Value for Monday of Week 41 in the season of Assessing

Taking Comfort from Home

Memories of home can bring great comfort.

  • Home is the nicest word there is. [source unclear]
  • Home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling. [attributed to Cecelia Ahern]
  • When I go home, it’s an easy way to be grounded. You learn to realize what truly matters. [attributed toTony Stewart]

Was home a place of solace and comfort? Do thoughts of home comfort us now? This is a state to which we aspire.

For some of us, the answer to these questions is yes. Like John Denver, I am a country boy, at least by background, having grown up on a dairy farm in Michigan, a mile from Saginaw Bay, the son of two of the sincerest people I have ever met. John Denver’s country music album “Back Home Again” captures that spirit, especially for someone like me who grew up in the country. Its images are so powerful that I chose my son’s name as a reflection of the experience I had growing up, and my wish for my son to have memories like that. The night Matthew was born, I told my parents, who were staying with us, why we had chosen that name; I never saw such a look in their eyes as I saw that night.

That joy has returned to me as a parent. When our daughter was preparing for a trip back to Michigan – a place she only visited on holidays – she posted John Denver’s “Country Roads” on her Facebook page. (A memory of returning home one Thanksgiving with that song on the car radio remains vivid today. It was playing just as I approached the dirt road where my parents’ home was. Crops had been harvested from the fields, and there stood our house, just like always.)

Not everyone is as lucky as I was. But then, we can choose what to make of our past. My hope for everyone is that you will know the sense of homely comfort I have known.

Real

True Narratives

How people create their home environments - how we decorate our homes and how we eat - is a living narrative about the comforts of home.

Technical and Analytical Readings

Photographs

Documentary and Educational Films

Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Novels:

Poetry

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Albums:

The soothing sounds of the African stringed instrument, the kora, meld with Djeli Moussa Diawara’s plaintive tenor to evoke gentle images of Africa. Here are links to his playlists, and some videos. 

Compositions:

From the dark side:

  • The piano pieces that comprise Michael Finnissy’s English Country-Tunes (1977) (approx. 50-53’) are not the idyllic works the title suggests. On the contrary, Finnissy draws his title from the first syllable of the word “country,” as it is pronounced. The work reflects the composer’s ambivalence toward his native England, particularly its attitudes toward sexuality.

Music: songs and other short pieces

Visual Arts

Film and Stage

This Is Our Story

A religion of values and Ethics, driven by love and compassion, informed by science and reason.

PART ONE: OUR STORY

First ingredient: Distinctions. What is the core and essence of being human? What is contentment, or kindliness, or Love? What is gentleness, or service, or enthusiasm, or courage? If you follow the links, you see at a glance what these concepts mean.

PART TWO: ANALYSIS

This site would be incomplete without an analytical framework. After you have digested a few of the examples, feel free to explore the ideas behind the model. I would be remiss if I did not give credit to my inspiration for this work: the Human Faith Project of Calvin Chatlos, M.D. His demonstration of a model for Human Faith began my exploration of this subject matter.

A RELIGION OF VALUES

A baby first begins to learn about the world by experiencing it. A room may be warm or cool. The baby learns that distinction. As a toddler, the child may strike her head with a rag doll, and see that it is soft; then strike her head with a wooden block, and see that it is hard. Love is a distinction: she loves me, or she doesn’t love me. This is true of every human value:

justice, humility, wisdom, courage . . . every single one of them.

This site is dedicated to exploring those distinctions. It is based on a model of values that you can read about on the “About” page. However, the best way to learn about what is in here is the same as the baby’s way of learning about the world: open the pages, and see what happens.

ants organic action machines

Octavio Ocampo, Forever Always

Jacek Yerka, House over the Waterfall

Norman Rockwell, Carefree Days Ahead

WHAT YOU WILL SEE HERE

When you open tiostest.wpengine.com, you will see a human value identified at the top of the page. The value changes daily. These values are designed to follow the seasons of the year.

You will also see an overview of the value, or subject for the day, and then two columns of materials.

The left-side column presents true narratives, which include biographies, memoirs, histories, documentary films and the like; and also technical and analytical writings.

The right-side columns presents the work of the human imagination: fictional novels and stories, music, visual art, poetry and fictional film.

Each entry is presented to help identify the value. Open some of the links and experience our human story, again. It belongs to us all, and each of us is a part of it.

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The Work on the Meditations