Once upon a time, there was a natural and unavoidable component of the home called the hearth. The hearth was the heart of the home. It was the central place for warmth, light, cooking, and life. The fire was continuously kindled and fanned. The flames flickered vivaciously in the center of the home, welcoming family, friends, and the occasional stranger, to come and sing, play instruments, dance, create, and read. The embers rested as the family slumbered, awaiting the next rekindling upon their waking.
The Latin word for hearth is focus, reminding us today that fire was once the focus, or the center of, our homes. Starting a fire is not always a simple task, and tending to it requires intentional skill, work, and care. Additionally, fire is mesmerizing, beautiful, and dangerous. While it captures our attention and imagination, it also needs to be engaged with through poking, prodding, feeding, and it needs to be kept within its bounds.
“Today, we have furnaces instead of hearths. Furnaces warm our homes effortlessly, but they do nothing to concentrate our energy, relationship, attention, and delight the way the hearth did. They ask nothing of us (except to pay the monthly heating bill) and they give us one simple thing: easy warmth everywhere. Reflecting on their unrewarding and disengaged nature, we put them somewhere out of the way, in a closet or in a basement. Rightly so; a furnace is a boring thing, and usually ugly too.” (Tech Wise Family, p. 72)
I encourage you to put the best things in the center of your home that your family can, and will, engage with. Put things that require attention, reward skill, and draw your family close together the way the hearth once did. Doing this will be challenging, frustrating, and maybe produce some grumbling and whining from children and parents alike. But, like any diet, or new habit, give it 3 to 5 days to challenge your family toward being closer to God and closer to one another.
Take a few days before you make changes to make sure you are a husband-and-wife team in this effort to draw your family closer to the Lord and to one another. Talk to your kids, no matter how young or old, about the upcoming changes. At the dinner table or in the car, begin to model and practice thankfulness, cheerfulness, and willingness to try something new. While you are doing this prep work, take time to slowly remove the old (namely easy everywhere technology that draws us inward and isolates us) and bring in the new (books, games, instruments, art, plants, etc.) to create your hearth one day at a time. Implement changes as you are able, with both your time and your resources. This is a prime opportunity for metanoia kai paideia. It is an opportunity to go back to the old roads and find your way home.
Maybe you don’t have an actual fireplace in your house. That is okay. The point is not about an actual, physical fire. The point is to commit to creating and keeping alive a home that is filled with love for the Lord Jesus Christ and for one other. The point is to provide a place within the home that draws everyone to its center for learning, growing, playing, and engaging with things like books, art, crafts, games, imagination, music, and warmth. The point is to provide a hearth in your home to be the place of human flourishing to cultivate wisdom and courage with opportunities to create, to develop skill, and to take risks.
“Children, in particular, are driven to create-if we just nudge them in that direction. They thrive in a world stocked with raw materials. But too often, and with the best of intentions, we fill their world with technology instead–devices that actually ask very little of them. A cheap electronic keyboard makes a few monotonous sounds, while an expensive one promises to make all kinds of sounds, from trumpets to marimbas to organs. But actually, neither the cheap keyboard nor the expensive one has anything like the depth and range of possibility of an acoustic piano or a trumpet or a marimba. A single pencil can produce more “colors” of gray and black than the most high-tech screen can reproduce. For a child’s creative development, the inexpensive, deep, organic thing is far better than the expensive, broad, electronic thing. And yet we are constantly tempted to give them toys that work on their own-that buzz and beep and light up without developing skill…But they quickly grow bored with devices that ask little of them and don’t reward creative engagement…Skip the plastic, skip the batteries, skip the things that work on their own. Or, if they find their way into your home anyway, put them at the edges. In the center, put the things that both adults and children will find endlessly engaging, demanding, and delightful.” (Tech Wise Family, p.80-81)
Don’t be afraid of a mess. Messes are part of the life that happens in the hearth. Remember, our homes are training grounds, not museums. The hearth (aka the living room) is meant for living together in one accord, face-to-face, and for giving your life away—my life for yours. Allow for messes together and expect and implement cleaning up together.
Our homes today desperately need a hearth. They need a center. Who will establish the hearth in your home? Who will start, or restart, and kindle, or rekindle, the fire in your home?
Start with a simple test: Are the most visible things more like a hearth or more like a furnace? Are the most visible things inviting you to create and produce, or are they inviting you to be passive and consume?
If you are single, you can do this too as you practice Biblical hospitality and enjoy Christian fellowship in your home.
Here are a few resources to help you establish and maintain your hearth.
“The Tech Wise Family” by Andy Crouch
“My Life for Yours” by Douglas Wilson
Tech Monsters In Our Kids’ Pockets…What Parents Can Do To Protect Kids
Wolves at the Gate: Entertainment Standards
If you are interested in further guidance and support, explore these homemaking resources and, or contact me.
Mama Lamb 