The Need for a Sanctuary

Your home is your castle, but it is also a sanctuary of peace, dignity and order amidst the chaos, uncertainty and overstimulation of the modern world.

Personality Ethic vs Character Ethic

How did we get this way?

Stephen R. Covey did a bicentennial study of American success literature and published his observations in the NYT best seller, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. (Covey, 1989) He observed that for the first 150 years, the USA was committed to conservative values such as honesty, integrity and hard work. Collectively, these correct principles are known as the character ethic. Our commitment to the character ethic made America a business superpower.

In the wake of the Great Depression, WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, Americans gradually abandoned the character ethic in favor of manipulative communications techniques and “fake it ‘til you make it” shortcuts of the personality ethic. Americans traded in the tried-and-true character ethic for plastic smiles, psychobabble and social aspirin and Band-Aids” short cuts of the personality ethic that treats the symptoms and leaves the underlying chronic disease intact.

In spite of the fact that adhering to the character ethic had put America in control of an astonishing 60% of the world’s wealth in the first 150 years of our nation, liberal academics and the board members of publicly traded companies value the quick buck over long-term success.

Combine the abandonment of the character ethic in favor of the personality ethic with the effects of technology and social media, and many people feel that people are less happy and under more stress than we were just 20 or 30 years ago, and if they could push a red button to stop the internet, they would.

Social Media, Big Tech & Big Brother

Your home can be both a fortress of privacy and security and a sanctuary of peace, calm, dignity, reason and order against the chaos, confusion, uncertainty and overstimulation of the modern world if you make it a refuge from worldly influence. This can be accomplished by controlling your environment by reducing the influence of social media, big tech and big brother. Unless you control them, these influences will bombard your family continuously and without mercy as they attempt to brainwash your family with the liberal version of the moral compass.

Social media is purposely designed to be addictive to children. (General, 2025) How could companies go so far astray? Maybe it’s because they are no longer led by people, but by boards of directors whose sole objective is to maximize short-term profits to shareholders. If you let it, it will monopolize your time.

Since the proliferation of AI, I find myself questioning virtually everything I see in social media feeds. “Is this just clickbait?” “Is that just AI-generated BS?” It’s to the point where you can’t believe anything that you see and it’s just exhausting.

It’s so bad that, apart from using it for work, I rarely use social media anymore, and I really don’t feel like I’m missing much. I still hear about important news and maintain important relationships through other channels.

Making Your Home a Sanctuary

So, let’s see how we can dial back some of this bombardment and turn your home into a sanctuary.

Invite Nature into Your Home

We are wired for natural environments. Spending too much time indoors and in urban environments is harmful. Simply walking in a forest, desert or on a beach has therapeutic value.

Turn your home into a more natural setting by adding:

• Live plants
• Trees
• Atrium
• Green wall
• Bird houses
• Bird baths
• Pets
• Aquariums
• Windows
• Skylights
• Water gardens
• Ponds
• Waterfalls
• Fountains
• Fireplace
• Candles
• Rocks
• Stone or masonry

Bring nature into your home with plants, animals, wind, earth, fire, and water. Open some windows or turn a patio or deck into an Arizona room; a room that is a transition between indoors and outdoors. Add a fire pit, heaters, misters or shade to extend usage.

Finding God in Your Garden

There is an earthy wisdom gained by farming and gardening. You learn that the law of the harvest: you reap what you sow. Observing plants and animals and nurturing them through their life cycles and then composting them back to soil teaches us about our own niche and that “there’s a place for everything and everything in its place.” It comforts us about life and death.

It teaches us to be good stewards of the planet, or at least our little corner of it. Homemade compost improves health of vegetables and limits green waste, which accounts for 25% of residential waste to landfills.

If you grow your own food, your home becomes a sanctuary against GMO’s and pesticides. Growing it yourself is about the only way to really know what’s in your food these days.

Make Your Home a House of Order

Cleanliness is next to godliness. We had a visitor in our home one day who afterwards said to me, “When I walked into your home, I just felt like … Wow, this is a house of order!” She must have visited on a good day when I didn’t have some project overflowing my den, but it is nice when our efforts are affirmed. An orderly home is something that we consciously strive for.

Having a house of order means having rules. Children, especially, need consistency, and parents can give them that by laying out clear, concise rules, enforcing them constantly and fairly, and presenting a unified front. When my wife lays down the law, I back her 100%.

If we follow rules long enough, we form habits, and habits are powerful because they set our default behaviors and SOP. Setting our default behaviors is important because we live our lives on autopilot most of the time. Most folks only make decisions when compelled to do so. Habits determine our behaviors and responses when we’re on autopilot.

Practice Heuristic Traditions

Each culture has what anthropologists call cultural memory. Is it the collective wisdom that a culture builds into its traditions over many generations of trial and error. It is preserved in oral history, poetry, music, traditions, rituals, prayers, dances, martial arts, meditation, yoga and so on. People who engage in these traditions often understand that they benefit from them, although they may struggle to explain the precise mechanisms by which those benefits occur.

For example, most cultures practiced hygiene-related traditions long before the invention of the microscope and the discovery of microscopic pathogens. Still, many cultures washed and bathed or knew that putting honey on wounds reduces the chance of infection.

In my lifetime there has been a push to do away with traditions such as reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and prayer in schools. They think they know better but ask them what a heuristic tradition is and they’ll probably give you a blank stare before they return to demonstrating to do away with what they don’t understand.

Spirituality

Stephen R. Covey taught that the 7^th habit of highly effective people was renewal or to “sharpen the saw.” To take care of ourselves in each of life’s four basic areas:

• Physical – Take care of your body with exercise, nutrition and rest.
• Mental – Take care of your mind by reading, writing, learning and creating.
• Emotional/Social – Take care of your heart by investing in important relationships and engaging in true recreation, laughter, humor and play.
• Spiritual – Take care of your spirit by clarifying your values (your principle center and morale compass), reading inspirational literature or scripture, spending time in nature, serving others, and engaging in meditation and/or prayer.

Make your home a suitable environment for mindfulness, meditation and/or prayer and engage in some form of spiritual renewal.

Make Time for Relationships

Like the plants in your garden, your relationships grow best when nurtured. Schedule one-on-one time with the important people in your life.

In most other languages the word for love is a verb, an action word, because love is something that you do, not merely an emotion that is felt or words that we speak. Words, by themselves, are not enough. We love others by serving them, understanding them and appreciating them. We can also express our humanity, or our love for our fellow man, through service.

Family Time

Spend time together as a family. It is also important to spend time as a family. My household sets aside an evening each week to spend time together. This reinforces the family structure. Each of us has a role to play.

Eat at the Dinner Table, as a Family

For millennia, families gathered for meals. They sat down together and discussed what was happening in the world and in their lives. Sitting down together for family meals also reinforces the family structure.

Restaurants are still set up around this idea, although if you look around, you may see people glued to screens messaging people on the other side of the planet or across the table. In our home, we don’t bring screens to the table at mealtimes, so they do not interrupt the tradition or ritual of family meals.

Purge Your Home of Harmful Influences

For your home to be a refuge from worldly influences, they must be eliminated or filtered to an acceptable level.

Consider limits on screentime. Remember the computer science concept of “garbage in, garbage out.” Set screen time limits and set goals to read some good books to replace some of the social media garbage with practical knowledge.

If you don’t use them already, consider installing and using parental controls. Without them, kids can quickly become desensitized to violence, adult language and pornography. Parents know their children, their development, and at what age they are prepared to handle adult subject matter.

For that matter, “garbage in garbage out” doesn’t have an age limit.

Summary

Your home can be a sanctuary, a place where your family is protected not just from physical harm but also from the spiritual harm and overstimulation that seems to worsen every day.

• Invite Nature into Your Home
• Plant a Garden
• Make Your Home a House of Order
• Practice Heuristic Traditions
• Make Time for Spirituality
• Make Time for Relationships
• Schedule Family Time
• Eat at the Diner Table, As a Family
• Purge Your Home of Harmful Influences

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