What's a home for, anyway? (What Hobby Lobby said)
This Bathroom Is For Singing
Hobby Lobby is not known for being a philosophical establishment. Its name announces its primary purpose as a supply shop for makers: we go there to buy watercolor sets, or yarn, or a new pair of sewing shears. However, these supplies are, like the unprocessed foods at the grocery store, strategically placed around the side and back margins of the store. The central aisles are filled with the craft equivalent of “processed foods”: goods that promise to nourish our creative aspirations without all the fuss of actually making anything.
I don’t say this to be cynical - what I’m really interested in is the ways Hobby Lobby has identified a need people have, even if the products they offer aren’t a sufficient response to those needs. (And of course Hobby Lobby isn’t the only merchant of dreams who does this — pretty much the entire world of retail and social media does the same thing). So what is this need that Hobby Lobby has recognized? It is surprisingly philosophical, or we might even say existential. Because a huge portion of the store’s central aisles are filled with beautifully printed phrases and mottoes, and almost all of these paint a little picture of the function or qualities of a home.
Here’s a sample I took more or less at random from their shelves this week:
“Still choosing this life together every day.”
“TOGETHER we can change the world.”
“Come gather”
“Farm to Table”
“Happiness is Handmade”
“The Farm Life Chose Me”
“Welcome to our Patio: Sit Long, Talk Much, Laugh Often”
“Enjoy the Little Things”
and my personal favorite: “This Bathroom is For Singing.”
It’s fair to acknowledge that there’s something a little cringe about these signs. Rather like having to explain a joke, one suspects that if you have to put up a sign on your patio instructing people to talk and laugh, then perhaps not much talking and laughing is happening naturally.
And yet, I would wager that most of the people who buy and hang up these signs do so because they want their home to mean something. To mean something more, that is, than the basic functions of shelter, sleep, and Netflix.
The farm life hasn’t actually chosen them at all, but they wish it would, because some picture of “farm life” carries values they’re hungry for (maybe self-sufficiency? freedom from the 9-5 grind?). Or they mount “Come gather” above the kitchen table because they’re tired of everyone munching on supper while working late at the computer, or scrolling on their individual phones. Even “This Bathroom is For Singing” strikes me as a little poignant. There’s a real sweetness in hearing someone’s garbled shower song drift down to you in the kitchen. But again — how many of us sing in the shower because that’s what the instructions on the wall tell us to do?
You get my point. Many of these signs are clumsy and sentimental, but people wouldn’t buy them if they didn’t promise to satisfy some real desire. A desire to live in a place of gathering, of farm-fresh meals, handmade goods, of lingering on the patio, help with the dishes and singing in the shower. Even a place where “together we change the world.” It’s not a bad picture at all.
The problem is that it’s a picture with no more depth than the particle board the signs are printed on. This is retail, after all, not philosophy: $12.99 isn’t enough for any actual help creating the reality these mottoes announce. But the presence of these products tells us something important: our schools, our families, our churches aren’t giving us language and conversation about what a home should be, and so we go and see what the marketplace has to offer.
What I took away from this week’s Hobby Lobby trip (besides some yarn - no surprise if you know me!), is that there’s a genuine hunger to inhabit meaningful homes, and to have language to celebrate and strengthen these places, but that maybe most of us don’t know where to to have this conversation.
What do you think of these kinds of home mottoes and decorative signs? When you think about the spiritual or moral life of your home, where do you go for your pictures or inspiration? Where and with whom are you having these conversations about what our homes should be?
It is so interesting thinking about that intersection between our aspirational values and our lives values and how the market tries to help us with the discomfort that gap creates by selling us things... I am part of Sarah Clarcksons book club this year and she made an off hand comment that since she is now in a season that is mostly about little kids & home, she is seeking to fill her imagination with beautiful stories that illustrate what a real, good home looks like in that moment. (Rather than just images of the scholar in the tower, or whatever her imagined life was before) Much better than putting a saying or a fridge magnet, I suppose. Because although idealistic, good stories with characters help give a vision for what our home *could* be and point us in a direction. So it did make me pause and try and think about how I imagine "home" and what is feeding into that. I too often know what I DONT want, and mostly that's reactionary to things around me... but do I have any encouraging guides towards what I do want to see our home become? Not just principles, but real pictures?
Insightful. If I’m being truly honest, those signs around my home are the reminder of what our home SHOULD be about. Not pithy platitudes, but rather the reminder to me that the purpose of home is for our sanctuary from an unkind, unrelenting world that tries desperately to distract us from whom we belong. A place where we lay our trauma at the foot of the cross and seek out healing. Where we recognize the physical mess might be more indicative of the mental and emotional chaos that consumes us when we get sideways with our ultimate purpose of knowing God ad being known by Him.