Habits Of The Household Quotes

Because young children don’t know how things are supposed to be done, they will come to imagine that the habits of their household are the habits of the world.

...I have this one nasty habit. Makes me hard to live with. I write... ...writing is antisocial. It's as solitary as masturbation. Disturb a writer when he is in the throes of creation and he is likely to turn and bite right to the bone... and not even know that he's doing it. As writers' wives and husbands often learn to their horror... ...there is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized. Or even cured. In a household with more than one person, of which one is a writer, the only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private, and where food can be poked in to him with a stick. Because, if you disturb the patient at such times, he may break into tears or become violent. Or he may not hear you at all... and, if you shake him at this stage, he bites...

Fire had come to know more about the insignificant habits and tastes of Lord Mydogg, Lord Gentian, Murgda, Gunner, all their households and all their guests than any person could care to know. She knew Gentian was ambitious but also slightly featherbrained at times and had a delicate stomach, ate no rich foods, and drank only water. She knew his son Gunner was cleverer than his father, a reputable soldier, a bit of an ascetic when it came to wine and women. Mydogg was the opposite, denied himself no pleasure, was lavish with his favorites and stingy with everyone else. Murgda was stingy with everyone including herself, and was said to be exceedingly fond of bread pudding.

We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like to be. There are households of the noblest intellects: choose the one into which you wish to be adopted, and you will inherit not only their name but their property too. Nor will this property need to be guarded meanly or grudgingly: the more it is shared out, the greater it will become.

You can’t think yourself out of a pattern you didn’t think yourself into. You practiced yourself into it, so you have to practice your way out.

It's terrible to allow conventional habits to gain a hold on a whole household; to eat, sleep and live by clock ticks.

At this point we can finally see what's really at stake in our peculiar habit of defining ourselves simultaneously as master and slave, reduplicating the most brutal aspects of the ancient household in our very concept of ourselves, as masters of our freedoms, or as owners of our very selves. It is the only way that we can imagine ourselves as completely isolated beings. There is a direct line from the new Roman conception of liberty – not as the ability to form mutual relationships with others, but as the kind of absolute power of "use and abuse" over the conquered chattel who make up the bulk of a wealthy Roman man's household – to the strange fantasies of liberal philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and Smith, about the origins of human society in some collection of thirty- or forty-year-old males who seem to have sprung from the earth fully formed, then have to decide whether to kill each other or begin to swap beaver pelts.

we become our habits, and our kids become us. Which means who our children are becoming is tightly connected to who we are becoming—personally and communally.

My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire, I longed to kindle one!

It was never reasonable or fair that women should shoulder the burden of household management, but it is possible that in an effort to move toward gender parity, some of the art and science of household management and gracious living have been lost.

If you don’t drink coffee, you should think about two to four cups a day. It can make you more alert, happier, and more productive. It might even make you live longer. Coffee can also make you more likely to exercise, and it contains beneficial antioxidants and other substances associated with decreased risk of stroke (especially in women), Parkinson’s disease, and dementia. Coffee is also associated with decreased risk of abnormal heart rhythms, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers.12, 13 Any one of those benefits of coffee would be persuasive, but cumulatively they’re a no-brainer. An hour ago I considered doing some writing for this book, but I didn’t have the necessary energy or focus to sit down and start working. I did, however, have enough energy to fix myself a cup of coffee. A few sips into it, I was happier to be working than I would have been doing whatever lazy thing was my alternative. Coffee literally makes me enjoy work. No willpower needed. Coffee also allows you to manage your energy levels so you have the most when you need it. My experience is that coffee drinkers have higher highs and lower lows, energywise, than non–coffee drinkers, but that trade-off works. I can guarantee that my best thinking goes into my job, while saving my dull-brain hours for household chores and other simple tasks. The biggest downside of coffee is that once you get addicted to caffeine, you can get a “coffee headache” if you go too long without a cup. Luckily, coffee is one of the most abundant beverages on earth, so you rarely have to worry about being without it. Coffee costs money, takes time, gives you coffee breath, and makes you pee too often. It can also make you jittery and nervous if you have too much. But if success is your dream and operating at peak mental performance is something you want, coffee is a good bet. I highly recommend it. In fact, I recommend it so strongly that I literally feel sorry for anyone who hasn’t developed the habit.

the greatest spiritual work happens in the normal moments of domestic life.

In other words: You can’t think yourself out of a pattern you didn’t think yourself into. You practiced yourself into it, so you have to practice your way out.

The most Christian way to think about our households is that they are little “schools of love,” places where we have one vocation, one calling: to form all who live here into lovers of God and neighbor.

when it comes to spiritual formation, our households are not simply products of what we teach and say. They are much more products of what we practice and do. And usually there is a significant gap between the two.

The impression given by Bill and May as a couple was of a marriage that was never seriously under strain but was based on habit as much as on affection, with each of them, increasingly, pursuing his or her own interests: Bill in his business, sport, walking, and playing cards; May in the running of the household, the welfare of her sons, Tullow Parish Church, local events such as dog shows, the garden, her dogs, and a donkey called Kish.67

By not choosing our habits carefully, we are falling back on rhythms that are forming us in all of the usual patterns of unceasing screentime, unending busyness, unrivaled consumerism, unrelenting loneliness, unmitigated addictions, and unparalleled distraction.

we parents who want to pattern our households in gospel formation should not just be looking for that one-off spiritual conversation that we hope our kids remember, we should be patterning our houses with the kinds of keystone family rhythms that turn kids into disciples of Jesus.

don't remember when Berkshire started growing to a point at which he was in a different league," said Emilie. "I think my parents were really private. They didn't want publicity. My dad was a creature of habit so everything was exactly the same. We never had a feeling we were growing up in some rich household.

She had studied the habits of the monied with diligence. She copied their modes of dress and speech, and cultivated an air of carelessness. But she was ill at ease around the household staff and the caterers, because she feared that if anyone from her home planet were to look at her too closely, they’d see through her disguise.

Our hearts need to be led to good places if we are going to lead the hearts of our children to good places. This is the kind of work that only prayer can do because words- especially the words of prayer and Scripture- lead the heart. So prayer and self-talk need to be habits that happen in that moment that we approach the situation.

What do you love doing? What’s hard about life right now? Who is your best friend? What do you think you’re good at? What do you want to get better at? When do you feel nervous? What’s your favorite book? What do you find yourself praying about often? What do you think about when you lie in bed? What do you wish you were allowed to do that you’re not?

We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like to be. There are households of the noblest intellects: choose the one into which you wish to be adopted, and you will inherit not only their name but their property too.

Eli did not manage his household according to God’s rules for family government. He followed his own judgment. The fond father overlooked the faults and sins of his sons in their childhood, flattering himself that after a time they would outgrow their evil tendencies. Many are now making a similar mistake. They think they know a better way of training their children than that which God has given in his word. They foster wrong tendencies in them, urging as an excuse, “They are too young to be punished. Wait till they become older, and can be reasoned with.” Thus wrong habits are left to strengthen until they become [579] second nature. The children grow up without restraint, with traits of character that are a lifelong curse to them and are liable to be reproduced in others.

Because young children don’t know how things are supposed to be done, they will come to imagine that the habits of their household are the habits of the world. If a child grows up in a family where angry words are exchanged over supper, he will assume that angry words are exchanged at every kitchen table; while if a child grows up in a family where no words are exchanged over supper at all, he will assume that all families eat in silence.

The other day I noticed that my Muse, who had long been ailing, silent and morose, was showing signs of actual illness. Now, though it is by no means one of my habits to coddle the dogs, cats and other familiars of my household, yet my Muse had so pitiful an appearance that I determined to send for the doctor, but not before I had seen her to bed with a hot bottle, a good supper, and such other comforts as the Muses are accustomed to value.

As Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford say in their book Right Here, Right Now: Sharing meals together on a regular basis is one of the most sacred practices we can engage in as believers. Missional hospitality is a tremendous opportunity to extend the kingdom of God. We can literally eat our way into the kingdom of God! If every Christian household regularly invited a stranger or a poor person into their home for a meal once a week, we would literally change the world by eating![13]

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain society—owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity—to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong, and certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of money. The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so very amusing in this world. And with all this, Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man by saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first founder of his family—the monkey. And so Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch's, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain. He read the leading article, in which it was maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all conservative elements, and that the government ought to take measures to crush the revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, "in our opinion the danger lies not in that fantastic revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of traditionalism clogging progress," etc., etc. He read another article, too, a financial one, which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped some innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his characteristic quickwittedness he caught the drift of each innuendo, divined whence it came, at whom and on what ground it was aimed, and that afforded him, as it always did, a certain satisfaction. But today that satisfaction was embittered by Matrona Philimonovna's advice and the unsatisfactory state of the household. He read, too, that Count Beist was rumored to have left for Wiesbaden, and that one need have no more gray hair, and of the sale of a light carriage, and of a young person seeking a situation; but these items of information did not give him, as usual, a quiet, ironical gratification. Having finished the paper, a second cup of coffee and a roll and butter, he got up, shaking the crumbs of the roll off his waistcoat; and, squaring his broad chest, he smiled joyously: not because there was anything particularly agreeable in his mind—the joyous smile was evoked by a good digestion.

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of careful training for Indian girls,” a U.S. government official had stated, adding, “Of what avail is it that the man be hard-working and industrious, providing by his labor food and clothing for his household, if the wife, unskilled in cookery, unused to the needle, with no habits of order or neatness, makes what might be a cheerful, happy home only a wretched abode of filth and squalor?…It is the women who cling most tenaciously to heathen rites and superstitions, and perpetuate them by their instructions to the children.

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of careful training for Indian girls," a U.S. government official had stated, adding, "Of what avail is it that the man be hard-working and industrious, providing by his labor food and clothing for his household, if the wife, unskilled in cookery, unused to the needle, with no habits of order or neatness, makes what might be a cheerful, happy home only a wretched abode of filth and squalor?...It is the women who cling most tenaciously to heathen rites and superstitions, and perpetuate them by their instructions to the children.

We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like to be. There are households of the noblest intellects: choose the one into which you wish to be adopted, and you will inherit not only their name but their property too. Nor will this property need to be guarded meanly or grudgingly: the more it is shared out, the greater it will become. These will offer you a path to immortality and raise you to a point from which no one is cast down. This is the only way to prolong mortality – even to convert it to immortality.

Thus for a long time the ancient Athenians enjoyed a country life in self-governing communities; and although they were now united in a single city, they and their descendants, down to the time of this war, from old habit generally resided with their households in the country where they had been born. For this reason, and also because they had recently restored their country-houses and estates after the Persian War, they had a disinclination to move. They were depressed at the thought of forsaking their homes and the temples which had come down to them from their fathers and were the abiding memorials of their early constitution. They were going to change their manner of life, and in leaving their villages were in fact each of them going into exile. (Book 2 Chapter 16)

To understand why a rhythm as simple as coming to the table could be so significant across so many areas, we have to understand the idea of a keystone habit. A keystone habit is one that supports a lot of other good habits. Exercise is a classic example. Studies consistently find that participants who were asked to exercise, even as little as once a week, without prompting started to eat better, sleep more, smoke less, and so on.7 Apparently, it is simply a human phenomenon that when we commit to certain smaller rhythms, a lot of other rhythms fall into place. This is fundamental wisdom for parents. It means that we parents who want to pattern our households in gospel formation should not just be looking for that one-off spiritual conversation that we hope our kids remember, we should be patterning our houses with the kinds of keystone family rhythms that turn kids into disciples of Jesus. Coming to the table to talk is one such keystone habit.

There are promises of protection in the Word of Wisdom. The Lord’s word of wisdom commanding abstinence from a worldly “king’s portion” of tobacco, tea and coffee, and alcoholic beverages that are habit-forming, and which counsels the simple diet of fruits, grains, and vegetables in season, with meats used sparingly, has been given you as a revelation of God’s great law of health. It stands today as a challenge to a world surfeited with things condemned as unclean and unfit for the human body. If you have faith as the youthful Daniel and his brethren and purpose in your hearts that you will not defile yourselves with “king’s meat and wine,” even though you may be two thousand miles east of the Suez Canal, your faith will have the reward of hidden treasures of knowledge, of strong bodies that can “run and not be weary and walk and not faint.” If by faith in this great law, you refrain from the use of food and drink harmful to your bodies, you will not become a ready prey to scourges that shall sweep the land, as in the days of the people of Moses in Egypt, bringing death to every household that has not heeded the commandments of God.

It is now long since the women of England arrogated, universally, a title which once belonged to nobility only, and, having once been in the habit of accepting the simple title of gentlewoman, as correspondent to that of gentleman, insisted on the privilege of assuming the title of "Lady,"6 which properly corresponds only to the title of "Lord." I do not blame them for this; but only for their narrow motive in this. I would have them desire and claim the title of Lady, provided they claim, not merely the title, but the office and duty signified by it. Lady means "bread-giver" or "loaf-giver," and Lord means "maintainer of laws," and both titles have reference, not to the law which is maintained in the house, nor to the bread which is given to the household, but to law maintained for the multitude, and to bread broken among the multitude. So that a Lord has legal claim only to his title in so far as he is the maintainer of the justice of the Lord of Lords; and a Lady has legal claim to her title only so far as she communicates that help to the poor representatives of her Master, which women once, ministering to Him of their substance, were permitted to extend to that Master Himself; and when she is known, as He Himself once was, in breaking of bread.

Creating a Chore List Chore lists might feel incredibly overrated, but they really do work.  By giving yourself a list of things to do on a daily basis around your home, you are spreading out your household chores, making them become spread out over the week.  Once you have your free time, you’re not going to have to worry about cleaning because you have already taken care of your cleaning throughout the week!  While the idea is overrated, the benefits are not!

The simple fact is that domestic dogs and wolves are different animals, adapted to different environments, and cannot live (well) in the other’s niche. Wolves are consummate predators, but it’s rare to find a dog that can hunt down and kill a moose for food. Dogs will track deer or chase wild hogs as they “hunt” with humans for sport, but it’s highly doubtful they could ever earn a living by hunting on their own. For their part, wolves rarely become tame enough to get by in the household dog’s world of human hearth and home. They may occasionally live on their own in or near human habitation, but they tend not to be able to eat in the presence of people. Whereas even free-living dogs that are raised in garbage dumps or just outside town are able to dine in the company of humans.

The number of shopping centers in the U.S. surpassed the number of high schools back in 1987.4 The average size of the American home has more than doubled over the past 50 years.5 One out of every 10 households in our country rents a storage unit to house their excess belongings.

Think about them as ways to align our heads and our hearts so we don’t just know the right thing to do, we also love doing the right thing.

These communities realized that if they didn’t shape their trellis of habit, the world would shape one for them.

Focus on overall activity. For faster health and weight-loss results, don’t only add the jogging routine to your life, but think about your existing habits. Jog, walk, or cycle instead of driving everywhere. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Remember that all your household tasks like cleaning or gardening add greatly to your total daily energy expenditure. Take a break at the office every hour or two to stand up from your desk and take a one-minute slow jog, two or three times a day if that is possible. Consider getting a stand-up desk.

Belinda and I heard Liz’s Earth Day sermon when I drove her to church today,” said Riley. “All about how we should compost and recycle—stuff that’s been drummed into me since I was born. I don’t go to church to improve my household habits.” Where could he go to improve his household habits?

vacation with young children is really just going somewhere scenic and working overtime shifts of parenting hours.

You can say what you want about housework--dusting, vacuuming, mopping, and so forth-- but besides having dinner together every night, there's nothing more valuable to a household than order. A tidy home provides structure for family life and an oasis from the chaos of daily living. And these sorts of household chores keep us in touch with our possessions, ideally in a constant state of measuring their value in our lives. Housekeeping chores are made for divvying up among family members-- cleaning gets done more quickly, everyone is invested in the care of the home, and good habits are established and shared all the way around.

Many other industries have their practice patterns measured. In 2009, the utility company Positive Energy (now Opower) was interested in reducing power use in neighborhoods. Their data showed that some households used far more electricity than their neighbors. After all, there are no standardized protocols on turning lights on or off when one vacates a room. Just ask anyone who’s argued with a spouse about this issue. The company decided to mail each household a regular feedback report that compared their electricity and natural gas usage to that of similarly sized households in their neighborhood. Playing on the benchmarking theme, the data feedback intervention resulted in an overall reduction in household energy use. When people saw they were outliers, they modified their habits so their usage fell more into line with that of their peers. In a year, this simple intervention reduced the total carbon emissions of the participating houses by the equivalent of 14.3 million gallons of gasoline, saving consumers more than $20 million.4 Lots of utility companies now take this approach—and it works.

At best, I am a tired, confused, impatient, guilt-ridden, and regret-prone father whose only hope is that Jesus actually did live, die, and rise again.

When the first thing I do in the morning is roll over, grab my phone, and begin scanning work emails, I wake to the monsters of performance. The story of reality is about what I can get accomplished today and whether I can justify my existence. When I begin the morning in social media, I wake to the monsters of comparison and envy. The story of reality is about the pictures of other people’s lives and whether I can measure up. When I begin the morning in the news headlines, the monsters of fear and anger nearly jump through the screen. The story of reality is about how the world is falling apart and how mad I should be at the others who just don’t get it. Or when I lie in bed recounting the day’s to-do list (or when I jump up and immediately start the rush to get everyone out the door on time), I wake to the monster of busyness. The story of reality is how there is always too much to do and never enough time to do it.

One of the best ways to do that is to cultivate the morning ritual of ignoring your phone until after you have found the gaze of God in Scripture. Going to Scripture before we go to our smartphones is another small way to pattern the morning in the reality of God’s love. But given the black-hole allure of the smartphone, it is probably one of the most radical habits of the household you can cling to. In turning our gaze to Scripture, we turn our gaze to the face of God, and find him looking back at us. In a house full of children, this will look as messy as everything else does. Ideally, the pattern of Scripture before smartphone means I’m up before them, having a few minutes to read and reflect before they wake. But of course that is not always the reality, and it is important to know that that is fine. Sometimes, that is even better, because one of the ways we teach the habits of the household is by letting children observe our habits and inviting them into them. Some mornings this looks like listening to a psalm while holding a kid who is holding a sippy cup of milk on my lap.8 He is invited into the routine. Occasionally it means reading a Bible story out loud to one of them. Many, many mornings it means they also get a book, or a coloring page, and we have some minutes of quiet before we start breakfast.

Systems are perfectly designed to get the results they are getting,” so say the business gurus.10

So it is that the small things are the big things, and the tiny routines run the deepest.

Each of us should assess the routines our household takes for granted, precisely because those are the routines we don’t usually think about—and hence, whose formative power we don’t recognize. We think of them as “things we do” and might not recognize that they’re doing something to us.

So if we need to be intentional about the liturgies of Christian worship in the congregation, we should be equally intentional about the liturgies of the household.5 More specifically, we should be attentive to the rhythms and rituals that constitute the background hum of our families and should consider the telos toward which these activities are oriented. The frenetic pace of our lives means we often end up falling into routines without much reflection. We do what we think “good parents” do. And we might think these are just “things that we do” without recognizing that they may also be doing something to us. This chapter is an invitation to take a kind of liturgical audit of our households, recognizing their power to calibrate our hearts and acknowledging that our domestic rituals might need to be recalibrated as a result of our auditing work.

But baptismal promises counter such a configuration: love and its obligations traverse the boundaries of “private residences” and “nuclear families” because they initiate us into a household that is bigger than that which is under the roof of our house. The promises in baptism indicate a very different theology of the family, which recognizes that “families work well when we do not expect them to give us all we need.” Instead, the social role of the family that is configured by baptism is to be a family “dependent upon a larger social body. . . . In theological terms, family is called to be part of the social adventure we call the church.”15

This is an important point: the formative rituals of the household are not just “private” exercises; they have a public impact precisely insofar as household formation, like communal formation and worship, ends in sending. We are not creating a “pure” household into which we withdraw and retreat in order to protect ourselves from the big, bad world. That would be to shirk our mission to “go.” Instead, we want to be intentional about the formative rhythms of the household so that it is another recalibrating space that forms us and prepares us to be launched into the world to carry out both the cultural mandate and the Great Commission, to bear God’s image to and for our neighbors.

we tend to treat our children as intellectual receptacles, veritable brains-on-a-stick, and we parent and protect them accordingly. We try to foster their faith by providing them with biblical knowledge, catechizing them to give us the right answers, and then gradually equipping them to also discern the false teachings the world will throw at them. If we humans are basically thinking things, then both our defenses and our instruction should be primarily didactic and theological. But what does it look like to parent lovers? What does it look like to curate a household as a formative space to direct our desires? How can a home be a place to (re)calibrate our hearts?

You could have Bible “inputs” every day and yet still have a household whose frantic rhythms are humming along with the consumerist myth of production and consumption. You might have Bible verses on the wall in every room of the house and yet the unspoken rituals reinforce self-centeredness rather than sacrifice.

7. The closer we are to Self-realization, or enlightenment, the more ordinary we become. Only seekers striving for liberation as if it were a trophy glamorize the yogic process and themselves. They want to be extraordinary, whereas liberated beings are perfectly ordinary. They are as happy washing dishes as they are sitting quietly in meditation or teaching their disciples. For this reason, Yoga has from the beginning celebrated not only the path of the world-renouncing ascetic (samnyāsin) but also that of the world-engaging householder (grihastha) who uses the opportunities of daily life to practice the virtues of a yogic lifestyle. 8. In all Yoga practice, there is an element of pleasant “surprise” or favorableness. In the theistic schools of Yoga, this is explained as the grace (prasāda) of the Divine Being; in nontheistic schools, such as Jaina Yoga or certain schools of Buddhist Yoga, help is said to flow from liberated beings (called arhats, buddhas, bodhisattvas, tīrthankaras, or mahā-siddhas). Also, gurus are channels of benevolent energies, or blessings, intended to ripen their disciples. The process by which a guru blesses a disciple is called “transmission” (samcāra). In some schools, it is known as shakti-pāta, meaning “descent of the power.” The power in question is the Energy of Consciousness itself. 9. All Yoga is initiatory. That is, initiation (dīkshā) by a qualified teacher (guru) is essential for ultimate success in Yoga. It is possible to benefit from a good many yogic practices even without initiation. Thus, most exercises of Hatha-Yoga—from postures to breath control to meditation—can be successfully practiced on one’s own, providing the correct format has been learned. But for the higher stages of Yoga, empowerment through initiation is definitely necessary. The habit patterns of the mind are too ingrained for us to make deep-level changes without the benign intervention of a Yoga master. All yogic practices can usefully be viewed as preparation for this moment. 10. Yoga is a gradual process of replacing our unconscious patterns of thought and behavior with new, more benign patterns that are expressive of the higher powers and virtues of enlightenment. It takes time to accomplish this far-reaching work of self-transformation, and therefore practitioners of Yoga must first and foremost practice patience. Enlightenment, or liberation, is not realized in a matter of days, weeks, or months. We must be willing to commit to an entire lifetime of yogic practice. There must be a basic impulse to grow, regardless of whether or not we will achieve liberation in this lifetime. It is one of Yoga’s fundamental tenets that no effort is ever wasted; even the slightest attempt at transforming ourselves makes a difference. It is our patient cumulative effort that flowers into enlightenment sooner or later.

But consider that perhaps what our kids need most is to see us fumble through something. What if the search for the perfect, well-behaved, and well-planned family devotions was undermining one of the key promotional aspects of your family? The space to share a mess and proclaim that God loves messy things like us. What if this core truth was the very thing that you are modeling for your children during family devotions?

Christian families cannot default to the American rule of life—we must fight for better habits. One of the places this is most urgent is helping our kids not engage in a life that is so busy that they don’t have space for imaginative reading, long conversations with friends, silent reflection, hobbies that are just for fun (not for getting into college), a walk in nature, a road trip with friends, a church retreat—the list goes on. We know that we were created by God to work, but there is so much more to life than work—there is play and rest too.

It is entirely possible to unconsciously indoctrinate our children into our broken view of the world, that life is fundamentally about what we can accomplish and there isn’t time for much else. This may be in the academics we push them to or in the sports schedules we try to keep. But if we find that life is too busy for them to have downtime to engage with the world, then something is wrong.

But consider that perhaps what our kids need most is to see us fumble through something. What if the search for the perfect, well-behaved, and well-planned family devotions was undermining one of the key formational aspects of your family? The space to share a mess and proclaim that God loves messy things like us. What if this core truth was the very thing that you are modeling for your children during family devotions?

The Bible is remarkably blunt about how broken we are. Most of the patriarchs of the Bible were pretty rotten fathers. Other than Jesus, all of the biblical characters we meet are generally like us: people who botch most everything. None of them are particularly good, and when we idolize them, we do a disservice to one of the great themes of the Bible—that we are all failed sinners in desperate need of grace.

But just like all these habits of the household, bedtime liturgies aren’t solutions to make bedtime easy or prevent us from being bad parents, they are rhythms that remind us we can rest in God’s goodness anyway. And we need those. Because otherwise we get stuck in our anger, our self-loathing, and our failures. That’s why I try to repeat this statement as often as possible: Our habits won’t change God’s love for us, but God’s love for us can and should change our habits.

A BEDTIME BLESSING OF GOSPEL LOVE Said perhaps with a hand on your child’s face or head. Parent: Do you see my eyes? Child: Yes. Parent: Can you see that I see your eyes? Child: Yes. Parent: Do you know that I love you? Child: Yes. Parent: Do you know that I love you no matter what bad things you do? Child: Yes. Parent: Do you know that I love you no matter what good things you do? Child: Yes. Parent: Who else loves you like that? Child: God does. Parent: Even more than me? Child: Yes. Parent: Rest in that love.

It's hard to move them close to God and others when you don't know who they really are. Our efforts to understand them through questions or conversation show that we are not just out to control their behavior but out to find them, just as our heavenly father came to find us.

This is the reality of discipline. It happens on the move, but it does not have to be off the cuff. Habits of pausing help with that... The point is often not so that they can calm down but so that I can. They are image-bearers of God and deserve a parent who is going to approach them in love, not the explosive anger and frustration that I am so naturally prone to.

In these moments, we are dealing not just with our kids' selfishness over not sharing a video game controller but with our selfishness over not wanting to be interrupted to deal with this for the third time in five minutes. And only I can do the work to realize that my anger in that moment is not a product of their misbehavior but my impatience.

Each morning we are born anew into the world, and each morning we wake up looking for someone who is looking for us. We are hungry for the gaze of someone who loves us.

Whether you are trying to get everyone to eat their veggies or buckle their seat belts, the most important habits will always be the source of questions and complaints—but parents persevere. Remember—that’s why we’re here.

If our hearts always followed our heads, we would not need to practice the things we learn. We'd just learn about it and the rest would follow. But that's not how humans work, which is why the biblical understanding of sanctification is not just about education and learning but about formation and practice as well.

Parenting, seen properly, is an unceasing spiritual battle. A battle that God is using to refine us, and a battle that God will win for us, but if it feels like a fight to you, that's because it is.

When you are at home with children, you are in a spiritual realm that would make even the most zealous monastics jealous. One of the most famous contemplative writers of the twentieth century, Carlo Carretto, spent years and years in the Sahara Desert, seeking God in a life of prayer and solitude. Later he admitted that he felt his mother, who spent thirty years raising children, was much more contemplative (and much less selfish!) than he was.

Like all kids in crisis, he must feel love before he can talk about it.

...the normal is what shapes us the most, though we notice it the least. It is precisely the unremarkable nature of the normal that gives it such remarkable power.

Authority intervenes with loving strength. It is the opposite of sitting on the sideline and making a request. We are not politely petitioning our children to consider our point of view, we are parenting them. This means we have a relational role to stand in, not just thoughts to offer. For their sake, we need to embrace the reality that that is exactly what they need.

We learned an awful lot about cats’ day-to-day behavior, habits and movements and, critically, the circumstances that led them to migrate or go missing. Some cats, we noted, reacted adversely to a change within the household—the arrival of a new baby, perhaps, or even a room being redecorated—and others were driven from their usual territory by an aggressive cat encroaching on their home or garden.

The most radical truths are really simple ones. God is real. He loves you. Good and evil exist. Good will win. You are made in the image of God. You are also fallen. Jesus died for you. He also rose for you. God’s world is beautiful. We are tasked with caring for it. Men and women exist. Families happen when they unite. Families are like building blocks of a healthy world; we should try to keep them together, and not topple them over. Prayer is real; it changes you as much as it changes the world. Life is hard, but God is with you. Suffering will happen, but it will sanctify you. Love is not a feeling, it is a sacrifice, usually in small things. God loves you, period. Your good deeds won’t change that; your bad deeds won’t change that. I will never leave you. Neither will Mom.

When I was a kid, I watched a lot of TV. And I played even more video games. So much so that around the time when I was ten years old, my dad told he would pay me $500 not to watch TV for a year…I remember the feeling while at our grandma’s house that I had to go play outside instead of watching Nickelodeon. I remember getting home from school and having to wrestle with boredom and sort it out in the woods instead of in front of the screen. I remember missing video games and being sad when a friend went inside to watch TV and I couldn’t come. But I also remember the space that opened up to fall in love with new things: the pleasures of whole afternoons outside with my brothers, extended baseball games in the yard, setting up complicated bike courses on a side street.

To steward the habits of your family is to steward the hearts of your family.

By not choosing our habits carefully, we are falling back on rhythms that are forming us in all of the usual patterns of unceasing screentime, unending busyness, unrivaled consumerism, unrelenting loneliness, unmitigated addictions, and unparalleled distraction. “Systems are perfectly designed

Use apps such as Healthy Living from the Environmental Working Group or Think Dirty to help you identify household and beauty products you should toss. Both apps rate products based on how many toxic ingredients they include (parabens, phthalates, lead, aluminum, PEGS). They also offer “approved” products to help you find suitable replacements.

Children raised in a household where one or both parents have a victim mentality will adopt the same behavior. Children are like sponges; everything they learn comes from their immediate environment—and if that’s the mentality they are exposed to from birth, there’s a high chance they will grow up believing it.

day of worship was shifted from Saturday to Sunday, to conform with the religious habits of the American majority. The use of Hebrew was virtually dropped from the order of service, in favor of English. Keeping kosher households was deemed both archaic and impractical—as well as un-American. (The great American leader of the Reform movement, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, had shocked the Jews of Cincinnati by putting on a banquet at which shrimp and crawfish were among the delicacies

The Sixteen Conclusions of Reverend Kirk In the last half of the seventeenth century, a Scottish scholar gathered all the accounts he could find about the Sleagh Maith and, in 1691, wrote an amazing manuscript entitled The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. It was the first systematic attempt to describe the methods and organization of the strange creatures that plagued the farmers of Scotland. The author, Reverend Kirk, of Aberfoyle, studied theology at St. Andrews and took his degree of professor at Edinburgh. Later he served as minister for the parishes of Balquedder and Aberfoyle and died in 1692. Kirk invented the name "the Secret Commonwealth" to describe the organization of the elves. It is impossible to quote the entire text of his treatise, but we can summarize his findings about elves and other aerial creatures in the following way: 1. They have a nature that is intermediate between man and the angels. 2. Physically, they have very light and fluid bodies, which are comparable to a condensed cloud. They are particularly visible at dusk. They can appear and vanish at will. 3. Intellectually, they are intelligent and curious. 4. They have the power to carry away anything they like. 5. They live inside the earth in caves, which they can reach through any crevice or opening where air passes. 6. When men did not inhabit most of the world, the creatures used to live there and had their own agriculture. Their civilization has left traces on the high mountains; it was flourishing at a time when the whole countryside was nothing but woods and forests. 7. At the beginning of each three-month period, they change quarters because they are unable to stay in one place. Besides, they like to travel. It is then that men have terrible encounters with them, even on the great highways. 8. Their chameleon-like bodies allow them to swim through the air with all their household. 9. They are divided into tribes. Like us, they have children, nurses, marriages, burials, etc., unless they just do this to mock our own customsor to predict terrestrial events. 10. Their houses are said to be wonderfully large and beautiful, but under most circumstances they are invisible to human eyes. Kirk compares them to enchanted islands. The houses are equipped with lamps that burn forever and fires that need no fuel. 11. They speak very little. When they do talk among themselves, their language is a kind of whistling sound. 12. Their habits and their language when they talk to humans are similar to those of local people. 13. Their philosophical system is based on the following ideas: nothing dies; all things evolve cyclically in such a way that at every cycle they are renewed and improved. Motion is the universal law. 14. They are said to have a hierarchy of leaders, but they have no visible devotion to God, no religion. 15. They have many pleasant and light books, but also serious and complex books dealing with abstract matters. 16. They can be made to appear at will before us through magic. The similarities between these observations and the story related by Facius Cardan, which antedates Kirk's manuscript by exactly two hundred years, are clear. Both Cardan and Paracelsus write, like Kirk, that a pact can be made with these creatures and that they can be made to appear and answer questions at will. Paracelsus did not care to reveal what that pact was "because of the ills that might befall those who would try it." Kirk is equally discreet on this point. And, of course, to go deeper into this matter would open the whole field of witchcraft and ceremonial magic, which is beyond my purpose in the present book.

One of the most significant things about any household is what is considered to be normal. Moments aggregate, and they become memories and tradition. Our routines become who we are, become the story and culture of our families.

By not choosing our habits carefully, we are falling back on rhythms that are forming us in all of the usual patterns of unceasing screentime, unending busyness, unrivaled consumerism, unrelenting loneliness, unmitigated addictions, and unparalleled distraction. “Systems

For previous generations, progress in life so far would have meant going through the motions prescribed by caste and class: together, the imperatives of education (inevitably vocational), marriage (nearly always arranged, with love regarded as a folly of callow youth), parenthood and professional career (with the government) imposed order, without too many troubling questions about their purpose and meaning. Regional and caste background dictated culinary and sartorial habits: kurta-pyjamas and saris or shalwar-kameezes at home, drab Western-style clothes outside; an unchanging menu of dal, vegetables, rotis and rice leavened in some households with non-alcoholic drinks (Aseem’s first publication in the IIT literary magazine was Neruda-style odes to Rooh Afza and Kissan’s orange squash, Complan, Ovaltine and Elaichi Horlicks). We belonged to a relatively daring generation whose members took on the responsibility of crafting their own lives: working in private jobs, marrying for love, eating pasta, pizza and chow mein as well as parathas, and drinking cola and beer, at home, taking beach vacations rather than going on pilgrimages, and wearing jeans and T-shirts rather than the safari suits that had come to denote style to the preceding generation of middle-class Indians. Our choices were expanded far beyond what my parents or Aseem’s could even imagine.

Add your monthly take-home pay to your partner’s monthly take-home pay. That is your total household income. Now divide your total monthly expenses by your take-home pay and from that you will derive a percentage. That percent is what each of you should contribute to your monthly joint expenses. Here’s an example. Let’s say your after-tax pay is $7,000 a month and your love brings home $3,000 a month. Your total household after-tax income is $10,000. Now add up all the expenses you have each month that keep the household running. Let’s say those expenses for utilities, rent, phone, and so on, come to $3,000 a month. Divide $3,000, your joint expenses, by $10,000, your joint take-home income, and that will give you 30 percent. That means that you each have to put up 30 percent of your take-home pay toward expenses, or $2,100 from you and $900 from your love—equal percentages, not equal amounts. Set up a joint checking account to pay for household bills. Yes, keep your own checking account, but set up one together. This is a great testing ground for your money habits. You know from the first month of The Save Yourself Plan that I want you to sit and pay the bills together. That means that one week before your appointed bill-paying, both of you are to have deposited your share of the monthly expenses into that account.

It’s important to be aware that many families are dysfunctional, but we can change the patterns. Even if a child grew up in an aggressive or addictive household, they can heal and move past that with immense emotional resilience, wisdom and gratitude. This is what recovery can offer anyone who, like you, is open-minded, willing and ready to explore self-awareness and take action.

Be kind to everyone at all times. Practice acts of kindness even if the situation does not necessarily call for it. Help an elderly cross the street, do the household chores for your mom, give offerings to the church, or buy food for the street children. Whatever the situation is, whenever and wherever you are, it is never wrong to be kind.The more you give the more you will receive back. You’ll just have to trust me on this one until you see for yourself.

Coffee If you don’t drink coffee, you should think about two to four cups a day. It can make you more alert, happier, and more productive. It might even make you live longer. Coffee can also make you more likely to exercise, and it contains beneficial antioxidants and other substances associated with decreased risk of stroke (especially in women), Parkinson’s disease, and dementia. Coffee is also associated with decreased risk of abnormal heart rhythms, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers.12, 13 Any one of those benefits of coffee would be persuasive, but cumulatively they’re a no-brainer. An hour ago I considered doing some writing for this book, but I didn’t have the necessary energy or focus to sit down and start working. I did, however, have enough energy to fix myself a cup of coffee. A few sips into it, I was happier to be working than I would have been doing whatever lazy thing was my alternative. Coffee literally makes me enjoy work. No willpower needed. Coffee also allows you to manage your energy levels so you have the most when you need it. My experience is that coffee drinkers have higher highs and lower lows, energywise, than non–coffee drinkers, but that trade-off works. I can guarantee that my best thinking goes into my job, while saving my dull-brain hours for household chores and other simple tasks. The biggest downside of coffee is that once you get addicted to caffeine, you can get a “coffee headache” if you go too long without a cup. Luckily, coffee is one of the most abundant beverages on earth, so you rarely have to worry about being without it. Coffee costs money, takes time, gives you coffee breath, and makes you pee too often. It can also make you jittery and nervous if you have too much. But if success is your dream and operating at peak mental performance is something you want, coffee is a good bet. I highly recommend it. In fact, I recommend it so strongly that I literally feel sorry for anyone who hasn’t developed the habit. Pleasure

Benjamin Hazlit was a fiend from hell. Maggie became convinced of this when after their third pot of tea—he preferred Darjeeling—he was still grilling her about her household, her habits, her schedule on the day her reticule had gone missing. And all the while—when she herself ought to have been focused on how to recover the dratted reticule—Maggie had been hard put not to watch his mouth as it formed question after question. His mouth was neither cold nor stern. It was warm and knowing and even tender… gentle, God help her. Gracious, gracious, gracious. His mouth was… it was a revelation, a window into a side of the man Maggie would never have guessed existed. With the spotty boys and aging knights, she’d endured some pawing and slobbering. She’d been kissed, groped, and otherwise introduced to the nonsense that went on between men and women. They’d given her a rare moment of sympathy for her own mother, those suitors who wanted Maggie’s settlement despite the fact that it came attached to her hand in marriage. Until she’d asked her brother Devlin why men felt compelled to behave in such a fashion, and Dev had gotten that tight, lethal look to him. He’d taught her a few moves then, creative uses of the knee, the fist, the fingers, and the suitors had become more respectful as a result. She wanted to plant her fist in Mr. Hazlit’s gut at that moment, though she suspected her fist would be the worse for it. How could a man kiss so sweetly, so ardently, and yet be so… fiendish? “Show

Opening the household table on a regular basis creates an undercurrent of the Christian life that mimics the adoption ethic.

Nurses must be ugly.” Dev closed his eyes. “Mistresses must be pretty. Housekeepers are not supposed to be pretty, but then we have your Mrs. Seaton.” “Hands off.” “My hands off?” Dev raised his head and eyed Westhaven. “My hands off your housekeeper?” “Yes, Dev. Hands off, and this is not a request.” “Getting into the ducal spirit, are you?” Dev closed his eyes again and folded his hands on his chest. “Well, no need to issue a decree. I’ll behave, as she is a female employed by a Windham household.” “Devlin St. Just.” Westhaven’s boots hit the floor with a thump. “Weren’t you swiving your housekeeper while she was engaged to some clueless simian in Windsor?” “Very likely.” Dev nodded peacefully, eyes closed. “And I put away that toy when honor required it.” “What sort of honor is this? I comprehend what is expected of a gentleman, generally, but must have missed the part about how we go on when swiving housekeepers.” “You were going on quite enthusiastically,” Dev said, opening one eye, “when I came down here last night to find a book.” “I see.” “On the sofa,” Dev added, “if that pinpoints my interruption of your orgy.” “It wasn’t an orgy.” “You were what?” Dev frowned. “Trying to keep her warm? Counting her teeth with your tongue? Teaching her how to sit the trot riding astride? Looked to me for all the world like you were rogering the daylights out of dear Mrs. Seaton.” “I wasn’t,” Westhaven spat, getting up and pacing to the hearth. “The next thing to it, but not quite the act itself.” “I believe you,” Dev said, “and that makes it all better. Even though it looked like rogering and sounded like rogering and probably tasted like it, too.” “Dev…” “Gayle…” Dev got up and put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I am the last person to begrudge you your pleasures, but if I can walk in on you, and I’ve only been underfoot a day, then anybody else can, too.” Westhaven nodded, conceding the point. “I don’t care that you and Mrs. Seaton are providing each other some slap-and-tickle, but if you’re so far gone you forget to lock the door, then I am concerned.” “I didn’t…” Westhaven scrubbed a hand over his face. “I did forget to lock the door, and we haven’t made a habit out of what you saw. I don’t intend to make a habit of it, but if I do, I will lock the door.” “Good plan.” Dev nodded, grinning. “I have to approve of the woman on general principles, you know, if she has you spouting such inanities and dropping your pants for all the world to see.” “I thought in my own library at nigh midnight I could have privacy,” Westhaven groused. Dev’s expression became serious. “You cannot assume you have privacy anywhere. The duke owns half your staff and can buy the other half, for one thing. For another, you are considered a most eligible bachelor. If I were you, I would assume I had no privacy whatsoever, not even in your own home.” “You’re right.” Westhaven blew out a breath. “I know you’re right, but I don’t like it. We will be careful.

there now sat a square package perhaps a cubit on a side, done up in a golden wrapping all spattered with ornamental sparks of brighter and darker gold. She went over to it, picked it up to test the weight: somewhat heavy. Arrhae shook the box, then smiled at herself. Nothing rattled. She wandered back into her chamber with it, pushed her clothes aside, and sat down on the couch. Carefully Arrhae unwrapped the paper without tearing it—the old habit of a household manager, not to waste anything that might be useful later—and set it aside, revealing a plain golden paperboard box inside. A seal held the closing-flap down. She slit the seal with one thumbnail, opened the box, and found inside it some white tissue spangled with more golden spots, all wrapped around something roughly spherical. Arrhae pushed the padding-tissue aside to reveal a smooth clear substance, a glassy dome. Reaching into the box, she brought out what revealed itself as a dish garden of clear glass: the bottom of it full of stripes of colored sand, and rooted in the sand, various small dry-climate plants, spiny or thick-leaved, one or two of them producing tiny, delicate, golden flowers. Attached to the upper dome, instead of a chip or tag, was a small, white, gold-edged printed card that said, FROM AN ADMIRER—WELCOME HOME. Arrhae

Neither do I like to see what I call "a young people's corner" in a church. They often catch habits of inattention and irreverence there, which it takes years to unlearn, if ever they are unlearned at all. What I like to see is a whole family sitting together, old and young, side by side, men, women, and children, serving God according to their households.

look in the kitchen cupboards of most American households and you are likely to find odd combinations of ingredients or bulk snack-food stashes that have little to do with nutrition and everything to do with childhood, memory, habit.

Personal residences and privately held businesses constitute important nonfinancial assets on many personal balance sheets. Homeownership insulates individuals from changes in the cost of renting a place to live. Since inflation-sensitive habitation costs constitute a significant portion of most household budgets, homeownership reduces the need for inflation-hedging assets in investor portfolios.

Thus each household and family does well to take an audit of its daily routines, looking at them through a liturgical lens. What Story is carried in those rhythms? What vision of the good life is carried in those practices? What sorts of people are made by immersion in these cultural liturgies?

The day my father left was a sweltering morning in late August. You wouldn't have known it by the way he was dressed, wearing khakis and a pullover sweatshirt. He had a winter coat draped over his left arm while he attempted to silently roll the ugly olive green Samsonite luggage he and Mom had purchased on their honeymoon out the door without disturbing anyone in the household. He did a lousy job because I could hear the straining of the front door on its hinges from my spot on the couch. “‘Daddy?’ I rubbed my groggy eyes and squinted to see him in the early morning light. It couldn't have been any later than 5:30 or 6:00 as the morning sky only showed hints of pink and brightness on the horizon. “He placed his finger to his lips and replied with a quiet ‘Shhh, Kathryn.’ “Sitting up on the couch where I had slept the night before, because I had a habit of sleep walking, I asked, ‘Where are you going, Daddy?’ “He glanced around and in the faint light I could see him lick his lips, a nervous habit of his. He did it when my mother would grill him about where he had been that afternoon after the store had closed. He also did it when my mother asked if he paid the gas bill or the electric bill as the lights were flickering. He did it when we kids would ask him a school question that he didn't know the answer to.