For Christmas this year I got my Julie a Champion Juicer. Although this might land some husbands in the doghouse, my Julie happens to love homemaking. I ordered the juicer from www.urbanhomemaker.com from which Julie also received twelve free lectures on nurturing children, cooking healthy, and ordering the home.

After burning the cds for her I took my MP3 and secretly listened to them at work. They were oozing with cooing over recipes and scrapbook ideas and although they kept referring to the "ladies" who were joining the phone seminar, I myself was enjoying it all quite enthusiastically.

What, you fellas are wondering, was I listening too? I was listening to women who had a vision about the home and their own vocations in it. During a time when persons have lost all sense of duty, purpose, and calling these have a concrete picture of who they are to be, how they are to be it, and a theology and philosophy to defend it. They are not looking for themselves, they have found themselves and seek only to make it so.

They talked about how to train children in diligence and resolve; about gardening and the beauty of sitting around a table for meals.

Here it struck me how womanized these concepts have become and how unappreciative men are of these very aspects of life. Why, in other words, are no men involved in similar pursuits? Where are the seminars on caretaking and on the economics of home management? Where are the gatherings for discussions on decision managment for our children, vocations, and evenings at home? Have we men simply let the women go on and become heroes of all these virtues?

I am glad for these women but two things are noteicable: first, these concepts are not feminine concepts though they are practically becoming so. Second, men are not taking note of the first.

Have we no theology as men of what the home is, how it functions, what our roles are, and how to raise up our children? Have we relegated this to women? Do we even admire such things anymore?

I'm jealous of these women. I am jealous of Julie who gets to homeschool our children. I would love so to do!

Many men leave home economics to their wives without realizing what has happened. Women have simply grown tired of waiting on their husbands to lead the way. In the process, men have lost their guts. They have glued themselves to TV and football and sluggish habits or else to endless ambition in their careers or strivings. Are we surprised that our children grow up with little admiration for our ways?

I would like to see men wake up and quit being a bunch of children whom their wives must take care of all the time. Let us learn again to be men, to debate, to think, to learn the wisdom of husbandry, caretaking, and home rearing. To take the reigns again as compitent and tested leaders. But we must first become compitent.