This crisis has reminded us that not everyone has access to a stable or safe home. But for those of us who are fortunate enough, the enforced time in them has brought on a renewed focus on domestic life. My own family’s experiments in homeschooling have not, as yet, shown us to be parents who offer “a storehouse of spiritual values and intellectual stimulation”, and there has been a fair amount of slumping, exhausted, in front of streaming services. I have realised that intellectual and spiritual formation (our own and our children’s) were things I assumed would happen out in the world, and home was for recovering from those efforts. This unspoken attitude meant we had effectively outsourced them, which I no longer wish to do.

Practically, Bonhoeffer writes of the need to put music at the heart of the home, and carve out protected time for real, engaged, conversation. Andy Crouch, more recently, advises shaping living space around things that encourage active engagement, like craft, cooking, music or books, rather than passive consumption of entertainment. The TV, or worse, individual screens is now the “hearth” of the home we gather round. Maybe they should be banished elsewhere.

If there are indeed “revolutionary times ahead” which we, like Bonhoeffer, may be facing, I’m realising that how we live at home will determine the people we are outside it. Now I just need to turn off Netflix.