RIGHT AT HOME

I traveled to Bethlehem, Pa., to talk about home at the Moravian Writers' Conference. About how home roots us, shapes us, tethers, scrapes, and needs us. About how (if we are writing, if we are living) we are forced to define what the word means to us.

Home is akin to poem. But how?

We took the ever-widening Northeast Extension to the Lehigh Valley exit, turned onto Route 22 east toward 378 South, and then there we were, on Main Street. Police people were cycling uphill at low gear. A klatch of smokers were savoring their torpedoes and perfectos outside Cigars International. The bellhops at the Historic Hotel Bethlehem, where John F. Kennedy once stayed and where the current wedding season was in full bloom, tipped their hats jocosely.

They were dipping the pretzels at the Chocolate Lab, entertaining questions (my questions) at the lovely and original Bethlehem House Contemporary Art Gallery, and when I asked the clerk at the Moravian Book Shop & Gift Gallery if it really was (as rumor had suggested) the "oldest continuously operated bookstore in the world," I was given the honest truth. Moravian Books is the oldest such establishment in the nation. There might be a store somewhere in Scotland with actual international claims.

Who cares? This town is full of history, steeped in the stuff of Moravian traditions, an inn where the founders of our nation slept, a lock of George Washington's hair. You walk up and down the brick and slate streets and a tower rises, Longfellow is cited, and old stone facades reveal themselves as former choir houses where single brethren and single sisters and widows lived in their divided, communal fashion.

The 18th-century Moravians, who had arrived from Europe, believed in equality and in democratic diversity, in a "General Economy" to which all contributed and from which all benefited. European, African American, and Native American, these citizens prospered together in the middle part of the 18th century, using the strength of Monocacy Creek and Lehigh River to power saw mills, gristmills, water works, linseed oil factories, tanneries, and the stuff of artisanal improvements.

Some of those buildings (restored or salvaged) are still here. The artisan spirit is, too. On this first Friday in June, we crossed the Lehigh by bridge and turned onto Third Street in south Bethlehem to join the 30 resident artists and their admirers at the Banana Factory, a former banana distribution warehouse that has been successfully converted into studio space, teaching space, ArtsQuest venues, even a youth theater.

"You have to experience this," we were told by the friends we'd just met, and so we did, moseying from artist to artist, talking trinities and the math of symbols, and envying the cheese, until it was time to return to Main Street, where the restaurants were serving tapas, satay, and beer beneath bulbous streetlamps and a gloaming sky.

In the morning we crossed the river again - this time in pursuit of the SteelStacks, acres of former Bethlehem Steel machinery that have become the backdrop of more culture and community, more ArtsQuest. During its 100-plus years of operation, Bethlehem pounded and rolled and cast the stuff of battleships and skyscrapers, bridges and stadiums, the Waldorf Astoria, Alcatraz, and Rockefeller Center. It hooted, steamed, employed, and when a collision of unhappy forces closed the plant's many doors and threatened this historic town's existence, some very forward thinkers and philanthropic hearts saved the five blast furnaces as both theater and history. There they stand - bolted, rusting, soaring - among stages, memorials, event sites, and, just down the way, the Sands Casino Resort.

There are small trees growing out of the grit of the Stacks. There's a visitors' center at the far end. There is a vast parking lot that, on this day, hosts the scooter-riding, trike-spinning, stereo-boasting SPMG Auto, Bike & Soundoff Show. The beat of reggaeton fills the air.

I walk, take photographs, ask questions about steel and car stereos, the lifestyles of painters, the alchemy of a local culture that keeps blacksmithing alive alongside the blast furnaces. Not a single person turns away. Instead, my questions yield conversations about Bethlehem hills, Moravian politics, and life within the sun and shadow of a braided history.

A few hours later, in the Foy Concert Hall on the Moravian campus, I sit in the front row as local teens take the stage to talk about home - to read their poems, to share their process, to celebrate the teacher who has led them forward. I listen to Joyce Hinnefeld, novelist, teacher, creator. Soon it is my turn to speak, to deliver this keynote, to share a tremulous notion or two. I stand, lift to my toes behind the tall lectern, and look out into the hush of the auditorium. My husband and my friends are there. So are strangers bearing open, willing hearts.

Home, I think as I stand there, is the tenderness and hope we carry forward. It is the grace with which we are received.

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of 20 books, including, most recently, "One Thing Stolen," a Parents' Choice Gold Medal selection

Beth Kephart blogs daily at www.beth-kephart@blogspot.com.