The Distributist ideal is that the home is the most important place in the world. Every man should have his own piece of property, a place to build his own home, to raise his family, to all the important things from birth to death: eating, singing, celebrating, reading , writing, arguing, story-telling, laughing, crying, praying. The home is above all a sanctuary of creativity. Creativity is our most Godlike quality. We not only make things, we make things in our own image. the family is one of those things. But so is the picture on the wall and the rug on the floor. The home is the place of complete freedom ... (Dale Ahlquist in Beyond Capitalism & Socialism-A New Statement of an Old Ideal)
That's my vision...I was talking to a friend the other night; we were discussing the differences between freedom and (financial) security. We have both gone through some difficult financial times in our businesses. Both of us would take (if we have the choice) the freedom we have now over the security we both could have working outside the home in corporate America. In our culture and economy, freedom and security are almost mutually exclusive (with the exception of a few).
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Several years ago Mrs. Curley began the practice of having the kids pair up randomly every day with one of their siblings to be their "prayer partner" for the day. The prayer partners would meet a couple times during the day for just a few minutes and pray together. Along with many other good practices-they slowly die out unless you are vigilant.
We decided to reinstate this practice this week. However, Mrs. Curley and I will now also participate (before I worked outside the home and couldn't participate). Additionally, when the prayer partners meet, they will not just rattle off a Hail Mary and go on with their day. They will decide together who (another family member) they will pray for that day. Let's pray it works (and sticks) this time.
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It looks like we will be proud owners of a couple goats come this weekend. We really want a family cow-but we haven't found it yet. In the meantime our old goat pen is overgrown and has an empty goat house. After talking to Mr. Culbreath the other night about how many goat owners want to get rid of their kids cheaply (they want the goat's milk and don't want to feed the kids), we kept on the lookout. We wanted a couple really young goats to clear the pen and then to raise for meat. They eat off the land most of the summer and hit the freezer in the fall. So we wanted to young billies (young enough to wether if they haven't already been).
On the way home from Mass on Sunday we saw a "Goats for Sale" sign. It was still there last night when we drove to CCD. So we stopped in a picked out a couple of 6 week-olds: one nannie and one billy. Billy is intact-but I can take care of that. I pick them up this weekend.
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Yesterday, Stephen Hand posts about a new book about Dorothy Day and links to this old post about Peter Maurin at The ChesterBelloc Mandate. Here's a piece to think about:
There is a photo of Peter Maurin from the 1920’s, and he’s quite dapper, very well dressed. It is probably from the years that he lived in Chicago. However, by the late twenties he began looking more like a bum. He had thought to himself, “How many jackets do I really need?” and “How many trousers do I need? I can only really wear one.” More fully he embraced poverty, a profound and a radical poverty in order to answer the materialism and the selfishness of the modern world. He never said that everyone should do this, but for him it was an answer to the modern world. When an encyclical was produced on St. Francis of Assisi, which most of us have probably never read, he was thrilled.
Oremus pro invicem!
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