Your home’s style is more political than you think
Genesis tells me I was made in God’s image, which is easy to believe on a good day. But the story of Noah, last week’s Torah reading, commands us to believe it about everyone else. After the flood, God makes a covenant with humanity, a binding relationship built on moral bonds between people. It sets a limit on human power, so that no one believes they stand above anyone else.
To paraphrase Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, if God is one, and there are many of us made in his image, then each of us is missing something another person has. Together, we make up for one another’s deficiencies.
The idea went on to have a big political life. John Locke, the father of liberalism, built his case for human equality on all people being made in God’s image, and it echoes in the Declaration of Independence: all men are created equal.
I’m taking a small leap of my own here, but the personal is political too, and home is where this idea gets practiced or quietly refused. Seeing God’s image in someone radically different from you is the stretch Noah asks for, and sometimes it’s just as hard with the people closest to us. A house might be telling everyone in it whose way is the right way, through whose books are on the shelf, whose art hangs on the walls, whose taste picked the couch and how the dishwasher gets loaded, and it can do so without anyone saying a word.
Feng shui concept: the relationships area (Gua 2)
In BTB feng shui, you stand at your front door looking in, and Gua 2 is the far back right corner of your home. The same map applies to every room, so your living room and your kitchen each have a Gua 2 of their own.
Gua 2 is the area of love, relationships and partnership, associated with Earth, the number 2 and the trigram Kun, receptive Earth. It speaks to romantic partners, family and friends, and more broadly to how grounded and supported we feel, how open we are to others, and how much room our home makes for connection.
Earth shows up in tactile textures, ceramics, natural stone, substantial rugs, warm earthy hues, pinks and the full range of human skin tones. That last point I learned from my teacher, Amanda Gibby Peters, and it feels especially fitting this week. Pairs offer a simple expression of partnership: two lamps, two pillows, two mugs on a shelf or two chairs turned toward each other for conversation.
Gua 2 also lives in how we make room for one another. A welcoming place to sit, a bedroom that works for both partners, an uncluttered spot for guests and a dining table that invites people to gather all carry this energy. At its heart, Gua 2 asks what it means to feel welcome and included, and whether our homes make space for the connections we want to nurture.
Signs this corner may need attention:
It holds the belongings of only one person
Only one person’s taste is visible in the space around it
It has gone dark, cluttered or ignored
Nobody lingers there
Weekly feng shui experiment
This week, look for the places where your home holds differences and the places where it smooths them over.
Whose books, art and cultural objects are on display in the shared rooms, and whose stay packed away?
Is there room at the dinner table for a respectful disagreement, or does the conversation steer around it?
Where does the person who needs quiet go, and where does the loud one go?
Can the house tolerate more than one right way to fold the towels or load the dishwasher?
Jot down what you notice.
Then ADD one object that belongs to someone whose taste differs from yours to the Gua 2 corner of your main living space, and leave it there for the week. OBSERVE how it sits next to your things and how its owner moves around it. If you live alone, choose something from a tradition, a culture or a friend whose views you don’t share.
If this week’s experiment got you looking at your home differently, there’s a new one every week. Subscribe to get the next feng shui idea in your inbox. →
