Shortcuts
  • Common Ground
  • Summer Conference
  • Residential Fellowship
  • Vocational Progamme
  • Sign Up
  • Vimeo
  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Lead Programmes
    • Summer Conference
    • Residential Fellowship
    • Vocational Progamme
  • Events & Courses
    • SPACE
    • Conversation Evenings
    • Short Courses
  • Resources
    • Common Ground Magazine
    • All Articles
    • Venn Presents
  • Store
    • Books
    • Devotional Resources
  • Who We Are
    • About
    • Our Story
    • Our People
  • Donate
  • Contact
Venn Foundation
58 Hillsborough Road
Hillsborough, Auckland 1042
Email: [email protected] Phone: +6499294988
PO Box 163138
Lynfield, Auckland 1443
Making a Home photo essay_small
  • Link copied!

Making a Home—An Expanded Vision

By Melody Cooper >> 3 min read
Arts, Photography, Music

I think that home is about what happens within the four walls, but it reaches outside of them also. This can be true whether you have a permanent structure to call home or not.

To explore this idea, I’ve used a house-shaped photo frame to capture four main themes: planting, liturgy, community, and building. This frame prompts us to see both the internal (four walls) and the external (beyond) as being intrinsically connected—they both rely on each other and extend towards each other. Home isn’t determined by house ownership; it’s far deeper and better.

My reflections on the idea of home have come about with the help of some theologians, so pay attention to what they have to say throughout. As you journey through these photos, I invite you to take some time to reflect on your own understanding about home. Reflect prayerfully, and, as you are prompted, note any ways in which you’re being called to respond —Melody.

Planting

MC_Cross
MC_Seedlings
MC_Garden bed

“Put in gardens and eat what grows in the country. Enter into the rhythm of the seasons. Become a productive part of the economy of the place. You are not parasites. Don’t expect others to do it for you. Get your hands into the Babylonian soil. Become knowledgeable about the Babylonian irrigation system. Acquire skills in cultivating fruits and vegetables in this soil and climate. Get some Babylonian recipes and cook them.” (Eugene Peterson, Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at its Best (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 149.)

Blooming

MC_Dried Flowers

Liturgy

“When we situate our households in the wider household of God and extend the liturgies of worship to shape the ethos of our homes, we resituate even the mundane. When we frame our workaday lives by the worship of Christ, then even the quotidian is charged with external significance. Our “thin” practices take on thicker significance when nested in a wider web of kingdom-orientated liturgies.”

(James K. A. Smith, You are What you Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2016), 133.)

MC_Books
MC_Common Ground

“Fa’afetai Iesu foai mai meaai tausi ai matou le fanau amene” (A Samoan grace said regularly around the dinner table in my household)

Community

MC_Town Centre
MC_Lucy

“St Paul tells people to get on with their jobs. He even assumes that Christians may go to dinner parties, and, what is more, dinner parties given by pagans. Our Lord attends a wedding and provides miraculous wine. Under the aegis of his Church, and in the most Christian ages, learning and the arts flourish. The solution of this paradox is, of course, well known to you. ‘Whether ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.’…. Christianity does not simply replace our natural life and substitute a new one: It is rather a new organisation which exploits, to its own supernatural ends, these natural materials.”

(C.S. Lewis, “Learning in War-time,” in Fern-seed and Elephants, ed. W. Hooper (Glasgow: Fontana, 1975), 31–32.)

MC_Grandma

Kaitiakitanga

MC_Sheep
Ambury Farm; in the distance, Ihumātao

Building

“Build houses and make yourselves at home. You are not camping. This is your home; make yourself at home. This may not be your favourite place, but it is a place. Dig foundations; construct a habitation; develop the best environment for living that you can.”

(Eugene Peterson, Run with the Horses, 149)

MC_Foundation
MC_Building

“The front door of the home is the side door of the church.”

(Christine D. Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 157.)

MC_House with door

(Images: Copyright Melody Cooper, 2021)

Arts, Photography, Music
More from
Melody Cooper +

Keep
Exploring

You may also
be interested in

Give us this day our daily bread_Melody Cooper_feature
Give us this Day our Daily Bread
5 min read

All articles from
this edition

To make a home_edition
Common Ground
October 2021 Edtn

Also
on offer

VRF Feature_Square
Residential Fellowship
Find out more

Common
Ground

December 2022 Edtn >>
An Advent Feast

Sign up to receive Common Ground in your inbox

Sign Up
Shortcuts
  • Common Ground Editions
  • Residential Fellowship
  • Vocational Progamme
  • Sign Up

Copyright © 2023
Venn Foundation

Venn Foundation

58 Hillsborough Road
Hillsborough, Auckland 1042

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +64 (9) 929 4988

Post: PO Box 163138
Lynfield, Auckland 1443

Venn Foundation logo
Stay in the Loop

Receive all the latest information about Venn events, resources, programmes, and updates.

Sign Up
  • Vimeo
  • Instagram
  • Facebook
Support Us

Venn Foundation is a Charitable Trust (CC28328). If you would like to support our mission and work we would love to hear from you.

Donate Now

Design by Andy Campbell

Development by Publica

Venn Foundation logo
  • Vimeo
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Copyright © 2023
Venn Foundation

Design by Andy Campbell

Development by Publica