I have advocated in my missives the resurrection of many a hoary tradition, ranging from hymn singing and one room schoolhouses to bell ringing and hand sewing. Today, I will put forth my argument for the return of something a little lighter. Perhaps, dare I say, even a bit—silly?

It is not out of pure nostalgia, nor am I proposing something in an unserious way when I say: bring back the square dance.

Yes, gentle reader, I do indeed mean to argue that it is past time to dust off that cultural gem that we middle-aged sorts recall, if dimly, from old record players and elementary school gymnasiums. And which younger folks remember not at all.

Before you roll your eyes and click away, consider:

That PE-class experience with the traditional dances and songs of rural Americana is as pale and insipid an imitation of the real thing as playing the recorder is of genuinely mastering an instrument and playing with others.

Picture, instead, a Friendship Hall (those used to exist in many small towns and villages). On the small stage, a band plays a sprightly tune, while a figure stands at the edge, looking out over the couples spinning through figure after figure at his direction. A cooler full of iced drinks sits on a table, and a few folding chairs around the room are occupied by those who’ve had to take a bit of a break, fanning themselves, and laughing. Bustling in the kitchen is the preamble to the cake walk that will occupy a break in the dancing.

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Zoom in on the action, and let’s give some thought to what makes this part of rural culture special. And what we’ve lost with its loss.

If you’re young enough to be unfamiliar with the square dance, let me elucidate its fundamentals. Each “square” is made up of four couples. They stand IN a square. The music starts, and the caller calls out directions. Grand squares, promenades, swing your partner. Once you know the moves, you can dance on and on without having to memorize set dances. Square dancing is descended from 17th century English Country dances and 18th century French quadrilles. The addition of the caller is a distinctly American variant. There are specific regional versions known as New England, Appalachian, and Western. Although the more modern version, with its 70-some standardized calls, is of the distinctly Western flavor. It is, quite simply, an integral part of our cultural heritage.

The delight of square dancing (for those of us old enough to remember the phenomenon outside those PE classes) was its accessibility. If you could keep the beat and follow the directions, that’s all you needed. And, since everyone is performing the same steps, it lacks the judgmental nature of modern “dancing.” (if the alcohol-fueled, suggestive rhythmic styles evidenced at weddings and clubs these days can be labeled with the term at all)

At its most fundamental, it returns us to a more concrete experience. Square dancing, like most forms of dance that predate the modern era, requires a partner. It rejects the androgyny and hypersexuality of hip hop and other modern dance forms. The caller addresses the “ladies” and the “gents” in turn.

A real square dance—as opposed to the competitions or demonstrations you might see in online videos—also traversed ages. Any given square might have an older married couple who’ve traced these same figures together many times, a young couple who are dancing together for the first time, a young girl being swung through the steps by her older brother, and a young couple out for their first evening away from the baby. Watch for a moment, and see the tradition being handed down with every do-si-do.

Dancing has the salubrious effect of reinforcing the old courtesies. Gallantry wafts around the room as gentlemen lead their chosen partner out onto the floor. The ladies, for their part, return in kind with gentleness. To quote the old song, “Even guys with two left feet come out alright if the girl is sweet.”

Another inducement is that of having an excuse to dress up. You’re likely familiar with all those memes about dresses with pockets. Well, if there is one thing femininity loves even more than pockets, it’s petticoats. Even before the costumes became stylized, girls had outfits for dancing. And dancing dresses were decidedly different from what my father would have termed “Sunday-go-to-meetin’” clothes. The gents, for their part, just need clean slacks and a button-down shirt. In neither instance would graphic t-shirts and pajama pants be appropriate.

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A good square dance blends the generations and the sexes without pretending that they are all the same, and interchangeable. Dancing (barring the modern, ictal variety) is, in fact, deeply gendered. The steps, direction, and positions are different for the man and the woman. It’s often said, “Ginger did everything Fred did, but backwards and in high heels.” This is not entirely wrong, but it misunderstands the nature of dancing. It requires one to lead, and one to follow. Its flow and substance is based on certain assumed actions and reactions from each partner. When the caller directs “swing your partner!” no one expects the ladies to stand and swing her gent around her and then out in a skirt-lifting twirl.

I remember a line from a book I read in college, in which one character—an older man—counsels a younger: “Ladies love dancing. I’ve never met one who didn’t.” This is largely still true. For evidence, I submit the current mild fad for Regency events. Teas, garden parties, and balls take place where attendees can come dressed like an Austen character, nibble cucumber sandwiches, and navigate the niceties of the dance card. You’ll find 90 percent of the attendees are women.

The same proportions will often play out in events like the Dutch dancers at Holland, Michigan’s Tulip Festival, folk dance competitions, and most modern dance studios. To fill the gap, many times you will see some of the girls “dance the man’s part.”

This is not a new phenomenon. In fact, we see Lizzy, in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” tease Mr. Darcy by confiding to his cousin that, “He danced only four dances, though gentlemen were scarce; and, to my certain knowledge, more than one young lady was sitting down in want of a partner.”

In our modern age, wherein technology has gotten more and more in the way of simple social interactions, going to a dance and asking a young lady to step out onto the floor may be even more intimidating to the average young man. However, one frequent complaint from those self-same young men is that they don’t know where to go to meet young women. My husband, the Last of the Gentleman Rankers, would gently point out that a dance constitutes a “target-rich environment.”

Square dancing, like many things that become wildly popular, followed that peak with a period in which it was considered so entirely “out” that it was widely mocked and derided. Rather like beehives and bellbottoms. But like those things, and other tangible experiences, it might be time for a revival. The generation that has chosen to embrace knitting, sourdough, fountain pens, and vinyl records might find a similar delight in the square dance. I bet we can even find them some records to practice with.

The requirements for a community dance are simple. First, a space: a school gymnasium, a community center, the fellowship hall of a church. Anywhere that has some elbow room. Second, a volunteer caller and a small handful of musicians. Or, even some recorded music, at least at first. You could even mix the two, so the dancing can go on while the musicians take a break. Add some simple refreshments like coffee, lemonade, and pie or cake.

The dividend reaped? An activity that mixes ages and sexes, giving older people a respected place and helping younger folks learn to be comfortable with wider social gatherings. Weak social ties develop into friendships, and opportunity is provided for new people to be introduced into the community. A local ritual is created, and this is a more powerful thing than you might think. And of course, it provides exercise outside the confines of the “fitness movement,” while simultaneously providing an opportunity for courtship without making it about courtship.

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Much ink has been spilled about “the loneliness epidemic” and the difficulties in meeting people, especially for the digital generation. Conversation is hard. Walking into a “singles event” is terrifying. Ice breakers are the stuff of nightmares. But square dancing? The caller quite literally tells you what to do. There is no pressure to make conversation, should you even have the breath to do so. By the time the set has ended, newly met partners may be laughing so hard together as they stand in line for lemonade that all awkwardness has passed.

Square dancing is not waiting for some billionaire philanthropist to finance its revival (sorry, Elon). And local community is not rebuilt with sweeping political victories or grand policy declarations, but in the simple coming together of neighbors.

Look around. Do you have a township multipurpose room that only sees use for elections? An old Friendship Hall? Perhaps a grange that sits under towering maple trees? Grab the fiddler and find the caller, hang out a sign, “Square dance here tonight!”

The rest of us, I imagine, will remember the steps as soon as the first strains of music reach our ears.

Warm Regards,

Holly, AKA The Country Mouse

P.S. Did your town, church, or 4-H club ever host square dances? I'd love to hear your memories. And if someone, somewhere, has managed to revive a community dance in the twenty-first century, tell us how you did it. We might all borrow the idea.

We sometimes call this “community.” But that word, like so many others, has been stretched and twisted. It has been, like Bilbo, too little butter scraped over too much toast, until it encompasses everything from fandoms and hobby groups to political blocs and consumer demographics. A word that once meant place, obligation, and continuity has been thinned out and distended to encompass mere affinity or emotional identification.

These lighter associations have their place, certainly. They’ve always been part of the social fabric. I probably have equivalent ties to some of my “digital” acquaintances as I do to the ladies in my old quilt guild. But these partial and often fleeting affinities have been given the illusion of a heft equal to that of genuine neighbors. We have lost the vocabulary to differentiate between the people who know us by our digital “handle” and those who will notice when our barn roof collapses. And that’s a problem.

Shaye Elliott relates a story in Welcome to the Farm, about a neighbor who went out of the way to help during a livestock-related crisis and refused any payment for his aid. “That’s neighboring,” was his response.

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But even “neighboring” has begun to get more than a little fuzzy around the edges. It invokes a warm feeling of nearness and contentment. Developments and municipalities invoke “neighboring communities” as if short drive times imply deeper ties. Cafes, schools, and churches market themselves as “neighboring” spaces, all the while making it clear that participation is optional, mobile, and often transactional. “Neighboring” has entered the buzzword party and checked its former meaning at the door.

The northern provinces of the Netherlands still have a word that retains all of the original meaning: noaberschap. Roughly, “neighborship.” In the rural regions, it carries all the connotations of embodied, mutual obligation of concrete types of assistance that “community” and “neighboring” have lost.

Noaberschap understands that neighbors don’t always agree. And, in fact, may irritate each other, sometimes for generations. I’m reminded of Mrs. Lynde, in the Anne of Green Gables books. In soothing Anne’s irritation with another local family she remarks, “Well, Pyes they are and Pyes they shall always be, world without end, Amen.” A tacit acknowledgement of both the tendency of the family to be a thorn in the side of the wider community and the obligation to tolerate them, anyway. It would certainly be easier to avoid or ignore one another. Noaberschap recognizes the covenantal bond between neighbors. Even those who create such friction that it wears on that bond and we must mend, and mend, and mend.

Noaberschap is not made up of symbolic displays of civic virtue—like putting a “little free library” in the yard and then basking in the glow of being a good neighbor. Noaberschap assumes that neighbors possess some claim upon us whether we find them congenial or not. It is not built upon perfect compatibility, shared politics, or carefully curated affinity. In fact, neighboring often persists precisely because departure is difficult and relationships cannot simply be severed at the first irritation. The people next door remain the people next door. Over time, obligations accumulate: meals delivered after funerals, livestock watched during illness, children checked on after school, driveways cleared after storms. Neighboring becomes less a matter of sentiment than of practiced fidelity.

Genuine noaberschap implies inconvenience. The inconvenience is evidence of the obligation baked into the word. It asks us to remain interruptible. To accept that our time, labor, and attention are not entirely our own. Modern life increasingly treats such obligations as burdens to be optimized away. Noaberschap understands them differently: not as inefficiencies, but as part of the fabric of a shared life. It’s the same instinct that fills church basements with casseroles after funerals and quietly organizes rides to medical appointments before anyone thinks to ask.

This type of genuine network of mutual obligation has gotten much harder to maintain. Our hypermobile society means our neighbors may constantly change. Noaberschap was built on long relationships and the expectation of eventual reciprocity, rather than simple good will. It’s made more difficult by fragmented schedules, two-income households, and on-the-go family life that revolves around travel sports, hobbies, and recreation. Noaberschap requires presence, both for noticing and for participating.

We sense, on some level, that neighboring once emerged through repeated small encounters: conversations over fences, children moving between yards, produce handed across porches. And so we attempt to recreate opportunities for those encounters. Sometimes this helps. But encounter alone cannot restore neighboring. A nod and a wave are not yet mutual obligation. Providing more opportunities for neighbors to casually meet each other is a good thing. But it cannot, by itself, “reknit the underneath” as Paul Vander Klay often terms the need to mend the underlying social fabric on which those relationships depend.

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Losing words like “community” and “neighboring” dilutes the ideas and concepts behind them. It may be time for more particular words like noaberschap to step into the gap. Without a word for practices that knit the underneath, we lose the ability to see the holes and mend them. Losing the word for neighboring risks diluting it into nothing more than performative “good deeds” that require no inconvenience, that place no obligations.

Neighboring grows slowly. It cannot be cultivated by a solitary gardener. There are, however, ways to encourage it to take root: remain in place longer, even if the neighbors around you change continually. Root yourself, if you can, and become an anchor. Know names, exchange small favors, and participate locally. Attend funerals, weddings, and open houses. Center these events on family, friends and neighbors. Forgo the “Pinterest-worthy” event and return to the backyard potluck. Borrow and lend, without resentment. And if you’re one of those people for whom this is a source of resentment - disregard this advice and neither a borrower nor a lender be. Live in way that is not so overscheduled that you have no time to be inconvenienced by your neighbors. If you have no time for them, sooner or later they will have no time for you. Notice routines, and be sure that yours are likewise being noticed. Create opportunities for reciprocity. Make an extra loaf of bread and take it across the street. Who knows? Perhaps a dinner of brisket and macaroni will return to you.

I drive by a couple of shiny, new subdivisions on my way home from work. In the gathering dark, I often notice that all is quiet. Many of the houses don’t even have first floor windows on the front of the house. Those that do, are dark. In the winter, the zoning board-mandated sidewalks are free of foot prints. These are our “neighborhoods.”

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What does noaberschap look like? Warm lights in neighboring houses, tracks in fresh snow. Garden produce on porches, or being handed over the fence. Children running between houses in a game of tag that encompasses multiple yards. Evening porch conversations. Full church parking lots after funerals, and people leaving with wrapped up leftovers from the luncheon.

Maybe noaberschap begins simply with a willingness to be inconvenienced by one another again.

Warm regards,

Holly, The Country Mouse

P.S. The Dutch word noaberschap is most closely associated with the rural eastern and northern Netherlands, where traditions of neighboring and mutual aid remained culturally important long after many similar customs faded elsewhere. Like many old words, it contains meanings that resist tidy translation. “Neighboring,” “neighborliness,” and even “community” all gesture toward it, but none quite carry the same sense of enduring mutual obligation rooted in place.

I suspect many readers have experienced some form of noaberschap themselves, even if they lacked the vocabulary for it. If you have stories of neighboring—good, difficult, funny, inconvenient, or memorable—I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Rather than expounding on my own thoughts, today I thought I would share a list of books. Now, I have no intention of leaping into the current “Great Books” discussions currently circulating. Nor is this the sort of algorithm “people who bought this book also bought” sorts of lists.

No, this is a hand-curated list of titles, from popular to obscure, that sit on my own shelf and inform my writing.

A few caveats: This list is not exhaustive. Inclusion on this list is not an endorsement of everything found within the covers of a given book. I invite you to add your own suggestions in the comments, along with the reasons for your recommendations.

Some of these books are very popular and easy to find. Others are much more obscure, and I’ve stumbled across more than one in a dim corner of a used bookstore. Once you know what you’re looking for, you’ll likely be able to locate a copy thanks to the modern internet.

And now, on to the list:

I. Foundations: Place, Limits, and Husbandry

Any conversation about Agrarianism will involve Wendell Berry. So we’ll start there. All of his work is applicable, but this nuclear library begins with:

The Unsettling of America
The Gift of Good Land
Imagination in Place
The Art of the Commonplace

To Berry, I would then add the following volumes. Ranging from historic treatises on the nature of the American yeoman farmer ideal to classic ecological treatises to more modern musings on the nature of our relationship with the land, each offers a unique perspective.

The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs, Joel Salatin
Old Fashioned On Purpose, Jill Winger
Dirt to Soil, Gabe Brown
Uprooted, Grace Olmstead
Home Ground, Barry Lopez, ed.
Pastoral Song, James Rebanks
The New Agrarian Mind, Allan C. Carlson
Letters from an American Farmer, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur (1782)
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard
A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold
An Agrarian Republic: Farming, Antislavery Politics, and Nature Parks in the Civil War Era, Adam Wesley Dean
Religious Agrarianism and the Return of Place: From Values to Practice in Sustainable Agriculture, Todd LeVasseur
Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian, Herrick Kimball
Baptized with the Soil, Kevin M. Lowe
The Essential Agrarian Reader, Norman Wirzba, ed.
Making Hay, Verlyn Klinkenborg
Deeply Rooted, Lisa M. Hamilton

II. Theology, Stewardship, and Covenant

This part of the list ranges from pure theology to books that specifically address biblical approaches to agrarianism. You’ll find books here that are classics of Reformed theology. And other books that might come from a pronounced Catholic or Lutheran perspective.

The Land, Walter Brueggemann
Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, Ellen F. Davis
Stewards of Eden, Sandra L. Richter
Food and Faith, Norman Wirzba
Agrarian Spirit, Norman Wirzba
Joining Creation’s Praise: A Theological Ethic of Creatureliness, Brian Brock
Pollution and the Death of Man, Frances Schaeffer
Culture Making, Andy Crouch
Living at the Crossroads, Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen
Dominion, Joseph Boot
The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, Jonathan M. Frame
An Agrarian Proposal: New England Agrarianism in Service of the Common Good, Rebecca Judge and Charles Taliaferro
God at Work, Gene Veith
The Holy Earth, Liberty Hyde Bailey
Flee to the Fields, Fr. Vincent McNabb

III. Household Economy and the Independent Farmstead

This section largely includes books that address the “how” more than the “why” of agrarianism. They’re a cut above the usual bright, shiny “how to homestead” books, and deserve a place on the shelf.

The Independent Farmstead, Shawn and Beth Dougherty
Small Farm Republic, John Klar
Slow Wood, Brian Donahue
The Lean Farm, Ben Hartman
The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Ben Falk
Restoration Agriculture, Mark Shepard
Folks, This Ain’t Normal, Joel Salatin
One-Cow Revolution, Shawn and Beth Dougherty
Five Acres and Independence, Maurice Kains
The Contrary Farmer, Gene Logsdon

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IV. Localism, Decentralization and the Common Good

Here, the lack of Reformed thought on topics like distributism and agrarianism really becomes apparent. So you’ll find quite a lot from Catholic Social teaching, as well as more ecumenical approaches. There are also some decidedly humanist works. And Kunstler, who is piercing but depressing.

Land and Liberty: The Best of Free America, Allan C. Carlson, ed.
Why Place Matters, William M. Clay, ed.
The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kuntsler
The Servile State, Hilaire Belloc
What’s Wrong with the World, G.K. Chesterton
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, R.H. Tawney
Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, Albert Borgman
The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis
Out of the Ashes, Anthony Esolen
Tools for Conviviality, Ivan Illich
Staying Put, Scott Russell Sanders
Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon

V. Cultivating an Agrarian Imagination

These are classic works of fiction that center the agrarian mindset. A lot of them you may have read. Maybe it’s time to re-read a few. I’d also note that the other books in the series included here are worthwhile, especially the other seven Anne books, the remainder of Moberg’s The Emigrants books, and, of course, Wilder’s series. As to Kuntsler, he presents a forward projection of a day when we go back to agrarian life out of necessity, rather than choice. The book is raw, difficult, but not without merit.

Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry
Hannah Coulter, Wendell Berry
Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
The Golden Road, L.M. Montgomery
Lark Rise to Candleford, Flora Thompson
Unto a Good Land, Vilhelm Moberg
Farmer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Silas Marner, George Eliot
Freckles, Gene Stratton-Porter
A Girl of the Limberlost, Gene Stratton-Porter
World Made by Hand, James Howard Kuntsler
Homestead on the Hillside, Mary Jane Holmes

VI. Books to Wrestle With

Most of the books on the list will present you with ideas you agree with and ideas you don’t. In this section, this may become more pronounced. Some of these books challenge our modern assumptions, while others lean into them. And each of them, with the possible exception of Schumacher, stands, in part or in whole, in opposition to a real Reformed Agrarian approach.

Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott
Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
Small is Beautiful, E.F. Schumacher
One Straw Revolution, Masanobu Fukuoka
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Chris Smaje
The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher

There are many other books that could have found a spot on this list, but it was starting to get just a bit long. Many are available via the usual commercial channels. And most of the rest can be found used, via aggregating websites like Biblio or AbeBooks.

Enjoy!

Holly, The Country Mouse

P.S. Please feel free to share your additions in the comments. Or, if you’re curious about why a particular tome made the list, just ask!

(Edited because - well, I should set a bedtime for posting. Past a certain hour I cannot be trusted to catch the typos!)

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Not long ago, I happened across a remark from a young married woman who was expressing regret at having taken her husband’s name. Oh, she was not unhappy in her choice of spouse, or finding the name itself awkward. Rather, she had encountered a memory of her accomplishments and found herself feeling as though she had “lost” the girl who had secured them.

My first impulse was to roll my eyes, mutter about the self-absorbed tendencies of the younger set and the degree to which they had imbibed the false teachings of later flavors of feminism and continue on with reading other correspondence.

But then I stopped for a moment to wonder—why should she feel as though she had, in her own words, “lost part of my identity”?

After all, generations of women have, seemingly without complaint and often with outright glee, retired their “maiden name” in favor of a new “married name.” (Leaving aside the relatively recent adoption of inherited surnames in general, which is a whole ‘nother conversation.)

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This has been a source of angst for at least the last 3 or 4 decades, I admit. When I graduated from veterinary school, I got married a bare fortnight later and then started my first job before a month had gone by. My new employers had made some assumptions and had a sticker printed to add to the front door of the clinic with my maiden name. The most senior of them, in his 60’s, was rather taken aback that I had chosen to use my married name professionally. I genuinely can’t recall if they ever DID add my name to the door at all.

Many of my classmates chose, indeed, to practice under their maiden names. Or simply retain it professionally when they married after being in practice for a while. A common choice in those circles.

Other women choose to hyphenate, going from Wilson to Wilson-Gomez. Although this has always struck me as being a little short-sighted. Even if this is the new “family name,” what happens with the next generation? I note we have not been inundated by correspondence from the Wilson-Gomez-Czernak-Chen family.

Many of these women, should you ask them, would suggest that previous generations simply allowed their identities to be subsumed in their husbands’. As if taking his name necessarily meant giving up all that had gone before. They will point to women like my mother, who was a nurse but did not return to that work until I was nearly 16, and assume that she had no sense of herself beyond that of wife and mother.

One has only to sit and listen to Mom, her sisters, and many of their acquaintances to determine that this is not so. In fact, even when she speaks to me, the conversations go something like, “You remember Eunice Warner*. She was one of the Scrubbs.” Or perhaps, “John Rogers—he married Lonnie Lyle, whose brother Lester married Charlotte Russell...”

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Indeed, encountering an old schoolmate of my mother’s, she turned to her companion and said, “You remember Mary, she was one of the Kendall girls. Her sister was in your grade.”

Within these communities, taking on your new husband’s name did not cause your previous identity to disappear. All of these women, even in their 80s, are known by their contemporaries still by their maiden names, their siblings, their parents, and grandparents. Identity, then, was relational.

Names, in point of fact, were once entirely relational. My years belonging to a medieval reenactment group were instrumental in my adding quite a few skills and bits of esoteric knowledge to my repertoire. Among those was the study of naming patterns.

Before the adoption of inherited surnames, there were a number of ways that one “John” or “Mary” might be distinguished from another. The first was via family. Patronymics or matronymics were based on the name of father or mother, respectively. So, John Robert’s son eventually became John Robertson. Nordic Maria Jansdotter, was Maria, Jan’s Daughter. Similarly, the Irish O’ denotes the same concept. Patrick O’Niall is Patrick, son of Niall.

Another way to differentiate two people who had the same given (or first) name was to use their profession. In a small village or town, there might be only one Blacksmith, or Wheelwright, or Cooper. Now it’s easy to tell whether you’re speaking about John, Robert’s son, or John the Cooper.

Barring these sorts of easy tags, someone might be known by a physical characteristic. Eric the Red, for instance, was likely a redhead. This is a practice we continue to this day, when we apply nicknames like “Big John” or “Rusty.”

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And, finally, sometimes people were differentiated by where they lived or had come from. Within the village, since everyone knew where everyone else lived, it might be Margaret by the Green. For the newcomer, from a few villages over, it could be William of Avon. Or, if the transplant was from another county or country entirely, Roger the Fleming.

I bring this up to demonstrate that ALL these flavors of names are relational. They worked because everyone in town knew enough of the identifying characteristics to parse the name. It was clear to everybody who was Jans’ daughter, which man was the village cooper, and which Margaret lived near the Green.

Even once these names evolved from personal to inherited surnames, and became Hansdotter, Cooper, and Green, the old relationships still held. And when a woman married, she did not shed those things. She was still the daughter of John Cooper and Margaret (Green) Cooper. Her new identity as the wife of Richard was stitched together with the one she brought to the marriage, much as coats of arms were combined.

This relational system worked beautifully because of stable communities. That began to break down with the post-War increase in mobility and corresponding large-scale dissolution of these generational communities. This sense of relational identity began to fray and thin.

For good or ill, we were known by our kith and kin. But now, three generations and counting into the displacement that is part and parcel of modern life in the managerial age, the people we spend most of our time with do not know our siblings, our parents, our cousins, or our lineages. In fact, so many of us are so displaced from such communities that “What is your mother’s maiden name?” is considered a reasonably “security question” for recovering that lost password.

If identity is no longer relational, it must be hung on some sort of marker. That void has largely been filled by personal accomplishments. However, we no longer have a particular community in which those accomplishments get woven into our larger identity. Our social contacts are much more siloed than they once were. Work acquaintances might recognize our career achievements. Neighborhood friends are aware of who organized the community garage sales. Church friends recognize the soloist in the choir.

Outside of those silos, those accomplishments tend to mean very little. Even very prominent laurels that attract the attention of a wider field of, say, professional colleagues, do so in something of a vacuum.

It is, then, often quite true that a woman who published multiple academic papers under her maiden name might fail to be recognized as a speaker at a professional conference if she has since married and changed her name.

The woman who posted the original musing was not incorrect to lament that no one in her new, married life would connect the name on the monument at her Alma Mater to the woman they knew. It is a disconnection. One that highlights our uprooting from communities and loss of relational identity, the way a wash of paint highlights the wax resist on the paper. It is visible only as a lack of something that can’t soak in.

We sense the void, sometimes attempting to fill it by insisting that “you are a BRAND,” and carefully curating an online identity. This shifts identity work from passive embedding (”who I am to my people”) to active performance (”the story I control and broadcast”). It turns passions and quirks into content and strategy. This, in turn, has a tendency to produce narcissism and a sense of isolation in equal measures.

This replacement is imperfect. Relational identity was thick, contextual, and forgiving—allowing for evolution within a known frame. A brand is thinner, more fragile, and demanding: it requires ongoing management, risks obsolescence, and collapses more easily under scrutiny or life changes.

Now, not everybody experiences it this way. It’s possible to build thicker, relational ties that still have a component of performance involved. And many uprooted people still manage to develop a sense of community that helps fill the gaps.

We sit at a cusp between two imperfect worlds. On one side: thick, interwoven community where one is known—for good or ill—by relationships as well as deeds. It offers ease and continuity, but little room to reinvent. On the other: liquid modernity’s shallow pool, where the past can be shed, but belonging is fleeting and loneliness is epidemic.

The remedies lie less in perfecting personal brands or stone monuments and more in rebuilding thick, local relational contexts—where identity can be chosen and inherited, layered rather than branded.

A return to rootedness means reclaiming relational identity. Radical individual autonomy is in vogue, yet it leaves us overdependent on fragile ego-brands. No man is an island. Thriving requires ties that sometimes ask us to let part of our curated self submerge into something larger—contributing to a whole that spreads wider, deeper, and longer than any single name on a monument ever could.

Warm Regards,

Holly, AKA The Country Mouse

P.S. I have begun to feel that the word “community” is either broadly misunderstood or has lost most of its meaning, entirely. “Relational” doesn’t entirely fill the void. I have some thoughts on this, which I’ll address in my next missive. But if you also have some thoughts, I’d love to hear them. Drop them in the comments.

Like a lot of other young couples, we spent a fair amount of time visiting the Parade of Homes, touring model houses in shiny new developments. Neat lots with quiet driveways were filled with regimented rows of houses, perfect green lawns spread out around them just waiting for the requisite swing set. It was so close, and yet just out of reach. Like Israel gazing over the Jordan at a land promised, unable to go in.

We, too, were barred. Not by a decree, but by circumstances that conspired to move us, stepwise, ever further away. Job loss and a noncompete that prevented finding another in the same community. Daughters with developmental disabilities, economic downturns, and changes in the local community.

Wandering in the wilderness feels like punishment. Discipline. And, in a way, that’s what it is. But not simply to inflict suffering. Sometimes the wilderness is where God prepares us to receive what He has already promised. It’s a discipline that produces formation. A change from what was, into what needs to be for the next task. Israel was reshaped into a nation that would no longer sigh for the comforts of Egypt. Likewise, we’ve been pared down and rebuilt, until we no longer even want the suburban soccer-games-and-wine-nights lifestyle.

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Twenty years later, we’re still in that same tiny house. The one we had planned to stay in for “oh, five years or so.” Around us, other families have moved out, into larger houses in fancy developments. While we wait, and work, and pour our energy into caregiving. There are days when we grieve the loss of the life we will never lead, filled with PTA meetings and proms, and all the trappings of middle-class “success.” But bit by bit, the desire for that reward has been worn down, then sculpted instead into a desire to steward. A faint inkling that the waiting is, perhaps, not withholding, but preparation.

That whisper on the wind, however, is sometimes hard to hear. Invitations to graduation parties and bridal showers for other people’s children can feel like that moment in A Little Princess—cold, wet, and hungry, staring through the bakery window while warm rolls are set out just beyond reach. To be so close, and yet have the thing you’re hungry for kept always just out of reach, can feel like a cruelty that could only have been designed for deliberate torment. The longing is intensified every time its object comes tantalizingly into view.

Israel was promised a land of milk and honey. But while they waited, they picked manna up every morning. Never an abundance - only ever just enough to satisfy. There was no seed time and no harvest. The cloud might rise from the tabernacle and set them on the move tomorrow. Likewise, we have spent much longer than we had anticipated in a season in which we cannot plant, or build, or settle. The plan to move to a larger house with a bigger yard has slowly grown indistinct, like blueprints gathering dust in a forgotten drawer. Instead, we wait for the provisional grace that comes with each dawn, while searching the clear horizons for signs of the showers of blessings promised.

All the while, the waiting does its own work. Israel had learned the patterns of slavery—fear, capitulation, and a distrust of authority. The wilderness taught them trust, patience, and a confidence in a God who would guide. Could a nation of slaves who had owned nothing have taken the Promised Land and regarded it as truly their own?

Transformation isn’t always noisy and abrupt. Sometimes it happens in the stillness of withholding, while we are slowly made over into people who can receive what is promised without destroying it. It teaches us to decouple the demands of our self-imposed deadlines from the passage of time. Like Sarah, promised a child as she grows older and older, we think we must have the blessing on our schedule.

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But genuine blessings are not constrained by our timelines. Or society’s demands. Or even biology. Its very lack of timeliness underscores the fact that it comes by grace alone. Into hands that have learned stewardship and quiet faithfulness.

“Almost there” seasons awaken in our hearts a deep homesickness. It’s nostalgia, in the Greek sense. Not a warm glow of good things past, but a genuine nostos algia - the ache for the return. We are designed for rootedness. And wandering in the wilderness makes us ache to be rooted. It orients us, like the pull of a compass, to our true North. Not the blessing, but He who blesses. We are pilgrims on the way, even in the Promised Land. This world is not our home, and even receiving a blessing should not squelch the ache entirely. Attending to it is part of discipleship. Can we be faithful not just in the longing, but also in the having?

Crossing the Jordan did not solve all of Israel’s problems. Oh, they didn’t need to collect manna anymore. It was time for sowing, and reaping. Each tribe received its inheritance of land, satisfying the desire for rootedness. But peace did not descend as soon as the monument was erected to mark the crossing of the Jordan. There was still work to do. And there would still be disobedience. Forgiveness. Blessings. Trials. Life, in all its messy complexity continued, even from inside the promise. Arrival does not mean perfect contentment from that point on.

Waiting in the wilderness forged Israel’s collective identity. They learned that God was present—really present—in scarcity, not just in blessing. It focused their understanding of that promise, and how they should respond to it. By the end of those forty years, Israel understood land differently. Some tribes even asked for their inheritance before crossing the Jordan, recognizing that the grazing land they already stood in was good.

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This is the gift hidden in the “nearly there.” A clarity about what we really want, rather than what we think we’re supposed to want. I can look back on things now, and suspect that I would probably not like the woman I’d have been if I had been allowed to live that suburban soccer mom life. That I would be less content in simply having those blessings than I am in longing for the opportunity to build community, practice good stewardship, and build a legacy. The grass may be greener, but that suburban lot would have been too confining for the woman who has spent two and a half decades wandering.

My feet are still in motion. Walking builds muscles. Hiking develops spatial awareness. The wilderness shapes, and teaches, and kindles a love for a land that is not yet mine.

Warm Regards,

Holly, The Country Mouse

P.S. Waiting has a way of clarifying our desires. Over the years, the dream of a bigger house slowly gave way to a different longing—the chance to steward land well, to build community, and to leave something living behind. Perhaps that, too, is part of what the wilderness prepares us for.

I wanted to dash off a quick missive today, before I go back to hot mug and warm blanket.

It’s a proper “bleak midwinter” today. Social media and news sites have reveled in video footage of the winter storm hammering the southeast. Up here in the Great White North, the ambient temperature has hovered around 0 F or just below, not counting the wind chill. I’ve had to explain to my dogs, Pete and Lottie, that it is too cold for puppy feet for a long walk today. Especially since they steadfastly refuse to wear booties. (Let’s remember I’m a veterinarian. I have a fair idea of how long it takes for frostbite to affect toes and noses, on a breed by breed basis. No walkies.)

In these very cold temperatures, the snow outside stays powdery and fine, swirling about with every gust of wind. Branches from the Burning Bush on the corner of the house scratch at the siding like the claws of something that would, itself, like to come in out of the cold. One almost expects the White Witch herself to step out of the roiling ice.

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Inside, it’s warm and toasty. My youngest daughter is snuggled up on one end of the couch, under a blanket, while Pete occupies the other. Our little town has its own power plant, separate from the wider system, and has not so much as flickered. Comfort abounds.

Periodically, this domestic tranquility is broken by the roar of the snowplow passing the house, throwing up rooster tails of snowy chunks into the driveway and yard. A neighbor stops out with snowblower and shovel to clear this fresh insult. He wears a headlamp to augment the streetlights as he fights off the encroaching dark. Come Monday morning, additional troops will have been rallied to sally forth against the fluffy white stuff, stacking it in neat piles and shoving it into circumscribed corrals.

It’s as if we cannot bring ourselves to admit that winter leaves us under siege and confined to the keep. No, raiding sorties are constantly sent out into the wider world. By fair means or foul, we’re determined to make sure the winter months are just as productive as the summer. Anything less is to admit defeat, and we refuse to surrender.

While fleets of pick-up trucks outfitted with plows and scrapers prowl parking lots across the countryside, quieter work has gone on inside. My yogurt mother culture has been happily incubating, while its sourdough cousin ferments gently in the other corner of the kitchen. I’ve started a new knitted beanie, and gotten a few inches of ribbing completed, while watching some video continuing education modules. A necessary, but often dull exercise. Laundry cycles run in the background, and I even had time to sew the ear back on a plush Stitch, torn off during an autistic meltdown. My daughter will be glad to have it back, I think.

Has my day been less productive? Some would say I am simply being indulgent by staying home and puttering. But perhaps we are not meant to fight against the season with all our might and main. Obedience in this season might look less like effort, and more like rest. The real work of the bleak midwinter might be interiority, maintenance, and matching the rhythm of the season.

It’s difficult for us, accustomed to the modern constant race for efficiency, to begin to move with the seasons. The mindset of year-round extraction of every bit of productivity we can muster has a tendency to leave us as lifeless and barren as my back meadow in February.

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We lose something important when we erase winter’s gentle message to slow down. It’s meant to call us in from the fields, to cut down our grueling hours putting up the harvest, and curtail our journeys. Winter is a time for rebuilding intimacy, and I don’t just mean for couples. Families spent winters working on projects together inside. A habit we refuse, in our mad rush to get back to whatever place we think its more important to spend our time.

We lose our ability to inhabit. To rebuild. To nurture. To mend.

Winter is for dilly-dallying around the house with a cup of tea and a small project. Something that requires your stillness.

Tonight, light a candle or an oil lamp, even if the power is still on. Find a cozy book. Knit a hat or some socks. Repair that tool that’s been waiting on your attention since August. Bake a cobbler with some of the fruit you put up last summer, and let the heat of the oven complement the heat from your furnace. Go to bed early, and let Him repair you, too.

Warm Regards,
Holly, The Country Mouse

P.S. May your house be warm, your work unhurried, and your winter tasks small enough to finish by lamplight.

It’s that time again. Barnes and Noble has its display of shiny new planners. Local gyms are offering discounted trial memberships. New Year, New You! The old year is shoved out the door, and the bolt shot home behind it. And so we begin our cultural perpetual Year Zero amnesia. That “fresh start” requires a certain forgetfulness of what came before. Oh, we can pat ourselves on the back for that list of accomplishments. The list of “great books” we read, the number of steps on our FitBit, or the new skills we learned. But they seem only to exist as a mark against which to set the new goal.

The old year is to be discarded. Swept away like the remains of the confetti from last night’s party. Very little time is dedicated to a contemplation of the past twelve months. How did we spend them? Not just the summation of the accomplishments, but a dwelling in its days and weeks. Why are we so eager to erase ourselves every twelve months, like a blackboard covered with the last chapter’s lessons? This annual forgetting is not harmless. It trains us to see our own lives as disposable drafts rather than as something being steadily built.

Reinvention requires a certain wrenching separation from the old self. Those changes we wish to make might be in relinquishing a bad habit. But just as often, those “resolutions” seem to entail a cutting ourselves loose from obligations, limits, or inherited patterns. “This year is going to be about me!”

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Fresh starts are easiest for those who have little to lose by leaving—and hardest for those whose lives are braided together with others. In fact, the very “fresh start” fetish favors the mobile, the unencumbered, the unattached. What parent announces to the family that the new year will start by clearing away all the artwork hanging on the ‘fridge? The single gal might trumpet her plan to move to a new city, start a new job, and look for a new relationship. Mom doesn’t come home to her family and declare they’re moving to a new city, a new school, new jobs, and leaving all their friends behind—and expect universal rejoicing.

What we treat lightly in January—moving on, starting over, cutting loose—has consequences in any living thing. Indeed, making a reset every year is much like transplanting your houseplant once a month. Each time, you tear its little rootlets out of the soil and leave them leaking accumulated nutrients into the new pot for a bit. Even if the pot is larger each time, the constant tearing away and replanting stunts growth. Rootedness cannot happen unless we’re willing to stay for a while, in the old soil.

Rootedness, in other words, is not merely a temperament. It is a moral stance. Rooting, staying, carrying on in the same old way is not just a failure to “turn over a new leaf.” It is a conscious choice, and an ethical one. Faithfulness is unintelligible without a duration in which to measure its scope. Continuity requires patience, perseverance, and submission to time. We have come to view the passage of time as a climb up a ladder, striving always to lose what is behind in the clouds as we go. In so doing, we lose, instead, its cyclicality.

Our impatience with seasons is not accidental. It has been carefully trained by digital life. The algorithm must be fed. New content must be produced. If you don’t post a new video or podcast episode or even pithy remark, your content drops lower and lower in the feed until it disappears. Meanwhile, the seasons turn in their quiet round. Winter to spring to summer to autumn, and round again. While the trees add another ring and the pair of hawks in the meadow raise another clutch of chicks. But we’re much too impatient to take winter for what it is—a time for rest, rerooting, and contemplation. It’s too uncomfortable to sit still and contemplate where we’ve really been; not the highlights reel, but the days and weeks and months.

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If January is not for reinvention, then what is it for? No life can be a blank slate. No one is “starting fresh.” Every January sits atop accumulated layers of damage, habit, grace, and work already done. Yet we vow again to lose weight, instead of allowing the weight of another year to settle gently on our shoulders like the snow sifting down outside the window. If we could let go of viewing each day as one more day, and remember that it is also one less day, our perspective might change.

The insistence on novelty (what NEW place will you travel to this year?!?!) devalues incremental improvement, mending, and building. Where, then, will you be going again this year, to build add another set of memories of that place?

January, back when I was young, was a time for taking inventory. As a teenager, I worked in a hardware store, and New Year’s Day was dedicated to physically counting every item in the store. It was slow, tedious work. Boring, but necessary. Less exciting than setting up a display for a new product, even though it was integral to understanding how the store was doing. Now, we trust the inventory in the computer to keep track of everything. When was the last time you saw a store closed so that the staff could simply... count things?

I don’t offer this as a program, but as a posture. Perhaps the reckoning is more important than the resolutions. The first week of the year might be better spent in inventory, confession, pruning, and quiet planning. Make peace with your unfinished work, rather than pretending it doesn’t exist. Better still, make a plan for progress on that work. Add to the work you did last year, instead of simply turning the page on it.

Stop asking “who will I become this year?” or “what will I accomplish?” Ask, instead, “what needs tending this year, rather than replacing?” Perhaps, “what has been entrusted to me?” or even “what do I need to remain faithful to?”

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This might be a year to start using a paper calendar. And, as my mother does, each year you can take down the old one, and store it carefully away. The stack of calendars grows year by year, containing a record of appointments, visits, or anything else you wish to note. Keep a garden notebook, if you have a garden. And, likewise, add the finished notebook to your bookshelf at the end of the year. You will begin to find a satisfaction in watching those notebooks gradually take up more and more space on the shelf. Documentation of the ephemeral shoots and leaves.

Year by year, the shelf fills. Not with resolutions kept or broken, but with evidence of having stayed. Of having tended. Of having lived a life that did not require erasing itself in order to go on.

Warm Regards,

Holly, The Country Mouse

P.S. My mother keeps every old calendar. When the year ends, she takes it down carefully and stacks it with the others. Birthdays, appointments, visits—nothing dramatic, just the record of having been where she was supposed to be. Over time, the stack grows heavy. I’ve come to think that weight is a kind of blessing.

Following on my last missive, I find I have more things to say, of a somewhat more practical nature, about land trusts and small places.

There are very few things more stirring than listening to a congregation however small, singing the Doxology. No praise team, no bass, no drums. Just voices raised in that old, old harmony. It’s one of those cultural touchstones that is, even now, fading away. Fewer churches make a point of singing it; fewer young people know the words without needing to look at the screen. And even fewer know how to sing in four-part harmony.

That old hymn has beautiful words:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heav’nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

And its familiar tune still resonates with what it means to worship together, to be truly rooted in a congregation and a community, and to be good stewards of that beloved place.

Those same impulses of deep roots and faithful presence, can shape how small townships imagine land use. Not as a slow retreat before the onslaught of Taco Johns and strip malls, and not just attempting ecological preservation. Instead, guarding closely the small piece of creation we are given is an act of cultural conservation as well.

When I say we hold it in trust, many people will think of formal land trusts, like the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy, or the Leelenau Conservancy. These worthy organizations are models to be emulated for the progress they’ve made in setting aside land for future generations, guarded from development. The Grand Traverse Land Conservancy, in particular, is the gold standard for such organizations. They’ve been successful in safeguarding natural and scenic landscapes, as well as advising local governments on preserving farm land, especially the fruit belt. Both organizations have wide, bold visions.

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Small places that lack the sort of tax base or donor class must think smaller. It’s not reasonable to ask a place like Banks Township, in Antrim County, or Jamestown Township, in Ottawa County, to set aside 18,000 acres of land or preserve 5,500 acres of farm land - Leelenau Conservancy’s current tally. They can work with such organizations and within their respective counties to set aside park and preserve land or make use of available state funds for these projects. But a land trust in a small municipality would have a rather different focus.

Grand Traverse Land Conservancy’s five county service area isn’t “a” place. It’s a more sweeping collection of towns and villages, woodlands and farms. A small township is less interested in large preservation projects, and more interested in things like preserving working farms, maintaining a stock of affordable housing for its residents, preventing displacement of its institutions, and keeping its land in productive, socially cohesive use.

This kind of land trust would function as a “commons of continuity,” rather than preserving the absence of development. Land that is simply locked up from development of any kind is a net loss for the township tax base, and for community life. The question that comes before the township board isn’t “how do we stop growth?” That question leaves them torn. No one wants to see their home paved over with parking lots. Nor yet do they want to see that place fade away into a ghost town as residents leave, the tax base collapses, and social ties fray until the place itself is no more.

The real question is, “How do we cultivate belonging?” Both of my example townships face similar pressures: sprawl from a nearby larger metro area, displacing farms, pricing out young families, and dissolving the intergenerational loop. The choices presented seem to be allowing and encouraging development or fading away entirely.

A township-oriented land trust would provide bulwarks against these pressures. Ideally that would mean stability for existing farmers, an entry point for young agricultural aspirants, land for local institutions that bind communities together, and long horizons that are not threatened by market volatility.

Let’s take a look at some concrete ways that might happen. Some of this is going to be rather Michigan-specific, because laws and financial structures vary from place to place. In Michigan, farm families can apply to sell the development rights on their land, usually to the County. Which means that it cannot be sold in the future for those subdivisions or strip malls. Since that’s already a function provided by Ottawa County, Antrim County, and private organizations like the Grand Traverse Conservancy, a township land trust wouldn’t really need to duplicate that effort.

A township land trust could create a variant on this program, however. The trust could buy farmland outright, and then lease it to farm families or beginning farmers at long term stable rates, likely lower than the market rate. This farmland “leaseback” program could run on very long time frames. This sort of preservation favors small farms over corporate agribusiness, not least because the land is owned by the township. Which prevents it being used as collateral in other transactions. That makes it less attractive to large entities, and also removes the temptation for a smaller producer to get into the debt trap by mortgaging the land to finance things that don’t return enough to pay off the loan.

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Not all the land in a township trust must or even should be in large parcels. Small pieces of land would contribute to a “cultural commons.” These are spaces that are used more communally. We’ve lost so many of them—old Friendship Halls, grange halls, even one room schoolhouses. These days, school buildings don’t belong to the community. They’re the property of The School District, and may not be used without permission of the board, the district’s lawyer, the custodial staff, and one or more unions. Friendship halls have been torn down or sold to private ownership. There are plenty of rentable private “event centers,” but most of those cluster in more urban settings.

That hole could begin to be filled with a “homestead grange” or a community hall, of sorts. Think of a building, owned by the trust, that included things like an incubator kitchen that could be leased by people starting a cottage food business. A gathering room that could host bridal and baby showers, anniversaries and celebrations of life, graduations and other events. Add on a small classroom for use by homeschool co-ops, quilt guilds, scout troops, 4-H groups, and seed swaps, to name just a few. Plus a tool shed to store tillers, cider presses, honey extractors, air compressors, scaffolding, and other larger tools available for rent from the homestead grange. Keep it close enough to the churches that the bridal party can walk down for a reception. Or a potluck dinner can follow the service.

The grange is the hub. Around it, add resources for rural skills and innovations. What, specifically, is included will be based on community need. It might include a fish cleaning station down by a boat launch or park. Or perhaps a maple syrup boiler, rentable in several-day increments, to boil down collected sap. A covered pavillion for farmers and makers markets. Small parcels dotted about as pollinator strips, orchard lanes, or even some dedicated crop variety trials. A workshop with available tools for things like broom making, basketry, carpentry, or whatever there might be a desire for. These small resources, dotted around the township wherever they make the most sense, are things that might be difficult for an individual to build, at least at first, but could be stewarded by the trust for the community.

Then add a few micro-assets: a trail connector, a boat launch, a scenic lookout with a bench. Too small to be “parks” but packing punch all the same. Perhaps obtain permission for things like a walking trail or cross country ski trail that has a trust-owned trailhead but crosses private property. A small township doesn’t need 300 acre preserves. Sometimes just a few key pieces of land make all the difference.

The final portion of the trust’s attention centers on creating community covenant parcels. For these, the trust would take land that it has acquired, and sell it back to private owners, with certain restrictive covenants. In all cases, the trust retains the development rights. All of the parcels involved would be subject to architectural and land-use restrictions. That keeps all the buildings sympathetic to the local vernacular, and makes it generally unattractive to people who want to build private manors without regard to the larger community. And, since the trust will hardly own all the land in the township, those folks can go build elsewhere without too much trouble.

Most of these parcels will also come with some conservation easements—preserving windbreaks, hedgerows, and viewsheds. Thoughtfully arranged, a patchwork of these parcels would allow wildlife space among the farm parcels, and the ability to move from wooded area to wooded area within those hedgerows and windbreaks.

Rules for what sort of housing may be built might also look a little unusual to the modern real estate market. No subdivisions, no megamansions placed in the center of an enormous parcel of lawn. No conversion to short term rental. And—here’s where Banks Township might have to address whether it wants to reconsider its zoning ordinance, or not—it would allow options like multigenerational housing, ADUs, or “side by side” designs of two homes on one parcel. Specifics would have to be tailored to the individual parcel.Taking a leaf from our cultural past, and adding on for a new generation, rather than sending them away, is part of the heart of a community-building trust.

With enough land in it’s “land bank,” the trust could even designate a set of adjoining parcels as “pocket hamlets.” The trust would retain ownership of a shared orchard, a common green, perhaps even a small chapel or meeting room/school room. And each parcel would have a specified portion alloted for the residence, clustering those houses around the shared resources. Small, walkable islands of rootedness. This, admittedly, is “land trust in advanced mode.”

Eventually, the trust might even acquire or build a small smattering of starter homes that could be leased to young families not quite ready to handle the larger responsibilities and expenses of their own farmstead just yet. But they would be close enough to the homestead grange and all its resources to begin to learn.

This is a land trust model for small municipalities, not for wealthy counties. It isn’t trying to simply “preserve” land, but to cultivate it. Development isn’t something to be avoided, but it is certainly something to be shaped. And it prioritizes community building over preserving views.

At this point, you are probably wondering how to finance such an endeavor. This will, by it’s nature, be rather Michigan-centric. Simply because that’s what I know best. A township-based trust would have the opportunity of weaving together sources of funding like Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Grants, both for farmland preservation and “value added” agriculture. The second aspect might apply to things like the incubator kitchen. Combine those with other sources like USDA Rural Development grants for the Homestead Grange, and Michigan Spark grants and Housing Development assistance and you have beginnings.

While private donors are nice, it’s unlikely that either of our example townships will be gifted with a large lump sum, meaning that what funds are available must be carefully managed, especially at first. The trust won’t be able to afford to just find a nice big piece of open space and buy it. Land acquisition is likely to be piecemeal, and small at first. Strategies like obtaining tax-reverted parcels, donor properties, working with conservation donors, and doing some parcel trading with the township itself will all be useful. It’s not uncommon for land in rural areas to change hands quietly, rather than being listed for sale. That network of farmers, churches, schools, and local officials can inform the trust of what properties might be available, and can communicate to land owners the potential benefits of working with the trust.

Once the trust is up and running, one of the goals will be to balance ongoing work and expenses against the income generated by leases and covenanted sales. Leases would include both farmland leases and also small fees for the use of trust-held facilities like the incubator kitchen, a farmer’s market stall in a nearby larger community, and items from the “tool chest.” Sales of trust properties would need to be carefully managed, with the trust retaining development rights and with restrictions for resale to prevent flipping. At the same time, the parcels should be priced modestly, to account for those restrictions. The goal is to keep the trust perpetually capitalized, and avoid its falling into a developer mindset, pursuing “growth opportunities” that work against its underlying purpose of growing and stabilizing a thick, interconnected community. The trust isn’t there just as a land broker, but to preserve cultural heritage, too.

That means that a small, township based trust might occasionally partner with county conservation programs, state programs, or larger regional land trusts. It needs to remain independent and not get absorbed into county-level goals and activities. If the goal is to root people in Banks Township, or Jamestown Township, or Overijsel Township then the trust itself needs to likewise remain rooted.

I did mention, in my last post, the idea of combining the plans from Jay Osbourn’s Free Farmhouse collection with a local lumberyard that can kit them up as a way to help add to a starter-home stock. I won’t go into that again here, although I think it’s an idea with merit, but probably less directly related to the trust and its financing. We’ll put a pin in that, and come back to it in a future post.

I would like, however, to take a moment to also discuss trust governance. The board should be one of mixed experience and deep roots. NOT composed of “experts” in trusts or grant writing or other fields that do not directly relate to the township and its people. This is an organization that exists to serve an explicit purpose in a specific place for a specific people. Not one that exists to provide jobs or experience for professional “nonprofit” organizers.

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An ideal board would be composed of representatives from the township at large, the local farming community, local trades or businesses, and one seat reserved for a representative from the church community, and another for a young resident. This ensures memory + innovation + moral ballast.

This is not an invitation to treat the local churches as an ATM, funding the trust on the grounds that it’s good for the community. Instead the place of the churches is to provide a deep well of moral and cultural heritage on which to draw in the rebuilding of the place in question. That might be by recommending families who might be good fits for covenant parcels. It could be by providing stewards for the community hall, or volunteers to make things like classes, markets, or seasonal festivals. Never forget that, while it’s important to have teachers and craftspeople and vendors, it’s the humble souls who set up the tables, run the lunch counters, and do the cleanup who really make things run.

The churches also provide a virtue-based vocabulary for belonging, sabbath, and stewardship. This is the deep weight that stabilizes the rest of the work, and it cannot be done without them. Leading all the participants in singing the Doxology at the end of an event is the very sound of communal worship and cultural coherence in practice.

The restrictive covenants attached to parcels that belong or pass through the hands of the trust reflect the very nature of being a covenant community. They tie land use to generational continuity, creation care, care for neighbor, and mutual responsibility. The tending of souls and the tending of land are inextricably intertwined.

There is a lot of discussion about restoring rootedness. Inherent to that restoration is teaching stewardship. You cannot be rooted in a place without participating in its care. As I argued in my essay for Mere Orthodoxy, the granting of “dominion” in Genesis is not a mandate to extract whatever use we can from creation, but rather to tend the garden. We are the undergardeners of Creation. Rooting families in particular places by inviting them into that work is a profound way to counter the displacement of the modern era.

As with stewardship, we need to recapture belonging as a Christian virtue. The ideal of total autonomy has been taken entirely too far, resulting in an atomized society where, to quote judges “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” But we are instead called to community, hospitality, covenant, inheritance; to care for “the widow, the orphan, and the stranger.” Rural churches do this quietly, every week. A township land trust functions as an expansion of this embracing of new residents, not just to shake hands and say hello, but to invite them into the full life of the community. This is a relationship that runs in both directions. New residents need to participate in community life, too. The church makes a natural hub for this knitting together of community.

The “think globally, act locally” trope has shown itself to be empty. Most of us have no way to affect things on a scale that influences global events. We can only watch them, as we scroll social media, and become frustrated. Or, we can instead embrace the sacredness of the small.

I’m certain that a lot of residents of small places would read this (if it circulates widely enough for that ever to happen at all) and think, “that seems like a lot of work. Why bother?” The plan offered here and in my previous essay offer at least one means of anchoring a place in its own cultural heritage and encouraging a flourishing community to root itself. The alternative is drift. Without intentionality, these places will be lost, either to sprawl or to decay. I offer a middle path, that is not an attempt at “preservation,” trying to build a terrarium to protect what we value, nor is it capitulation to the (admittedly very LOUD) voices insisting that the only way forward is to grow, grow, GROW!

The strength here lies in its small scale. A little township can move more quickly, adopting and discarding ideas as they prove useful or not, than a county. Relationship governance beats bureaucracy any day. And no one is coming to save you, regardless of who wins the next county-, state-, or nationwide election.

All of the places I’ve held up as examples—Banks Township, Jamestown Township, Overijsel Township—as well as a lot of others I’m unaware of, have things to defend. The land, certainly, but also culture, heritage, ways of doing things. I don’t necessarily mean that a large proportion of your citizens are of a certain culture, that is celebrated annually at the “Wherever Festival.” Many of these places have developed their own unique local cultures, blended from a dozen different places and woven into something unique. I’m advocating a way to stop the fraying of those threads.

Think about it. Talk about it at the local coffee shop. (If you’re going to Friske’s, have a sour cream donut on my behalf.) As much as we blame the internet and social media for our modern ills, it does provide the ability to do some initial research. Go look at the local GIS parcel maps. Talk to township officials. Read the parameters for some of the grants I talked about. Know a lawyer with some experience with real estate? Ask what it would take to set up such a trust.

It’s almost Christmas. Think about your traditions, who you have to pass them to. Go to the children’s Christmas program at the local church. Drive around and think about what it would be like to be headed to visit one of those little pocket hamlets for a Christmas carol sing.

Warm Regards,

Holly, The Country Mouse

P.S. I’m thinking about this in very particular places—roads I know by heart, churches where the doors stick in winter, fields whose ownership has changed but whose fences haven’t. If you’re reading this from a place like that, I’d like to hear what you see from your own front porch.

If you’re involved in teaching, pastoring, or forming people to think faithfully about land and place, I suspect you’ll recognize some of what I’m reaching for here. This conversation feels like it’s only just beginning.

I hope you will not mind too much if today’s missive is addressed to the place where steam trains once passed my great-grandparents’ farmhouse. That once knew the house my grandmother was raised in; the same house my father recreated for her in miniature as a treasured memento. And, if you, too, take away some small modicum of hope, so much the better.

Banks Township, Michigan, is a place that will always have a piece of my heart. And a large chunk of my family history. Although the old house is gone—sold, moved to another farm, and a second story built on top—the stories run deep. Five generations of my family are buried in the Atwood Cemetery. I remember sitting in the Ellsworth Christian Reformed church, swinging my black patent leather Mary Janes, too small for my feet to reach the floor. I love every sun-warmed orchard slope, every rippling stream, every lake breeze that shakes the pines and maples.

So it should surprise absolutely no one that this piece from The Mackinac Center, bemoaning the lack of success Banks Township had in stimulating ‘growth’ by implementing a zoning ordinance, caught my attention. The piece went on to state,

“Most of the growth and development of Michigan’s communities came before zoning took hold. Factories, farms, fuel sources and housing developed naturally and in places where they made sense. As municipalities imposed zoning — often to “keep the character” of communities — they made things worse. Housing prices skyrocket, development stagnates and tourism suffers. These unintended consequences have made communities worse than they would have been. “

It also cites an opinion piece by Jarrett Skorup that champions leaning into tourism to save “midwest factory towns.” I cringed, I must confess.

What is “Growth” For?

I think the first thing we must think about is ,what would a flourishing Banks Township look like? Is “development” something to be pursued? Would “tourism” improve the lives of the residents? Are strip malls and subdivisions “growth”? Will condominiums along the shores of the lake help draw new residents and balance budgets?”

I’m not convinced. Already, Tom’s grocery store, with its wooden floors and freezer lockers for all the local beef that he cut for farmers across the county has become an antique store. The owners had a photo of the building as it once was, but had no idea who Tom was or what that business had been to the community. I remember Mom stopping in to get the ingredients to make Grandpa his favorite cookies - cherry winks. If we were good, we’d be allowed to pick out a sticker book or some paper dolls from one of the wire spinners at the end of the aisle.

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Across the road, the old Atwood Christian Reformed Church was sold, the congregation merging with their brothers and sisters in nearby Ellsworth. The building was sold and became, first an Arts Center, then a shop selling art and home goods.

Both antique store and gallery are now closed, as well. Tourism? Maybe not.

Banks Township, Ellsworth, Atwood, and all of the almost 1500 people who still live there need to decide who they want to be. I don’t think zoning will help. I don’t think unzoning will help. Although it might open them up to assault by the forces currently bearing down on the rest of rural Michigan. By that, I mean solar farms, wind farms, data centers, battery installations, and other “development.”

As a grandchild, if you will, of Banks Township, and with a deep love for both the familiar hills and vales as well as the people who inhabit them, I’d like to make a suggestion for another way.

The Mackinac analysis (and others) have highlighted the things Banks Township doesn’t have. It’s not the tourist haven that nearby Charlevoix is. It is not, in fact, a dying manufacturing town. Which means that Jarret Skorup’s advice doesn’t apply. It doesn’t have much infrastructure. Although that lack may be what has saved it from the depredations of those who stomp about like Godzilla, looking for cheap land to exploit in the “green energy” and AI boom. And it doesn’t have “enough housing.” But, it also isn’t handcuffed with expensive infrastructure that suburbia inevitably brings.

What it does have is something all of those analyses missed entirely: Cultural capital in spades, especially for such a small, rural area. The population is small, and a little older than the rest of the state. But within it lies a wealth of knowledge about the land around them and how to live on it. Farming, fixing equipment, tending fruit trees, raising beef, and cooking from a well-stocked pantry. There is an active historical society, with dedicated people who want to pass on the stories of the area. And a strong religious core that holds people together. All of this, among the rolling beauty of the orchards, farms, lakes, and acres and acres of land, is an embarrassment of riches, and one that is more appealing to Gen Z than it might seem on the surface.

How Do We Find Those Who Want to Inherit?

While some of us older folks might have a mental image of the up and coming adults as a horde of tech-savvy urbanites training their ambitions toward college degrees and nonprofit management, that impression doesn’t really reflect the truth. So, what do they want?

Demographic analysis of Census data reported by Business Insider shows that since 2020, people ages 25–44 (older Gen Z plus millennials) have shifted toward moving into rural counties and small metros, with about 63% of such counties gaining in that age group between 2020 and 2023, versus 27% in the early 2010s. What that means is that the movement of younger people is shifting to smaller towns and rural areas.

49% of rural Gen Z would like to move to a town or city in-state (vs. 42% out-of-state), driven by job barriers but a desire for community-rooted stability. This highlights Gen Z’s preference for nearby, affordable locales over big-city leaps.
Source: Gallup/Walton Family Foundation Rural Gen Z Survey

47% of Gen Z express interest in learning a trade, starting a small business, or pursuing apprenticeships instead of traditional college. This links to rooted rural economies where hands-on skills enable local livelihoods.
Source: Gallup/Walton Family Foundation Gen Z Panel (2025).

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Only 41% of Gen Z believe they will ever own a home, with 70% of young renters (Gen Z/Millennials) struggling to afford housing payments. This economic pinch amplifies pulls toward affordable, land-based rootedness.
Source: Redfin/Ipsos Housing Affordability Survey (May 2025).

In short, Gen Z is lonely, uprooted, and in search of a life that offers more satisfaction and connectedness. They don’t need convincing, they just need a little help.

How then, would Banks Township and other places like it provide them with an on ramp to the sort of life that the people who already live there take for granted?

Who’s Doing it Right?

Let’s widen our lens and take a look at a few other places, and how they have succeeded. None of them map perfectly onto Banks Township, but all offer things to learn.

First, let’s run right down US 131 to Traverse City. Now, TC (as everybody in Banks Township already knows) is an absolute tourist Mecca. Growth isn’t really their issue. At the same time, they are also home to the Green Door Folk School.

Since its launch in early 2024, the Green Door Folk School—founded by Traverse City local Kristina Schnepf as a hands-on, adult-focused hub for traditional skills like woodworking, quilting, biodynamic farming, mushroom foraging, and community events (e.g., barn dances)—has emerged as a key catalyst in Traverse City’s quiet renaissance for young adults, particularly Gen Z (aged 13–28 in 2025). While not exclusively Gen Z-targeted, its emphasis on low-barrier, immersive learning in a region already primed for agricultural and cultural revival has drawn a notable youth cohort seeking rootedness amid urban disillusionment. Paired with broader efforts like the Northwest Michigan Food & Farming Network (FFN), Hagerty Center programs, and local land trusts, these initiatives have contributed to measurable demographic shifts, fostering skills, networks, and livelihoods that encourage long-term settlement.

The summation of all this effort is about 200-300 young people choosing to root themselves in Traverse City or its immediate surrounds. At least 70% of participants in these programs express an intent to stay for at least 2 years. Birth rates are rising, and alumni have started at least 25 new shops and eateries.

Let’s widen our lens further, but stay in the Midwest. Have you ever been to Lindsborg, KS? They’d like you to “come home to Little Sweden.” The town’s $500k-seeded community land trust offers 0% loans up to $15k for homes under $150k (median: $165k), facilitating 120+ purchases by under-35s committing to 5-year stays. There are also “starter homestead” plots available (1–3 acres) to support micro-farms with shared tools. At the same time, Bethany College’s non-degree programs in Swedish crafts (e.g., Dala horse carving, baking) and trades draw 200+ annually. And with those new-found skills, newcomers can take advantage of $2k–5k micro-grants that have already launched 35+ ventures (e.g., cobbler shops, diners), with a 70% 3-year survival rate via the annual Young Entrepreneur Fair. Events like the biennial Svensk Hyllningsfest (19k attendees in Oct. 2025) and church-hosted “welcome suppers” build bonds, boosting birth rates +8% (to 12/1k) and retail sales +22% ($45M in 2024).

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The result? From a pre-2020 youth loss of ~60/year, Lindsborg gained a net 180 young adults (2020–2025), dropping median age to 35.5.

Both examples stand on four pillars:

1. Offering an alternative to a University degree - trades like carpentry, welding, HVAC or other fields that are needed everywhere.

2. Folk schools or traditional skill programs - these can teach a marketable skill. But they’re as much about cultural transmission, satisfaction, and adding a richness to life that can only be found in doing instead of consuming.

3. Land banks or micro homestead incubators - some way to get young people onto the land, when they’re convinced they’ll never be able to own a house is a key element of genuine “growth” for a community.

4. Local small business support - the only way to grow and maintain a small town or rural community is to lose the Walmart mindset, and commit to patronizing local businesses. That means the newcomers make use of businesses that are already there. And the locals support any new businesses that the immigrants might start.

This is growth without strip malls and subdivisions.

What would this look like, specifically, for Banks Township?

Let’s see:

It all begins with access to land and housing. Admittedly, a bit of an issue for a township that has only 1,022 housing units to start with. The first step, then, would be to establish a Community Land Trust whose purpose would be to preserve working land and secure affordable, livable homesteads for young families. Leave me a comment if you’d all be interested in a subsequent piece on the brass tacks of how that would happen. But, in a nutshell, the trust would issue 99-year, inheritable leases. This keeps costs down, encourages long term residency, and counters the upward price pressure caused by short term leasing of units and seasonal homes.

Leverage state and federal grants. There are a host of them available; Michigan’s Office of Rural Prosperity, USDA’s Rural Development grants, and Community Facilities Direct Loans & Grants can support infrastructure, shared workshop spaces, historic buildings, and homestead-oriented vocational training.

Banks Township might not have the population or the draw to support a “folk school” in competition with the more artsy Traverse City. But a “homestead grange” might be just the ticket. Modeled loosely on the Grange organization, that advocated for farmers and then served as a social glue, a Homestead Grange would be there for the small farmers, homestead business owners, and folks who just want to do for themselves. Like the Green Door Folk School, it would offer classes. But tailored to living a more self-sufficient life. Pantry basics, seasonal gardening and orchard care, soil building on glacial slopes, creating a laid hedge with native plants, small engine repair, basic chainsaw safety, and so on.

Provide an alternative solution to the housing crunch. Jay Osborne, of the Free Farmhouse project, is an architect who provides complete plans, free of charge, for many farm house designs. Many are reconstructions of historic farmhouses that he measured and drew. They’re meant to be simple to build, from standard lumber and supplies, and often come with pre-designed additions. Start small, add on as needed. Now, take that fabulous resource, and make it even more accessible by having a local lumberyard kit up the supplies for 2-3 of the most useful designs.

Take it a step further and provide some classes on basic framing, concrete pouring, and so on. Found a co-op that keeps a tool library and a roster of retired builders, electricians, plumbers, farmers, and others who can serve as mentors. Facilitate “house raising” get-togethers among co-op members. There might be some overlap here with the Homestead Grange.

Give the churches a chance to be involved, too. Parish stewardship committees partnered with the Land Trust would be best placed to identify families who would benefit from the opportunities offered. Church-sponsored apprenticeships would pair teens and young adults with older congregants skilled at carpentry, farming, canning, sewing, or other useful skills. They could provide a Deacon’s Tool Chest, purchased with benevolent funds or grants and used to both teach and provide the means to build and repair. Barn-raising weekends, organized ecumenically, where congregations adopt one or two homestead projects per year—an embodied expression of neighborliness and covenant responsibility. Or even hosting a meal on co-op work days. Revive the tradition of community labor followed by a shared meal.

By lowering the barrier to land, simplifying housing, supporting small enterprises, and involving the Church as both a moral and practical guide, Banks Township can regenerate the conditions that once made it flourish. Let those dear people pass on all the things they know to a new generation who yearns to learn them. Use the bones of inherited culture and Christian obligation to rebuild a place suited for the next generation.

The thirty thousand foot view: Reject strip malls and subdivision or whatever the Mackinac Center defines as “growth.” And trade it for a thick-rooted, intergenerational community. Maintain a community that can continue to hand down its land, stories, and worship across generations.

I don’t live in Banks Township. I am unlikely to, given my own circumstances. But I do own a little real estate - a plot about three by six feet, mine in perpetuity, right next to Dad, in the Atwood Cemetery. I write all of this out of love, and the hope that the place where the ground is—to paraphrase the poet Donald Hall—thick with my known dead, will remain sturdy enough to support 100 years or more of history for another family who has yet to even hear its name.

Warm regards,

Holly, The Country Mouse

P.S. Places like Banks Township don’t flourish by accident; they flourish when the people who love them are willing to imagine what’s possible. If you still call those hills home—or if you carry a similar place in your own memory—I’d welcome your thoughts. What do you believe a healthy, rooted community should protect? What should it dare to build?

In the next part of this conversation, I’m inclined to trace the practical path: how a land trust begins, what a Homestead Grange might require, and which first steps any rural township could take without waiting for permission. But if there’s another direction you’d like to see this go, I’m listening.

This constitutes something of a bonus missive, and I expect it to be the beginning of a four-part series. It flows in part from recent events, and in part from my most recent Front Porch Republic essay.

The Myth of the Village

There has been quite a bit of discussion on social media about a piece in the Atlantic, by Olga Khazan entitled “The Most Useless Piece of Parenting Advice.” The author rails against ubiquitous advice to young mothers to utilize “their village” to help with the ups and downs of child rearing. The essay itself was followed by a flurry of responses, with a lot of people suggesting that what Khazan omitted in her analysis was the option of Church as “village.” As the deluge has slid across my feed the last couple of days, I decided that I, too, wanted to put an oar in the water. But I want to respond both to Khazan’s complaint and the rather facile proposed solution to simply make your church your “village.” (I also hate that word. We’ll get to that in a bit).

At the outset, I want to underscore that none of these people are incorrect in their diagnosis of our atomized, alienated society. Khazan’s original piece puts its finger on the problem, and Nadya Williams’ lovely response for IFS further plucks at this thread. We all feel the same aching desire for connection. But the advice to “find your village at church” mistakes structure for substance. The ready-made “community” of a congregation cannot, by itself, replace the full lattice of ties that once supported everyday life. Williams makes the point that people who have never experienced the support of a church family don’t know what they are missing. I would extend that argument to suggest that even people in close knit congregations, who have never experienced the wider depth of real community bonds likewise don’t know what they, too, are missing. But naming the ache is not enough; we misprescribe the cure.

And as a final caveat, I approach this problem from my usual vantage point of small places and rural redoubts. Urbanophiles may have to engage their imaginations a bit.

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As long as we’re speaking in metaphors, let’s talk for just a moment about the word “village,” and the execrable book that made it a metaphor for family as collective obligation and an attempt to clothe statist overreach as virtue. Your children aren’t really your children, they’re “our” children. But a mother of small children is not looking for a crèche in which to deposit her offspring so that she can return to some “more fulfilling” aspect of her life. She’s searching for fellowship, mutual aid, support, and sometimes just some commiseration. These things are found in kinship networks.

Threads of Kinship

Kinship can be blood or spiritual. But the old adage that “blood is thicker than water” is an adage for a reason. Networks built entirely on commonalities like neighborhood, life stage, ideology, or even denomination are more fragile that family webs in most cases. Certainly, these are thinner than they once were. Fewer children, fewer aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, and sisters make for fewer strands. Divorce, geographical separation, and the recent trend of abandoning family over political disputes fray them further.

The problem has been analyzed almost to death. Broken families, uprooted generations who did not grow up in the same community that their parents were raised in, fewer siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins distributed across larger geographic spans. Churches that have succumbed to the “seeker sensitive” advice to such an extent that they have become spiritual filling stations, looking to “top off” patrons rather than nurture a single body made up of many members. Neighborhoods in which nobody knows anybody else, where most families sleep in their homes but do almost everything else elsewhere.

The desire for a “village” is really the unarticulated longing for shared life and obligation. We want to know and to be known. But the notion is so alien to most of us that we concentrate on our desire to be known, putting little or no effort into the “knowing” of others half of the equation. The desire to be part of a thick, firm, community is a good one and to be encourage. We want the benefits of obligation, while trying to dodge the obligations themselves. But it’s important to understand that you cannot simply “build a village” as you would an IKEA bookcase, in under an hour using only an allen wrench. The genuine thing is a carpenter’s masterpiece, assembled carefully, piece by piece, carefully shaping them to fit together over a long period of time.

A real community is not simply a collection of people who will put their arms out to catch us when we “trust fall” backwards with our problems. It’s a sturdy structure, cross braced with pieces that share the weight and hold each other up. It isn’t one single, load-bearing beam. It’s the intersection of many pieces that lock together into a solid frame. Family, congregation, neighborhood, civic groups, friendships, and mutual relationships separated by a few degrees all overlap to form a social life that forms a web of mutual dependence. This is why single point solutions (”just find a church”) collapse under real weight.

Post Turtles

Without cross braces, all that are left are posts. Have you ever heard of a post turtle? It’s a country idiom, a turtle atop a fence post. You might not have any idea how he got there, but you do know that he doesn’t belong there, he can’t get down, and he can’t do anything where he is. A post can support a turtle; it cannot hold up a household.

Dear reader, we have built a post turtle culture—perched above real connection, exposed, inert, and precariously individualistic. Khazan is right; telling the turtle to “find a village” won’t get him down. Personal freedom and helplessness are opposing sides of single coin. If we are entirely free of the constraints of other people, we are also bereft of the right to call for aid. Rohan will not answer. Our turtle friend is displaced from the land and useless for bearing any weight, all while being incapable of calling for help. You can’t build a home with posts. You can build a palisade, but it will serve only to keep others out. Posts, beams, and cross braces are required to build a home. A structure to connect the tops of the posts down to the land itself, that distributes the weight, shares the burden, and can shelter more that a single soul. Radical autonomy is simply loneliness with better branding.

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And yet, all is not lost. The ruins of our post turtle culture contain the materials for rebuilding. Small acts, persistent attention, and careful repair can reclaim what has been weakened, restoring connection one plank, one rope, one shared moment at a time.

Reclaiming Connection

The work of reclaiming connection requires surrendering some of the autonomy we have been taught to prize. Changing it requires surrendering some of the autonomy we have been taught to prize. Let me simply point out a few things. Having more children means that your children will have each other to lean on. It also means that they can share the burden of caring for you and your spouse as you age more broadly.

While you get on with the long-term project of making more kinfolk, you might be surprised how many of your existing relations are quite delighted to reconnect. I have recently found a rather distant cousin who has no siblings, no children, no aunts or uncles left. He’s slightly bemused and warmly enthused by my periodic visits, often bringing yet another cousin along for him to meet. Send Christmas cards, meet for coffee, plan a reunion. Give genuine consideration to the idea of moving back to wherever your family might still be concentrated. It might mean taking a lower paying position, or passing up some career opportunity. Make sure, when you do the math, that you leave a column in your spreadsheet for conviviality, meaning, and contentment.

Understand that digital community is not genuine community. It is much easier to forget about someone who hasn’t logged on in a while than it is to disregard a normally neat neighbor whose grass is suddenly much too long.

Fellowship in fertile soil naturally expands beyond kinship, whether of blood or of spirit, to include a web of households joined together by duty, gratitude, and place. This genuine village, in the deeper sense, is tied together by bonds of mutual dependence, shared history, interlinking kinships, and a commitment to each other and their place.

It is the interlinking that provides most of the strength. If, for instance, you ever went to school with a cousin, you know that you held your cousin more tightly than your other classmates. And, at the same time, your classmate cousin held a closer spot in your web than other cousins who lived further away and whom you saw less frequently. Some of your neighbors might attend your church. Others may not. Some neighbors might have children who play a sport with yours. Others may be retired, children grown and gone. It is the summation of all of those small connections that builds into a web that is both strong and resilient. This is the lattice that makes community cross bracing.

The Long Work of Building

Most communities do not simply have A church. There are multiple congregations of different denominations or even different faiths, whose congregants are not siloed into interacting only within that institution. Most people have connections, sometimes deep ones, sometimes casual, outside those walls. I have a copy of the old Barnard Grange Ladies’ Auxiliary cookbook, largely because it has recipes contributed by my grandmother and my great aunt Jennie. Our family were never grange members; we had farmsteads, not cash crops. But Jennie even shared her banket recipe, a near sacred trust, because those ladies were her neighbors and her friends.

As a child, my family belonged to a tiny little church. Too small for anything but the basics of sunday school, sunday services, and the odd catechism class, it didn’t have any of the “bells and whistles.” But Mom and Dad were willing to let me go to the midweek Awana program with the little girl down the street, where I probably learned most of my bible memory verses. Mom, in turn, gave piano lessons to my young hostess. Everybody got something from the arrangement. I was learning to brace.

Sometimes, indeed, a church can offer at least a place to start building your village. You begin in an environment where everyone is already oriented to a degree of generosity of spirit and openness to hospitality. But some churches are better at this than others. Let me tell a small tale here, not out of bitterness, but as an illustration.

When the Beam Breaks

My husband and I had recently bought our first house, and were attending membership classes in a local church that we had decided would suit both of use, coming as we did from different backgrounds. I was pregnant with our first child, and before we finished the class sessions, she was born prematurely.

Both pastors were very supportive, visiting the hospital regularly. Once she came home, one performed her baptism and the other the presentation to the congregation.

And then we ended up getting a bit lost. To be sure, it was a largish church, with 1400 professing members. We tried signing up for small groups for parents of small children. And never got an invitation to one. We put her in the church day care program, hoping time with other children might improve her increasing obvious developmental delays.

I fielded calls from other congregants who knew I was a veterinarian, looking for professional advice, often after hours. I got a call one afternoon from a gentleman who introduced himself as a member of the church’s Stephen Ministry. Finally! I unburdened my poor overwhelmed young mother’s heart about our struggles with a child increasingly obviously disabled, as well as the usual financial and other frustrations of a young household. When I finished, he managed to stutter that he had been calling to ask if I had wanted to join the Stephen Ministry, and hurriedly hung up.

If you are a generous soul, dear reader, wondering if he at least passed my plaint to a deacon or elder, someone who might reach out to us... he did not.

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We continued to try. Even after we were asked to remove our daughter from the day care program. She was simply too much, still not walking or talking at the age of three. My younger daughter was born. And, as she grew, also displayed some deep developmental delays. Only the nursery director would permit them in the nursery, doting on both of them and encouraging me to keep asking the church to consider more targeted programming. “There is a need,” she would say, stroking my youngest’s blonde ringlets, “and they can afford to hire someone trained.”

For several years, my husband and I would attend opposite services, one of us the early morning, the other the late. While the other stayed home with the children. It would be at least a relief to have our children have access to a program that would allow us to sit through a service together. So we went, again, to the church office and asked if they would consider starting a special needs Sunday school. We were offered a room in the basement if we would like to conduct one. That, dear reader, is conscription rather than fellowship.

A church that operates as a marketplace, consuming our gifts, without offering casserole crumb of support in return, cannot be a village.

Our current church is kinder and less status conscious, but is overburdened. A local residential home for developmentally disabled adults provides weekly services for residents, their families, and the rest of the community. It’s a good thing. It is not, however, a “village.” The knees of everyone in the chairs in the gathering room are buckling under the same burden. Drowning people cannot hold each other up. There can be some mutual support, but bowed timbers are not reinforcement.

There is one more caution I must share. Even when a church has sound doctrine, warm fellowship, and generational continuity, it is a single beam. And beams can crack. Moral weight is integral to structural strength.

I grew up in a tiny, interwoven congregation of people who genuinely tried to live as one body. But this is a fallen world, and a profound moral breach occurred.. The pastor declined to institute any sort of discipline, a failure of shepherding that deepened the breach. The ridgepole was broken, and would not withstand many more years of storms and winds before it fell in. The church slid into decline, and finally folded. The people for whom that little congregation was the entirety of their web suffered the most. If the church is the only beam in your life, when it breaks, so does your life. A well-braced household stands firm, even when part of the frame gives way.

The collapse of a church is not an uncommon thing, especially in the current hyper-secular age where many congregations are aging. My mother’s church finally closed its doors in July. I had worried about her, and what this would mean. Because those good people had made a point to make sure she had assistance when she needed it. She is 80, a widow of a few years, and both of her children live a couple of hours away.

Mom, for her part, has a robust hearth circle. Quietly, year by year, she and Dad had patiently placed lath and lattice across their lives. She has already found a new church she likes. While the next door neighbor was over this week to change out the battery in her car. She went to lunch with a friend from her Tai Chi class at the Senior Center, got picked up for a “ladies night out” by another neighbor, and hosted a visit from old friends from that first old church who were in town for the weekend. Another neighbor stopped by with some brisket from his latest barbecue session. I need not have worried.

Friction and Fellowship

We should not move on from here without revisiting the idea of correction and discipline. True fellowship does not just provide practical help, it carries a certain moral weight. This is something we moderns do not like to submit to. We walk around wearing shirts that say, “Don’t Judge Me!”

But a community that never corrects is not a community, it is an audience. What we need isn’t affirmation, it is assimilation. When you live cross braced, others will notice if you’re starting to become crooked and seek to straighten you. This is the friction of a life well and integrally lived. Modern online tribes try to simulate fellowship. But in that frictionless environment, nothing can hold. The moment you dissent, your membership in the tribe is revoked. Real fellowship disciplines in love, and endures. We must be shaped: sanded, filed, chiseled down until we fit together like a well-jointed frame.

Living the common life is what the longing for a “village” really is. But we must understand, first and foremost, that a village is not a “support staff.” And that we must release the idea of radical autonomy as being entirely anathema to a common life. To rebuild such a life will take more than joining a church.

Live near kin or long term friends, even if you have to sacrifice a certain degree of affluence or gaining another step on a managerial ladder. Join a church. And also join overlapping civic efforts. Share the rhythm of work, worship, and celebration with your neighbors. Give up a little of your personal independence to gain a hearth circle. Submit to the created order of obedience and stewardship.

As you walk around your place, look for post turtles, and try to help them down. We were made to be joined together, not perched. Don’t “find your village.” Build your cross braces. The work begins with the smallest of obediences: stay, build, connect.

Warm regards,

Holly, The Country Mouse

P.S. Village-building is not a weekend DIY project. There is no allen wrench, no quick-assemble kit. You are not issued a village membership card with your church offering envelopes. It takes patience, stubbornness, and the willingness to get your hands dirty. Start small. Keep at it. And yes, help the post turtles down.

I am a bit late with what was meant to be my Halloween missive. I hope you will forgive the delay, and still appreciate the tidings.

As October wound down, my husband and I spent the last few evenings indulging in our annual spooky season film fest. Neither of us much cares for the sort of horror movies that dominate the season. We prefer the ones I’d place in the delightful shiver category—stories that make you glance toward the darkened hallway, but smile while you do it. Among our favorites is the Doctor Who episode “Blink.”

If you’re not familiar, it follows the adventure of Sally Sparrow as she tries to outwit a set of creatures known as the Weeping Angels—statues that look like carved angels covering their faces, but which can send you back in time with a single touch. The story begins with Sally exploring an abandoned house in London, where she discovers a message hidden under the wallpaper—addressed to her by name. And the chase is on.

“Blink” doesn’t have any overt Halloween theming, but it’s perfectly balanced between eerie and wondrous, which makes it ideal for the season. It reminds us of the thrill of not knowing what’s behind the door—or what might move when we’re not looking. It’s a timely reminder in a world determined to make everything so very safe that there’s no room left for the strange joy of the unknown.

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This is why we love old cities—with their nooks and crannies that might hide an entrance to some forgotten underground world. While the nanny-state urbanists keep drafting their visions of the perfect metropolis, full of clean lines and bright surfaces, we long for the crooked and unkempt. It’s the difference between watching The Addams Family in its original black and white and seeing photos of the actual set—painted in garish pinks to read better on early television film. Turn on all the lights in the spooky house at the end of the lane, and the mystery vanishes. Only the banal remains.

We’ve mistaken the absence of danger for the presence of life. We put up railings on glorious vistas to keep anyone from falling—and in doing so, block the view. Quirky cottages are condemned and torn down as “safety hazards.” I sometimes wonder if any twelve-year-old today has ever played Ghost in the Graveyard—in an actual graveyard.

Modern urbanists would have us stroll along sidewalks of prescribed width, past buildings whose facades display an engineered calm—polite, pristine, interchangeable. But where, in that seamless “City of the Future,” could one still stumble across an old iron gate mounted between two brick pillars, overgrown with briars yet beckoning the adventurous soul to tug it open on its rusty hinges and see what lies beyond?

Replaced, no doubt, by a neat little coffee kiosk.

I’m reminded of the neat, Rockwell-esque vision of small town American life that opens “Something Wicked This Way Comes”—our other spooky season classic. What would Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway make of it all? Would any of the denizens of the overlit modern global metropolis deign to attend a midnight carnival? Could they even understand the urge to follow one’s curiosity wherever it might lead? Or would they, like Mr. Halloway, have already hedged their lives in with rules meant to keep them safe—even if those rules cause a sclerosis of the soul.

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Curiosity, even tinged with fear, is a moral muscle—one that must be exercised. The boys’ real danger is not the carnival’s temptations, but the risk of becoming immune to wonder—whether of delight or horror. Mr. Halloway learns this just in time. Failing to do so makes of us all Autumn People, so afraid of facing winter and death that we cease to live at all.

This gives us two competing visions: the technocratic dream of the perfect city—brightly lit, flattened out, every variable controlled by the powers that be. Everything runs on schedule; each day is portioned out efficiently. Or, if we translate this to a smaller scale, the Rockwellian small town of neat storefronts all in a row: Trumanville, neatly hedged and painted in pastel tones.

Versus the living city, full of empty lots, odd corners, quirky angles—and maybe even Weeping Angels. There is risk. There is wasted space and time. There are, perhaps, even unicorns fed by adventuresome youngsters not with corn, as the poet says, but with the possibility of being.

When we engineer out risk, we raise children who never learn to take it. They cannot tell what is reasonable and what is not. And since we learn not from our successes but from our failures, we deprive them of learning altogether—and ourselves of the same childlike wonder.

This is why tales of the fantastic are so important. One of my favorites when I was young was John Bellairs’ The House With a Clock in Its Walls. (Read the book; the cinematic version sanitizes it entirely—Bellairs wrote gothic horror for the tweener set.) I happened to be driving through Marshall, Michigan, this past weekend, and passed the house that inspired it. I’d admired it before, but this time I noticed the nearby cemetery, dotted with mausoleums, one even built into a hillock. I half expected to see Serena Izard swooping among the gravestones, even in the cold light of day.

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The delightful shiver is meant to prick our imaginations into life. We must remember that there are things too marvelous, too astounding, to be explained by spreadsheets and maps. If we cannot grasp that, we cannot begin to understand grace. A place without shadows does not have light—it only has glare. Glare that blinds us to everything else.

Do we really want a world in which nothing unexpected ever happens? Where there is no mysterious door that might hide a secret garden? Where we are entirely safe—but never surprised?

Those who have never known terror, however briefly, cannot comprehend awe. Wonder, risk, and reverence are inseparably entwined—even if it’s the terror of racing home in the 9 p.m. dark, hearing footsteps that might be your own echoes, or might not. When the lamp gutters unexpectedly, or a sudden cold gust swirls the leaves across the street, peppered with paper fliers bearing the names Cooger and Dark.

This season, on the dark and moonless nights, I’ll take the house with the angel statues, the gate left slightly ajar, the carnival that comes at midnight. Because only those who risk a little fear ever find themselves astonished.

Warm Regards,

Holly, The Country Mouse

'P.S. The world is thinner than we think. Sometimes, all it takes is a half-open gate or a strip of peeling wallpaper to slip between what is and what might be.

I’d like to take a moment to welcome an influx of new readers, many of whom have found me from my recent piece at Mere Orthodoxy. If “Stewards of the Soil” resonated with you, this little corner of the internet may feel familiar: less like a soapbox, more like a garden gate, where ideas are tended alongside herbs and hens. You may find you don’t particularly like everything that grows here — I, for instance, hate Brussels sprouts — but I hope that you will recognize the value and stay for the things that you do find nourishing.

Here, I write about how faith meets matter, and how stewardship extends throughout our lives. And stewardship, after all, requires not just willing hands, but the means by which those hands might work. Perhaps, then, it would be a useful interlude to talk about the things that make stewardship possible: our tools.

I have spent the weekend at my mother’s home, taking up the soaker hoses from the raised beds in her garden and draining the irrigation system. Dad built her an excellent garden, designed to allow her to continue to cultivate fruits, vegetables, and faith even as the physical challenges that come with being 80 make themselves felt. But all of the tight connections that allow her to water with ease all summer long are a bit much for her hands when it’s time to put it to bed before the snow flies.

This is a task I am more than happy to take on, but I always feel just a bit discombobulated. I am away from home, away from my familiar array of tools, and reduced to asking her where to find each item, hindered by the fact that she often doesn’t know what they are called.

I need the Channel Locks.
No, the Channel Locks.
That’s a wrench, it’s too small.
Yes, the ‘big mouth pliers.’ See the channels? Channel Locks.

Likewise, when we come back in and dusk falls, I’m happy to help her in the kitchen. There are fresh apples from the local orchard just waiting to be made into a pie. But it’s not my kitchen. I don’t have my trusty French rolling pin. Or my paring knife. Or any of a dozen tools I reach for every day. Everything is slower, more difficult, and involves asking for her help when I am trying to provide my own.

Tools mediate our ability to approach the rawness of the world as it is and turn it to our intentions. Genesis 2:15 admonishes us, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” Tools to work — to cultivate — the land are part of our mandate. Many tasks cannot be performed without them. I cannot prune my apple trees without a pruning saw. I cannot sew an outfit for one of my children without needles. Tools, rightly used, are one of the original fruits of obedience.

Using a good tool has the effect of training us at the same time. Repetition teaches our hands, minds, and hearts to focus; to learn more deeply than memory alone. Muscle and sinew record the actions required for the task and gradually become able to repeat it without our conscious effort. I always smile when I see a colleague knitting during a seminar. She’s not ignoring the speaker; she’s keeping her hands busy in a way that lets her mind focus more sharply than it would, otherwise. I have found that when I knit while listening to something, I recall it in sharp detail the next time I pick up my needles.

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Tools help us to form habits of attentiveness, patience, and care. Few things can sharpen the senses like cutting an apple with a very sharp knife. It’s a skill that an older child can certainly learn. Would it be faster and would I end up with more consistent slices if I did it myself? Of course. But I would be depriving the child of one of the many, many repetitions that will be required for her to learn to do that task well.

While all tools participate in our formation, not all of them teach good lessons. One of the tools that was, for a while, very popular was the bread machine. I loathed them. I didn’t care for the end product. And I cared even less for the way it cut me out of the process. The acts of measuring ingredients, blooming the yeast, adding flour until there was “enough,” and then kneading by hand on the countertop are meditative. I don’t know “how long” to knead the dough. I know when it feels right. When the way it springs back from each push, the smooth stretch as I pull the ball back to me, and the cessation of its attempts to cling to my fingers tell me it’s done, then it’s done. Cover it with a soft, threadbare but clean kitchen towel, and set it next to the stove to rise. Punch it down, portion the dough, and then shape it into loaves. Into the oven, watched closely for just the right doneness, and then tipped out of pans to have tops buttered and start to cool.

The bread machine bypasses this homely liturgy. The user merely dumps in the mix and some water and presses a button. The computer cycles through its program - set intervals for mixing, kneading, rising, baking. The heating element provides warmth for the rise, and then heat for the baking, beeping when the loaf is deemed “done.” It might even sit, forgotten, within the machine until someone notices. After all, nothing about the process required any sort of attentiveness. But it’s still “homemade bread,” right?

What, then, is the baker even for? Sometimes, in a fit of domestic pique, I will make sure to roll out one of my loaves and fill it with a bit of butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon before popping it into its pan alongside its brothers. Take that, machine. Cinnamon swirl toast puts to shame the bread facsimile you produce.

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This has been a bit of a confession. I did, once, own a bread machine — a gift from a well-meaning soul. And it got a certain amount of use, mostly from my husband who rather delighted in access to fresh bread that did not require my labor and attention. He could make bread for himself whenever I was too busy. And early in our marriage, when I still spent much of my time on call for emergencies, that was often the case. I always resented the thing, at least a little. Even when I had to acknowledge that I had not had the time to bake.

The bread machine has gone. The baker is returned to her proper place. And, even if it might not be as frequent as he would prefer, my husband absolutely delights in a fresh, warm loaf. Made with buttermilk, honey, and wifely hands and skill. It is as much an act of service as a source of sustenance.

Perhaps that is the central lesson of tools: they call us back to participation. The task is to keep tools in their proper place. A good tool, a proper tool, is less an object to be picked up than a co-laborer in our shared task of stewardship. If a nonsentient one. Our tools serve us, and we must take care not to allow that relationship to become inverted. We should also honor our tools, keeping them in good repair. Dad’s shop tools always hung neatly on pegboards. Mom’s kitchen tools each have a spot in cabinet or drawer. I make a point to sharpen my knives and dress my cutting boards with beeswax on a regular basis.

Before the advent of our current disposable era, it was common for tools to be passed down from one generation to the next. It was not possible, for instance, to be a blacksmith without an anvil, tongs, and hammer. To fulfill vocation, to serve creation, means to pick up some sort of tool. Learning to use them well, care for them, and teach their use on to the next generation is an act of rebellion against our throwaway culture.

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It can be very difficult to differentiate between a true tool that extends our embodied capacity for service, and a machine that replaces or diminishes it. Some tools can do either, depending on their use. But determining when a tool is acting as part of our formation and when it might be creating deformation is a topic for another day.

Tools are not relics of a forgotten past, but links to our creaturely calling. To tend the soil — whether of field, home, or community — is to participate in God’s patient work of cultivation. Tools are our tutors in patience, humility, and good stewardship.

In the coming weeks, I’m going to try to further explore when agrarian imagination and participation is not a nostalgic escape or a curated performance, but a patient apprenticeship in right relationship to the created order.

For now, may your tools teach your hands what your heart hopes to learn, be they pen, plow, or prayerbook.

Warm Regards,

Holly - The Country Mouse

P.S. I won’t judge you if you still love your bread machine. I am no Luddite. But for those of you who remember VeggieTales, I point you at the example of Speigel, the Flobbit, and his love of “labor-saving devices.”

On another drive, I turned off M-57 to follow a sign marked, "Pompeii." What little remained of the former bustling stagecoach and train stop seemed to be mouldering into dust before my eyes. The surrounding landscape, once dotted with family farms and now pocked with enormous windmills, seemed determined to take it back entirely. Only the grain elevator and a few other buildings remained, with no people or vehicles in sight. Pompeii felt like ashes gone cold, with nothing left to rekindle.

Between Allen and Pompeii lie a thousand towns, caught somewhere between ember and ash. Which can be stirred alive? And which are no longer capable of generating warmth?

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Leaving country byways and small towns behind to pass through larger towns and cities is, in its own way, a little disorienting. Regardless of the name on the sign, the pattern is always the same: big box stores and strip malls interspersed with look-alike housing developments. This year's flavor for new builds is gray, with a bit of dark gray thrown in just for color. Or, if I've hit the "older" section of the edges of town, it might be empty storefronts and developments full of tri-levels and bi-levels, all in need of a new roof or a coat of paint. It's as if someone has tossed a line of lighter fluid from the town proper, out into the surrounding landscape, and lit it with a match. It burns brightly for a little while, then the flame lowers, turns blue, goes cold.

We laugh about failed chains sporting Spirit Halloween banners every autumn, while at the same time understanding that there is a coldness in the air there that has nothing to do with the oncoming October, nor even Bardbury's Autumn People. Something more insidious whispers in the wind. The quiet death of a hundred hundred places that used to matter. That once were home. Stagecoach stops, train stations, or oases along early highways, all losing their character, their populations, and that little spark.

But the spark of a place cannot be measured in sales tax or square footage. The lifeless nature of those ubiquitous commercial strips tells us firmly that the spark does not lie in economic activity alone, no matter how many charts are produced at township meetings trying to sell "growth." The warmth of hearth and home requires more than that. It's tied up in memory and meaning, congregations and communities. Or sometimes a stubborn remnant of "stickers," to borrow from Walter Stegman, who steadfastly refuse to abandon their place. From Bowling Alone to Hollowing Out the Middle and The Left Behind to Uprooted, books aplenty have been penned in an attempt to diagnose the problem. Some offer solutions, others suggest it’s better to "let nature take its course" and allow these places to fade away. Because it's hard to spot the spark or feel the gentle warmth without stopping and staying a while. The embers are fragile, apt to go out between one visit and the next.

The suburban experiment was, in some ways, an attempt to light new sparks and set new fires to burning. Fed on growth, like a bonfire fed with lighter fluid, the warmth was always artificial, transient, and unable to sustain itself. It was, both literally and figuratively, dependent on gasoline. Suburbs are the domain of the car, and its attendant supply of gasoline. Addicted to accelerants, when growth begins to slow, they resort to splashy projects, outside money, or tourism to keep the flame burning. But the resulting flare-up inevitably fades to ashes with astonishing speed. A good fire, like a good town, needs tinder, timber - and patience.

Some towns can be coaxed back, like embers stirred to life. With the right patience and fuel, they leap into a rekindled merry blaze. Lowell, too, could have gone the way of husks and hollow storefronts. But the Flat River runs steady, and the town has learned to gather there. The old Showboat drew its last crowd long ago, yet a new one gleams on the water, anchored not in nostalgia but in invitation. Along the riverwalk, musicians tune their guitars, children chase soap bubbles that vanish in the breeze, and booths of pottery and honey line the path. It is no longer a place merely passed through—it has become a hearth on the water’s edge

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If you've found that the flashing heat of propellants doesn't provide that bone-deep warmth you're seeking, it might be time to seek out a place that still holds embers. Get off the highway and begin to wander, with purpose. Keep an eye out for church potlucks spilling onto the lawn, a VFW hall with a full parking lot, a local festival that doesn't make the pages of national magazines. Sometimes it’s there in intentional care - a town square that's lively and freshly painted, rolling farms with neat farm houses and painted quilt squares on the barn, or a 4H auction banner on the local grange hall. Because the real embers are in the hearts, not the streets or the balance sheets.

Reigniting flames is a delicate work, even more for newcomers. Kindling isn't something you bring, but something you arrange around the embers so it can catch. Listen, first, above all. Saving a place requires not regarding yourself as its savior. Learn the rhythm of the place. Find where to blow, ever so gently. Volunteer to help, first, not lead. Lend some hours to the local scout troop or work the cash box for the pancake breakfast. Take out a booth at the craft fair. Restore a single building. If you want a master class in how it’s done, I invite you to read about Jill Winger's journey from "self-sufficient" homesteader to local business owner. And her journey in understanding that truly belonging to a place means belonging to its people.

Every twist of dried grass, every stick of fatwood placed into the newly sputtering flame can build momentum - if it isn't overwhelmed and smothered. And soon, a modest hearth fire is burning cheerily. The goal isn't growth for growth's sake. Nobody needs a fire burning so hot that it chases everyone out of the room and burns through all its fuel in a single night. It takes a steady fire to maintain a community.

There are a great many places like Pompeii, too far burnt out to be relit, however persistently we might poke at the ashes. And far too many people who think their own energy, desire, or brilliant business idea is enough to bring their selected place back to light. One ember does not a hearth fire make. There is as much potential for disappointment as for rekindling. To say nothing of the bitter souls who have been living amongst the ash, and who will resist attempts at restoration with every fiber of their being, perverse though the impulse might seem. Approach any attempt at restoration with a humble heart.

Reviving a place that has burned to embers is not a conquest. Light a torch from its fire not to declare your victory - but to pass it to other hands, so that they can relight their own fires.

I begin this series - which will be intermittent, rather than a collated stack of pieces - with a short introduction of the problem, so that you may know where we are and where we are going.

Read on, Lizzie. Read, on

One of the many ubiquitous memes crossed my feed the other day, and I chuckled at first, as we are meant to:

"Not really sure what season it is. I saw pallets of watermelon, Halloween candy, pool floaties, fire wood, and Christmas lights at the store yesterday ..."

It’s funny because it’s true. Walk into any big box store and you’ll see the same jumble of seasons stacked side by side. But about three heartbeats later, the humor gave way to sadness. It underscores just how completely dissociated we are from the grounded, embodied existence we were meant for.

What is early September like in the store? Mannequins dressed in denim and flannel, sporting fashionable coats and sweaters. Grocery aisles with the same year-round produce, only the country-of-origin sticker shifting as seasons change elsewhere. And of course, Hobby Lobby famously sets out its Christmas merchandise in July. By September, it’s green and red as far as the eye can see. Retailers are always two or three holidays ahead of real life.

What is it like outside, in early September? Here in Michigan, this weekend felt autumnal, a “false fall” that will soon give way to heat again. It’s still late summer: the grass green, peppers ripening in the garden, the sun lingering until nearly eight.

No wonder our bodies are confused. We spend our days in climate-controlled buildings under fluorescent light. We eat whatever we like, whatever the season. At best, we nod to the year with a small bag of produce from the farmer’s market. We pretend at seasonality with “pumpkin spice season,” “spooky season,” “the holidays,” or the school year. It is a tenuous system at best.

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Once, the flow of the year was unmissable. Summer break had a purpose: farm kids were needed to help with haying and harvest. Autumn meant a surfeit of produce to tuck away or consume before it spoiled. Menus were seasonal, sometimes monotonous in late spring when stores had run out and new crops weren’t yet in. Long days demanded long hours; short days pressed us to rest. “Cozy season” was no marketing gimmick. It was the natural rhythm of knitting needles, braised beef, and early nights by the fire.

Fresh strawberries in early summer were a delight precisely because their season was short. Frozen ones never quite measured up. Pre-industrial life, and even much of the 20th century, was bounded by the seasons of earth and church alike: Planting, Harvest, Advent, Lent. Now, retail cycles dictate what is “in season.” Quarterly reports set our rhythms more than weather, sun, or liturgy.

That does not make it less disorienting. It is no wonder we feel disconnected—from time and from one another. Our local environment no longer shapes what we eat, what we wear, or when we gather in celebration. Chronos, uniform and commodified time, has displaced kairos, sacred time. And when that happens, rootedness withers. Our senses dull, our memory weakens.

Rituals flatten into consumer markers: Harvest Home replaced by pumpkin spice lattes. Independence Day reduced to fireworks. Even the church loses track of its feasts and holy days in the mad rush to acknowledge retail holidays.

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But we can resist. Step outside. Keep a personal almanac: note the first frost, the first snow. Build a bonfire on the winter solstice. Not to honor paganism, but to remember that we are halfway out of the dark. Slow down for the holidays. Reclaim the liturgical year. Let Advent be expectation. Stretch Christmastide through the full twelve days to Epiphany, or even Candlemas. Light candles in exuberance, leave the tree up, resist the urge to pack away joy in early January. Mark Lent as a season, not just as a private fast. Make Easter more than a bunny.

Reclaim the warm delights of summer evenings. Make lemonade on the porch as the day fades. Let the seasons tell you what it is time to do. Fill the pantry in summer; empty it in winter. Learn the superiority of May butter. Know the rhythms of livestock: calves in spring, beef in late fall. Eat seasonally.

Small acts of seasonal rebellion restore rootedness.

So, the next time you find yourself standing in a big box store, surrounded by pool noodles, Halloween candy, and holiday lights, turn your back. Step outside. Feel the warmth of the sun on your skin, the bite of autumn on the wind. Summer is ending. Fall is just around the corner. The seasons are still there, waiting. On your way home, stop for some fresh early apples from a roadside stand.

It is not time for mistletoe and holly. Not yet.

Everything in its season.

Warm Regards,

The Country Mouse

P.S. If you’ve enjoyed this reflection, I’d be grateful if you’d share it with a friend who might also be weary of the blur of modern time and eager to recover a more grounded rhythm. Subscribing helps keep these essays flowing, and it keeps us in conversation together as we learn how to live more seasonally, more attentively, and more rooted in the life God has set before us.

This fortnight’s missive is a little brief, but I hope you’ll forgive me. The shift of the seasons brings a shift in schedules, and that can be more than a little trying when some of the household don’t transition well. But read on, Lizzie. Read on.

The calendar says August, but the dog days of summer have given way to cool breezes and a few sprinkles of rain—at least for the next few days. The sunlight has begun to take on the softer cast of autumn, as the sun slides lower in the sky. Squirrels are tucking away acorns and beech nuts. And I start to feel the need to tuck skeins of yarn and fat quarters of fabric away, in preparation for the turn of the season. Perhaps it’s hibernation. Perhaps it’s the continuation of the thrill of “back to school” shopping, the grown-up equivalent of a fresh box of crayons.

Either way, I tend to orient myself toward laying in supplies and organizing projects before winter settles in. Better to have something always to hand, even on days when the weather is too foul to leave the house—or I don’t want to take off my fuzzy slippers. This year, I’ve wound yarn into cakes and tucked them into bags with sock patterns, clipped cross-stitch threads and fabrics into project pouches, and stacked fat quarters for an English paper-pieced quilt. To say nothing of a nearly complete Waldorf-style doll who will need a wardrobe.

Handwork used to be a chore when I was younger. I loathed the time it took to hem by hand, and chose dress patterns with machine hems whenever I could. Now I find it soothing. Partly because I’ve grown better at it, and no longer get frustrated trying to coax the fabric into neat folds. Partly because the rhythm doesn’t demand my full attention—I can listen to music, an audiobook, or (if my husband isn’t home) even Lark Rise to Candleford on the television. My basket is filled with projects like this. And I thank my mother for insisting, when I was young, that I learn.

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Of course, the young aren’t always amenable to such lessons. Most see them as I once did—glacially slow, with no real purpose. Which is why small but useful projects matter. In 4-H, I sewed garments I could wear, doll clothes, and tiny furnishings for my dollhouse. The point wasn’t just the finished product, but the lessons in attention, patience, and usefulness. Those things are rarer than ever in an age of splintered attention and TikTok videos.

Even Anne Shirley had to learn the slow way:

“I do not like patchwork,” said Anne dolefully, hunting out her workbasket and sitting down before a little heap of red and white diamonds with a sigh. “I think some kinds of sewing would be nice; but there’s no scope for imagination in patchwork. It’s just one little seam after another and you never seem to be getting anywhere. But of course I’d rather be Anne of Green Gables sewing patchwork than Anne of any other place with nothing to do but play.”

Even young Anne saw that, distaste or not, such tasks rooted her in the household. A grown Anne puts those lessons to use—we see her sitting on the porch, finishing a dress for a social occasion, or visiting Miss Cornelia with busy fingers as they cement their friendship.

That same truth plays out in real households today. A friend treasures a wobbly little step stool her son built in his father’s shop. None too straight, yet she uses it (carefully!) whenever she needs a boost—to her son’s great pride and delight. In my mind’s eye I can already see him years from now, presenting her with a beautifully made wooden jewelry box.

The point is not perfection, but the doing. The Pinewood Derby, at its best, teaches boys to shape their block of wood into a car with their own hands—sometimes graceful, sometimes clumsy, but always theirs. The goal is learning, not the trophy.

My father’s love was woodworking too. He built case goods and tables, but his joy was in small wooden models of vintage cars and tractors. He spent hours shaping and sanding, often altering the plans to make them his own. Well-meaning people told him to sell them, but money was never the purpose. It was the joy of the making, the feel of the wood, and the delight of learning new techniques. There is always more to learn, however skilled we become.

Meanwhile, our world grows noisier. Outrage churns online, campaigns cry out against cruelty, and yet we can’t sit quietly for fifteen minutes without picking up a phone. Attentiveness is a skill, and we’re forgetting to teach it. Some parents are calling for phone-free schools. I’d add this: let’s put something in children’s hands besides nothing. Give them tools, needles, thread. Teach them to shape, stitch, or carve, and they may find their restless energy transformed into patience, care, and pride.

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And if you didn’t learn as a child, it’s never too late. Begin, like Anne, with patchwork. Try knitting, or spoon-carving, or baking. Don’t be discouraged by early efforts that show little for the time you’ve put in. Sooner than you think, your mind will quiet and your soul will settle each time you pick up the tools. And the fruits of your work will add to the comfort of your household, day by day.

Warm regards,

The Country Mouse

P.S. To work with our hands is to consent to limits: of time, of skill, of patience. Yet it is within these limits that we rediscover abundance. The slow rhythm of handwork steadies the mind and anchors the heart. It reminds us that beauty is not manufactured in haste but revealed through fidelity to the small, repeated act. When we stitch, carve, mend, or knead, we are not merely making objects but shaping ourselves into people capable of attention, gratitude, and care. The work of our hands, humble as it may be, becomes a quiet testimony: that we are creatures called not to consume endlessly, but to cultivate, to tend, and to offer back what has been entrusted to us.

One of the most profound divides lies in our understanding of land: what it is for, how it ought to be used and, perhaps most contentiously, how much of it any one person should rightly hold.

A certain strain of urbanite takes deep issue with the idea of private acreage. Sometimes this appears as offhand dismissal from apartment dwellers sounding off on Reddit: “People out here buying hundreds of acres to live on just so they don’t have to look at a neighbor… it’s the epitome of selfishness.” Other times, the disdain comes cloaked in expert opinion: “There’s a kind of ‘cult of acreage’ going on, and it’s not productive.”

Let’s take that critique seriously enough to examine it. Is there any merit to the idea that owning 40, 80, or 160 acres is unnecessary—or even greedy? Or are we looking at a misunderstanding born not of malice, but of distance?

The mindset that treats land ownership as inherently greedy grows from disconnection. Cities, by their nature, divorce daily life from the land. We sense this, often in a half-conscious way, when we tell someone behaving erratically to "touch grass." Even in the most concrete of jungles, we seem to understand that clarity and sanity begin with contact—with the ground, with the seasons, with the real.

In urban environments, land is defined by pressure and price. The demand for space, paired with a modern fixation on "efficiency," leads to an assumption: land is only useful when it is built upon. Anything that looks empty must be wasted. Even among new urbanists working toward more livable cities, the answer is always to build upward, not outward. From that vantage, the rural parcel looks like useless sprawl: indulgent, underutilized, even immoral.

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Land, in this framework, becomes commodity.

But to the smallholder, land is not commodity. It is calling. It is daily labor, rooted presence, and the quiet weight of responsibility. It is what supports not only the household but the broader ecology around it. To look at a hayfield and see only vacancy is to misunderstand both the work and the worth of the land.

The first thing to understand is that, for the urban or even suburban dweller, home is often a place simply to sleep and perhaps be entertained. For the small holder, home is the nucleus of the oikos. The center of the household economy, and site of production of many things the household either needs or can trade for things it cannot produce by itself. It is somewhat ironic that many urbanites who rail against capitalism as the source of all their woes are so willing to train equal venom on people who are living a lifestyle much more localist and distributist than the necessarily corporatist and consummerist life found in cities.

Let's take a walking tour of that 80 acres, and see what's there that the casual eye may consider "wasted." And that might, in point of fact, be doing some heavy lifting.

• 10 - 20 acres in pasture for rotational grazing (beef, sheep, goats)

• 1–2 acres of intensive vegetables - ktichen and market use

• A small orchard or nut grove, or both

• Pollinator habitat and native hedgerows

• Managed woodlot for firewood and timber

• Hayfields to support winter livestock

• Field crops for home use, like wheat or oats

• A home, barns, fencing, and setbacks

• Berries, both as hedges and in beds

• A small pond, and adjacent duck house

• Chicken coop, or tractors that can be moved on pasture

• A willow bed for basketry or trellises

• 1/2 - 1 acre of cut flowers as a cash crop

• Pig pens/pasturage

That “wasted” acreage is more than capable of producing all the dairy, meat, and eggs a family needs—plus surplus for sale. Drive around any rural area and you’ll find roadside stands selling fresh eggs, flowers, and vegetables. Yards dotted with signs offering freezer beef, pork, or lamb. Much of the family’s fruit and vegetable needs can be met and preserved through the year. Even the so-called “fallow” segments provide vital habitat for pollinators and space for wildlife.

Despite the flood of “¼ acre” and “1 acre” homestead layout plans on Pinterest, the simple truth remains: it takes space to feed a family. More still to feed a community. And it takes margin to do it faithfully, season after season. When stewardship and regenerative practice—not obsessive efficiency—are the goal, elbow room is essential.

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If we’re to ask whether owning larger parcels of land is inherently greedy, we first have to separate land held for speculation from land that’s part of a household economy. Our financialized real estate market has sadly turned land into commodity, valued mostly for what someone will pay for it—whether to own or to rent out. This is not stewardship. It’s profit made off exploitation.

Acreage stewarded with care, rather than managed for maximum short-term gain, is both household lifeblood and a refuge for biodiversity. It can be put to countless uses—until development strips it from production, often forever. I think of this every time I drive past a solar farm replacing pasture and woods. Unfortunately, zoning and market pressures have warped the perception of land’s value—from its productive capacity to mere dollar signs.

Celebrities owning hundreds of acres of manicured lawn promote a distorted vision of “the good life.” But it’s time to push back against the idea that any ownership of acreage is greedy or self-indulgent. Desiring space—not for separation, but for production and participation in creation—is quite the opposite. It’s a covenantal commitment to care.

The Whole Foods crowd intuits this truth when they shop for grass-fed beef or pastured eggs—but too often remains disconnected from where their food, clothing, and other essentials actually come from. Living on stewarded land is not romanticism. It’s responsibility. Eighty acres is not ego. It’s ecosystem. Working the land in ways that don’t demand every square inch be constantly, actively productive is not waste. It is rest, resilience, and reality.

If you still wonder why anyone would want 80 acres—or doubt it can be put to good use—go visit a working farmstead. Walk the fence line with us and watch the pasture rotation in action. Stroll the orchard and spot native pollinators. Help bring the cows in from pasture and marvel at the golden cream in the pail. Go home laden with gifts from creation and its faithful keepers—and think of that the next time you get your groceries delivered.

Warm regards,

The Country Mouse

P.S. It’s easy to reduce land to a dollar value or a political talking point. But land—true, living land—is the place where work, care, and creation meet. It’s a classroom for patience, a refuge for wildness, and a ledger of legacy.

Before we dismiss the value of acreage, we should ask: what kind of world do we want to build? One where every inch of earth is accounted for in spreadsheets? Or one where space exists—not for excess, but for life to flourish in all its complexity?

Owning land isn’t about greed. It’s about grace.

Look around, and you’ll see that weird is celebrated everywhere, across both popular and countercultural lanes. Runaway hits like Stranger Things center the misfits and turn them into heroes. Popular podcasts exalt the outsider: the goth kid in Evangelical Appalachia, the artistic loner in a farm town. Once, not so long ago (see the sidebar), “weird” carried the sting of social awkwardness, a failure, or refusal, to fit in. It marked a distance between the shared values of a community and the person who stood just outside its rhythms.

Now, “weird” signals a spark of chosen otherness—something not just to be accepted, but celebrated, even when it can’t be understood. But this is more than an embrace of uniqueness or a healthy acknowledgment of difference. It is a full-scale retcon of our personal pasts: a re-writing of childhood and community into a myth where anyone who mattered was always the outsider. “Weird” becomes not a struggle, but a sign. And with it often comes the quiet rejection of shared culture and rooted belonging in favor of a constellation of personal distinctiveness: atomized, curated, and detached, interacting only with others who claim the same sacred strangeness.

Yet beneath the cheerful embrace of “weirdness” lies something more complex. Murkier. Often, what we frame as self-acceptance is really a form of inverted narcissism: the quiet conviction that being excluded wasn’t a sorrow, but a sign of being better than the crowd we left behind.

This is the other side of the American Dream. If the brightest and best must leave home to chase opportunity, to ascend the ladder of success and become someone worth admiring, then what does that say about those who stay behind?

In that narrative, to stay is to lose. To remain rooted in one’s hometown or faith tradition or family culture is, implicitly, to admit failure. But what about those who did leave—and didn’t end up as dazzling successes? What story do they get to tell?

Here, the new myth begins to write itself.

If they weren’t celebrated as exceptional in their youth, and didn’t rise to renown after leaving, then their story demands another logic. Enter the Weirdo: a character too talented, too sensitive, too intelligent, or too authentic to ever belong in a place as dull and narrow as home. The problem was never with Our Hero. It was the townspeople. The neighbors. The church. The school. They were too small-minded, too judgmental, too backward to recognize greatness when it flickered in their midst. And they remain too blinkered to see it even now.

So Our Hero becomes the exile. Not in tragedy, but in moral victory.

It’s a narrative we all recognize, because we’ve been soaking in it for years. Think of that famous moment when Hagrid turns to a lonely boy who lived in a cupboard and says: “You’re a wizard, Harry.” With one sentence, the years of rejection are reframed: he wasn’t awkward, he was magical. They didn’t overlook him, they feared him. He didn’t fail to fit in, they failed to be worthy.

This is the new cultural liturgy: if you are not embraced, it is because you are too rare to be understood. You must leave them behind. It would be wrong to stay.

And this is the narrative that now sweeps across the vast majority of what calls itself young reader or young adult literature and storytelling: the misunderstood outsider, shunned for their difference, who is eventually revealed to be the most important of all.

But it wasn’t always so.

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Before there was Hogwarts, there was The House with a Clock in Its Walls. No, not the Jack Black movie. The original, excellent book by John Bellairs, and the series that followed. Lewis Barnavelt is awkward, overweight, bookish, and emotionally needy. He is orphaned, yes. But unlike Harry Potter, he doesn’t discover that he’s the Chosen One. He doesn’t receive an owl, a legacy, or a grand redemptive arc that rewards his difference with cool powers and peerless leadership.

No, Lewis is simply a lonely boy who desperately wants to be liked, and who makes an awful mess of things trying to fit in. The popular boy whose friendship he craves ultimately rejects him. Not because Lewis is too special to be understood, but because he is, quite honestly, not yet capable of being a real friend. At least, not at the beginning of the book. Lewis is not vindicated. He is humbled.

Likewise, anyone who’s read past the first book in The Chronicles of Narnia will remember Eustace Clarence Scrubb. (A boy, as Lewis famously put it, who almost deserved such a name.) He’s so generally unpleasant that even the Pevensies—preternaturally patient Lucy included—can hardly abide his company. Surely, if anyone could recognize hidden specialness, it would be the Kings and Queens of Narnia. But Eustace isn’t special. He’s insufferable.

Even after his first trip to Narnia, and his dramatic transformation from literal dragon back to boy, his classmates at the progressive “special” school still find him hard to take. Only his mother prefers the pre-Narnia version of her son: the whining, self-righteous, socially obtuse little creature he once was. One might even call Mrs. Scrubb the first true believer in “weirdness as superiority”—a woman who resents her son’s becoming more bearable, simply because it means he now fits in.

But if the stories we tell now teach us to exalt our strangeness, it’s no surprise that we’ve begun to rewrite the stories we once lived. This is the deeper shift—not just how we talk about weirdness now, but how we’ve come to remember it in ourselves.

In this new moral framework, it’s not enough to have been a bit different, or socially awkward, or left out. You must have been misunderstood in a profound and even prophetic way. It is not enough to have been lonely; you must have been rejected because you were ahead of your time.

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So we revise our personal histories accordingly. Kids who once just preferred books to baseball now remember themselves as spiritual martyrs. Girls who had a rough patch in middle school now identify themselves retroactively as “neurodivergent” or “othered,” whether or not they ever understood themselves that way at the time. And men who never managed to ask a girl out may now declare that no woman could have appreciated them—because they were just too deep, too different, too real.

This is a kind of emotional gnosticism: the belief that our past pain only makes sense if it is recast as hidden greatness. What was once just awkwardness or immaturity or plain bad behavior gets remembered as evidence of innate specialness. The very fact that we didn’t fit in becomes proof that we were right to stand apart.

And this isn’t just personal, it’s generational. Entire cohorts have begun to mythologize the 1980s and 90s as a time when the sensitive and strange were cast out by a cruel monoculture. We look back on those years not with empathy or clarity, but with a kind of curated nostalgia, assigning ourselves the role of the bullied prophet or misunderstood sage—whether or not anyone ever called us weird at all. The "Satanic Panic" expands into an all-encompassing Stepfordization from which we barely escaped with our "weirdness" intact!

Let’s pause for a moment and consider a couple of literary heroines who were every bit as awkward—and just as capable of horrifying the neighbors—as any boy with blue hair and an earring in 1984.

Harriet the Spy is smart, obsessive, and entirely lacking in empathy. When her secret spy journal is discovered, and her classmates read the things she’s written about them, they all turn on her. And at least once, we all understood precisely why. She’s not persecuted for being “real," she’s rejected for being cruel. And the resolution isn’t vindication. It’s repentance. Harriet doesn’t go on to become a Pulitzer-winning columnist who proves she was right all along. She becomes editor of the school paper—and uses the platform to retract the hurtful things she said.

Anne Shirley, though more winsome, is no less of a misfit. Dreamy, dramatic, and far too intelligent for her own good, Anne is constantly offending people without meaning to. She has empathy, but no filter, no restraint, and often, no sense of how her words affect others. And she too, is eventually humbled. Anne doesn’t end up running away to the big city to become a celebrated literary genius. In fact, she gives up a university scholarship to return home and care for Marilla. She chooses love over ambition. Place over prestige.

Both girls begin as “weird.” But neither is canonized because of her strangeness. What makes them heroines is what the modern Weirdness Protocol never demands: the willingness to change.

At the heart of the “Weirdness Protocol” is a stubborn unwillingness to change, an outright refusal to even entertain the idea that the norms and values of one’s home might contain some good. It’s this same refusal that fuels the modern impulse to flee family, church, or hometown entirely. The awkwardness of adolescence must be reframed as oppression; the misunderstandings of youth must become evidence of trauma. And the blame must rest entirely with the place and people left behind.

Never would the modern Weirdo sing along with Bob Crosby:

“Don't know why I left the homestead / I really must confess / I'm a weary exile / Singing my song of loneliness.”

Such a turning homeward is unthinkable. Because it would require the unpalatable admission that the Weirdo is, perhaps, not so very special. And that the place she left is, perhaps, not so very bad. It might even be full of those “dear hearts and gentle people” her self-mythologizing has long since written off. To acknowledge that would require a level of introspection and humility the Protocol does not permit.

This is especially acute for those who leave home and do not succeed. Who do not return bearing wealth, acclaim, or influence. Only two choices remain. The first: admit failure, return home, and submit to the values and culture of the place once rejected. The second: rationalize the impossibility of return by constructing a mythology of profound “otherness," one so deep and cosmically ordained that re-rooting is no longer possible.

Sometimes, a narrow third option is offered as a sort of compromise: a return might be imaginable, if only the place and its people were to change. If they were to evolve enough to recognize the Weirdo’s hidden greatness, to apologize, to cater to the exile’s sensibilities. Only then, perhaps, could home be tolerated again. But that home would not be a place of forgiveness and reweaving. It would be a conquered territory, where the Weirdo is finally installed on the throne they always believed was theirs.

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Lewis Barnavelt does not make another attempt to gain status or notoriety by advertising his supernatural adventures. He has learned better. He resigns himself to the margins of school social life, not with bitterness, but with acceptance, in the company of the equally oddball Rosalita. He finds quiet kinship rather than glory.

Eustace Scrubb does not return from Narnia wearing his honors or demanding recognition. He does not expect applause for his transformation. Instead, he tries to put into practice what he has learned about humility and empathy, albeit with mixed results. He struggles, but he makes the effort to be good, rather than to be admired.

Harriet M. Welsch does not use her newfound authority as editor to punish the Spy Catchers or double down on her former sharpness. She confesses her sins and resolves to do better. She turns her pen from clever cruelty to the more difficult work of building trust and speaking with honor.

Anne Shirley, perhaps the clearest example of “weirdness” turned to love, never tries to rise above Avonlea. She grows into it. Even when she and Gilbert begin their new life across the Island, she carries Green Gables with her in her heart. Her home is not something to be escaped, but something to be cherished and sustained.

The earlier vision of weirdness was redemptive, not in the sense of proving the character right, but of making them whole. They didn’t need to be applauded; they needed to be loved, and to become lovable. Maybe we’re not so different from them. Maybe we weren’t weird in a heroic sense. Maybe we were just young, unsure, and in need of grace.

When “weirdness” is embraced as an identity, it builds a wall around the self. The desire to remain “misunderstood” can prevent the Weirdo from embracing home and family, and from being loved into transformation. It makes reconciliation impossible. And when a whole community of self-described Weirdos reinforces this posture, the idea of breaking from that community to pursue return becomes harder still.

Being strange isn’t a sin. But neither is it proof of sainthood. Maturity is saying, with St. Francis of Assisi, “Oh Master, let me never seek so much to be understood as to understand.”

We need to recover the possibility that what looks like “strangeness” might sometimes be a mask for unresolved pain, stubbornness, or simple narcissism. My fellow ’80s kids would do well to remember The Lost Boys. Weirdness isn’t always something to be embraced.

True belonging does not require us to become “normal,” by anyone’s definition. But it does require that we respect our people, our places, and the things that made us who we are. And that we allow ourselves to be changed by love, so that we can become a true part of them. The weird protagonists of earlier fiction were not heroes because they were different. They became whole when they stopped needing to be.

Warm Regards,

The Country Mouse

P.S.

None of this is to deny that some people really were mistreated, or that some places really were narrow, or unkind, or unworthy of return. Sometimes, leaving is necessary. Sometimes, distance is healing.

But not always.

And in our rush to romanticize exile, we risk losing the ability to discern which is which. Not every departure is a victory. Not every wound is proof of prophecy. And not every strange child is a secret saint.

Sometimes, we were just odd. And what we needed wasn’t escape, but formation. Not vindication, but mercy.

If that sounds too simple, it may be because grace always is.

And yes, I understand the arguments for why we’re all supposed to care—arguments about cultural shifts, shifting Overton windows, and the slow erosion of rights and freedoms, real or perceived. These aren’t trivial concerns.

But the fact remains: for most of us, the latest development out of Washington, New York, or Los Angeles has little to no real effect on our day-to-day lives—unless, of course, we live in those places. And truly, it shouldn’t.

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The real reason we’re so emotionally entangled in national politics is because we’ve surrendered far too much of our sovereignty to it. We’ve allowed decisions made thousands of miles away to matter more than they ought to—to matter more, in fact, than the decisions made in our own homes, churches, and neighborhoods. That’s a problem—and not just a political one. It’s a spiritual and cultural one, and it’s one for which we all bear a measure of responsibility.

We’ve come a long way from Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a nation of yeoman farmers—and not all of that journey has been progress. The truest kind of freedom has less to do with slogans or elections, and more to do with the ability to live free from dependency and coercion. A household that can meet its essential needs—food, clothing, shelter—from its own land, labor, and resourcefulness is far more difficult to manipulate. But if that same household is reliant on distant systems for the basics of life, then the withholding or rationing of those things becomes a powerful tool of control.

A free family, with a modest plot of land and a few well-chosen skills, once lived in quiet sufficiency. They didn’t need total self-sufficiency—trade and barter supplemented what couldn’t be grown or made at home—but they weren’t beholden. Their security was rooted in stewardship, not subsidies.

This is, in fact, the biblical vision of freedom. The prophet Micah gives us a picture not of war chariots or grand capitals, but of households at peace: “Each man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the Lord Almighty has spoken” (Micah 4:4). It’s a domestic, agrarian image—freedom grounded not in abstraction, but in land, labor, and the absence of fear.

We forget, sometimes, that true liberty has more to do with rakes and canning jars than with ballots and slogans. Modern ideologies—whether feminist or socialist—often treat freedom as something to be demanded, systematized, or redistributed, rather than something to be exercised. In different ways, both attempt to extract the blessings of liberty from others, rather than cultivate the conditions of liberty within the bounds of household, skill, and land. But that approach can only endure so long as those being asked to subsidize it remain willing to do so.

The deeper danger is this: that in striving for an abstract, individualistic “freedom” to pursue desires without cost, we forget the older, quieter freedom—the freedom to meet one’s own needs, to live in dignity without dependence, to provide rather than protest.

This is why they fail to understand—and why the proliferation continues anyway—the quiet return to skills and habits that once formed the foundation of the household economy. Backyard chicken keeping, raised garden beds, sourdough cultures: these are not just hobbies. They are acts of reclamation, a soft but steady pushback against a DoorDash world.

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Even something as simple as hanging clothes on the line becomes both a moral and aesthetic act. Images of wooden clothespins and sunlit linens now fill Instagram feeds, reflecting not just nostalgia, but longing. The compost bin, once dismissed as quaint or messy, restores a kind of faith in frugality—one squandered by the hollow promises of the frequently fraudulent recycling industry.

Yes, many curated feeds highlight pastel eggs on antique counters, linen dresses floating through manicured gardens, and staged shots beside picturesque fences. But beneath the styling lies something more. This is not just an aesthetic. It is a declaration of allegiance to a different economy—one built on skill, care, and limits—rather than a superficial lifestyle choice.

The question must then arise: why must we fight so hard to return to what was once our natural habitat?

The simple answer is—we’ve done this to ourselves.

In our quest to preserve the most pleasant, unobtrusive environment possible, we’ve layered our lives with zoning ordinances, HOA bylaws, and suburban design principles that exist primarily to eliminate discomfort. No chickens, no clotheslines, no vegetable patches too close to the sidewalk. Nothing that smells like work or looks like disorder. And in so doing, we’ve stripped our homes of their purpose, turning them into little more than sleeping pods and entertainment centers.

We’ve compartmentalized life to such a degree that our children rarely see us work with our hands—engaging in useful projects with patience, endurance, and skill. They don’t grow up seeing the natural limits of place, kin, and neighborliness as meaningful or formative. Instead, they are taught to reject those limits—to escape the quiet town, the family obligations, the so-called drudgeries of a life tied to the land or the home. We tell them freedom lies beyond these boundaries.

It is a lie. And like all lies, it breeds bitterness and discontent when the dream of limitless autonomy proves hollow—when the reality of our deep and mutual dependence becomes unavoidable.

And so our children run amok, agitating for changes both unworkable and undesirable—not out of malice, but because we have neglected the long training in slow citizenship that should have begun when they were small. We failed to show them what freedom requires: not the shedding of limits, but the wise acceptance of them.

We must relearn how to live within limits—of place, of kin, of community. Not as an act of sacrifice, but as a recognition of reality. We are finite beings, meant to be shaped by the ground beneath our feet and the people beside us.

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It is time to return to the long obedience that forms a free people—a practice far less counterintuitive than it sounds.

Because the truth is, the kind of freedom that endures doesn’t begin in Washington or on the debate stage. It begins in households that know how to care for themselves and their neighbors. It begins in backyards—not manicured for resale value, but cultivated for use, beauty, and rest. It begins at the clothesline, the compost bin, the kitchen counter where bread is kneaded and a child learns to wait for yeast to rise.

There is no shame in starting small. Sow something. Build something. Fix something. Teach your children that home is not a place to escape from, but a place to grow into. Practice the economy of enough, the grace of limits, and the kind of dignity that isn’t granted from above but cultivated from below.

We may not recover the republic overnight. But we can restore a backyard at a time.

And that, too, is a kind of revolution.

Warm Regards,
The Country Mouse

P.S. If all of this feels a little out of reach, start smaller. Start with your windowsill. A pot of herbs, a mended shirt, a dinner made from what’s on hand. These aren’t grand gestures. But they are the slow work of restoration. The more you do them, the less performative they feel—and the more free you become.

The backyard republic doesn’t require permission. Only patience.

Meanwhile, we spend the day celebrating the nation’s birth, reveling in tales of secret meetings in taverns, riders clattering down cobbled lanes in New England towns, and the slow westward expansion of radical ideas about freedom and self-governance. We celebrate our heritage, mark a cultural triumph—and return to homes that possess neither.

How did we, somewhere along the way, become enslaved to an all-encompassing sameness that has bleached the vitality from our common lives?

The way we build our homes and communities is just one example of our surrender to that sameness. Once, as a free people, we built houses, churches, and towns from the materials at hand, with skills learned by doing, shaped by experience, affection, and necessity. In the South, high ceilings and dogtrot layouts helped beat the heat. In the North, steep-pitched roofs and masonry hearths shed snow and held warmth. Fieldstone walls marked the land and stood for generations. Chestnut beams served as solid ridgepoles.

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We have forgotten that the places we live in—the land beneath our feet—is a gift and a blessing, not a commodity. In treating it as merely something to be bought, sold, or “developed,” valued only by market trends, we have allowed the slow erosion of memory, heritage, and the deep, anchoring sense of belonging.

And nowhere is that erosion more visible than in what—and how—we build. A house used to be more than shelter. It was an extension of the land itself: shaped by wind and weather, built with what the land could yield, and imbued with the character of the people who tended it. Across regions, this gave rise to what we now call vernacular architecture—not a style, but a conversation between place and purpose, necessity and care.

In the Upper Midwest, houses stood on fieldstone foundations, their walls framed with oak or chestnut beams hewn by hand. Roofs rose steeply to shed snow, and porches wrapped around the southern side to catch the sun’s warmth in winter and shade it in summer. In the South, tall windows opened to draw breezes through dogtrot halls, while deep eaves offered shelter from heat and storm alike. On the plains, sod houses hunkered into the earth, wind-tight and resilient. In the southwest, adobe bricks were easy to mold into solid houses than provided respite from the burning heat. These buildings weren’t the product of architectural theory or aesthetic trend—they were born of experience, rooted in particular soils and weathers, in the wisdom of those who knew how to read a piece of land and build accordingly.

Even churches and schools once bore this mark—white clapboard chapels facing east, their bell towers rising above the trees not for vanity, but to call a scattered people to shared time and worship. Town squares were laid out with an eye toward walking distance and social cohesion. The built world held memory. It shaped habits. It taught restraint, endurance, and care.

But that memory has been overwritten. Today, instead of drawing from the land and learning from its contours, we impose upon it—grading hills flat, tearing out hedgerows, and plunking down homes designed not for this place, but for market appeal in a distant region. The conversation between builder and land has gone silent. In its place, we get a generic monologue: vinyl-sided, overscaled, and algorithmically optimized.

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You can drive across the suburban landscape and identify when a neighborhood was built—but not where. The same house might stand in Newport News, Peoria, or Portland. Fifties-era ranches give way to the split-levels and tri-levels of the seventies, which in turn yield to the faux colonials of the eighties. After that, any remaining hint of regional identity disappears into the muddled aesthetic of recent decades: a complete abandonment of style, logic, or place.

While it was never common for the average homeowner to hire an architect, there was a time when local builders still understood something of architectural design. They had a working sense of proportion and balance—of what would please the eye, endure the seasons, and make the most of available space and budget. Many relied on builder’s pattern books, often written by architects or craftsmen trained in the classical tradition. A modest home still bore the marks of considered construction.

But once computer-aided design entered the picture, all bets were off. Walls could be dragged and rearranged with the flick of a mouse, leaving it to the software to spit out a tangle of trusses and load paths that technically supported the result. What emerged was often an overbuilt, visually chaotic box with gables erupting in all directions, rooflines stitched together like a bad quilt, and segments practically guaranteed to leak. The rendering might dress things up with false shutters, ill-fitting gingerbread, and a digital wash of landscaping, but it couldn’t disguise the fundamental incoherence. And yet these plans get printed anyway—in glossy magazines that promise “500 House Plans for Your Country Lot!” without noting that 498 of them have never been built, and that the world would be better off if 497 of them never are.

We sit with rapt attention, streaming shows that chronicle the loving restoration of an 1892 farmhouse brought back to life. We marvel at its axe-hewn beams, cheer as the owner discovers a handwritten note on a lath board mid-demolition, and sigh with satisfaction as this grand old dame steps forward into her second century—cedar siding restored, wood windows reglazed and balanced with new sash weights, rafter tails recut to match the original profile.

And then—we turn right around and settle. We accept a puzzle box made of cardboard and spray foam, wrapped in plastic, thrown up in six months by a national building firm with no knowledge of, or care for, the community around it. A house whose bones are glue and gypsum, whose stone is mere veneer, and whose structural integrity is defined more by engineering tolerances than by endurance.

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The odds of such a house surviving fifty years, let alone marching into the next century with grace and dignity, are vanishingly small. But perhaps that no longer matters. We’re just as likely to move again in five. What we build now isn’t meant to last. It’s meant to sell.

And yet the buildings we inhabit—like the tools we use and the clothes we wear—are not morally neutral. They are visible expressions of what we believe about time, permanence, and our obligations to others. A home built to endure suggests a life meant to endure alongside it: rooted, patient, accountable to both ancestors and descendants. A home thrown up to last just long enough to be resold suggests something else entirely—a belief that we are passing through, that the land owes us convenience and comfort, but we owe it nothing in return.

This disposability is not simply aesthetic. It is spiritual. It trains us in detachment—from place, from community, from the responsibilities of dwelling. It makes neighborliness harder, because neighborhoods are no longer meant to foster connection—they are meant to maximize square footage and curb appeal. It makes reverence harder, because nothing around us is built with reverence. And it makes gratitude harder, because gratitude requires some sense of inheritance: that what we have came at a cost, and must be tended with care.

A people who live this way too long forget not only how to build—they forget how to belong. They trade craftsmanship for convenience, beauty for resale value, and stewardship for transience. The result is not just architectural poverty, but cultural amnesia.

And so, as the sky bursts with fireworks and the flags ripple in the breeze, we mark the memory of a bold and risky founding. But if we are to remain a free people—truly free, not just in law but in spirit—we must recover the habit of building like we mean to stay. Not merely staying put, but staying rooted: in place, in memory, in obligation.

That doesn’t require grand gestures or expensive restorations. It can begin with the decision to preserve what we have, to build what suits the land, to choose durability over fashion. It might look like repairing a porch instead of tearing it off, planting a tree whose shade we may never enjoy, or learning the story behind an old stone wall rather than bulldozing it to widen a drive.

Freedom, rightly understood, is not license to consume and discard at will. It is the opportunity—and responsibility—to make something worth inheriting. To build as if we were shaping not just structures, but souls.

A free people do not settle for houses that could be anywhere. They build homes that belong here.

Warm regards,

The Country Mouse

P.S. If you live in a house like the ones I’ve described—don’t take this as condemnation. Take it as invitation. You don’t need axe-hewn beams or fieldstone walls to begin building differently. Plant something. Repair something. Learn the name of a tree in your yard or the history of your neighborhood. Love what’s been given to you, and shape it with care. Belonging doesn’t require perfection—it begins with attention.

Last time, we discussed the slow collapse of the home sewing industry’s infrastructure—particularly its dependence on mass-market products like big-box patterns and discount polyester blends. I made a case for returning to the art and science of sewing garments, especially by teaching the next generation.

But let me also point you to a community that has kept these skills alive all along: the historical costuming crowd.

These folks are a wealth of knowledge. They can direct you to vintage manuals, modern reconstructions, online workshops, and more. And unlike most modern home sewers, they’ve rarely relied on tissue-paper patterns or polyester from the craft chain stores. Their world is full of real fabric, real fit, and real learning.

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So let’s talk about sourcing fabrics—because JoAnn is, for all intents and purposes, gone. And even if you’re not a sewer, stay with me. This is part of a larger shift. Big box stores across every sector are faltering. Department stores are empty. Malls are dying. Even Amazon isn’t the infinite resource we once believed it was.

And yet—don’t mourn JoAnn too deeply. I don’t.

Over the last decade, their stores became dominated by home decor, seasonal trinkets, and faux crafts. Their garment fabrics were often synthetic, stiff, off-grain, or thin. Cheap? Arguably. But not inexpensive in the long run.

Here’s where I’ll get a familiar objection:
"But not everyone can afford the good stuff, Shirley!"
To which I reply: buying poor quality isn’t actually saving money. It wastes your time, discourages beginners, and leads to more replacement purchases.
And don’t call me Shirley.

It’s time to raise both our standards and our expectations of cost. We’ve grown used to paying very little for clothing and materials, even as quality has plummeted. That mindset won’t serve us well if we want to create durable, beautiful things.

Rule One: Forget What You Knew About Fabric Shopping at JoAnn

Buy the best you can afford. It will serve you longer and make the process more enjoyable.

Now someone will chime in: "But beginners shouldn’t use expensive fabric!"

Actually, starting with poor materials is one of the surest ways to make a beginner feel like a failure. Bad fabric, bad tools—they turn a learning curve into a wall. Would you ask someone to build a bookshelf with warped lumber and a plastic hammer? Or teach someone to knit with acrylic yarn and metal needles?

Where to buy, then, if JoAnn is no longer an option?

Let’s start with where not to go:

• Michael’s and Hobby Lobby will likely carry even lower-quality fabric, with even fewer options.

• Quilting shops, while charming, mostly sell cottons ill-suited to garment sewing. (Unless you really love to iron.)

That brings us to the internet—which is frustrating for fabric shopping, I know. You can’t touch, drape, or scale anything in your hands. But it can work, if you learn the landscape.

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Tips for Online Sourcing

• Buy from shops that offer swatches. Yes, there’s a small fee, but it saves you the pain of ending up with six yards of disappointment.

• Label and save your swatches. They become your personal reference library. Start a notebook, and tab the sources.

• Prioritize natural fibers. Cotton, linen, wool, and silk breathe better, sew easier, and won’t leave you wrapped in woven plastic.

• Seek out cotton in all its glorious weaves: broadcloth, lawn, voile, dobby, twill. It’s versatile and forgiving.

• Linen from Eastern Europe is currently both economical and high-quality.

• Etsy can be gold—if you know what to search for. Try "Japanese cotton lawn" or "cotton georgette." Look for shops that specialize in imported or deadstock fabrics.

• Don't overlook shops that cater to heirloom sewing—many based in the South, with beautiful fine cottons and even real silk ribbon. Yes, for children’s clothes—but usable for any refined sewing.

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Consider Forming a Sewing Co-op

If you have sewing friends, a homeschool group, or even a small local class, you could go in on bulk orders and split the costs. This was how food co-ops worked in the 70s and 80s—and it works just as well for bolts of linen.

You’ll need a few ground rules:

• Everyone pays before the order is placed.

• Have a plan for dividing and distributing yardage.

• Consider a small website or spreadsheet for coordination.

If you’re teaching, use the co-op to buy in bulk for class. Students can buy what they need at wholesale cost. You’ll need a supply cupboard—but it’ll go a long way toward making quality materials accessible to beginners.

That’s the real answer to the affordability question: not cheaper fabric—but smarter systems.

Warm regards,

The Country Mouse

P.S. I'll list some of my favorite online fabric sources and Etsy sellers below. Check back frequently—stock changes often.

P.P.S. If you're a longtime reader, you’ll know this post is part of a broader pattern. The collapse of centralized, commodified systems is happening across industries. But the future isn’t bleak—it’s more communal, more local, more deliberate. Sewing just happens to be one beautiful thread.

Links:

Farmhouse Fabrics - for heirloom sewing supplies, including fine cotton lawns and handkerchief linen

Sartor Bohemia - for fine natural fiber fabrics, including linens and silks

Nomura Tailor - High quality Japanese cottons and a host of other fabrics, trims, and sewing tools