On Homecoming

Dwelling, family, roots, and the eternal spiritual homeland

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Matti Gao

August 5, 2024, written in Southern Cyprus

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I’ve moved homes nearly every two years since I was a child. In high school, I boarded at school, and every time I returned home for vacation, the “home” had changed to a different place. Amusing, isn’t it?

But it wasn’t amusing then. Back then, all I wanted was a home. To me, the concept of home was simple: a fixed, unchanging place.

When I was six or seven, I lived at my grandmother’s house in Harbin. One winter, I heard my parents had returned, and in the bitter cold of minus 25 degrees Celsius, I braved an hour-long bus ride across the city alone, just to appear at their doorstep. I can still recall the shock and heartbreak on my mother’s face when she opened the door.

At that time, I didn’t care about the place itself—I just wanted to be with them. To me, home was wherever my parents were.

Before high school, I followed my parents wherever life took them. But once I entered high school and began living on campus, I seemed to grow up, becoming less reliant on them. The concept of home no longer felt as vital. I studied and lived alone in Beijing through high school and university, gradually becoming accustomed to a life of constant “voyaging.” At least outwardly, I seemed untroubled.

In 2011, I got my first opportunity to intern in London, and from the moment I arrived, I fell in love with the city. It became a distant destination I longed for, pulling me further into my journey of perpetual movement. Being on the road made me feel alive. Yet deep in my heart, I always yearned to settle down, to let my soul find a moment of rest.

Now, I am sitting on the opposite shore of Israel. Just to the north lies a region torn by war. Here, on the southern coast of Cyprus, families bask under the scorching 33°C sun, vacationing, their skin glowing red like cooked crabs.

The scene before me feels like a childhood dream—one I may have visited in my sleep—a family together by the sea, doing nothing but sitting idle, soaking in the warmth, dipping into the water, then returning to the sun again.

But doing nothing at all takes immense courage. It requires a deep well of security and an abundance of love—not love you actively seek, but the kind you receive passively.

In 2007, at the age of 18, I found myself at the peak of existential questioning—a time of profound confusion. It was during this year that I first encountered the Bible and began attending church with friends, engaging in endless discussions (and arguments) in our dormitory about faith, God, and art. Some of those friends are still searching, while others have given up.

But in 2009, I met a pastor who prayed for me. I don’t remember what he said, perhaps because he didn’t say much at all. Yet for the first time, I felt the undeniable presence of God. It was as if I saw a vast golden field, glowing like Van Gogh’s final paintings of the wheatfield,  but without the crows or dark skies—only radiant, blazing light. Golden, warm, welcoming... 

I couldn’t stop crying, not out of sadness but from a profound sense of “coming home.” It felt like the embrace of a father with open arms, welcoming and loving me unconditionally. It was the prodigal son’s return, a story so many artists have depicted, perhaps none more poignantly than Rembrandt.

Since that day, I feel as though I have found a home for my soul. This home is invisible, intangible, and distant, yet at the same time close enough to see whenever I close my eyes. When I feel lost or anxious, I know where to look; I know where home lies.

When creation connects with the Creator, it evokes a feeling of home—of wholeness, of completeness.

I’ve never been to Jerusalem and the Middle East, but I always want to go, it feels like another sacred and mysterious spiritual homeland to me. Purity, redemption, and eternity—though these concepts lack geographic coordinates, they reside in each of our hearts. For me, that place is Jerusalem and the Middle East, the cradle of ancient civilisations and human origins. There, humanity once existed in its simplest form, grounded in the most fundamental relationships: family and kinship.

As I sit across the sea, gazing at Israel, Lebanon and Iran,  from afar, this might be the closest I will ever be to that "scriptural homeland.” Whether I will have the chance to return to that home in this lifetime remains uncertain, as conflict and war continues. But it doesn’t matter. I know that just as there was once an old Eden and an old Jerusalem, there will one day be a new Eden and a new Jerusalem.

The quest for spiritual roots is a complex journey. 

Home is also where our roots are. Wherever the roots lie, there, too, is home.

I look toward the horizon across the Mediterranean sea. It feels both near and distant. Beyond that horizon lies the unknown, yet this time, I am not afraid.

At this moment, I am filled with gratitude. My body and soul have become a small boat, carried gently by the wind toward the horizon. The blazing sun above shines down, and I suddenly understand the nature of “passive love”—a love that is given without condition, a love that simply asks to be received. It is a happiness so profound that it fills me with clarity.

Home, I realise, is finally a verb.

And in love, there is no distance, no temporality, no eternity.

Constantly voyaging, constantly homecoming…