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BY LORI BROTHERS

Yes, I am a Hobbit fan. I have been a fan my whole life since I read it as a tween. Then diving in over and over again. I read it to my children as soon as they could be cognizant of linking hearts and minds into the adventure of imagination on a grand scale.

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort." - Chapter 1​

The romance of the first two sentences is the hook. And oh, how Bilbo loved his home. Yet, he was coaxed out of his warm, comfortable, cozy hobbit hole, into the wide open, unexpected world of adventure and intrigue beyond the Shire.

When I think of adventure, I think of Bilbo Baggins. In our current circumstances, we are all Bilbo, but in reverse. Many of us have been urged to “hole up” in our homes, narrowing our scope of experience and adventure but not our ability to influence and be influenced by who, what and how we meet the landscape and choose a path within our confines.

In our modern times of freedom in our culture “you do you and I’ll do me” is a current thread running through our living styles. It is a world growing in acceptance of individual unique expression. We have the world as our platform in life, and on the internet. Generally, if we are well, the concept of being inside our homes for longer than a heavy snow storm is unlikely for us. Even in snow emergencies, we are still promised our mail and the employed make it out to their workplaces – albeit a little late.

Inspiration through creative homing is flying out of people from all directions. The circumstances we all find ourselves in is calling forth creative solutions, courageous responses, and the audacity to be uniquely outrageous. I saw a video of a guy laying on his belly on the couch with a bowl of water in front of him. He was dipping his face in the bowl while performing the free-style stroke in good form, and swimming a marathon in his living room. This is the adventure of meeting ourselves. We see the results of inspired hearts and minds being pressed into small spaces. Life is asking us all to tap in, tune in, and explore who and what we are in an unprecedented way.

The proverb, “Home is where the heart is” captures how what a person loves “homes” them, and also implies that a person’s home is a defining force. This saying intertwines the concept of home and heart which can never be separated.

So I leave you today with one more quote from, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, by J.R.R. Tolkien, “There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”