The Internet is a wild and untamed jungle, but it contains small gardens of peace and sanity, of order and delight. There are many homemaking blogs, but none excels that of Lydia Sherman, a woman who was raised in the Alaska outback and later became an American housewife. Don’t be deceived by the homey crafts and Victorian posters displayed on Lydia’s site. Here is a woman of universal wisdom and insight. She is typical of the seasoned woman of yesteryear who had already raised her children and whose sole purpose in life was to convey the essential truths to the young. These women served as ballast, keeping an entire culture from sinking. Tomorrow belongs to the Lydia Shermans. We will recapture the truths that never die.

A group of executives gathered for a meeting in the offices of a West Coast software company. The participants included one female vice president for marketing, beautifully coiffed and dressed in a silk suit. As soon as the meeting began, she took out her note pad and began writing. She appeared thoroughly engaged.

From over her shoulder, another participant glimpsed at the words on her page. They did not appear relevant:
 
       Pick up Elsie’s invitations
       Dry cleaners
       Party favors
       Chicken cutlets
       Dentist, 4 p.m.
    
The vice president was writing a mother’s shopping and errand list. According to a friend who related this incident, this woman was present in body, not in spirit. She was similar in function to those buxom carved figureheads on the prow of sailing vessels, leading the way through turbulent seas with beauty and an unvarying smile.

Dear Reader,

Thank you for visiting, and welcome to this website.

Domesticity is an ongoing state of war. I know it doesn’t sound dangerous, but it is. Home is a jungle. It’s a hurricane at sea. It’s a beast in chains.

Think of the dust that blows in from distant deserts and galaxies, settling on tables, floors, walls and papers. There’s something reminiscent about each particle. Think of the broken pipes and the leaking roof. They crack their whips. Think of the wolf at the door. He huffs and he puffs. Think of the ambulance at the curb and the sympathy card in the mailbox. Home is the best place to die.

Think of future generations. They sing their favorite tunes even now. Think of the minds of children. They’ll discover new continents within four walls. “History has tongues,” said Stephen Spender. The same might be said of the smallest child, in communion with past and future even when incapable of speech.

Cleaning and cooking, dusting and weeding – this may seem very ordinary and un-dangerous. To me, it’s filled with philosophical depths. The kitchen broom and the garden hoe are ancient tools of enlightenment. The scientist in his lab may have the illusion of progress. The sweeper knows this: Nature only changes so much.  Out of the very ephemera of home, the idea of eternity arises.

The universe doesn’t knock at the front door; it enters the very cracks in the walls. We are hungry and there is a world of food. We think and there is a world of ideas. Dust is metaphysical. Truth is everywhere.

It’s true that thoughts themselves sometimes destroy thinking. The best cure is more thoughts, only the right kind.

Mike Berman, one of the perceptive commenters from Lawrence Auster’s View From the Right, writes about The Finest Occupations :

You bring up a subject here which has consumed me since I can remember. Coming from a poor family, one of my early memories was the marshals coming to our door to put us on the street and my promise to myself that I would never let this humiliation happen to me.

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Is there an inherent good in all work. What is it?

Think of all human occupations through the ages – the farmers, the soldiers, the sailors, the welders, the chefs, the priests, the lawyers, the bankers, the bank robbers, the insurance agents, the politicians, the mechanics, the journalists, the professors, the teachers, the police, the computer programmers, the actors, the doctors, the nurses, and so on.

Imagine being something else in one’s own time or in another place and another time.

How about a shepherd? That would be the one. To be a shepherd in fifth century B.C. or a shepherd in the hills of Britain many centuries ago – that would be the career.

A shepherd’s life is elemental. There is plenty of time to walk and think. The sky is overhead and open land stretches before him. He probably doesn’t own any of this land and he is poor, but his constant companions are submissive creatures, some of the most gentle in the animal kingdom. They recognize his voice in the dark. His dog is trustworthy and reads his thoughts.

His existence is simple, but full of occupational hazards. There must be moments when he lays his head on his stone pillow at night and, surveying the stars overhead, feels not wonder, but worry.

Our shepherd is a human being.

Perhaps, in looking at his days, we can find some guiding principle for all human occupations. There must be something that links them all together, some ideal they hold in common.

People say the highest purpose of work is to express our individual talents.

But if self-fulfillment is the highest purpose, many people –maybe most – are left in the cold. Has our shepherd ever had the option to find his born career? Did our shepherd ever stop and think what he would most like to be? His work was likely given to him and he never had the luxury of looking.

What truth and meaning does he find in it? He must find this: he is master and slave. He is ruler and ruled. He is no different from all of us. At the very minimum, he governs himself.

There is an unseen hierarchy and we must find our rightful place in it, a place with something below and something above.

The human body appears to liquefy with age. It actually grows more arid, but it seems to slowly melt into the earth. This metamorphosis, which seems to slowly drag every cell with it, is visually compelling.  Its physical effects are so unlike the beauty of youth that they are often mistaken for its opposite.

If one takes the separate features of the old – the skin, the hair, the eyes, the posture – one finds almost no support for the argument that age possesses its own beauty.  But, the whole often conveys something the parts do not.

What is this something?                                                   

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