During a recent visit to Lynchburg, Virginia, Kassie and I paid our respects to Sheldon and Davy Vanauken.

This couple and their love story has been an inspiration and a source of hope and encouragement to so many. Looking back over the last 17-years of marriage, we know that we have lived under the Mercy.

If you haven't already, let me encourage you to read A Severe Mercy and its lesser-known sequel, Under the Mercy.

Vanauken wrote poems that appear in both of these books and in a published collection that is worth owning.

As I knelt to read the inscription on the grave marker, a cardinal fluttered by and perched on a nearby bush, watching over us.

This is no chance, 

This bird of flame 

That grips my glance: 

I see God’s name 

In scarlet flight 

And know that He 

Along the light 

Is hailing me.

-- "Cardinal" by Sheldon Vanauken

What if we still ride on, we two

With life for ever old yet new...?

One thing I have noticed over the years is that many fathers are not opposed to what their wives love about classical education so much as they have simply never been invited deeply into the conversation by means of their own reading.

Mothers often arrive first through instinct, beauty, atmosphere, stories, and the desire for something richer for their children. Fathers, however, frequently need a different doorway. They may need to encounter these ideas through questions of work, meaning, marriage, masculinity, craftsmanship, and the recovery of ordinary life itself.

With that in mind, this is a list of books I would recommend for husbands and fathers who are thoughtful, busy, practical, skeptical, or simply not naturally “bookish.” These are not primarily books about education, but they can awaken wonder, restore meaning to household life, and help modern men rediscover what it means to be more fully human. I would not offer these books as assignments or arguments to win, but as invitations and conversation starters that can slowly deepen a shared vision of family culture.

Chance or the Dance? — Thomas Howard

A joyful and haunting invitation to see the universe not as an accident, but as a meaningful drama in which every ordinary thing participates.

Perfect for the man who feels that modern life has become flat, mechanical, or spiritually thin, even if he rarely articulates it.

Bed and Board — Robert Farrar Capon

A witty, earthy, and deeply theological vision of marriage and household life that portrays love not as sentimentality or efficiency, but as a feast of forgiveness, embodiment, and daily fidelity.

A great choice for the father who loves his family but feels tired all the time. At his best, he longs for home life to feel less like constant management and more like abundance, joy, and shared delight.

Wind, Sand and Stars — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

A pilot-poet’s meditation on danger, duty, friendship, and civilization that restores grandeur to masculine work and human responsibility.

For the man who likes his philosophy smuggled in on a prop plane, the author of The Little Prince writes for the hardworking father who resonates with duty, craftsmanship, courage, and masculine responsibility.

How to Think Like Shakespeare — Scott Newstok

A witty and deeply practical defense of humane learning that argues education is about forming judgment, character, and wisdom rather than producing information workers.

Perfect for the father who is intelligent and capable but skeptical that older approaches to education remain relevant to modern life.

A Guide for the Perplexed — E. F. Schumacher

A humane critique of modern materialism that helps readers recover hierarchy, meaning, scale, and a richer understanding of what it means to be human.

An excellent choice for the systems-thinking man who senses that modern culture is disordered and wants a deeper explanation for why life feels increasingly fragmented.

"Since language is the distinguishing property of reason, the formal principle of human species, learning to listen, talk, read and write is the chief work of schools from nursery to college. Reading is the horse of culture, carrying the burden of 'the best that has been thought and said.'"

- Dr. John Senior

In short, men lit up the night.

We used to mark time, gather people, and set the world on fire (literally).

Catholic faith is not meant to be a thin veneer on top of the rest of life. It is thick with custom, memory, and shared experiences.

The men who came before us knew that Catholic culture was meant to be kept not only in the liturgy, but in homes, backyards, and public gathering spots.

They lit bonfires.

Religion is not meant to be a Sunday-only affair or an internet phenomenon.

It is the very ligaments of life.

When our shared practices were stripped away, what was lost was not only ceremony, but a whole way of life—a network of local, embodied, participatory culture that formed men and bound families and communities of faith together.

You may have noticed that we are still living in the after-effects of that loss.

Some men believe the fix is in better content and stronger apologetics, and yes, these have their place.

But everyone knows that culture is not rebuilt on the internet alone.

It is rebuilt when it is embodied and inhabited.

That is why…

You’re invited to light a fire on the evening of May 1st.

Show me more!

Enrique Rigg did an amazing job putting it together, and John Oliver's voice was pitch-perfect.

Satan doesn’t want fathers to watch this, and I love to frustrate his plans. Will you do me a favor and share it with everyone you know?

The most important thing we’ve learned,

So far as children are concerned,

Is never, NEVER, NEVER let

Them near your television set -

Or better still, just don’t install

The idiotic thing at all.

In almost every house we’ve been,

We’ve watched them gaping at the screen.

They loll and slop and lounge about,

And stare until their eyes pop out.

(Last week in someone’s place we saw

A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)

They sit and stare and stare and sit

Until they’re hypnotised by it,

Until they’re absolutely drunk

With all that shocking ghastly junk.

Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,

They don’t climb out the window sill,

They never fight or kick or punch,

They leave you free to cook the lunch

And wash the dishes in the sink -

But did you ever stop to think,

To wonder just exactly what

This does to your beloved tot?

IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!

IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!

IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!

IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND

HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND

A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!

HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!

HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!

HE CANNOT THINK - HE ONLY SEES!

‘All right! ‘ you’ll cry. ‘All right! ‘ you’ll say,

‘But if we take the set away,

What shall we do to entertain

Our darling children? Please explain! ‘

We’ll answer this by asking you,

‘What used the darling ones to do?

‘How used they keep themselves contented

Before this monster was invented? ‘

Have you forgotten? Don’t you know?

We’ll say it very loud and slow:

THEY... USED... TO... READ! They’d READ and READ,

AND READ and READ, and then proceed

To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!

One half their lives was reading books!

The nursery shelves held books galore!

Books cluttered up the nursery floor!

And in the bedroom, by the bed,

More books were waiting to be read!

Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales

Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales

And treasure isles, and distant shores

Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,

And pirates wearing purple pants,

And sailing ships and elephants,

And cannibals crouching ‘round the pot,

Stirring away at something hot.

(It smells so good, what can it be?

Good gracious, it’s Penelope.)

The younger ones had Beatrix Potter

With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,

And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,

And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-

Just How The Camel Got His Hump,

And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,

And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,

There’s Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole-

Oh, books, what books they used to know,

Those children living long ago!

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,

Go throw your TV set away,

And in its place you can install

A lovely bookshelf on the wall.

Then fill the shelves with lots of books,

Ignoring all the dirty looks,

The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,

And children hitting you with sticks-

Fear not, because we promise you

That, in about a week or two

Of having nothing else to do,

They’ll now begin to feel the need

Of having something to read.

And once they start - oh boy, oh boy!

You watch the slowly growing joy

That fills their hearts. They’ll grow so keen

They’ll wonder what they’d ever seen

In that ridiculous machine,

That nauseating, foul, unclean,

Repulsive television screen!

And later, each and every kid

Will love you more for what you did.

Ever since I became a father, the Ash Wednesday reading from the book of Joel has pricked my heart more than most other Mass readings.

It could be because I am reminded in the same Mass that my children are dust. Even my look-alike four-year-old Beau, with his ash cross hidden beneath his too-long dirty blonde bangs (that boy always seems to be overdue for a haircut), bears the mark of his mortality.

The change of routine always makes my young children extra silly during Mass. One day, there will be contrition and mourning, but for now, it’s all giggles.

And yet, where I am often stern and sometimes quick to wrath, there is something about their little smudgy foreheads that softens my response.

“For gracious and merciful is He,

slow to anger, rich in kindness,

and relenting in punishment.”

In those moments, I remember to be more like God because over the years, my children will become more like me.

As fathers, the way we respond to the actions of others has the power (to borrow a phrase from Dickens) to render them happy or unhappy.

We are the stewards of the environment and also of the atmosphere of our lives.

Lent reminds us both of what we need to give up, but it also reminds us of the storehouse of grace and mercy that is ours to enjoy and share.

In a sense, fathers can choose to breathe warmth and life into a room, or they can leave it cold and dry as dust.

We know what God does.

This Lent, practice the rich kindness that lifts others up.

After all, we have a resurrection to prepare for.

I have reached the age where a man begins to wonder about the long line of people who came before him. These thoughts often come to me during that pause in the Mass, right in the middle of when the priest says, “Remember also, Lord, your servants, [pause] who have gone before us with the sign of faith and rest in the sleep of peace.” In that brief moment when the voice of the priest falls quiet, I whisper the names of my dead relatives. Quickly, before the priest continues, I offer a final prayer for all my ancestors whose names are lost to time but who once walked the earth and worked and worried and loved and prayed and made my existence and the existence of my children possible. 

I am a Bailey (yes, like George Bailey), and in my imagination, the old Baileys stand inside Scottish castle walls, steady men guarding their bailiwick with watchful eyes. My mother, though, comes from the Palmers, that old English family who dared to go beyond the walls. These ancestors of mine went all the way to the Holy Land and came home with palm fronds as proof that they had seen the places where God once walked among men.

I can see them now making the long walk back to England, carrying those blessed leaves, and I wonder if their children smacked each other with them the whole way, the same way mine do in the van ride home every Palm Sunday.

When I meditate on my mother’s maiden name, I realize I have pilgrim blood coursing through my veins. Admittedly, this is a startling discovery for a man who sometimes feels like it's a real chore to make the short drive to the store for bread and milk.

And yet, there it is all the same. Somewhere far back in the long lineage that leads to me, men set their faces toward Jerusalem and walked until their feet bled. And because they did, I cannot help but wonder where I am being asked to go, and whether I will rise, at last, to go there.

Well, we did something odd, and now there is a live tree in my house. Abies fraseri: known for its evocative scent, soft needles, and rigid branches. A standard-issue evergreen for the season, picked from among its brethren under a tent off the side of the road.

To be specific, the tree now camped out next to the end of my sofa and blocking the secondary entrance to the room came from a crowded parking lot at an inflated price to fund a local addiction-recovery ministry. At least, that’s what the sign said. It’s a nice detail, but, as you know, that’s not where the tree is from—not really. Even the farm it presumably grew up on isn’t its deepest origin.

The tannenbaum standing tall in my living room in nothing but a metal base and modest skirt is born of something older, lovelier, darker, deeper. I sense that reality as I stare into it late at night, bare of lights and ornamentals. One of my children, unable to bear the nakedness of the branches, stuffed in a few pinecones she found outside. Somehow that only heightened the tree’s wildness. What is this sappy thing doing in my house?

In a season when the woods grow darker and colder by the night, why do civilized men insist on bringing a piece of the forest into the warmth of our well-lit homes?

Surely someone has a tidy history lesson at the ready, but at this point I find myself drawn to the poetic knowledge available to my blessedly non-analytical children. I mean the kind of knowing that happens without explanation—the kind that teaches the soul through the imagination and a touch of holy fear.

What do you want from me, tree? What are you trying to show me? Would it surprise me if an excited red squirrel leapt out of your branches, or a sleepy white-tailed and spotted fawn unfolded itself awkwardly from beneath your lower limbs? Perhaps you are a portal for something more transcendent. Whatever the case, you are a guest from out-of-doors, and you remind us that creation is alive, a memento of the living green now hidden in winter waiting to break forth. Do you have any idea of the robe of light I have in store for you?

Maybe tonight I’ll sit up a little longer in an unlit vigil after my wife and children are asleep. It is the second week of Advent after all, the fast before the feast, and I can still stare into the black between the branches. That ancient darkness. The haunting and hopeful expectation. And I’ll remember that soon this wild and hairy thing will be arrayed in glory, its arms weighted down with silver and gold, its body enwreathed with light. And, if we are willing to wait on the Lord, one day we will be too.

Once, when driving from North Carolina to Tennessee, I pulled off for gas on a country highway. The station doubled as a small general store with dry goods on wire racks, beer and soda refrigerators humming, and a collection of household and automotive odds and ends where you know each has a story of something somebody needed at some time and will maybe need again, plus a perpetual pot of drip coffee.

I grabbed a few snacks and asked for the money on my pump. While I paid the cashier, I noticed seven men sitting in a circle of folding chairs in the corner of the store, each holding a steaming styrofoam cup. From the looks of it, they weren’t in a hurry and had been there for more than a while.

What happens to us when we give ourselves and other men permission to sit and talk in this way? They were speaking and listening in that easy measured manner men converse in while up in tree stands and down in fishing boats, saying everything and nothing, solving new problems and sitting with old ones.

I didn’t catch a clear word of their conversation, but I received a glance and a collective nod. And somehow, in a moment, we all seemed to confirm that this way of men gathered, men talking, men simply being together, is something we need, and maybe something too many in an age of distraction have forgotten how to engage in.

I wish I had a styrofoam cup of coffee and a folding chair to offer you right now, because at its best, Sword&Spade reads like whatever was being said in that circle of men. I hope you will stop in, stay a while, and listen in.

Read Sword&Spade

“Forced down once more in a landscape of deep sand, I was waiting for the dawn.”

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars

It is a fitting response for educators today to be tormented by the farmer’s point of view. After all, the parables and revelations of the final reaping are not exactly all peaches and cream. The weightier responsibilities and judgments that come with the vocation of teaching ought to put the fear of God into anyone looking to labor in the field that we call the classroom.

As a man of the land, the farmer is concerned with cultivation. Where his task is agriculture, the school teacher, it can be beautifully said, is concerned with the cultivation of souls. Teachers, like parents, have the noble tasks of being co-laborers with God in tending to the fruit of virtue and rooting out the weeds of vice within students’ souls. In this way, the good teacher looks upon students from a farmer’s perspective. Undoubtedly, this way of seeing can be improved with real dirt under one’s fingernails and food growing in even a small plot behind the house (consider it a reintroduction to reality through the senses). Still, even the metaphor alone penetrates enough to speak to something in any receptive teacher’s moral imagination. Simply put, a farmer’s point of view is one centered on facilitating fruitful growth through cultivation. His hand is on the spade, his eye is on the plant, and his hopes are in the harvest.

C.S. Lewis famously said that, “[t]he task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.” What that means, Lewis explains later, is “to train in the pupil those [emotional] responses which are in themselves appropriate [...].” Like the land subjected to the rule of the gardener, the human soul must be subject to the rule that facilitates proper intellectual and emotional development. Put another way, students must be taught to think rightly, but they must also be taught to feel rightly,

The importance of training emotional responses may be news, especially to a modern self-proclaimed traditional educator who has determined in his own heart, like Dickens’ Gradgrind, that, in the final analysis, feelings do not really matter. Just the facts, ma’am. But lo and behold, while the progressive types have been laboring these many years in the soil of student feelings, the would-be conservatives have sold the whole farm. Let the reader not forget that many of the trained debunkers of Lewis’ day are now the teachers of today’s teachers, and they see emotions, as Lewis describes, as “contrary to reason and contemptible.” Suppose Lewis’s overarching diagnosis in The Abolition of Man is right, and common sense suggests it is. In that case, there is no education without the formation of feeling responses because the seat of emotion (what Lewis calls “the chest”) is what makes us human, to begin with. And like rocks are hard and water is wet, some emotional responses are true, and others are false. To deny that is to deny reality and puts one in the position of sorely needing an attitude adjustment.

Alas, all is not lost. One exemplary trio of teachers who understood the type of soul cultivation needed was doctors John Senior, Franklin Nelick, and Dennis Quinn. In their too-little-known Integrated Humanities Program (IHP) at the University of Kansas, they called upon the senses and emotions of their students to “experience the transcendentals of beauty, goodness, and truth, rather than offering mere definitions to be learned for an examination” (Poetic Knowledge, 149). How did they do this? For starters, they invited students into a classroom to primarily listen and bear witness to a lively conversation between the three professors. They recognized that much of the spade-work needed for the soul could be found in reading classic children’s literature, poems, and the Great Books of Western civilization. Outside the classroom, students memorized poetry through a call-and-response group recitation. No one ever received a poem on a printout; instead, they heard the spoken poem from their classmates. On certain nights, the students went stargazing and listened to their classmates (typically a charming sophomore girl) recount the myths behind the constellations by the moonlight.

On their own accord, IHP students put on traditional folk festivals and learned to Waltz. The IHP professors did not just offer their students what they desired; they professed something about what they ought to desire and set an example that could be received through embodied action and imitation. In this way, their college experience became a normative influence that cultivated the human soul through the senses.

Poetically speaking, these professors wanted their students’ hearts to leap up when they beheld a rainbow in the sky. They wanted them to know what it was like for love to be like a red, red rose that’s newly sprung in June. They wanted them to know what it was like to wish to be a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn instead of a modern starving for meaningful contact with the world. Professors Senior, Nelick, and Quinn sought to pass on “poetic knowledge.” In other words, they provided their students with a sensory-emotional experience grounded in a nonanalytical encounter with reality’s beautiful, awful, and mysterious qualities. This matters because when the senses and emotions are engaged, the soul can perceive the significance and meaning of reality. As a result, many IHP students began to ask the big existential questions of life, and, on their own accord, a good number took the Catholic claims about reality seriously and entered the Church. As Isiah prophesied, water began to gush forth in the wilderness, and streams formed in the desert.

It is fitting for today’s teachers to be tormented by the farmer’s point of view, but it is also right to move from torment to right practice and hopeful expectation in a God who promises to give increase to those who labor in the fields. We may find ourselves in a landscape of deep sand, but the life-renewing dawn is coming, and meanwhile, the world is still charged with the grandeur of God, and there is good work to be done. Let him who teaches put his hand on the plow and do the work of cultivation. After all, the Landlord will be here soon.

I wrote this for the wee Baileys. Feel free to adopt it for your own family.

Q: What is Halloween?

A: It is the night before All Saints’ Day, when the Church keeps vigil. The year turns, the light fades, and we remind ourselves that death is conquered under Christ’s rule.

Q: Why do we call it Halloween?

A: Because it is All Hallows’ Eve. The old word hallow means holy, and the name still carries that meaning and memory.

Q: What do Christians do on this night?

A: We pray for the dead and sing for the saints. Candles burn in windows, Jack-o’-lanterns, and on graves. These are signs that the light still holds against the dark, and they are a terror to demons.

Q: Why do we wear costumes?

A: To join the ancient play that mocks Satan and all the forces of darkness. Children dressed as saints, angels, and even demons to show that Christ has broken their power. This act of play is a kind of victory.

Q: Does Halloween belong to the secular world?

A: No. It comes from the Church. What was once a season of fear has become a feast.

Q: Why do we laugh at death?

A: Because Christ entered death and destroyed it from within. We can look it in the face and smile, knowing that the grave cannot hold those who die in Christ.

Q: Why do we trick-or-treat with our neighbors?

A: Because the joy of the season is meant to be shared. In old times, people begged for cakes and offered prayers in return. We keep that spirit when we knock on doors, greet our neighbors, and pass treats in charity from hand to hand. We also promise to pray for their dead.

Q: How should a Catholic family keep this night?

A: With gratitude and courage. Light a candle. Pray for the souls of the departed. Tell the stories of the saints. Step into the night without fear, for the world and all its shadows are under God’s control.

Q: What by example do we teach our neighbors and friends on this night?

A: That holiness is not escape from the physical world but an incarnated presence. That Christ’s victory is everywhere. That we are a people who can walk through darkness because we carry the light.

Q: What happens during these days of Hallowtide?

A: On All Hallows’ Eve, the Church Militant stands guard, fights, and plays in joy. On All Saints’ Day, we rejoice with the Church Triumphant in glory. On All Souls’ Day, we pray for the Church Penitent, the souls being purified for paradise.

Sword&Spade is where I do all my best writing and where I pull together contributions from the writers I know and love best.

The editors are saying the next issue on Death will be the best in seven years.

Will you do me a favor and join us here?

Readers of The Bailiwick can use the code “GRAYSCALECHALLENGE” to get 10% off a first-year subscription to my quarterly print journal before the end of October.

If you want to know more about the Sword&Spade Gray Scale Challenge, go here.

Friends of the quarterly print journal I help publish say the next issue of Sword&Spade Magazine is set to be one of the best so far. It will arrive during the month of November, when the Church reminds us that we will die.

In response, for 54 days — from All Saints’ to Christmas Eve — Fraternus is inviting you to join The Sword&Spade Grayscale Challenge.

It’s simple: turn your phone to grayscale mode.

Why should you join the challenge?

1. Be reminded that you will die.
The saints kept skulls on their desks. Every time you glance at that dull screen, remember to number your days.

2. Pray for the dead.
November is the month of the Holy Souls. A grayscale phone is a daily memento — a visual requiem.

3. Detox from dopamine.
The machine’s algorithm runs on color, speed, and noise. When you take the color away, the dopamine hit is weaker, and you deprive yourself of one more little pleasure.

This challenge is about mortality and mastery.
Make your phone boring. Make your life beautiful.

Join the movement and take the Sword&Spade Grayscale Challenge.

Instructions:

iPhone
To turn an iPhone to grayscale, go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Color Filters, then toggle on Color Filters and select Grayscale.

Android
You can turn on grayscale on an Android device by going to Settings > Accessibility > Color and motion, selecting Color correction, then turning on the feature and choosing Grayscale.

Tag your friends and family on social media now to invite them to die to their phones.

#SwordandSpadeGrayScale

The Catholic home is like a city set on a hill. Its halls are hallowed, its bed blessed, and its table is laden with delights. Who can number its glories? Sons like cedars, daughters like pillars, patriarchs presiding over a land flowing with milk and honey.

But be honest. Most of us live with overflowing trash cans in a land of spilled milk and suspiciously sticky linoleum. As for our children, more Cain is raised than we care to admit. Even when the little Philistines are eventually purged from the city, they always find a way to reoccupy during Christmas.

Householding is hard work. Sadly, most contemporary images offer little help. Depictions of modern houses are either depressingly out of reach or blatantly dishonest. Fathers who want to hold a house as God intends need less advice from the so-called housing authorities and more encouragement from fellow peasants who know where to find real milk and, if they are lucky, a bit of butter.

To that end, I am the husband of one wife and the father of (at the moment) six children. Each time I lie down and get up again, there seems to be another little ship in the harbor. This remark is not meant to impress, but to impress upon the reader that space at Chez Bailey is getting tight. We keep feeding the children, and they keep getting bigger. Strangely, even though I keep paying the rent, our house keeps getting smaller.

It wasn’t always this way. As newlyweds, our first house was an embarrassingly large four-bedroom we rented at a bargain. We didn’t know it then, but it was too much house. Half our dinner conversations back then were spent deciding which spare bedroom we would rendezvous in later that evening. The house belonged to our landlady, who only required limited use of it during football season. Aside from “no pets,” her only stipulation was that she and her friends could access the downstairs bathroom on game days, as it was a short walk to the college stadium. When we decided we wanted a dog more than bathroom guests, we downsized to an efficiency apartment better suited to our situation.

Since then, our family has expanded, but housing has remained small. Traveling for work in the early years, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment on the edge of a Navajo reservation, a single-room dry cabin with an outhouse in Alaska, and a former rectory built for a single priest attached to the backside of a college chapel. Sharing a wall with God had its privileges, but sharing one bathroom among six souls tested our sanctity.

As we raise our family, I am learning that the elements that contribute to a modest home are not solely determined by square footage; they also encompass the atmosphere of a home and the life lived within it. If modesty is the inner life of a man expressed in gestures, it is critical to consider the inner life of a home and how it forms a family. After all, modesty in a home is a type of harmony. It is tasteful without pretense, tactful without sterility, festive without fuss. For residents and guests alike, it demands neither too much nor too little of them. Modesty, as it were, is the mother of manners.

Modern houses come in all shapes and sizes. Take it from me: you can put more children in a 10x10 nursery than most people think. That said, as boys and girls grow, I am learning it is fitting to grant them their own space. I probably own too many books (book gluttony is real), but it is not necessarily immodest to have a home library. One day, it would be beneficial for my wife to have a designated space for her art projects. However rooms are designated, a modest house follows the Goldilocks principle of not being too large nor too small for its purposes.

As for how we deck the halls, the virtue of modesty suggests a mean between minimalism and maximalism. Furnished in proportion to its purpose, a house should allow for fullness, but hold all things in due measure. From birthday decorations to board games, the modest home is not over the top, but it does not fail to bring out the trim and tackle fitting for any occasion.

The atmosphere of a modest home communicates a sense of occasion. No matter the season, it is in tune with the time. The ancient Greeks were on to something when they perceived two distinct types of time. Chronos is ticking by all around us, consuming every second and decade of our lives. Kairos captures the quality of time, the occasion, the moment of opportunity. A modest household lives in the rhythms of Kairos, while an immodest one is out of sync with the music of the seasons.

The heart of a home is the life lived therein. The material realities of a house can support and communicate modesty, but if the family does not possess the virtue of modesty in its life, it will all be a façade. The environment and atmosphere of a home can help a modest life along, but the virtue of modesty is the fruit of the Holy Spirit that must be cultivated through habits of right living. Before a family can be modest, it must learn self-control, and before self-control, chastity. Chastity is the guard at the door that asks whether a desire is lawful. Self-control follows, and it discerns whether a lawful desire is fitting for the moment. Modesty is what results when a family learns to live by both.

The modest home is not the one HGTV praises, but the one fitting to a family’s vocation in holiness. When my wife and I dream of the future, we imagine homesteading with a farmhouse large enough for all our books and as many children as God will bless us with. The virtue of self-control teaches us not to seize every good at once, but to accept the one proper to our mode in the moment. So, for now, the farm will have to wait. God desires families to live in one accord, whatever the square footage or garden size.

Our homes tend to reflect the condition of our souls; sometimes they are cluttered and loud, and sometimes they are fastidious and sterile. But just as grace perfects nature, the pursuit of modesty redeems the mess—inside and out. The world will hardly notice homes where this deeper restoration is taking place. Instagram won’t feature them. Realtors won’t praise them. But a modest house, sticky floors and all, is the envy of the angels.

Something about this conversation with two friends concerning things that have changed my life as a son, husband, and father seemed to bring out more confessional responses from both the hosts and me.

Trying to be a good man is difficult.

I hope this conversation will encourage you (or a man in your life) as you work toward the restoration of Christian culture within your own family!

Here is how you can get the printed quarterly journal.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be

The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:

The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,

In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself

Is the reader leaning late and reading there.