“If you want to bring happiness to the whole world, go home and love your family,” is a quote attributed to Mother Teresa. In her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, she elaborated: “If we love, naturally, we will try to do something. First in our own home, our next door neighbor, in the country we live, in the whole world.”

Mother Teresa understood the mysterious connection between small acts of love and larger societal change. Often, we feel powerless as great clouds of evil spread tentacle-like over the world. We read headlines with dread, riling ourselves up over events over which we have no control. But we are never actually powerless. We can begin to change the world by reforming our own hearts and our own homes, by doing the good that comes to hand. The art of householding and homemaking lies within everyone’s grasp, with a much wider-reaching impact than we might at first imagine.

One of Jordan Peterson’s famous rules for life is “Clean Your Room.” This seems trivial until you understand Peterson’s larger point. Like Mother Teresa, he understands that talk of crushing evil in society or reforming corrupt institutions rings hollow if we are not first working to crush the evil existing within our own little daily orbit: our own minds, families, homes, and neighborhoods. “My sense is that if you want to change the world, you start with yourself and work outward because you build your competence that way,” he says. “I don’t know how you can go out and protest the structure of the entire economic system if you can’t keep your room organized.”

“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till,” J. R. R. Tolkien wrote. I may not be able to end wars or repeal unjust laws, but I can pull weeds – both literal and metaphorical – from my own garden.

If everyone fulfilled their duty of state, big or small, taking care of their responsibilities to an exemplary degree, the world would be transformed in a flash, bringing a reign of peace. Well, we cannot control how others fulfill their responsibilities, nor can we very easily control how big or small our own responsibilities turn out to be. But we can control how well we fulfill them. And wider change will radiate out from our daily life based on how well we complete our duties, at work and especially at home, however insignificant they may seem. In reality, no duty is insignificant, especially where love is concerned.

Crafting a home with intentionality – a place where others are not just provided shelter and food, but where they feel at rest and cared for – is no small act of love. And acts of love are never fruitless. The seeds of social change are sown first at home.

The art of crafting and keeping a household is the universal vocation, the work of the common man or woman. We must not mistake the word “common” to mean unimportant. The art of the household bears a special dignity, forming the center of gravity for a family, the place where all the most important things happen – the meals where more than just food is shared, the celebrations that brighten faces and hearts, the conversations that stay with you long after, the tragedies that sear the soul, the embraces that wipe away the tears.

Further, a nation is a great collection of households – and the health of that nation depends directly on the health of its households. Are they places of love, order, productivity, peace, joy, charity? Or are they places of selfishness, tyranny, consumption, waste, and discord? What people experience in their homes correlates directly to what happens in the wider society.

Our society tells young people a tragic lie: only the accumulation of money and the pursuit of career is a fitting task for their talents. But creating a home and a community requires just as much ingenuity, planning, and skill as a career, maybe more so.

I find myself continually challenged and stimulated by this labor of love to make a home. The homemaker must be an accountant, financial planner, gardener, maintenance technician, parent, psychologist, teacher, mechanic, cleaning professional, and many other things, all at once. In my role as a father and husband, I’m always asking myself: How can I make the lives of those under my care better? How can I improve the physical, financial, emotional, and spiritual environment in which we live? How can I make our home more beautiful, functional, productive, joyful, efficient? I find such questions endlessly engaging, and I suspect that most men – when they view their homes and families as their greatest project – feel similarly.

Of course, none of this is to deny the importance of meaningful careers or political action. These, too, are good and important, leading to dramatic positive change in the world. But it’s worth remembering that a career was once viewed as simply a necessary component of the larger project of crafting a home and building relationships. At one time, careers existed to serve the household and its web of relationships, not the other way around. And that, I submit, was a saner time.

—

The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image Credit: Public Domain Pictures