Houses of the Spirit

Domiciles ordinarily represent the first space that humans occupy, structures through which they begin to realize their own being and relation to the larger world. It is also in and through houses that humans may first experience themselves as souls, gaining sacramental intimations of a spirituality mediated through yet also beyond the materiality of their primal shelter. This chapter reflects on the diverse ways in which house structures, even as they are stationed in space, play a critical role in the spiritual journeying of writers such as Henry Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. With reference to fictional works by Willa Cather, Marilynne Robinson, and Ernest Gaines, this chapter also reflects on the problematic complications of humankind’s relation to home places—that is, on what it means to be displaced and the existential consequence of encountering former houses that are no longer homes.