Dear Friend, 

While sheltering at home earlier this year, our family embarked on a series of ambitious DIY projects that will likely keep us busy well into next year. In March, we shared how we were enlarging our vegetable patch. Another project—just completed—was to move the workbench from the shed to the basement, setting up a year-round hub for coordinating house projects.
 
Soren’s workbench was built by his dad, known by our kids as “Gramps.” Gramps, whose own workbench is pictured above, was a jack of all trades, a lawyer, a one-time hardware store owner, an inveterate DIYer, a pro-life and pro-family politician who never failed to reach across the aisle, a tireless crusader for prison reform, and most of all a loving husband and dad who often worked with his boys to teach them how to build and repair things around the house. When we bought a fixer-upper as newlyweds, he showed up for weeks at a time to do the demolition and framing. He left the easy jobs for us.  
 
As you know, in the third week of each month, we turn our focus to Level 3 of your Trinity House—Household Economy. A vast swath of our daily life occurs on this level. From scheduling and budgeting to cooking, gardening to plumbing, cleaning to repair, your household economy will keep you busy for a lifetime. It can be overwhelming. But instead of throwing up our hands, let’s take a moment to reflect on just one focal point for Level 3: the workbench.
 
Much like the garden or the kitchen counter, the workbench provides a focal point for the family’s shared work. At the workbench—with dad or mom shoulder-to-shoulder with the kids—we can build and repair the necessary items for our household. And we can have some fun in the process as we reflect the interpersonal communion which belongs to us in our God-given identities.
 
The wise Wendell Berry, author of The Unsettling of America, helps us here. He distinguishes between work that is “isolating, harsh, destructive, specialized or trivialized,” on the one hand, and work that is “restorative, convivial, dignified and dignifying, and pleasing,” on the other. This “good work,” he explains, “is not just the maintenance of connections…but the enactment of connections. It is living, and a way of living; it is not support for a family in the sense of an exterior brace or prop, but is one of the forms and acts of love.”
 
In other words, the workbench is a focal point par excellence to maintain and develop your loving relationships as a family. We are blessed to have memories of rolling up the sleeves in our childhood with our parents. Was every moment of that shared work in the household “fun” or enjoyable? Of course not. But on the whole, the hundreds of hours we spent doing good work—convivial, dignified and dignifying—were a gift we will forever carry with immense gratitude.

In those days, pre-smartphone and pre-Internet, our parents did not hand us a screen and say “have fun.” On Saturdays and on many weeknights, our parents handed us a tool, taught us how to use it, and invited us (OK: maybe we should say “required us”) to help the household by working alongside them.
 
So where to begin? After all, with so many of us tied to our screens because our jobs depend on them, it can be downright hard to make it to our workbench, let alone accomplish much there. Here are three tools which have helped us to leverage the power of our workbench to teach and form our children:    
 
1 | Habit Stacking

The social science is clear: our willpower is weaker than we think, especially when it comes to creating new habits out of scratch. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, writes, “When it comes to building new habits, you can use the connectedness of behavior to your advantage. One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do … and then stack your new behavior on top. This is called habit stacking.” Instead of being overwhelmed with the idea of starting a new habit of exposing your children to regular home maintenance and repair, start small and stack your workbench time on top of a habit you already have, like mowing the grass or weeding and watering.    
 
2 | Google

Not sure how to fix a leak, replace an electrical socket, or unclog a sink? You’re probably a millisecond away from a brief, accessible video which outlines the main steps. You can connect your kids’ media proficiency with the higher purpose of improving your home. One dad has even launched a popular YouTube program call “Dad, How Do I?” which offers brief videos like “how to change a tire.” As you learn together, you can weave in a spiritual lesson about, for example, the virtues, St. Joseph, or a memory you have of your own parents or grandparents, their faithfulness, and what they taught you. 
 
3 | Grace 

Let’s be candid: especially when you’re getting started, you may experience push-back or moodiness when you invite your children over to the workbench—or to the back deck to repaint it, or to your fence to repair it. Instead of quitting or doing the project solo, we need to offer these common, daily moments of frustration over to the Lord. Take a moment to pray, asking the Lord for wisdom, patience, and love. Then be persistent and confident in inviting your children to learn and work together, shoulder-to-shoulder, resisting the siren call of going back to the loneliness of a game or email or text on the nearest screen.
 
The stakes are high. The “digital attention economy” is fighting for our kids’—and our own—time and attention, and while the days are long in parenting, the “years are short.” As disciples of Jesus the Carpenter, let’s get back to our workbenches. Like St. Joseph—who has been called the “glory of domestic life”—let’s roll up the sleeves and serve our families with love.

Heaven in Your Home Toolkit
 
For an inspiring visual representation of the family work we’re talking about, check out this Russian Orthodox icon entitled “The Labor of the Holy Family.” 

Pope Francis points us over and over to the simplicity of the everyday, to places like our workbenches: “Our God lets us understand that he always operates in simplicity, in the simplicity of the house of Nazareth, in the simplicity of everyday work, in the simplicity of prayer” (cf., 3/16/20 homily).

At Aleteia: “Meet the dad who’s teaching basic skills on YouTube for kids without a father figure.” 

“Saturday Morning Chores and Catholic Social Teaching” is an article which makes great connections between chores and the deeper teachings of gratitude, virtue, the common good, obedience, and sanctification.  

“Whatever form it takes,” John Cuddeback writes in Reclaiming the Household, an essay we have cited before, “there is no substitute for the shoulder-to-shoulder unity of the family doing work together.”

Testimonial

“Trinity House Community draws us closer to each other, to family and to the Church. It encourages quiet moments of rest, reflection and prayer—an evangelizing presence in a noisy world.”  – Msgr. John Cregan, Diocese of Arlington 

Coming Soon…

Stay tuned…we are looking forward to sharing a schedule of Heaven in Your Home Workshops (livestream and in-person), other speaking engagements, and monthly Heaven in Your Home Gatherings for later this summer and fall.

Please Join Us In Prayer 

• For the staff and ministry of Trinity House Cafe, and the recent Heaven in Your Home Workshop participants; 
• For all individuals and families, that they might be open to God’s grace and imbue their homes with faith, love, and the peace of Christ;
• For all those who mourn the loss of loved ones; for the sick, their caregivers, medical personnel, and all essential workers; and for the unemployed, and all those facing difficult financial decisions in these days.

In Christ, 

Soren & Ever Johnson
Founders & Directors
Trinity House Community
Making Home a Little Taste of Heaven