day no. 16,164: the family was the first university

"A row of identically dressed and identically trained soldiers set side by side, or a number of citizens listed as voters in a constituency, are not members of anything in the Pauline sense. I am afraid that when we describe a man as 'a member of the Church' we usually mean nothing Pauline: we mean only that he is a unit--that he is one more specimen of the some kind of thing as X and Y and Z. How true membership in a body differs from inclusion in a collective may be seen in the structure of a family. The grandfather, the parents, the grown-up son, the child, the dog, and the cat are true members (in the organic sense) precisely because they are not members or units of a homogeneous class. They are not interchangeable. Each person is almost a species in himself. The mother is not simply a different person from the daughter, she is a different kind of person. The grown-up brother is not simply one unit in the class children, he is a separate estate of the realm. The father and grandfather are almost as different as the cat and the dog. If you subtract any one member you have not simply reduced the family in number, you have inflicted an injury on its structure. Its unity is a unity of unlikes, almost of incommensurables." -- C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and other essays: Membership

The family was the first university.

Family is where unity in diversity was first fully realized. A man and a woman have as much in common as they have in distinction. They are diverse, but they are alike; and in marriage, they come together as one flesh in a unity that glorifies the diversity of each. The family is from God and combines robust creativity with covenantal unity. He makes the two into one in a way that does not rob from either, but rather accentuates both. Diversity is retained, but unity is gained.

"To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition. " -- Samuel Johnson

Home teaches us harmony.

At home, a person can be themselves without being abandoned. At home, a person can be unique and still be part of something. Each member of the family is unique without being an outcast. Their differences contribute to the unity just as a kidney comes along side a liver to make a healthy body.

"He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A home provides a place of peace. The unusual find their place and the regular finds its delight. Everyone is at rest being who they are under the comfort of the same roof -- living, moving, and having their being as part of the household.

The home is where the heart is taught true diversity and it grows to love outside its comforts what it once learned routinely within them. At home you learn to look not only to your own interests, but the interests of others so that when you leave the home you are prepared to consider the interests of others without forfeiting your own interests altogether.