I wanted to wrap up today by thanking you—our 12 listeners—for being so gracious and so willing for me to speak to you about things I honestly don’t have the right to.I don’t mean your house—I’ll talk about that all day long with or without your permission. No, I mean talking about your home.It’s your home that’s none of my business. But I can’t help it, because home is really the point, isn’t it? Home is ground zero. Strangely, it’s our launching pad and our destination. Like T.S. Elliot once said, the end of all our exploring in this life is to arrive back where we started and know the place for the first time.The winter holidays are really and truly all about home. Attach whatever other beliefs to them you wish, this season will always color outside those lines because at its heart is something which transcends belief, something universally human that rises up in us all when the world turns dark and cold.A yearning, a longing, for the warmth, the safety, the rest for a weary soul that can only be found in the most sacred place in the universe—home.So it feels right, doesn’t it, in the cold and dark, that we adorn that temple with the incense of evergreens and offerings of light. It feels right to feast and laugh and give one another gifts and do whatever else it takes to remind ourselves that as long as love endures we will endure. As long as love endures we will find our way home.Home is where the real magic happens. But if you’re not careful you’ll miss it. Because it’s largely hidden, woven into entirely unexpected and unlikely things. Things like piles of laundry, dirty dishes, and re-heated leftovers. Bills to pay, homework to do, dog hair on the sofa, socks under the bed, toothpaste on the counter. Days that run too long and alarms that ring too early. And all the while, home wraps itself around us, holds us, protects us, prepares us, even though most days we look right past it in search of some other life we’re dreaming of.But eventually, slowly, sometimes tragically too late, we all come to realize that there is no place in our lives more important than that place. Home is where we’re from, and when thisday of dreaming is done, home is where we’re all going. Launch pad and destination.I’m here because I believe in home. I think you show up every week because you do too.My holiday wish for you is for you to find home on every level. Make the house look great, of course, but also keep doing the hard work of remodeling yourself until you’re truly home in who you are. Then, throw open the doors, stretch out your arms and make the space between them a place where others feel at home too.No one ever leaves home. We just move it from one place to another to another until eventually we arrive where we started and know it for the first time. Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like it.