The Home as Public Space

A Public Space

Friends will be happy to know* that as of this Saturday, the eldest Darwin is now a full-fledged college graduate. Her sister, at the same time, has finished up her 12th-grade classes at the local community college, and is now a high school graduate, making us 3/7 in the post-grade-school department. We plan to hold a party of Hobbit proportions for them both some time in the summer (all the more necessary since the college grad finished high school in 2020 and so had no celebration at the time). You're all invited, of course. I do sometimes wonder (in my tired moments) why we should bother throwing a specific shindig, since it seems like we have so many people passing through this house on a daily and weekly basis that every day might as well be a grad party. The House As Public Space has been my frequent topic of meditation of late.

As anyone who talks to me for two seconds knows, we are in the throes of rehearsals for The Music Man. Most of our rehearsals are held in the basement of a local church, pastored by a dear friend (and cast member). Hospitality is a great charism of this congregation, and the basement, with its kitchen, is used by many different groups. There are tables, chairs, a nursery, and any kitchen utensil your heart could desire (in triplicate). Each group who uses the area has the honor and responsibility of resetting the space in readiness for the next comers, who will in turn refresh it for the group that follows. Many of the organizations that use the basement, like our community theater company, are not specifically affiliated with the congregation, but simply need a Public Space in which to meet.

Our house, to a lesser degree, is a Public Space. The dining room is not merely a place where our family congregates to dine a few times a day. It is a Schoolroom, an Office, a Meeting Place, an Acting Studio, a Game Room, and a Sitting Room. The population of the house, both residents and guests, varies from day to day. I am not always entirely sure how many people will be sitting down to dinner, or how many of them will be actual denizens of this household. 

Given this public use of space, I've been trying to be deliberate in resetting the room for the next use. Have we cleared the table after dinner? Have we removed the serving dishes from sideboard, and put away the leftovers? Are the schoolbooks, if not put away, pushed to the end of the table or moved to the shelf under the windows? Do the vases of flowers that appear at intervals need fresh water? Are the extra chairs put away? Is the floor vacuumed? Is the table vacuumed? (Yes, I've cut the Gordian knot of housework, and use the vacuum for every even remotely applicable purpose.)

This is not to say that the room is immaculate. There are game boxes on the window sills, buckets and jackets and someone's set design project on the chairs that line the wall, decks of cards tucked on the display shelves of the china cabinets, and hay under the guinea pig's cage in the corner. But if the main body of the space can be usable on short notice for some other purpose, we have done our job. 

Family life ought to be a training in resetting for the next users, though often we get too comfortable to bother. How many times have I walked in the kitchen to get ready for dinner and found that someone made cookies and left everything sitting out? How many times have I walked in the dining room in the morning and found that nobody put away last night's dinner? How many times have I come into the living room after the teens had a movie night to find popcorn bowls and seeds all over the rug, and forks and mugs shoved behind the curtains? There's an ease that makes family life pleasant and informal, but sometimes that immediate ease hinders a future chance to make someone else at home in your house. I often find myself resetting in the morning, and that's okay, but wouldn't it be nice if after each use, the rooms were reset so that they were pleasant to walk into, and presentable when the next person suddenly drops by? 

This is a family house, well-lived-in, and we like to live comfortably with each other. At the same time, everything we have is given us in trust, for others. Our house doesn't just belong to us, but is held and administered so that we can share what we've received. And we have received much -- how much, I realize more and more as the years go by. Any family blessed with happiness, stability, and mutual love has an obligation to open themselves, within prudence, to others who yearn for these things themselves. I do say "prudence", because each family has their own gifts and strengths, and their own boundaries which must be maintained for the flourishing of its members, especially the children. 

And speaking of the children: a bonus shot of Mrs. and Miss Darwin, commencing the commencement.

*This statement, now a family catchphrase, often headlined the society announcements in the newspaper of the small Mississippi town where my grandparents lived.

Shields Up

Several times lately I've had cause to be reminded of my deep seated tendency not to talk in person about what I really believe on various topics: faith, politics, etc.  (If this seems odd from someone who has written a blog on precisely these kind of topics for nearly 20 years: congratulations, you are reading my long term pressure release valve.)

Thinking of Rome many times a day -- and also Facebook's weird tendency to show a blogger link as censored if I don't include an image.

There is, of course, the conventional wisdom about topics not suited to dinner conversation, with religion and politics topping the list. No one wants to be at the dinner table where someone throws out a conversational gambit like, "So, what do you think, should Israel just ethnically cleanse Gaza?"

Certain topics are recognized as being contentious and so we tend not to bring them up in situations where we don't want to have contentious conversation.

But I think there's a deeper sense in which society is pretty good at teaching us that if we're far enough off the beaten cultural path, people will not like you if they know what you believe. And having internalized this pretty thoroughly, even when I'm talking with people who are also interested in topics like religion, it takes a sort of effort to say something like, "The Catholic Church teaches that using artificial birth control is wrong, and that's in some ways hard and frustrating to live by at times, but I also thing it's true and important, and so we do that and would not want it any other way."

There's a feeling of incredible relief when you meet another person under circumstances that make it clear you actually agree on such topics and can discuss Church teaching openly on any topic without feeling like you're suddenly going to be attacked and have to defend yourself.  It's not that I'm averse to arguing (again, look at my online activities, though I don't have the energy I once did) but the sense that "other people don't like people like us" is so strong that one doesn't necessarily want to spoil an otherwise congenial social relationship.

Additionally tricky is that for most of my life, just because someone goes to the same Catholic parish and is active in the parish doesn't mean that they actually agree with the Church on any number of topics, or indeed that they don't hold Church teaching in contempt.

Indeed, growing up in '80s parishes in California, it was pretty much the assumption that everyone from the catechists on down thought Church teaching was misguided at best and evil at worst.

In the intervening 40 years, a lot of those people have physically left the Church, as they had intellectually long before.

But even so, one often feels one needs to look for clues before one knows whether one is talking with someone who thinks cohabitation, sterilization, abortion, and euthanasia are normal and reasonable things or moral evils.

The result is both that I usually find myself living behind a shield, and feeling especially close and grateful to any group which makes it clear to me its possible to let the shields down without fear of being suddenly labeled as some kind of a moral freak.