"I have always felt that the best security for civilization is the dwelling, and that upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends more than anything else the improvement of mankind. Such dwellings are the nursery of all domestic virtues, and without a becoming home the exercise of those virtues is impossible."
-   Benjamin Disraeli 

This theme ran throughout the book the three youngest and I finished reading tonight before bed, A Tree for Peter by Kate Seredy.  The smallest steps in home-making renewed hope first in one child, then a family, and finally ignited a community. It illustrates the impact that simple, domestic chores and rituals have to heal and sustain and civilize us.

Is this still important in a world spinning chaotically on its axis?  There may be nothing more important than holding tenaciously to home, to helping others gain or regain it.  Seredy so clearly shows that stewardship is the antidote to destruction and despair. Hospitality, the antidote to hostility. 

Civilization, like charity, begins at home.