In the years before the Proclamation on the Family made “the family” one of the most often-invoked terms in Mormon discourse, we Latter-day Saints spoke very often about “the home.” ((No, I don’t have a study marking the moment when “the family” overtook “the home,” and no quantified measure to prove that “the family” now outpaces “the home,” but for us living in the wake of the Proclamation, perception is reality on this point. )) You see vestiges of that in the familiar statement that “No other success can compensate for failure in the home,” and in hymns like “Love at Home” and “Home Sweet Home” (dropped from the current hymn book but commonly sung in my childhood). I think it wouldn’t take much searching to find mottoes like “Home – that the feet may leave but the heart never” current in the wider world also making appearances on items made for the Relief Society bazaar. The oldest girls’ classes in Primary were called “Lihomas” – LIttle HOme MakerS. ((Not, may I emphasize, “FuMoS” – “future mothers”.))   Search virtually any issue of Improvement Era or the Relief Society Magazine and you will find language like this from Heber J. Grant in the November 1936 Improvement Era (plucked at random from a list of links to the Era): “I hope that in every home you have the Era. In my judgment the material in our magazines is of great value in the homes of the Latter-day Saints.”

“The home,” as used by the Latter-day Saints, included “the family” – i.e., Lihomas had lessons on caring for their younger siblings, and the roles of father and mother were always honored in any discussion of the Latter-day Saint home — but “the home” included concepts that are absent from our current, more clinical use of “the family.” The Lihoma watchword: “I will greet the day with a song; make others happy; serve gladly,” and the motto the girls embroidered on samplers: “I will bring the light of the gospel into my home,” supported the role of the home in promoting happiness and preparing for the future. These teachings about “the home” taught the duties and opportunities of a daughter, sister, wife, and mother, beyond the mere naming of those roles as parts of “the family.”

My bishopric planned a Sacrament Meeting a few weeks ago on the theme of “the home,” and it was clear from the bishop’s extended introduction that he intended that theme to be broader than the textbook definition of “the family,” because he mentioned a variety of circumstances, including single adults living alone, where homes but not families were featured. Unsurprisingly, though, the speakers gave us three talks focusing on different aspects of “the family” – newlyweds, divorced fatherhood (actually a pleasant novelty, in my experience), and a grandmother looking back at what she had done with her family when they were young to prepare them to raise their own families. I say “unsurprisingly” because we’re no longer used to thinking of “the home” as a concept distinct from “the family,” and the meeting did not fulfill its promise, especially in the case of adults living alone.

But in the spirit of whoever it was who said he was never bored at a meeting because if the talk was not the one he wanted to hear he wrote his own talk in his mind, I collected thoughts for what I might have said, and wanted to hear, when the theme was “the home.”

In my mentally constructed talk, “the home” does not refer merely to the building in which an individual or family lives, although the idea of shelter and safety is inextricably part of “the home.” But whether “the home” exists in a McMansion or something more “be it ever so humble” – even if, say, it is a temporary and rude shelter – “the home” can exist anywhere the other essential elements exist.

“The home” is a refuge from everything that is not “the home,” whether that’s “the world” in the sometimes overused Mormon sense of evil and danger, or whether it’s the cares of the marketplace or the troubles of society or even the pleasures of good friends and good causes. “The home” is where you shut out, even for a short time, everything that is not of most personal concern. “The home” is what you make it, because you set the standards and make the rules, according to what is most important to you.

“The home,” at least if you design it according to traditional Latter-day Saint values, is a place where the gospel is taught and practiced. It is the incubator where small children learn to pray, where “keeping the Sabbath” is defined in a personal way that may or may not match with the definition of others in the ward, where all those living there learn to sacrifice some part of their personal desires for the benefit of the others.

“The home” is where those who have broken a commandment find love and support despite their weakness, and where they are helped to repent and do better. It is where what “we” decide matters reigns, and what “everybody else” does is of lesser concern. Even when “the home” is not of classic Mormon design, ready to be embroidered on a pillow and emblazoned across the cover of the Ensign, “the home” is still the design of those who live there, together with their compromises and choices, and is the place where core values are determined, and taught, and sustained.

“The home” prepares those who live there to go out into the world again, knowing what one’s key values are, practiced in getting along with others, able to cope with and even triumph over hardships, to build Zion at best, or at least to sweep the streets of Babylon and make it a better place to live.

In all these senses, “the home” is available to everyone, from the loneliest individual to the largest extended family living as a unit. “The home” isn’t defined by the presence of a living father, or by the number of children, or by whether the mother has paid employment, or by whether all those living there are faithful Latter-day Saints, or struggling ones, or former ones, or never ones, or whether some are gay or old or feminist or highly educated or politically conservative or healthy or mixed-race or football players or veterans or collectors of Judy Garland memorabilia. “The home” is where you care for and forgive each other, or where you turn to books or prayer or knitting because you have no one to care for or to care for you. “The home” probably isn’t perfect, but it’s the place where you can fail safely, and catch your breath, and try again.

I have a home, a worthy one, even when I have no family to share it with.

I wish we still talked about “the home” as the seed of eternity and the cradle of Zion, the way we used to.