Facing an Anti-Family Economy
Economic demands often work against your being a man or woman in your household. There is a plan for manhood and womanhood that you can discover and execute, starting at home.
Responding to the Dominant Culture
Strong cultural pressures both pull you away from home and invade your life there. You can take responsibility and thrive.
Overcoming the Feeling of Powerlessness
Confused and isolated, sometimes you don’t know where to turn. You can become the man or woman you know you can be.
What can I do?
STEP 1: Start by reading Reclaiming the Household.
Then dive deep into the gifts of household life by taking Man of the Household (see below for more details) or Woman of the Household.
Free Online Course:
Man of the Household
hidden
Why take this course:
As natural as it is, being man of the household does not come naturally, especially today. We need to be intentional and take specific steps to become the man we want to be. The course goal is this: to be the man of my household, a true husband and father, taking first responsibility for crafting the good life in my home, and so fulfilling what my nature calls me to, my heart longs for, and my loved ones need and deserve.
To whatever extent we become that man, it is its own reward. Yet also our wife, our children, our friends, and all our loved ones will be grateful and reap the fruits of our efforts. For generations to come.
If you are interested, I would love for you to join me in this course.
This course has four modules:
- Man as Crafter of a Household
- Man as Husband
- Man as Father
- Man’s Work, Leisure, and Daily Life in the Home
Each module has:
- a pre-recorded lecture (viewable at one’s own schedule)
- a worksheet for formulating resolutions and a concrete personal plan
Each student can:
- participate in online discussion forums with me and other LifeCraft members
- email me questions to which I will respond directly by email
This course is designed for:
- husbands and fathers, young and not so young
- men preparing for marriage
- other men who seek to understand better their vocation to fatherhood, through considering fatherhood in its most obvious instance
- men’s groups, Bible Studies, Exodus 90, marriage prep groups, etc.
STEP 3: Take concrete steps to enrich the lives of those in your household, starting at the dinner table. Watch the Dinner at Home mini-series for ideas on setting manners and having good, meaningful conversations.
STEP 4: If you can, make a hearth in your home. If you can’t, how about a bonfire? Read about the importance of hearths and fires: Making the Times that Matter, We Need More Fires, A Fire in the Hearth, and Make a Fire Today.
STEP 5: See below for featured Wednesday Quotes that address the theme of household.
Featured Posts:
Men in Quarantine: 3 Ideas for Rediscovering Marriage
“What we share now is this home of ours.” “So, my dear, we must recognize what God has assigned to each of us, and try our hardest to carry through our respective responsibilities.” Xenophon, The Estate Manager Marriage is often an exercise in recognizing the gift in...
A Husband: Responsible for the Household
Ischomachus’s wife: “My mother told me that my job was to be responsible.” Ischomachus: “My father gave me the same advice.” Xenophon, The Estate Manager One casualty of the decline of the household is that men and women don’t see their role in it as central to their...
Seeking Harmony in Our Home
“When cordially united, a father and sons, or a family of brothers and sisters, may, in almost any state of life, set what is called misfortune at defiance.” William Cobbett, The Cottage Economy The other evening we sat down as a family for the first time in a few...
Recent Posts:
When in Doubt the Go-To Principle
I shall reproach him because he attaches little importance to the most important things and greater importance to inferior things. Socrates, Plato’s Apology Trying to live a good life, you spend your days deliberating about hard questions. There is no way around this....
Does Your Home Have a Physical Center?
“No social group...can survive without constant informal contact among its members.” “The hearth, the place where food was made and eaten, was the heart of family life.” A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander, et alia With persistent centrifugal factors...
Need: The Hidden Key to Wealth
“Well, you see, my property is enough to supply me with all my needs... Socrates, in Xenophon’s Estate Manager The wise help us to see better. By looking through their eyes, we learn to see things more as they are. One great fruit is that we can be more grateful....
Love First Learned from a Lady
But love, first learned in a lady's eyes... Shakespeare, Love’s Labours Lost It has been said that woman specializes in loving. There is a profound truth in this. It is not that men do not know how to love or are not called to love. But women, especially in their...
Physical Home as Common Ground
My wife said to me, “John, we need to be here, together. This is our common ground.” Recently my wife and I were struck anew by a significant aspect of being-at-home, in the physical place. Our lives are given a center that grounds us and draws us together. Of late we...
On a Wedding Day: A Glimpse of Marriage Itself
“One could find no other association more necessary nor more pleasant than that of men and women.” Musonius Rufus Last Saturday was one of those days around which the rest of life clusters—either as preparation or as consequence. I committed my beloved eldest daughter...
An Empty Nest
How selfhood begins with a walking away, And love is proved in the letting go. Cecil Day-Lewis, Walking Away We have been observing the progress of a family of swallows in our barn for the last few weeks. Yesterday, the three young ones fledged. After spending many...
Manual Workers, Wisdom, and Cosmic Order
“How can he become wise who handles the plough? ...each becomes wise through his work.” Sirach Ben Sira and Aristotle are of one mind regarding the scribe’s pursuit of wisdom. “The wisdom of the scribe depends on the opportunity of leisure; and he who has little...
A Wife in Her Well-Ordered Home
“Like the sun rising in the heights of the Lord, so is the beauty of a good wife in her well-ordered home.” Sirach There is so much to fathom in these words in praise of a good wife. What a revelatory simile/metaphor! Like the sun rising, so is the beauty of a good...
Ruling Our Households Like the Cosmos
“...when he made them he precisely determined their portions. He arranged his works in an eternal order, and their dominion for all generations; they neither hunger nor grow weary, and they do not cease from their labors...they will never disobey his word.” Sirach...
When a Man Becomes a Priest
When my daughter was three her uncle was in formation to become a priest. One morning she asked: “After Uncle (X) becomes a priest, will he ever become a man again?” It dawned on us that this amusing question has real weight. An ancient Latin word for priest means...
Craftsmanship Vs. Money-Making
“...you thought that the shepherd as a shepherd tends the sheep not with a view to their own good, but like a mere diner or banqueter with a view to the pleasures of the table; or, again, as a trader for sale in the market, and not as a shepherd.” Plato, Republic Both...