Radical Homemaking: A revolution in progress?

Forty-five minutes from now my cultured milk will be ready for the next stage in the cheddaring process. It’s time to write, for I’ve been stirring thoughts while stirring this foamy white elixir that my son and daughter pulled a couple of hours ago from the teats of our three cows.

I am thinking about an excellent book I just read by Shannon Hayes called Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture. At the heart of the book are a set of home visits Hayes made to twenty families and individuals whom she describes as radical homemakers. These are people who are—how can I say it—like us. It has been five years since Geoff and I packed our belongings, sold our house, and left work, friends, and family to make art on a deserted farm in upstate New York.

Indeed, Hayes’ critique of contemporary culture lands close to home. In pursuit of affluence, she writes, we Americans of the western world have created an economic system that is ravaging the health of our selves, our communities, and the planet. In this “extractive economy,” women and men leave home to work for wages they spend to fill their emptied homes with food and domestic goods they no longer know how to make. These goods are generally produced in bulk, far away, by strangers working under exploitative conditions, as part of a production and distribution process that extracts resources from the earth, and leaves polluted air, soil, and water in its wake.

Page after page Hayes shells out the statistics: despite our relative affluence, we are not happier, healthier, or richer. We are depressed, stressed, and restless. Our local communities are weak; our planet is dying. Many of the jobs available to us are not what we consider meaningful work, and yet, because of those jobs, we don’t have time in our lives to do what matters most to us. “The extractive economy,” she insists, “is terminal” (58).

There must be a better way—or many better ways—and Hayes sets out to document what some intrepid explorers are discovering. These radical homemakers, as she describes, are transforming home from a place of consumption to a place where women, men, and children work together to grow, make, and create what is vital to their living.

I get up from my computer and check on my cheese, where it waits on the stove. The milk is still warm, a balmy 90 degrees. I add a half-teaspoon of rennet and stir for a minute, slowly, as not to slosh. I set the timer again. Another forty-five minutes and I should have a nice firm curd.

None of the radical homemakers Hayes describes milk a cow, but in the end, Hayes’s concern is not with the practical activities of homemaking themselves. She maps the phenomenon in general terms, describing three overlapping, cyclical phases: radical homemakers redefine wealth in terms of family, community, good food, pleasure, and health. They reclaim skills lost in the increasing dependence on corporations for our livelihood, including nurturing relationships, setting realistic goals, redefining pleasure, and cultivating courage. They work to rebuild society, engaging in civic, artistic, and entrepreneurial activities often in their communities. In these ways, Hayes insists, radical homemakers are building a bridge from an extractive economy to one that is “life-serving,” where the goal (she cites David Korten) is “to generate a living for all, rather than a killing for a few” (13).

As I reflect on this book, I am struck by how dangerous it is. Isn’t Hayes promoting a nostalgic escape to a romanticized home life that never existed? Isn’t she advocating poverty and deprivation for all? Doesn’t she risk perpetuating gender stereotypes that have trapped women in domestic drudgery, denying them the opportunity to share their talents with a larger public?

I chew on the thought as check on my cheese. The curd should be forming now, firm to the touch, floating in a halo of whey. I am making this recipe with three gallons of milk—a bit more than half of this morning’s catch. The rest we will skim and drink, churning its cream into butter and ice cream, making cottage cheese, yogurt, and mozzarella too. Later.

I turn back to Hayes, a radical homemaker herself. She is well aware of the dangers. A Ph.D. from Cornell who graduated with fistfuls of ambition, she is wrestling with these issues herself. It is why she is writing the book. It is why she lays out the historic, economic, and cultural contexts that enable her readers to appreciate how radical the work of homemakers is. As she explains, the history of the United States is a history of a shifting balance of power from homes to corporate institutions, spurred by industrialization, the rise of advertising, and the shift to a consumer culture. By embracing home as central to their living, then, radical homemakers are saying no to corporate dominance, and yes to good old American values of democracy, self-reliance, family, local community, and quality of life. Ambitious indeed.

Nevertheless, the question lingers: is it enough for homemakers to know that what they are doing is radical in these ways? Hayes admits, the radical homemakers who are “truly fulfilled” expand their “creative energies outward,” beyond their homes, in that third phase of rebuilding society. Home becomes the philosophical and practical base for “deeper social accomplishments”; “the fertile ground” that feeds a “deeper fulfillment” (250). As important as this rebuilding phase of homemaking is to her thesis, Hayes spends five pages on it, versus sixty plus pages on the phases of redefining wealth and reclaiming skills.

What is it, then, about radical homemaking that allows us to feel this “deeper fulfillment” more than we would in any other way of living? Is it really about working in the home—or about moving beyond it?

The timer goes off. I stroll to the stove. The curd is done. I smile as it pushes back against my finger. I take out a long knife and cut the curd, back and forth. The knife clicks on the edge of the pan, tapping out a rhythm I consciously repeat. I finish the checkerboard, make some diagonal moves, turn the stove to low, give a good firm stir to the mass, and go back to my desk. It’s coming. So is my blog.

I think about my latest book, What A Body Knows: Finding Wisdom in Desire. In it I talk about the cultural epidemic of depression (that Hayes also describes) as evidence of a dissatisfied desire for spirit. Humans, I argue, have a need for a sense of vitality, direction, and belonging that allows us to affirm that our lives are worth living. In the west we undergo a mind over body sensory education that leads us to believe that we will secure the affirmation we seek when we find the right belief, the right practice, or the right community—the right something outside of ourselves to fill our inner lack. We aren’t finding it.

What we need instead, I counter, it to cultivate a sensory awareness of the movements that are making us. When we do, we learn to participate consciously in the process of naming and bringing into being a world we love that loves us. It is this participation, I argue, in our own bodily becoming, that will yield the sense of affirmation we seek.

I trot back to the stove and give the cut curd another stir. So, then, is it helpful to think about radical homemaking as a way to express a desire for spirit? How are the movements of radical homemaking making the people who make them?

From the stories Hayes tells, it is clear: the movements that these people are making in their lives, as they redefine, reclaim, and rebuild, are making them into the people they want to be. The movements they are making in every case are addressing acute sensations of discomfort that these people have had. In most of the stories, there is some catalyst—a lost job, a sick child, a divorce, an illness—that breaks them open so that they are able to feel discomfort with their lives, and feel that discomfort as an indictment of corporate dominated forms of work, health care, food production, education, or government.

Further, not only were all of these persons able to feel their discomfort as an indictment of corporate culture, they were also able to find in that discomfort impulses to move differently—they were able to discern what I would call the wisdom in that (frustrated) desire. Instead of wishing the pain away, they were able to feel and receive the impulse to re-center their lives around home-making as a way to name and make real a world in which they want to live.

In this sense, these acts of homemaking are not a nostalgic escape nor a retrenchment in gender roles; they represent creative responses to untenable situations that align with the life conditions that the failure of those situations have enabled them to appreciate as having value. Here Hayes’ analysis is brilliant, for she demonstrates time and again how the move to radical homemaking is what the overwhelming success of corporate power is itself producing in many of us—its own overcoming.

What is it then, about radical homemaking that yields the “ecstasy” that Hayes’ recounts? It is not necessarily the activities of homemaking itself—even at the level of general skills. Rather, the pleasures of gardening or canning, home schooling or baking bread, nurturing relationships or redefining pleasure emerge as a result of how well those movements address the discomfort that the people who are making them have felt: the sense of alienation and isolation; the frustration with work, health, and educational options; the plastic glaze of industrialized food; the stifled creativity.

It is true: in so far as these feelings of discomfort are characteristic of contemporary society and even epidemic in proportion, then the activities of homemaking may prove radical as well to others feeling the same frustrations. Given the kind of challenges we as a society face, the tasks of home making can indeed provide us with opportunities for discovering patterns of relating to ourselves, one another, and the planet that are life-affirming.

However, the power that home has as a site of resistance—and pleasure—is rooted elsewhere: in how the acts of home making encourage people to cultivate the kind of sensory awareness that enables them to participate more and more consciously in the process of sensing and responding to their feelings of discomfort, frustration, and despair as impulses to move differently than cultural norms prescribe. It is this kind of sensory awareness that our dependence on corporate powers discourages us from cultivating.

Here lies the ecstasy Hayes identifies. When people are present in their lives, engaged in actions that require them to cultivate a keener awareness of what their bodily selves know, they will feel that sense of vitality, direction, and belonging that makes life worth living.

I pop back in to check on the cheese. The curds are cooked, wrinkled and squeaky, adrift in a growing sea of golden whey. I pour the curds into cheesecloth, wrap the ends around a wooden spoon and let them hang from the pot. The whey will go to the chickens, or the tomatoes. Then one more hour until salting and pressing, and two months at least before eating. It’s a process, for sure. It takes time.

Is this cheesemaking a radical act? I ponder its pleasures. Sure, I love the sensory dimensions of the seemingly miraculous transformation from liquid to solid. I appreciate the variations and complexities, the possibilities for error and discovery. I also appreciate how I am securing our dairy independence from forms of industrial farming that leave cows to stand all day on concrete, in their own manure, shot through with antibiotics to keep them from getting sick. Milk is a resource we have, in abundance. It makes sense to use it. I appreciate the ability to nourish myself and my children with untreated, local milk products, that come from healthy cows. Our family of seven (mostly) vegetarians saves over a hundred dollars a week by making from milk all that we do.

Then again, I know that in making this cheese I am enabling my kids to do what they want to do--milk their cows--and thus realizing a vision of family where we all work to ensure that each one of us gets what we need to become who we are. I know too, in making these moves, I am making myself into the philosopher and dancer I want to be—ever growing in my understanding how the movements we make in every moment of our lives make us who we are. It’s why we’re here.

Besides--or because--of all these reasons, the cheese is simply, incredibly delicious. Let the revolution continue.

Only 51 weeks left!

How are those resolutions?

Around this time of year, emotions are complex. You may feel unhappy that the home holidays are over, as well as relieved that the rounds of rituals and relatives are done. Pleased to be back with a familiar routine, yet bored by the grind. Eager for what is yet to come, and burdened by what has not yet been done. Glad and sad to leave 2009; both poised and unprepared to greet 2010. Energized and exhausted, elated and depressed; ready to go, ready to rest. Ending and beginning again.

It is hard to know what to do with all of the ambivalence. The reigning rubric for this passage in time is resolution. There is a tendency is to want to resolve the welter of emotions into a set of resolutions that you plan to enforce with new resolve. So you compress the chaos into a numbered list, and forge the tensions to an iron will. You vow to stick to some species of diet, asserting control over something that flows through your bodily self, whether calories, actions, or words. This year I will succeed!

Or perhaps you are disillusioned by all this resolving and respond to the mayhem by rejecting the ritual as a set-up for disappointment. Too often, as you know, resolving is simply a matter of re-solving, applying the same old solutions to the same old problems year after year without success. For what significance does a calendar count carry anyway? Life continues, regardless.

Why celebrate the slipping of time at all?
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The kids are milling about, waiting for our ritual. Every New Year’s Eve, we create one. For the past couple of years we have sailed milkweed pod boats loaded with sticky burrs and other symbolic bits into the fire of our wood stove, delighting in the firecrackling bursts. This year, however, we haven’t collected any boats or burrs. It’s cold and dark. Kyra is already asleep on the couch.

I am out of ideas. Will our ritual fail? At least I can gather some pens and paper, surely we will write something. I select a rainbow of ink colors so each person can have his or her own. What else do we have lying around? I find a can of mixed nuts that Geoff bought for the holidays. A chocolate bar house gift. Sprigs of sage from a local farm. Branches of evergreen cut from our Christmas tree. A candle and matches. I make a pile. Something will come of this.

We wake up Kyra, sit in a circle by the stove, and light the candle. An idea pops into my mind: A book! Our neighbor recently taught us how to make a six-page book out of one piece of paper. Let’s do it! I show the kids how: fold and bend, one small cut, and fold again. Soon we are each holding small books in the palms of our hands. They feel magic.

Words flow from my mouth. For each open fold, pick a realm of your life, three in all, and write down the qualities and character you want that realm to have in the year to come. We’ll try it.

Kyra wants help. She shows me her book. She has named her themes: Family. Life. Love. What else to say? I am scribbling madly, reaching deep into myself, wanting it all. I make a book for small Leif. We are writing our lives.

After filling our books we cradle them gently. I pass around the can of nuts. There are seven kinds. Pick one. We all have different hopes and needs and wishes and wants. Go for it. Be yourself. Be nutty! (Afterwards we realized that we each picked a different nut.)

The kids crunch their choices. I pass the chocolate. The no-fail cure for those times when dementors steal all your happy memories. Remember the sweetness we share. Our family will nourish you.

As the chocolate finishes its round, I pass the evergreen branch tips: keep your dreams evergreen. Then I pass the sage: a fragrant spice to carry your prayers to the heavens.

We bundle the sage and evergreen into our books (we’ll keep the chocolate and nuts, thank you), and line up to toss our wads into the fire—the books of our lives, leaves of our loves. We let them go. We blow out the candle and talk softly. We realize how much our ritual embodied the community that supports us--friends, family, neighbors are all enabling us to write our own stories. We go to bed.
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Why do it? It is not to resolve what roils. Rather, we celebrate in order to stir it all up—all of our competing desires and hopes, our conflicting wants and wishes, all the sheer, raw energy of our bodily selves.

For when we stir the embers of our bodily selves, releasing the emotions we have and hold, we open ourselves up to currents of creativity streaming through us. We crack open our small minds to the imagination of the universe, far greater than ours, that lives in our bodily selves and through our bodily selves, in the form of impulses to move that we can open to receive. What do you want? What can you want? What is there to want?

Think back ten years, five or even one—did you imagine then that you would be where you are now? Could you have even imagined it? How is it that you think you can imagine now what the best path for you will be?

Our capacity to predict and plan, to rationalize and hold in line, is a vital resource for sure. We need goals and projects, schedules and schemas. But we also need moments when we break ourselves open to insights coursing through our singular selves that no one else can know but us. And we need moments where we affirm that our ability to carry through our plans and projects depends on a web of relationships that extends beyond us, supporting us in being and becoming the singular selves we are.

Here is where ritual has power. For its actions grab our minds and direct our attention to what we are sensing, to the movements we are making, so that we can discern the impulses to connect that are stirring in us. We want to connect with what our bodily selves know. We want to connect with each other. We affirm the mystery in which we are always already participating as we bring into being a world we love that loves us.

So what is there to resolve? Perhaps it’s better to consider what we want to dis-solve—any well-intended mental constructs that pit us against our bodily selves in the name of ideals that aren’t really ours.

Perhaps it’s time to shake out our re-solving and learn to discern what our bodies know. Call it my new year’s dissolution.

* Photos taken in ice storm on December 25