“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” ~ James Baldwin
For the last 6 years or so, I’ve been blessed to teach classes to some amazing students. Not just any classes but classes focused on gardening, canning, and homemaking. It’s an awesome privilege because it feels like my students are inviting me into their homes when they enroll in one of my classes. I don’t take that lightly, home is of huge importance to me. In fact, I rather feel like a home-centered life could bring about profound, wonderful change in the world. It seems to me, a truly wonderful home embraces more than just the home and its inhabitants but rather spreads light to the world around it. Idealistic, perhaps but I’ve seen it often enough to believe it as truth.
I keep that mind each and every time I step in front of a classroom or the webcam. I hope in some small way, I’m helping my students create their own vision of home. It may sound grandiose or even egotistical but in a small way if I succeed in helping someone create a home and life by their own hands, well I think I might be changing the world just a bit too. It’s a big switch from my idealistic views of creating world peace as a teenager, but this is so much better. Change one person, one home at a time, that’s powerful and to be a part of it on such a small level, that’s humbling.
It’s a take on voluntary simplicity and homemaking that we don’t often think about, we don’t necessarily associate such personal choices with impacting the world at large. I want to encourage you to do that today, keep it and yourself humble of course, but today remember that your personal choices very likely reflect into the world around you and with that comes the power to change things. It will happen slowly, without a doubt very slowly, but it will happen and folks that’s amazing and beautiful.
Please tell me, how are you changing the world today?
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Part of the mission statement for my teaching of writing and composition to HOMEschooled students is ‘to change the world’. This week I’m changing the world through teaching writing and teaching knitting
By doing my best not to punish or reward my children for their behavior, but to truly *see* them, to excavate the need behind the behavior, and to love them unconditionally in this moment.
So true, Kathie. And each time we buy (or don’t buy) something, we’re making a choice with an impact.
The rest of the week is a little different, but today I’m doing a little research and nesting so I can raise the next generation of our family as best as I’m able!
I’ve done co-canning with a neighbor, a friend, and a set of friends. Great fun and my expertise gets passed on. I’ve also built portable humid climate (a touch of special engineering there) solar dehydrator with a set of friends, done local workshops on them, and posted an Instructable on building one. I like the ripple effect when I do these things.