having a community that one calls home

We wander in our thousands over the face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning beyond the seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but it seems to me that for each of us going home must be like going to render an account. We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends - those whom we obey, and those whom we love; but even they who have neither, the most free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties, - even for those for whom home holds no dear face, no familiar voice, - even they have to meet the spirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its valleys and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its trees - a mute friend, judge, and inspirer. Say what you like, to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear consciousness. All this may seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed very few of us have the will or the capacity to look consciously under the face of familiar emotions.
There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp. I think it is the lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call their own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to meet its disembodied, eternal, and unchangeable spirit - it is those who understand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of its secular right to our fidelity, to our obedience. Yes! few of us understand, but we all feel it though, and I say all without exception, because those who do not feel do not count.
Each blade of grass has its spot on the earth whence it draws its life, its strength, and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life. .... We exist only in so far as we hang together.
- Joseph Conrad, "Lord Jim"