June 1, 2020 - 7:00am
I have been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers in Prison in lockdown. Imprisoned by the Nazis for taking part in a plot to assassinate Hitler, the great theologian had time to process how much the world had changed since his childhood. Many of his urgent reflections on how to live resonate with this moment, not least the theme of home.
The centrality of the home in a time when we’re all confined to it is obvious, but it’s also part of a longer trend. I wrote last year about the “pivot to burnout” that saw branding companies and marketers focus on the “domestic cosy” trend — even before it was enforced, we were spending more time in (and more money on) our living spaces.
Bonhoeffer got me pondering whether there might be something else significant that could change underneath the consumer led-rush. After the birth of his nephew, he wrote:
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.
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SubscribeDietrich Bonhoeffer was so good at pointing us to the simplest and best things in life.
Recently I’ve been looking at photos of my childhood in which my parents figure a great deal. I am so grateful to them for the loving, happy and secure home they gave me as their only child. All that I received from them was built on the foundation of their love and commitment to each other strengthened by the Vows they shared in Christian Marriage.
We now live in a society in which the extremely well tried and tested model of Christian Marriage is seen as one option amongst many, and our legislators have worked methodically over the years to undermine it further. Soon they will be debating a Bill in which a person can resign from their marriage by simply stating that there has been an irretrievable breakdown. There need be no recourse to reconciliation and the other partner will be unable to contest the divorce.
There is a growing body of evidence that children do best within the traditional model of husband and wife committed to each other building a strong, stable, loving home for them. This evidence is ignored because it does not fit in with the canons of diversity and equality which, at present , are the only mores permitted by the secular, liberal, cultural Marxist ascendancy. Meanwhile so many children suffer in dysfunctional homes.
It makes me weep.
Lovely article. Thanks
The ” revolutionary” times of which Bonhoeffer spoke are already upon us– in plain sight. It has taken an existentially awful pandemic to re awaken us to Home and Family as the heart and the hearth of our lives— where parents can re engage with their children.
A hundred million digital photo albums will recapture these moments which might never have happened otherwise.
Bonehoeffer was a Christian–and about to die for that witness. He knew that family prayer was what held it all together– gave it an internal cohesion and the strength that was to sustain him in prison, writing words that strengthen us today in our times.
So great to see Bonhoeffer mentioned. Such a wonderful thinker and writer. Thank you for reminding me to read him more.
I read him in my late teens and early twenties and was inspired by his books. I think I should take another look, now I am in my seventies and spending too much time on screen
I agree with Jasmine. Bonhoeffer is one of my favorite Christian apologists. I am currently reading “The Last Days of Dietrich Bonhoeffer” by Goddard. Even the the Nazi prison guards had a deep respect for him and sometimes supported him even in small ways.
Nice.
This period has given me the notion of home as a place of basic needs fulfilment. This is perhaps best represented by Maslow’s hierarchy of need which is I am confident what Crouch was referring to.
I’d say if there was one acedemic subject that needs a home environment whilst it is not taught at school is ecology which includes the principles by which we can cooperatively live.
DB a great hero of mine, and very good to see him referenced here. A nice photo too. I am not sure if he was involved in in the 1944 plot for which he was convicted as he was imprisoned in 1943, but I am sure more scholarly opinions than mine will know.