10’) (list of recorded performances)
- Charles Ives, Symphony No. 2 (1910) (approx. 42-43’) (list of recorded performances), offering a wealth of homespun images from the United States.
- Herbert Howells, String Quartet No. 3, “In Gloucestershire” (1923, rev. ca. 1930) (approx. 29-30’), “arose from thoughts not only of the Cotswolds but also of The Great War”.
- Herbert Howells, Concerto for String Orchestra (1938) (approx. 28’) (list of recorded performances), was “sketched a short time after Sir Edward Elgar's death in 1934, and at a still brief interval, after the loss of an only son, Michael Kendrick Howells . . .”
- Hamilton Harty, An Irish Symphony (1904, rev. 1915 & 1924) (approx. 31-34’) (list of recorded performances)
- Edward German, Symphony No. 2 in A minor, "Norwich" (1893) (approx. 33’)
- German, Welsh Rhapsody (1945) (approx. 19’) (list of recorded performances)
- Manuel de Falla, 4 Piezas Españolas (1909) (approx. 16’) (list of recorded performances)
- Franz Liszt, Hungaria (Poème symphonique No. 9), S. 103 (1854) (approx. 21-23’) (list of recorded performances)
- Kurt Atterberg, Symphony No. 4 in G Minor, "Sinfonia Piccola", Op. 14 (1918) (approx. 20-21’) (list of recorded performances), draws on Swedish folk music
- Milkail Glinka, Symphony on Two Russian Themes in D minor (1834) (approx. 13-14’) (list of recorded performances)
- Morton Gould, American Ballads (1976) (approx. 34-35’) (list of recorded performances)
- John Ireland, A Downland Suite for string orchestra (1932) (approx. 17-18’) (list of recorded performances)
- Raga Desh (Des) is a Hindustani classical raga for late evening. The word “desh” means “country” or “province”. Performances are by Nikhil Banerjee, Parvez Khan and Zia Mohiuddin Dagar.
- Carlos Guastavino, Flores Argentinas (Flowers of Argentina) (2007) (approx. 27’)
- Florence Price, Symphony No. 3 in C Minor (1938) (approx. 28-31’) is set against the backdrop of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
- Henri Dutilleux, Piano Sonata (1948) (approx. 27’) (list of recorded performances): “. . . a lucid and overtly personal amalgam of French pianistic traits stretching back some seven decades . . .”
- Anders Koppel, Mulberry Street Symphony (2007) (approx. 94’): “Each of the seven movements of Mulberry Street Symphony is a dramatic piece that tells a story in sound. The cinematic opening track, ‘Stranded in the City,’ conveys the sights and sensations of an immigrant’s arrival into New York City during the latter part of the 19th century.”
- Gloria Coates, Symphony No. 14 (2001-2002) (approx. 34’), “is an especial homage to Gloria Coates's native land, based as it is on early American hymns by two of New England's first composers”.
- Heitor Villa-Lobos, Symphony No. 6, “Sobre o linho das montanhas do Brasil” (On the Outline of the Mountains of Brazil) (1944) (approx. 26-31’) (list of recorded performances)
- Villa-Lobos, Symphony No. 10, “Sumé Pater Patrium” (Sumé, Father of Fathers) [Amerindian Symphony] (1952) (approx. 57-67’) (list of recorded performances): “The symphony was originally written to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Sao Paolo in 1552 . . .”
- Florence Price, Violin Concerto No. 1 (1939) (approx. 30-32’) “unmistakably evinces Price’s own style, being inflected with blue notes and the sound of African-American spirituals.”
- Elena Ruehr, String Quartet No. 9, “Keweenaw” (2022) (approx. 20-22’) is drawn from Ruehr’s experience growing up in northern Michigan. In her program note, Ruehr writes: “This quartet explores various parts of (Michigan’s Upper Peninsula), from a native berry ripening in the sun, to an early fall blizzard, to a ghost town called Central, to the majestic Lake Superior itself, to the wolves who still live there.”
Compositions drawing on the past:
- Arne Nordheim, Canzona per orchestra (1961) (approx. 14’): “The term Canzona has its roots in 12th century French music. In 15th century Italy the form was further developed, first and foremost by the famous Gabrieli, who cultivated sound groups within an instrumental ensemble. What Arne Nordheim attempted to do was to elucidate his material by variations and to make certain sectional divisions of musical continuity.”
- György Ligeti, Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano (1982) (approx. 21-23’) (recordings) “combines elements of musical avant-garde with traditional compositional forms. The composer experiments here with various compositional techniques, such as micropolyphony, while still maintaining a certain formal structure that gives the piece coherence and logical development.” “With the subtitle ‘Hommage à Brahms’, Ligeti makes reference to the older composer's own Horn Trio, the first and perhaps only other one of its kind within a precious chamber music repertoire with horn that is not exclusively for winds. Ligeti's trio evokes a variety of more traditional features typical of Brahms including a four-movement layout, motivic continuity, thematic development, a scherzo, a clear ternary form and even a passacaglia (a Baroque variation form that Brahms used as well) in the last movement. . . .” However, Ligeti acknowledged that the work bore little similarity in tone to Brahms’ horn trio: “Though composed as a companion to the Brahms trio, its only musical reference is to Beethoven where the trio’s opening theme contains a distorted quotation in the violin to the beginning of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata ‘Les Adieux’. Otherwise, the similarity with Brahms is more in the structure of the work with the first movement as an Andante followed by a scherzo-like second movement. After that, any similarity ends.”
Songs of Robert Burns: songs written by various composers, based on lyrics from the poet.
Albums:
- George Winston, “Montana – A Love Story” (2004) (53’) is “love letter to (Winston's) home state . . .”
- Steven Halpern, “Ancient Echoes” (2013) (71’): “Enchanting compositions inspired by ancient Greece, Egypt and China awaken feelings of déja vu and eternal delight.”
- Ex Silentio, “Lethe” (In the Courts of the Orient) (2020) (60’)
- Ex Silentio, “Mneme” (2015) (60’): “Ex Silentio play music from the mediterranean countries from medieval times and early renaissance, from traditional sources as well as from art music like the 'Cantigas de Santa Maria'. With music from different countries around the mediterranean sea, they create a vivid and colourful portrait of that time and culture, mixing dance music, songs and instrumental pieces.”
- Art “Turk” Burton, “Ancestral Spirits” (2019) (70’): “This is (Burton's) follow-up to Spirits – Then & Now. Burton’s history traces back to Dizzy Gillespie in bebop and Muhal Richard Abrams in the avant-garde and his music bridges these eras, infused with his Afro-Centric style.”
- Alchemy Sound Project, “Afrika Love” (2021) (41’): “Although the group possesses an affinity for fusing classical composition techniques with expansive improvisation, what stands out on Afrika Love . . . is its undisguised love of the jazz tradition.”
- Brian Landrus Orchestra, “Generations” (2017) (59’): “In (Landrus') own words, this first-time orchestral adventure 'is a culmination of everything I’ve listened to and loved over the years.'”
- Fernando Garcia, “Guasábara Puerto Rico” (2018) (51’): “. . . relishing the tussle of folkloric cross rhythms . . . makes this . . . a masterful mash-up of interlacing meter.”
- Ros Bandt, “Glass & Clay” (1995) (63’), evoking the distant past
- The Crossing, “Seven Responses” (2017) (106’), “will challenge artists and audiences alike to explore our relative distance from, or closeness to, music across centuries, cultures, and continents.”
- William Goldstein & Lawrence Juber, “Musings” (2016) (51’)
- Catalyst Quartet, “Uncovered, Volume 2: Florence B. Price” (2022) (117’): the composer’s heritage is foremost in these chamber works from an African-American composer of the middle twentieth century.
- Amaro Freitas, “Sankofa” (2021) (45’). Freitas says: “The symbol of the mystical bird, which flies with its head back, teaches us the possibility of going back to our roots, in order to realize our potential to move forward. With this album I want to bring a memory of who we are and pay homage to neighborhoods, names, characters, places, words and symbols that come from our ancestors. I want to celebrate where we come from.”
- Three Notch’d Road, “Shining Shore: Music of Early America” (2022) (57’): “. . . the Charlottesville group has mined the rich heritage of its own musically fertile region, presenting a fresh, inviting line-up of short songs and instrumental works that were likely heard in the state or its preceding colony from the late 17th-to mid-19th-centuries.”
- Nat Brookes, “Cormorant” (2023) (57’): “Inspired by the driving grooves of British Folk Musics and the twisting flow of European Bal, Cormorant is a beguiling mix of Jigs, Three-Two Hornpipes, Mazurkas and more.”
- Voces8, “Enchanted Isle” (2019) (79’): “. . . all of this music paints a landscape portrait of our home, our enchanted isle, back in the U.K.” [Barnaby Smith, of Voces8]
- Daniel Behle, “Heimat: 500 Jahre Heimatlieder und -gedichte” (2022) (94’): the title means “Homeland: 500 Years of Songs and Poems about Homeland”.
- Katerina Papadopoulou & Anastatica, “Anástasis: A Journey through Old Greek Music” (2021) (62’): “Papadopoulou describes the project, subtitled A journey through old Greek music, as ‘an imaginary voyage of the Rose of Jericho through space and eras’ . . .” Papadopoulou’s other releases are along the same lines.
- sixty1strings, “Music of the Golden Age” (2022) (54’) is an evocative disc of Baroque-era music played by a trio of musicians on mandolin, harp and guitar.
- Danûk, “Morîk” (2023) (33’): “On their debut album, Morîk, Danûk seeks to revive a collective consciousness of the importance of homeland through the rediscovery of ancient sounds.”
- Mari Kalkun, “Stories of Stonia” (2023) (44’): “With a voice that seems to speak to us from the heart of the Estonian forest, Mari Kalkun’s music is at once of a place and deeply personal. Rooted in ancient Estonian and Võru traditions, but beautifully fresh and contemporary, Stories of Stonia reaches back to very old layers of tradition to imagine what Mari’s ancestors would have thought and sung about the world in an era of skyscraper, steel and metal.”
- Pulse of Berat, “City of 1000 Windows” (2023) (54’): “Berat is a beautiful enchanting town in central Albania. Locals also call it the City of a Thousand Windows due to its unique Ottoman-era architecture.”
- Nils Økland & Sigbjørn Apeland, “Glimmer” (2023) (48’): “Over fourteen shortish pieces often derived from traditional singers in the folk tradition of western Norway (sometimes collected by Apeland himself), together with a few originals including music jointly composed for a film about the nineteenth century painter Lars Hertervig, the harmonium’s wheezing bellows and Økland’s keening fiddle conjure up an austere, hard won aesthetic of grounding drones and minimal, almost reluctant melodic filigree.”
- Joseph Tawadros, “To Those Who Came Before Us” (2023) (60’): “For my 20th album, I wanted to be solo. Solitary. Lost within the confines of my beloved Taqasim, the traditional Arabic musical art form of improvisation. I wanted to honour the people that have come before me, who have inspired my thoughts, my dreams, my feelings, my musical phrases and directed me on the path I'm on today.” [Joseph Tawadros]
- Martin Simpson & Thomm Jutz, “Nothing But Green Willow: The Songs of Mary Sands and Jane Gentry” (2023) (51’): “Jutz and Simpson capture the heartbreak, yearning, loss, brokenness, and hope of these ballads in beautifully sparse arrangements.”
- Batsükh Dorj, “Ögbelerim (Music for my Ancestors)” (2023) (50’): “In the remote foothills of the upper Altai mountains, Batsükh Dorj perpetuates khöömei in his community. This remarkable musician perfectly masters the different throat singing styles typical of the Tuvans: khöömei (contracted throat singing), sygyt (whistled throat singing), kargyraa (deep throat singing), ezenggileer (lit. ‘stirrups’), and borbangnadyr (lit. ‘rolling’).”
- Vasilis Xenopoulos & Paul Edis Quartet, “Feels Like Home” (2024) (45’): “The album packaging for ‘Feels Like Home’ features the duo’s personalised version of the London tube map with locations that have significance for the musicians represented as ‘stations’. These include Athens and Boston plus various places in the North East and in London and the Home Counties.”
- Gothic Voices, “Echoes of an Old Hall” (2021) (76’) is an album of medieval music, evoking a distant past. (Here is a link to the group’s albums and singles.)
- Marlon Williams, “Te Whare Tīwekaweka” (2025) (39’): “‘Through the process of constructing these songs,’ Marlon says, ‘I’ve found a means of expressing my joys, sorrows and humour in a way that feels both distinctly new yet also connects me to my tīpuna [ancestors] and my whenua [land, home].’ Connection lies at the heart of Te Whare Tīwekaweka, the album’s five-year process reconnecting Marlon to family, friends and his home town of Lyttelton after a globe-trotting decade establishing his career.”
- Stanley Cowell, “Musa: Ancestral Streams” (1974) (38’) is “a solo piano set of stunning reach and scope, its adherence to intimacy contrasts sharply with the bold, multi-dimensional sensibilities that signify the vast majority of post-Coltrane excursions into spiritual expression, yet the sheer soulfulness and abandon of Stanley Cowell's performance nevertheless vaults the record into the same physical and metaphysical planes.”
- Alex Hitchcock, “Letters from Afar” (2025) (57’): “I wanted to make a record that recognises the influence of New York on my music, but that also has the confidence to offer something that's my own and that I can contribute, which is a product of the UK, where I've grown up. The title 'Letters from Afar' tries to capture the tension in the push and pull of these different information flows: receiving musical influence from the US... and taking that back to my work in the UK and Europe.”
- Fergus McCreadie, “The Shieling” (2025) (46’): McCreadie infuses his piano trio - piano, bass, and drums - with his Scottish heritage. McCreadie and his crew transported themselves, their instruments, and their equipment to the remote region of Glen Shiel in northern Scotland. “A ‘shieling’ is a shelter used in the summer to look after livestock on pastureland. It encompasses a nomadic lifestyle and connects to the Scottish traditions and music that are such an influence on Fergus McCreadie’s music.” “The music is informed by the island’s seashell grain, and the snow-blanket over Glen Shiel influences the mood of the musicians.” “. . . if you saw Scottish folk served with jazz on a menu, you might not order it, but goodness me, you would be missing out.” Unlike piano trios in “classical” music, which express equality among the players, the piano here is the clear leader, with the bass and the percussion playing supporting roles.
- Crown and Country, “Crown and Country” (2025) (37’): “. . . aboriginal storytelling meets electronic music . . .” The album “. . . is a remarkable collaboration between Warlpiri elder Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu-Kurlpurlurnu and producer Marc ‘Monkey’ Peckham. Wanta features alongside his father, Jerry Jangala Patrick OAM, a First Contact elder and revered Warlpiri songman. Their voices are woven into hypnotic dub-infused soundscapes, bridging spoken word and ceremonial song with electronic music”.
- Lamia Yared & Efrén López, “From Minho to Euphrates” (2025) (58’) “interweaves 4th-century Syriac hymns, 12th-century Cantigas de Santa Maria from the court of Alfonso X, Aleppine Muwashahāt, and a rare 13th-century composition by Safi al-Din al-Urmawi, one of the great theorists of Middle Eastern music.” Yared says “we developed a modal framework that bridges Arabic musical traditions with Galician medieval repertoire, while also drawing on Persian influences embedded in the Syriac legacy.”
Music: songs and other short pieces
- John Denver, “Country Roads” (lyrics)
- Dolly Parton, "Coat of Many Colors" (lyrics)
- Elton John, "Country Comfort" (lyrics)
- Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Sweet Home Alabama" (lyrics)
Visual Arts
- Norman Rockwell, Christmas Homecoming (1948)
- Norman Rockwell, Homecoming Marine (1945)
- Norman Rockwell, The Homecoming (1945)
- Norman Rockwell, Homecoming
- Norman Rockwell, Homecoming (1924)
- Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 9 (1910)
- Vincent van Gogh, Village Street and Steps in Auvers with Two Figures (1890)
- Isaac Levitan, Golden Autumn, Village (1889)
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Hills of Trouville (1885)
- Claude Monet, Zaandam (1871)
- Gustave Courbet, The Homecoming (1854)
Film and Stage
- Great Expectations, adapted from Charles’ Dickens novel, about a man who “almost (but not quite) forgets his modest origins as the foster son of kindhearted blacksmith Joe Gargery”
