A Feng Shui Take on Genesis, Nolan's 'Odyssey', and Coming Home
Last night I watched Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey.
His Odysseus is a hero fighting his way home, haunted by what he did at Troy and unsure he still deserves the home waiting for him. Homer’s hero never carried that weight; Nolan added it, saying that atonement is something audiences bring to the story.
As Nolan has said, the Odyssey was always about coming home emotionally as much as physically.
Who we are at home is shaped by how we create and tend it, and the Torah seems to know this. Genesis, which we read this week, tells the creation of the universe in just 34 verses. Later books devote nearly 500 to building the Mishkan, a home for the divine, and describes its completion in the same language it uses for the completion of the world. Building a home, it suggests, is its own act of creation.
But some days we walk in the door and all we see is what we haven’t done, a feeling Odysseus would understand.
Rabbi Sacks, writing on this week’s parasha, puts it simply: “You can lose faith in humanity, or yourself, or both. At such times, the knowledge that God has faith in us is transformative, redemptive.”
That’s where coming home begins: not by being good enough first, but by starting the repair. Tending the place where you walk in, so it welcomes you, is a small, daily act of hope.
Feng Shui Concept: Sheng Chi
To paraphrase my teacher Amanda Gibby Peters: does your home support you, or drain you?
In feng shui, the answer often comes down to sheng chi, the generating, life-giving energy that lifts and replenishes. When sheng chi flows through a home, the home supports the people living in it. When it’s blocked or stagnant, the home drains them.
You don’t have to create sheng chi from scratch. It’s already somewhere in your home, in the light, a plant, a favorite chair, or anything that makes you glad to be there. The work is to notice where it lives and help it reach more of your home.
Weekly Feng Shui Experiment
Sheng chi enters your home through the front door, which feng shui calls the Mouth of Chi. It’s also where you enter, so that’s where to start.
Come home as a guest. Step outside, then walk in slowly, as if for the first time.
Notice the first thing you see. Is it something that welcomes you, or something waiting for you to deal with it?
Clear one thing. Just one: the pile, the bag, the box that’s been “temporary” for months.
Find your best spot. Where in your home do you feel the best?
Sit in it and ask why. What is it giving you: the light, the softness, the view, the quiet?
Take one small piece of it somewhere else. The lamp, the plant, the throw rug. Pick a corner that drains you and give it a little of what works.
Give it five minutes. Sometime this week, sit somewhere in your home and appreciate it for making you feel good and for helping you believe in yourself.
Bonus: if others live with you, ask them what they see when they walk in, and what would make them feel welcome. Doing this together is a blessing. The Mishkan was built that way, with everyone bringing something.
