homemaking

These early autumn days are perfect for making soup. The light is softer, the air has a chill, and everything seems to be in transition from the leaves on the trees to the grapes on the vines. There’s a wholesomeness and heartiness to soup or stew. The chopping and joining of elements, the house smelling like the many complex lifeforms that make up a healthy eco-system of vegetables, salt and fat (have to have some sort of fat, fat free is so last decade). From cutting the vegetables, dousing them with olive oil and roasting them in the oven, to throwing them in a pot with herbs and sauteed onions, to turning up the heat and watching as the ingredients marry in the pot. A steaming, nourishing bowl. People from all over the world are taking care of loved ones with this alchemy. I stand over the pot, breathing in the sweet earthy aroma in profound gratitude for the earth that sustains me and the fruits it so generously supplies. This nourishing practice feels even more essential during these difficult times.

It's no secret that I love homemaking. I’ve been called to support and write about the power and beauty of home and family for over 40 years, stabbing around in the dark trying to find an effective way to share what I’ve been learning and sensing. I didn’t enter this inquiry because there were no other choices. I had a great education, enormous privilege by birth, and some talent in the arts. But rather than aim for wealth or fame, our cultures highest values, I chose to deep focus on home and nature. And there have been many sacrifices. My family has had less resources and opportunities than the one I grew up in. But this is a price worth paying for a life that is authentic to my nature.

From our culture’s viewpoint, homemaking has been deemed a waste of time and a prison where dreams go to die by many on the left and turned into a gilded cage, a “should” with limited options for women by many on the right. Are the only choices to either feel like we’ve wasted our life and talents cooking and cleaning, living in a prison where our true self is dropped at the gate, or spending our lives based on someone else’s idea of what a good life, a good woman, is supposed to be, slaves in our home? They are both constructs. One creates free labor, or a form of slavery, while demeaning the domestic women who love to nurture. The other demeans the feminine aspect elevating the male paradigm of work outside the home being more important than work within the home. To hell with both of these limiting beliefs! Thankfully there are more than just these two paths.

As an artist I see homemaking as filled with sensual delights, as a spiritual practitioner I see it as a brilliant place to practice presence. The Catholic Benedictines practice of Ora et Labora, pray and labor, and the Zen practice of being fully present with each task, are beacons on the path of spiritually driven domesticity. As Ms. Sohn, a Methodist minister and author writes, “While I used to consider the work I needed to do around the house utterly expendable, I now see it as integral for me and my family’s happiness. Through my body’s daily offering, I bear witness to the belief that my private sphere is just as worthy of my attention as my public sphere and that my inner life is just as worthy of my care and labor as my outer one. And with each sock I put away, I trust that a sacred alchemy is unfurling.”

This is not about hiding out in our homes without caring for our community and the world. Domestic spirituality builds a rich inner life and expands that life out to community action to bring more kindness and sanity to a troubled world. We are all jewels in indra’s net, the net that expands throughout the universe with a jewel at the center of each node. You and I are each a unique and precious jewel in the net of life. Our well- being is affected by the well- being of all the mothers in prisons, the families in war zones, the billionaires in Silicon Valley and all the other myriad life forms. During these challenging times nourishing ourselves, creating more love in our homes, can be a real comfort and stabilizing act. It may not be a practice and delight for everybody and it doesn’t take care of all the imbalances but it is one way to break the binds of negativity and fear that swirl around us now.