Just reading the words, “Household Economics,” which compose the title and focus of the fourth chapter in Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People, conjured up memories of my grade 7/8 Home Economics teacher, Miss Precious. (Yes, that was really her name.) With her beehive hairdo (she had one) her pince-nez glasses (those too) and her stern face, she was, for many reasons, unforgettable. I was one of her favourites: my mother had taught me well; to cook simple things and to sew, and by my parents’ strong example and good teaching I had already absorbed a lesson or two about managing limited resources.

So when I picked up the “Household Economics” essay by Sharon Daloz Parks, I admit I felt just the teensiest bit smug; this is one area of Christian practice in which the lessons of my lifetime have come a little easier. My husband and I are at a stage of life where we can breathe a bit; our children are educated and launched, our home is paid for, we have no debt. We may not have accumulated as much as some people we know, we’re driving a 13-year-old car, and the kitchen needs a renovation that may never happen. However, we’ve always managed to prioritize charitable giving in the belief that our giving was really just giving back from out of the abundance that God had given to us. As we look behind us at a lifetime of managing our household in the ways that we have, we feel good about what that has all added up to. We also know we’ve made some mistakes. But we are content. We are in a good place, and we are grateful.

Thinking bigger

But the “household” that Parks writes about is much bigger than just what goes on within the four walls of our private abode. She does begin there, noting that “Our households are anchoring places where, over time, we craft the practices by which we prosper or fail to prosper.”

“Like the words ecumenical and ecology, economics is rooted in the Greek word oikos, meaning household, and signifies the management of the household—arranging what is necessary for well-being,” she explains. “Good economics practice—positive ways of exchanging goods and services—is about the well-being, the livelihood, of the whole household.”

That’s where she begins. But she doesn’t end there. Rather, Parks points out that every one of us is a member of a “planetary commons.” In other words, we all share a communal household—planet Earth—and we also have a duty to manage the resources of this much, much larger household to the benefit, the well-being, of all its inhabitants.

And suddenly, I realized, chagrined, that I had no reason to feel self-satisfied.

I’ve been to the developing world. I’ve travelled its deeply rutted roads, and seen its hungry children. I’ve visited its hospitals and schools and wrestled with the inequities I’ve been confronted with between the lives of people there and our living standards here in the developed world. I’ve learned about injustice, because I’ve seen it firsthand. I know it exists, and I know that unless I’m actively taking even small steps in my life to counteract it, then I am, by default, contributing to it. If my personal household is flourishing, but our planetary household is not, I still have work to do.

So if I want to deepen my Christian practice in this area—and as I’ve meditated on this subject I realize that I do—then I need to think more about where and how I allocate my spending dollars. I need to do the hard work of researching where the goods I buy come from, and how they are produced. I need to be willing to pay the higher costs of fair-trade products. And I need to do a better job here in my own private household of adopting practices that mean better care for the planet, not only because it’s the one household that we all share, but also because it’s the only home we’ve got.

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Practicing My Faith, Part 5 – This post is fifth in a series and part of a culminating project for a course I am taking on Spiritual Discernment and Theological Reflection at McMaster Divinity College with Dr. Wendy Porter. For context, read part 1 and part 2.