Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life

Keeping House is a wide-ranging and witty exploration of the spiritual gifts that are gained when we take the time to care for hearth and home. With a fresh perspective, mother, wife, and teacher Margaret Kim Peterson examines the activities and attitudes of keeping house and making a home. Debunking the commonly held notion that keeping house is a waste of time or at best a hobby, Peterson uncovers the broader cultural and theological factors that make housekeeping an interesting and worthwhile discipline. She reveals how the seemingly ordinary tasks of folding laundry, buying groceries, cooking, making beds, and offering hospitality can be seen as spiritual practices that embody and express concrete and positive ways of living out Christian faith in relationship to others at home, in the church and in the world.

Margaret Kim Peterson is theologian in residence at First Presbyterian Church, Norristown, Pennsylvania. She grew up in Mount Vernon, Iowa, and though now a long-time resident of the East Coast, she returns to the Midwest whenever possible. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and Duke University, she now teaches theology at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. She is married to Dwight N. Peterson, who also teaches at Eastern University. Together they are the parents of a son, Mark.