Husbandry

With the passing of my wife, I consider myself a widower and no longer a husband; yet some have said that I continue to be a good husband in the care I give to my children. This article has me mulling over the meaning of Husbandry: https://life-craft.org/husbandry-and-rethinking-a-mans-bond-with-his-wife/

Wendell Berry has pointed this out.

“The word husbandry is the name of a connection. In its original sense, it is the name of the work of a domestic man, a man who has accepted a bondage to the household.”

So much here to consider. Husbandry is connection. When a man marries, the primary ‘connection’ in his life should be to his wife. But this connection is part of a web of connections, a web centered in a home they make together. Indeed, because a man binds himself to his wife, he also binds himself to their common home, their shared place in the world. If we unhinge the man from the broader web of connection then we threaten the original, root connection. And we also threaten the other things that call for and indeed demand a husband’s attention.

Berry offers this characterization of husbandry: “it is the art of keeping tied all the strands in the living network that sustains us.” This might seem abstract and a bit wide of the mark; I think rather it goes to the heart of rediscovering and healing masculinity, or more to the point—to healing men; and marriage; and the home.

A true husband tries to keep tied together many things that need to be kept together. Husbandry is a wonderfully vast enterprise that takes care of people, and so takes care of many ‘things’ in human life. A husband in the fullest sense is a man who has fallen in love with a woman, and then discovers that his love for her calls him to that vast enterprise, an enterprise calling for amazing, concrete applications. Imagine a world in which the concrete arts of life are driven by married love! It is always a matter of love, and love brings things together. A married man discovers that his first love does not narrow his life. Rather, by a deep magic the maturation of that love expands his heart, his vision, and the work of his hands to encompass more than he could have imagined.

In short, the seeming ‘ambiguity’ of the word husband points to a great truth: the arts of taking care of material things (in which the land has a unique but certainly not exclusive place) are closely tied to marriage. Somehow a man’s being a husband to his wife—which again is the foundational commitment—calls him to a broader and deeply embodied husbandry. We can rediscover and rethink this husbandry and how to enact it today–first of all for the sake of our marriages. And then for most everything else too.

I feel that bondage, in the sense that I realize any wanderlust that has sprung from my grief has to fall silent compared to the needs of my children and my obligation to raise them well, which means mitigating changes, which means staying in our home, maintaining the place of connection.