My family’s flock of fowl came up in a different piece recently, and here I am at it again this week. It must be my not so latent aspirations for land and livestock. In any case.
We’ve noticed that our chickens are quieter than some. Whenever my parents, who also keep chickens, visit, they remark on the peacefulness of ours, so now we notice. When we let our birds out of their coop, they scour the yard, slowly and soundlessly, looking close at the ground for bugs and grains of grass. They squawk rarely and usually only to announce with pride their laying of eggs. Otherwise, they are noiseless creatures, apparently absorbed in the simple but important work they have to do.
My husband and I wonder—naively, maybe—if it’s something about our yard that encourages their quiet. The lawn borders several acres of young woods (not ours), thick with weeds in the summer, and similar trees and underbrush line the fence between ours and our neighbors’ yards. It is a hidden place, tucked within and under green. Besides the occasional grind of a too-loud truck, at this time of year our property is filled mostly with birdsong, insect hum, and the whisper of leaves.
What a joy it is to make a home for these creatures, I often think. And it is a particular kind of joy—the satisfaction of being a home to some living thing and being apparently not too bad of one. Our chickens might have lived somewhere else with other people, but we bought them, so they live in our coop and in our backyard. It is their place, the world they know (in however limited a way, but I’ve heard that birds are smarter than we think).
We, but creatures ourselves, have the privilege of crafting that world—using the natural environment we’re given but still cultivating it into something beautiful and nourishing: the green, the quiet, the attention. Still more, although we may be projecting our own contentment, the birds seem to enjoy this place too.
One afternoon, though, as I leaned over the railing of our deck, having these cheery thoughts of bird flourishing, a thought startled me: However much I care for them, however much they give, our chickens are among the least important creatures I make a home for.
I make a home for my family, an infinitely more meaningful work. I realized that all of what was true about my chickens was deeply true about my humans and with greater consequences. Our home is the little world in which most of life is felt and struggled with and either loved or hated.
In other words, the people we live with are the ones we have the responsibility of being home to—whether a spouse and children or housemates or even ourselves. In households with several adult members, everyone contributes, whereas parents of younger children face more responsibility, but still each individual ultimately chooses whether home is a beautiful place—honest, peaceful, chaotic, exciting, joyful, quiet—and in that choice is a hidden but understood word about whether we and those who live with us are worth the intentionality or not.
There seems a possibility of repeating the kind of homes we experienced as children or always delaying the investment—whether it is one of organization and planning or design and money—or of never acknowledging the opportunity. I don’t mean to say that anyone’s childhood home was dysfunctional but that we can find freedom in considering the kind of world we want to live in regardless of our upbringings and making that. Delaying the investment may be out of real necessity and prudence, but it might also be an excuse. For those with young children, we might miss the opportunity for so many lessons in beauty. For those of us who haven’t considered this before, take my chickens as your sign.
We may forget the weight and transcendence of home making precisely because of how much we talk about it, how much it seems exclusively associated with color palettes and expensive furnishings or whatever projects Instagram says you should be doing. It is not always easy to confront the real responsibility, which extends far beyond aesthetic beauty and into the realm of human flourishing.
We are not only answerable for the physical space we form around ourselves and whether it inspires others but also what it communicates about the time we inhabit and what it means to be human. We can give those we love a place to rest.
I hope it is not too bold to wonder if, in crafting a home for others and ourselves, using the materials available to us, doing it with love and intention, we experience some snippet of God’s pleasure at creation, at having made a beautiful world and watching his creatures live in it.
Wonderful article.
Beautiful reflection!