Edith Schaeffer
April 7, 2013
Edith and Francis Schaeffer
ALTHOUGH I have read several of her husband’s books, I am embarrassed to say I have never read the works of Edith Schaeffer, wife of Francis Schaeffer, the Evangelical Christian thinker who had a gift for deflating philosophical materialism. Mrs. Schaeffer, who died in Switzerland last week at the age of 98, helped her husband run L’Abri, their famous intellectual hostel in Switzerland. She wrote more than two dozen books and ardently defended the role of women at home. She wrote in The Hidden Art of Homemaking:
If you stop putting off homemaking until your hope of marriage develops into a reality, and start to develop an interesting home right now, it seems to me two things will happen: first, you will develop into the person you could be as you surround yourself with things that express your own tastes and ideas; and second, as you relax and become interested in areas of creativity, you will develop into a more interesting person to be with.
Mrs. Schaeffer apparently understood that domesticity is a state of being, not just a state of doing.
Here are some other quotes (page numbers omitted) from the book:
It seems to me that whether it is recognized or not, there is a terrific frustration which increases in intensity and harmfulness as time goes on, when people are always daydreaming of the kind of place in which they would like to live, yet never making the place where they do live into anything artistically satisfying to them. Always to dream of a cottage by a brook while never doing anything to the stuffy house in the city is to waste creativity in this very basic area, and to hinder future creativity by not allowing it to grow and develop through use.
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Interior decoration is not just one’s artistic efforts, but it is that which your home (even if it is just a room) is. If you are ‘decorating’ with clothes draped on every chair, with scratched and broken furniture- it is still your interior decoration! Your home expresses you to other people, and they cannot see or feel your daydreams of what you expect to make in that misty future, when all the circumstances are what you think they must be before you will find it worthwhile to start. You have started, whether you recognize that fact or not! We foolish mortals sometimes live through years not realizing how short life is, and that TODAY is your life.”
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I often advise young brides who are traveling during their first weeks or months of marriage to start “homemaking” in a hotel, even if they are there for only a night, rather than groaning about having to “wait so long to have a home”. How? …Your own cloth, your own candlestick, just one rose or daffodil is enough to make a difference… You will be surprised how much difference it makes to have done something to make a room your home, even for one night.
—- Comments —-
Karen I. writes:
Mrs. Schaeffer’s observations about homemaking are correct. There are too many people who wait for ideal circumstances rather than making the best of their current situation. I see this all the time where I live, which is an apartment complex. The cost of living in my state is among the highest in the country, and mothers who want to be home full time, even those with husbands who make a good living, often have to make significant compromises in their housing situation to stay home. This typically means they live in either a small, old house, or an apartment.
There are hundreds of residents in my apartment complex. We all have the same sort of box-like apartment to live in. It is large, bright, and safe with lots of storage room, but it is still a basic box as far as homes go. It is very interesting to see what people do with their apartments and the little areas around them. Some don’t clean at all, and live in squalor. They fail to decorate in even a minimal way, and don’t bother to even hang curtains, so it is possible to see into their home at night. They don’t sweep their steps or wash their windows. One old lady was so bitter about losing her house and living in an apartment, that she told me it was nothing more than “a hotel” and she did not intend to ever hang curtains. She lived in filth and her apartment smelled bad. Her adult daughter would come to visit, and clean the entire time.
Others make the most of their situation, and decorate their homes beautifully. They keep the outside decorated and the inside spotlessly clean. One group of older women got together and planted a huge flower garden outside their apartments. They apparently know what they are doing, and hundreds of flowers are in bloom from spring to early fall. The garden is so beautiful that people driving by stop to stare at it. Another neighbor has done such a nice job with her apartment that it looks like a charming cottage scene from a decorating magazine inside, and my children love to visit her. Many of her things came from thrift stores, but look like costly antiques.
I plan to read Mrs. Schaeffer’s book. Thank you for pointing it out. Lydia Sherman’s blog, Homeliving, also has many excellent posts about homemaking in less than ideal circumstances.
