Part 4 of the 4-part series, Unlearning Capitalism. To receive the entire series - which includes guided meditations and reflection prompts - in your inbox, sign up here.

If capitalism lays claim to your body, your time, and your labor, as we’ve seen in this series thus far, then by default it is also laying claim to your home: the primary place where you attend to your needs.

How many of our activities at home are in service to how we earn a wage? The laundry, the cleaning, the cooking - it’s so often crammed into edges of our days or weeks, in tiny windows of time when we’re not beholden to income-earning work. While this may have shifted early on in the pandemic, I’ve found that even for those still working from home, the size of the work continues to squeeze out the time necessary for homemaking.

Making home, when done with intention and depth, requires a lot of time.

People who leave the world of wage labor to make their homes - raise children, care for aging parents, cook food, or just generally run a household - are absolutely working full time, and I’ve often heard them wonder how they ever got anything done when they had a job. The demands of earning a wage outside the home often diminish the capacity to make that home, unless there is a partner or other household members who can do so while others earn an income.

Capitalism’s demands also corrode the sanctity of where we make our lives. Home becomes a place where we simply prepare for and recover from work. And while working from home is a tremendous gift, it can also become toxic because we haven’t addressed the real root of anything - we just might be more comfortable as we engage with capitalism.

In 2021, I wrote an article about the pain of living at work, and want to share a bit of that piece with you here: “Home should be a refuge. It should be a container in which you can fall apart, mend, dance, love, create, rage, and nourish. Ideally, home is a safe and big enough space where you can process the difficult emotions that come up at work and explore new possibilities when you’re ready to make a change. But when you live at work, as many of us have done for over a year now, home starts to disappear. The work eats at its edges, making the sacred space too small to hold us. I suspect that even as more working people return to office spaces and hybrid arrangements, the elusive boundaries between work and Home will remain corrosive.”

Reclaim Your Home as Sacred

The best thing you can do to reclaim the sanctity of your home is to live in it. To really live in it, with rootedness and an ability to see it as the spiritual center that it is.

Many of us are used to being transitory beings, and while I believe every living thing has the right to migrate, the movements of most modern humans are less cohesive and less rhythmic than, say, a flock of birds flying north for the Summer. It’s very easy in our culture to never feel rooted in a place and for home to begin to feel worthless. And this is necessary within capitalism. As Silvia Federici notes in her book Re-enchanting the World, “Capital keeps us constantly on the move, separating us from our countries, farms, gardens, homes, and workplaces, because this guarantees cheap wages, communal disorganization, and a maximum vulnerability in front of the law, the courts, and the police.”

By embracing your home as the place where you are making your life, you reclaim some of the energy surrendered to capitalism and the cultural norms of nowhere-ness.

Your home isn’t permanent, and it may not be your favorite place right now, but it is where you are, and so it’s where your life is being made right now.

Below are some of my favorite ways to honor my home as the sacred place that it is:

1) By talking to my home. Telling it what I love about it, thanking it for sheltering us, holding us, letting us make a life inside of it.
2) Walking through my home with incense, declaring it as a special place, where we’re protected and loved. I’ll also often open the windows to let any stagnation clear out as I’m burning the incense.
3) Going to my backyard each morning with my pot of coffee and offering the first pour to the beings that we share this space with. I talk to them and thank them for their beauty and for allowing us to be here.

I encourage you to find the practices that feel genuine and fun for you. Relating to your home as a sacred space doesn’t have to mean that it’s perfect or as pristine as a temple - it just means that it’s important, and that it has a greater purpose than simply enabling you to serve capitalism.

The Earth as Home

Before the advent of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago, our ancestors were nomadic hunter-gatherers who moved through the land according to the seasons and migratory patterns of their more-than-human kin. While “home” certainly included shelters and lodging, “home” was also the entire ecosystem that they sourced their food and materials from.

Indigenous teachers and modern hunter-gatherers show us that a sense of safety and belonging need not be confined to the space within four walls; we evolved to feel at home within the natural environment, knowing that our place was among the elements that gave us life. We absolutely need the safety of home, and it’s time that included the ecosystems we inhabit.

Humans won’t be able to weather climate change without those of us in countries with the most energy expenditure making significant changes to our culture and lifestyles. It’s not surprising that there is overwhelming resistance to this; many of us wonder if we could cope with rationed electricity, limited water, or hyperlocal food options. We’re loath to give up our comforts, even as we realize that they’re making us less resilient and more dependent upon a broken system. But on the other side of 24-hour internet access, big homes for small families, and car culture, lies a heartier sense of “home.”

Imagine what it would feel like to walk along grass and trees to your neighbor’s house instead of alongside a busy, scary street. Imagine what it would feel like to spend time growing your own food or tending to a community garden once a week. Imagine how you’d feel knowing that resources were truly being shared more equitably around the globe, in a way that didn’t tax the Earth. Imagine being able to see the stars at night in the city and waking up to birdsong instead of revving motorcycle engines. Imagine your home becoming even fuller, with visitors, crafting, ritual, and traditions coming to life regularly within your special space. These are the things that are possible when we embrace the entire Earth as our home.

All that it takes to reclaim our Earth as sacred is to name and relate to it as such. It is a knowing that you already have inside of you.

Your Home is Sacred

Reclaim Your Home as Sacred

The Earth as Home