It is a space for real leisure-in the sense of meaningful, rich, shareable actions. It is a space for good work-the kind of work that can be done together, or at least in the presence of others, especially by hand. Such a space can have varied forms, but it must have certain characteristics. I mean a space of human proportion-fitted to the number of people that live in our home and those ‘guests’ that are nearly-household-members a space that by its physical constitution fosters something we so crave and need: sustained shared life and real presence. And so, we have no place that daily draws us together, whether by necessity or by choice, where we live in mutual presence where we can be together as only human persons can, in body and soul, in mundane but natural activities. Or perhaps I should say of individual proportions: i.e., the individual persons we care about most. Though less obvious since we have become used to it, this is a crisis of civilizational proportions. I will focus on one that is squarely, indeed physically, within the four walls of home-yours and mine. Their effects more proximate, they call with urgency for special attention. I am not sure what to do, for instance, about the things stuck in the ports of our nation.Ĭrises closer to home are different. Some crises are more remote in their causes and thus more difficult for the common man to address. This is a time of crisis in multiple aspects of human life. The term ‘crisis’ is bandied quite a bit-undoubtedly, often with good reason today. With persistent centrifugal factors eviscerating our home life, we feel discouraged, even overwhelmed. “The hearth, the place where food was made and eaten, was the heart of family life.”Ī Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander, et alia “No social group…can survive without constant informal contact among its members.”
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