The Art of Being at Home

Since returning from travels, I’ve revisited Alain de Botton’s reflections on homecoming in “The Art of Travel”. He wonders if we might find our own neighbourhoods more fascinating if we applied “a travelling mind-set,” a humble receptivity, or heightened attention:

“Receptive, we approach new places with humility. We carry with us no rigid ideas about what is or is not interesting. We irritate locals because we stand in traffic islands and narrow streets and admire what they take to be unremarkable small details. … Home, by contrast, finds us more settled in our expectations. We feel assured that we have discovered everything interesting about our neighbourhood, primarily by virtue of our having lived there a long time. … We have become habituated and therefore blind to it.”

In London, I had the opportunity to look through the journals of Lilias Trotter, someone who models a humble curiosity and attentiveness to the home she made in Algiers. I hope to spend more time with these journals, their accounts of travels and events at home (and learn to decipher Trotter's lovely script!)

Illustrations from Lilias Trotter’s diary,1899 © Arab World Ministries

Even after living in Algiers for over a decade, her1899 journal is filled with paintings, in the borders and sometimes across entire pages. To me, these are marks of sustained, careful attention to people, places, even plants, and how God was present there. She records the antics of adopted daughters, women at their daily tasks. She sees Christ in the radiant morning star which she paints over indigo mountains. Nothing seems above or beneath her notice.

Illustrations from Lilias Trotter’s diary, 1899 © Arab World Ministries

Admittedly, her adoptive home of Algiers could be considered exotic relative to her English upbringing, such that curiosity is unremarkable. But it seems to me she could have easily become habituated or blind, neglecting to paint, ceasing to see. I’m glad she didn’t.

Porch view from a Toronto home

I hope to cultivate and grow in attention to the people and places I live among. I've tried to pull out my sketchbook in daily life, not just on my travels, and look afresh at the various homes I've made, bits of my natural surroundings changing with the seasons, views from windows or porches. These things are easy for me to overlook or rush past. But what richness can be found in lingering and looking, as the pages of Lillias’ journals witness.

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Sources:

Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel, Vintage International, 2002

Lilias Trotter, 1899 journal, AWM/AMB, Box 17, Papers of the Algiers Mission Band, SOAS Library Special Collections

Miriam Huffman Rockness, A Passion for the Impossible, Discovery House Publishers, 2011