Instinctive in us humans are all the desires for survival that include making a home, especially making a home for the winter. I believe that is why we experience such deep delight in running these ancestral programs---especially the one called “building a fire”.
I had never learned to build a real fire in a hearth until I met Anthony, my husband-to-be. Having grown up in Crested Butte, he was patient, skillful, and obviously knew how to stack the wood and add the crumpled paper to make a long-burning fire. Once the flame was kindled, he knew what to do to “nurse” the flame, to make it grow without popping or jumping out of the fireplace. I suspect my dad had done some fire-building once or twice a year when I was a kid, but not with that degree of expertise or with that sense of getting a real blaze going. I found that skill quite bewitching, as I am sure my ancestors did before me.
Even in our furnace-heated homes, that longing to create a fire and have a hearth still surfaces. The rituals of Christmas include a lot of talk about fires, chimneys, and mantels, which many of us don’t even have, or use much if we do have them. I invite you to think of those primal skills and the need to create a fireplace when it carried with it that necessity of homemaking, heat.
When Laurens van der Post returned from the Second World War and met Carl Jung in Zurich, he records his astonishment at the care and ritual that Jung would put into the making of a fire. Not only did Jung regard the fire as sacred, but for him it symbolized the very vehicle of human spiritual transformation. i
I have learned that, to quote Chaz Gormley,
Carl Jung believed that building a link to the center of human personality was one of the great needs of the modern age. In classical times, the goddess Hestia was the goddess of the hearth, and the sacred fire in the center of each home. Her presence was felt whenever her fire was lit… [ In early Greek thought, Hestia also dwelt on Mount Olympus, but in later myth, she was exiled from there and symbolically downgraded to the home.] [According to Jung,] the exile of Hestia from Olympus, and the later movement from a geocentric to a heliocentric view, were psychic disasters for human psychology.ii
There is an activity that today I would rechristen ”Tending the Hearth,” not that you need to have a real fireplace to tend it. Homemaking is not about having a perfect home.
Homemaking is not about wealth, nor a Martha Stewart kind of perfection, nor being unfailingly gourmet or upbeat. Home does not require having saintly, delightful companions to share your hearth with. The spiritual discipline of homemaking is to make a home that lures our family, or other companions, into feeling genuine love and care in the very fabric of our attentiveness to them.
What does it take to create a real home? Whether we are making a place for one soul or many, there is more to it than meets the eye. I believe we need to talk about it more, because I see far too many folks among my clients and friends who struggle to create that sense of home. Since no one teaches the skills of home-building, we either inherit them from wise forebears or we tend to be handicapped in our home-building skills---a curious condition, to be sure, but I am convinced it is a real one. And I have my own saga of having learned only in middle age to appreciate some of the domestic arts
Alfred Schutz, the philosopher, says we carry out our lives in many “provinces of meaning,” but the primary one—the one where we eat and sleep, make love and build fires—he calls the “lifeworld.”iii Many of us, these days, spend far too much time in the other worlds—such as cyberspace-- and our connection to the lifeworld grows thin. Does it really threaten us psychically? I believe it does; I believe it threatens us body and soul.
Many people experience depression at this time of year. The darkness contributes, of course, but so does our lack of skill in nurturing ourselves and others. A friend wrote to me this winter as follows: “I have been out of balance recently and struggling to reconnect with these [homemaking] parts of myself. I needed particularly to take care of my own soul, to cherish my friends, sensory pleasures and time away from the struggles of life, as a balance to the rest that life and my work [of ministry] offer.” She is so perceptive. The skills are not as simple as merely deciding to be more sensual or hiring a decorator or a cleaning person, although there are benefits to both. We cannot simply delegate the arts of home!
Not every home is what the hobbits in Lord of the Rings called “homely.” Our contemporary lifespaces tend not to be built for intimacy and conversation—for feeling love and connection. No doubt we have every right to play computer games and watch TV, but what about talking? Do we still do intimate conversation? I don’t think we need useless kitsch, but I have certain traditions that I cherish. We have a family of those Caroling People that we put on our mantel at Christmastime. They are dressed in rough wool and have funny snub noses. I surround them with trees and fake snow, a dog and a mailbox. They look exactly like my New England ancestors. I have no doubt they are my equivalent to the Lares and Penates that graced the Romans’ hearths.
We don’t drop in on each other as folks used to do. I get a kick out of Burroughs’ observation that a mouse might have dropped in on its neighbor----does anyone do that any more? I rather envy my mother, in Keene, New Hampshire, who still has about 8 friends of the dropping-in variety. It’s not a bad idea to have a friend drop in, for you can say “Oh, I just was making papier mache Chinese lanterns” and that explains the mess. If you invite her over, you might have to clean up. Even though my dining room is often messy, I believe it is homey because it is inviting. There is enough paper and mess for two, or three. I am not a judgmental artist, but a “Come and join me,” artist, as I think we all were meant to be.
As to hospitality, I have a Mock Aunt in New England, a widow, who is one of the most open and hospitable people I know. She isn’t fussy or pretentious about manners or gourmet food---in fact I have had grilled hot dogs at her house more than once! But she always creates such a welcoming atmosphere, letting children roam while still making sure they are safe, bringing people together who might not otherwise choose to be together. She has had enough sadness in her life to make an excuse for lengthy withdrawal, but she chooses instead to make a rich but simple home.
Our homes convey our culture-- including our ethnicities. Although ethnicity has become a sensitive and politically charged topic, I know that in order to have roots, we have to put them down into some particular culture. In countless ways we are cultural animals, and only if we travel a good deal in other countries do we really begin to transcend our local aesthetic. Our chalice lighter Jane Mathews is one of the people I know who has done that remarkably well. For myself, I cherish that spare New England aesthetic that I grew up with, knowing that Peter Morales is correct in saying that this way of life is losing its hegemony and needs to make way for more melting-pot ways, especially in the church. But I can’t pretend to make a personal home that feels Cajun or Californian or Southwestern. With my soul being what it is, I can only make a home that smacks of New England. The Jungians say we imbibe those symbols of home in our first twelve years, and they orient us to the world.iv
Have you ever read a person’s character from their home? Occasionally, I have had the privilege to go to someone’s home I did not really know. Last year I got a chance to preach in Grand Junction, and I was privileged to stay in a home whose owners were wintering elsewhere. What delight I took in piecing together their interests and tastes. They happened to have many priceless art objects from foreign cultures, as well as quilts and plants ,unusual teas and really interesting potholders. But I most vividly acquaintance I made from reading their bedside books. My favorite was Howard Zinn’s book on American Democracy, which I heartily recommend.
I know one young couple who in a time of great wealth bought a forty thousand dollar motorcycle, took it up the utility elevator and put it in the middle of their living room floor. While their visitors found it amusing, I don’t think it helped them create a home. A motorcycle is not a symbol of home. It’s a symbol of excitement, speed, and wanderlust. Our unconscious reads this language despite what we may intend.
Building a home takes time and intentionality, like building a fire. Both men and women have sets of skills that are relevant to home-building. For example, I think wood-working is a promising skill. It shows patience and a nesting instinct, whether one actually learns to make any furniture items or not. Cooking is a skill that many of both genders now profess an interest in. I grew up in that pre-Julia Child era where there was not a lot of interest or skill in cooking among Americans, and I am not a skilled cook, but I admire those who can cook, especially those who cook with some sense of a learned tradition.
When we rely on the microwave or the canned soup supper, we can send a message that “I do not have time to live in the present” or something closely akin. Children especially---as well as our partners and housemates and friends---deserve that we make some time to cook for them. My French “mother” that I met when I was 16, in the South of France, exclaimed, “How could you have grown so big out of cans?” And today I make a mean Salade nicoise in her honor, that I learned to make from her. I admire people who have the instinct to entertain, to offer a dinner, even if it is just a simple buffet for extended family. When the skills and manners of being a good host or hostess are lost---even if it’s because we live humbly—I fear there is much that will never be recaptured. A Super Bowl Party with chips and dips may be very American, but it is not the only model for conviviality that I would want my son or my nieces to be exposed to.
The second challenge of winter besides making a home is probably to get outdoors and look around us. I suspect we do that far less than our forebears who had almost no high-tech gear for weathering the cold and wet. Of course, I remember many expeditions as a child with sleds and flying saucers and nothing more than wool coat and knitted mittens to cut the chill. I wasn’t much of a naturalist as a kid, but I do recall looking around me at the animal trails with delight, and one brief winter of owning a Siberian husky who took to snow as his native element.
John Burroughs, a turn of the 20th century naturalist, reminds us of the wonder and majesty of the deep winter season. Some years we get a deep winter here in the Front Range, and other years one has to go up to the mountains to experience it---but you will all know the weather I’m referring to. It’s almost shocking to read his full chapter on The Snow-Walkers and to admire how much he was able to discern from the marks on the snow.
Parker Palmer writes of the deep winter of the Midwest “One [of its] gifts is beauty, different from the beauty of autumn but somehow lovelier still. I am not sure that any sight or sound on earth is as exquisite as the hushed descent of a sky full of snow. Another is the reminder that times of dormancy and deep rest are essential to all living beings. Despite all appearances, …nature is not dead in winter—it has gone underground to renew itself and prepare for spring. Winter is a time when we are admonished, and even inclined, to do the same ourselves.”v
I love the deep winter, and since I have become a novice watercolor painter, I can tell you with more precision what I love. My native palette must have been formed during my New England childhood, because I especially love all the grays of nature. Taking pity on me after my repeated failures to render the ochres and melony oranges of the Southwest, my watercolor teacher finally taught me to create an exciting rock-gray by mixing opera---a brilliant pink! –with peacock blue ,and I could scarcely control my excitement. Those rich grays do not lurk in any tube.
I love too how Burroughs tells us that he sees all the tracks on the snow and discerns their meaning as to what little animal passed by. Nature is a home we ought to enjoy far more than most of us do. That notion of subtle, quiet observation—the kind you can do in a wintry field--- strikes me greatly.
Have you noticed, lately, what can be observed about your fellow human beings? So much of the time even those of us who do “people work” are trying to motivate or change someone, tutor or improve them. What I love is just observing how people function. How we reveal ourselves in our words and actions, even in our subtlest “tracks.”
For example, I can almost guarantee that each one of you knows someone who is depressed or despondent this winter. What can you do? If you say this outright, you might frighten him or her. Rather, tell them you want to have coffee or tea, and make a date. Do you know how easy it is to find out about another person? If not, practice a week in which you consciously arrange to listen to another person for half an hour or more. Even if you are the person who just got the new car with the bow on top, it is possible to wait till a friend is not depressed to share your joy.
When you hear a reference that puzzles you---say, the friend says “I find sausage depressing” or “I love green wrapping paper “ or “I have always wanted to go to Flint,” ask the person to tell you more. Of course, the deeper feelings will be harder to recollect, but stash the reference for future consideration. The unexpected utterance can be an immediate window into the soul. I guarantee you will soon learn things about your friends you never would have found out while being your normal effervescent self. (story)
I relate, too, to the concept Burroughs mentions of “satiety” or “satiation”---which means we really do get enough, feel full, and need to stop partying. Feasting and shopping and opening presents are not bad---they can be fun---they help the retailers—but they come to an end. Our souls are starving for something else…. It is still deep winter outside.
My Swedish-American family gave me a book when I was married by Thyra Ferre Bjorn, called The Home Has A Heart. Even though most of the recipes are too fussy, I have learned to think about giving my home a heart where the love that I feel for my family gets expressed. When I was a girl, I knew my home had a heart because my Mom was always in the kitchen. She was no great cook—in fact, she smoked and played solitaire. Her specialty was listening to people and tweaking relationships. My Nana Olga was more of a “bustler” than a cook, but as she bustled about, she had a way of making her kitchen seem special, too. She would play tea party with her granddaughters for hours, and—like some of you at JUC--- she had a tradition of a group that played canasta. My Nana Kit had a back kitchen where she posted pieces of my artwork---which is why, to this very day, I know my art is valuable. It is back-kitchen art!
So, this winter, I want to invite each of us to deepen the arts of homemaking and the arts of winter observation. There will be plenty of time to worry again about health care , politics, the lethality of global warming, and the crisis of education. There will be time in just a few days to return to your job or school , to your responsibilities, concerns and worries.
Meanwhile, it is not by chance that we advertise our church with these words “A Religious Home for the Liberal Spirit.” The Spirit is something we often picture as insubstantial, and floating or airborne, like a bird or a flame. It is the part of ourselves that yearns for justice, peace and righteousness over all the lands. A Spirit definitely needs a home, and Jefferson Unitarian offers itself by its wayside sign to all who pass as a “home”. Just as a family needs a hearth of some kind, a church needs a hearth and a center as well. When I first came here, I recall that the Stewardship Committee was actually “symbolically selling” the bricks of the old fireplace wall—the former brick wall just outside the sanctuary—as a fundraiser. It made sense to me---you paid for a piece of something that you were not going to pocket and take home, but it was real nonetheless.
We make our church a “church home” not only by bricks and mortar, by fellowship dinners and classes, by attending worship and socializing with all who come, by casseroles delivered and visits made to our sick and shut-ins—but also by consecrating this space to be our “hearth.” This space is now filled with memories, this commons has been the scene of countless meals and buffets…the chapel has hosted many a ritual …the courtyard has been the scene of a child dedication, the memorial garden holds many of our ashes. Here is the place where I find our communal center, the hearth for our flame.
In addition to making our own private homes special to us, each in our own ways, may we continue to make this our religious home by our many actions, gifts, and sacrifices---by our devotion--- may we build with great care the sacred, metaphorical fire of our commitment to this faith, to our shared Principles, and to each other.