Omphalos?  What is an omphalos?  A Latin term that appeared often in the annals of ancient Rome, omphalos is best translated as "the center of the world" or the "navel of the universe."  As the proud Romans saw it, their empire was an omphalos, the center, hub, the undisputed integration point of the known world.  For them, Rome was the zenith, the highest, the beginning and end of all civilization.

    Let's look at omphalos as a center, yes, but center as a home, a home that is the beginning of our life journey, a home that, in some way, is also the end of our existence.  A home as that which runs through the entirety of our lives, shaping, influencing, building and, sometimes, tearing apart.  A home that is always there, home that though it may at times not seem present at all, steadfastly weaves itself into the currents of our days.  Home as the center of our world.

     

    Long ago, poet William Yeats asked, "Will the center hold?"  One day, our home, our center, will be gone, as will we.  Shorn of its cohering life force, the center itself will vanish, too. Our omphalos will be no more.  
    

    Yet omphalos cannot be the center unless centering is possible.  And in an ordered yet allegedly meaningless world (an oxymoron for sure), how can centering, a centering of thought, meaning, and belief, be?
    

    It almost makes one want to say there is a God.