LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. — Along with about 20 million other Americans who’ll do the same this summer, my family just moved house.

It’s the biggest relocation of my life — 2,016 miles to be exact — from a bohemian suburb of Chicago to a groovy beach town in Southern California. It’s been said that moving is one of life’s most emotionally stressful events, right behind marriage and divorce. Yet moving to a new space in a new place can be spiritually stressful, as well.

Along with figuring out where to hang the artwork and deciding whether to go with blinds or drapes in the living room, I’ve been thinking about what I want our new home to look like spiritually.

A haven. A sanctuary. A place of love with an open-door (and open-heart) policy. Warm. Welcoming. Safe.

Some time over the next weeks and months, we’ll have our pastor and our rabbi come in and formally bless the house, with all the liturgical bells and whistles. But as we unloaded the moving truck, I wanted to be spiritually — as well as aesthetically — intentional about how things should be.

In most spiritual traditions, there are prayers and rituals for blessing a new home. There also are plenty of superstitions about new homes.

According to British folklore, the first visitor to the new home is a harbinger of things to come. That visitor, known as the “first foot,” should be a tall, dark-haired man who brings gifts, such as a coin, bread, salt, coal or whisky, thereby ensuring prosperity, sustenance, flavor, warmth and mirth.

While we didn’t plan it, the first visitor at the new house was our old friend David, who, luckily, is tall with a shock of black, curly hair. When David turned up to say welcome, he didn’t bring anything, but he was wearing flip-flops with sand in the treads. I figure that counts as salt, so at the very least our new place should be flavorful (and, given the flip-flops, laid-back, as well).

One traditional Hindu ritual for blessing a new house involves leading a cow through all the rooms of the house, followed by boiling some of the cow’s milk in the new kitchen.

We don’t have a cow, but our cat Cleo is pretty hefty. She was the first one to trot through all the rooms in the house, and the first “meal” prepared in our new kitchen was a bowl of kitty kibble.

In spiritually preparing our new home, I knew that prayer would be the most important part of the process. What should we pray? How could we best articulate our spiritual hopes for this new, hopefully sacred, space?

I did some research and found a number of beautiful prayers — some ancient, others newfangled but no less powerful — that will be on our minds as we unpack all of our 237 boxes.

The traditional Jewish prayer for a new home begins by thanking the Almighty for sustaining us and bringing us to this (new) place.

In Catholicism, one of the prayers in the house-blessing ritual reminds us that Jesus made his new home amidst the human race. I thought about that for a long time — the idea that Jesus’ incarnation was perhaps the biggest and most emotionally stressful relocation ever.

The prayer I chose to pray as we crossed the threshold of our new home was one I discovered on the Web site of St. Mary’s Hospital and Medical Center in Evansville, Ind., called “Prayer for New Beginnings.”

If you’re one of the millions of stressed-out, sweaty folks packing up and starting afresh in a new place, perhaps it will be a comfort to you, too:

“God of new beginnings, we are walking into mystery.

We face the future, not knowing what the days and months will bring us or how we will respond.

Be love in us as we journey.

May we welcome all who come our way.

Deepen our faith to see all life through your eyes.

Fill us with hope and an abiding trust that you dwell in us amidst all our joys and sorrows.

Thank you for the treasure of our faith life.

Thank you for the gift of being able to rise each day with the assurance of your walking through the day with us.

God of our past and future, we praise you.

Amen.”

(Cathleen Falsani is the author of “Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace,” and the upcoming “The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers.”)