For a great study along these lines, see Dale Allison’s little book “The Luminous Dusk” (an earlier version was called “The Silence of Angels”). He looks at such things as the ubiquity of artificial light and noise and the modern lack of a sense of wonder, which distance us from the natural world and from each other.

Philosopher Albert Borgmann (Power Failure) talks about “focal things” vs. technological “devices” … he speaks of the leisurely meal which you and I recollect from our grandmothers’ homes as a “focal thing.” The meal required shopping at the market, conversations with the grocer, then various members of the family gathered in the kitchen as we chopped and mixed and baked and fried, children who participated in the process by setting the table and hanging around the kitchen to lick the batters and sneak a taste, and then the splashing and play as we cleaned up afterwards. The whole process promoted conversations and the interaction that take place as a result of the “focal thing.” A technological “device” on the other hand is meant to maximize efficiency and eliminate all of the prep work – ready-made meals, for example, and the microwave oven. One of the central characteristics of a “device”, says Borgmann, is that it unburdens us from all of that time-consuming work of shopping and meal preparation. What devices rob us of, Borgmann contends, are the “focal practices” demanded by “focal things” – the routine ways in which we engage the larger world in our daily lives.

In my own immediate family, meals were sacrosanct. No matter what, we were to be home for dinner time. Some of my fondest memories of childhood are from meals that would last 2 hours or more as my father and mother caught up on what was going on in our lives (and there was a lot of catching up with seven children), when Dad would challenge us with new words to spell and define, or offer a prize to the first to build a motor, or solve a math puzzle (always elaborate word problems). When we gather as a family we still linger in preparation and in conversation around the dinner table.

Several years ago I remember a public service announcement encouraging parents to gather their children for dinner once a week – and nearly weeping at the poverty of that picture. I am not a luddite (far from it). But we must pay more attention to the things we give up for the sake of the convenience brought by those technological “devices.” Rites of passage (and the communities that live them), are more important than mere convenience.

Your post blessed me, and made me pine all the more for genuine community, David. Volumes are written in the line above. Before I visit your site I have to ask, have you read Wendell Berry?

Everyone was always there as if it were impossible for them to be anywhere else. A rare illness struck, but was never over cause for concern. Everyone said that for about 30 years there, the family Churched together, recreated/vacationed together and was probably never more than 35 mins apart.

And then the wind blew it all away. Folks died, moved, converted to different churches, busied themselves endlessly with nothing, married, got divorced. By the time my own son passed away from cancer a couple of years ago, no one could even make it to the funeral.

My wife and I sometimes sit in our living room, feeling like Adam and Eve. The only people in the world, starting all over. Dislocated from Eden and barred by swords of flame. Breaks my heart in a way that whiskey can’t fix.

Thank you for writing this today.

“I make to it an annual visit I carry my children to it and teach them the hardships endured by the generations which have gone before them. I love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early affections and the touching narratives and incidents which mingle with all I know of this primitive family abode. he name of my posterity be blotted forever from the memory of mankind!”

(I am also Anglican, though I am at the moment attending a relatively conservative Episcopal parish. I spend every Sunday weighing whether I can continue going. By the fall, I hope to be at a traditional parish using the ’28).

Read the first four paragraphs at this link to see what the “log cabin” came to mean in relation to this discussion over 100 years ago. Daniel Webster’s opening quotation is especially relevant: http://www.daytonhistorybooks.com/page/page/1571350.htm