Of Hobbit-holes

The other day I was flipping through a book of modern prefabricated homes. Many of them were quite intriguing and clever structures, and a good many were also aesthetically pleasing. Most eye-catching, however, were the various designs of tree-houses and other, smaller residences. Often, it is with smaller buildings that the architect can have the most fun - thinking out each detail carefully. This little trot through what turns out to be very hefty book inspired a couple of sketches of tree-houses and other cabin-like living areas. Designing small places in the woods made me think of the hobbits in J.R.R. Tolkien's epic masterpiece The Lord of the Rings. Even from the realm of fantasy one can draw inspiration for the real-world.

In Tolkien's universe, hobbits are a diminutive race of pastoral people who make their homes in holes in the earth. As Tolkien explains in The Hobbit, these are not dusty, dingy, muddy holes, but full-fledged houses located beneath the ground. So, I embarked on a little design adventure into hobbit-hole architecture by designing a one-bedroom, one-bath residence for our good friend Austin Hostetter. And, what an interesting quest it turned out to be!

We will not now consider the mere aesthetics of the design, but the overall idea wound up in the thought of living underground. The prospects for sustainable living are immense in hobbit-holes. Since the home is located essentially underground, heating and cooling loads are greatly mitigated by the large amount of insulation (soil and so forth). Presumably, in such a house, it would be cool in the summer and moderately warm in the winter. Also, given the green nature of the roof, vegetables and such could be grown on top of the home to help offset food costs. Water would be absorbed by the roof, rather than shed from it - reducing the need for such inconveniences as gutters and downspouts. In short, the hobbits had it right - living with the land (or in their case in it), rather than living against the land.

The design is fairly straightforward and simple, and the idea was that theoretically the attention would be paid to the details rather than to the arrangement of rooms. Building in a sustainable manner means including details, structure, etc. that are made to last. This facet is often overlooked in our maniacally consumerist society. Tried and true materials like brick, stone, concrete, and wood are preferred in this design so that it could be maintained easily in the future.

Overall, a very fun little design. As ever, do click the image to view larger.

The Daily Niblet: Emails

Having recently returned to college, I have found my once-tranquil email inbox inundated with tens - nay, hundreds - of superficially important emails. Approximately 20% of the emails that I receive pertain (even tangentially) to my life. About 5% of what I receive in my inbox requires me to respond in some fashion. That act of responding is the topic for today's niblet.

How should I end my email back to someone? It is one of those eternal questions in the vein of "who let the dogs out?" Should I say sincerely when I'm being less than sincere? Should I say thanks even if I don't ask for anything? Should I say something else entirely? I suppose knowing the audience is a big part of responding to email. If, for instance, I am emailing certain professors in the college of architecture and planning, I will invariably end my email with Best. I always send my Warm Regards to professors in the honors college. Emails to classmates rarely get any send-off (or greeting) at all.

But, there are always differing circumstances. Let us remove ourselves from secular email and discuss the most confusing form of communication the world hath ever known - the sacred email. The sacred email typically involves a rather mundane reminder of meeting times and places for certain events occurring in the parish, the Bible study group, etc. These pose a response problem for me. Far be it from me to belittle someone's piety and devotion, but I just don't know how theological people are getting with their emails. Ending with God Bless seems to evoke an image of someone sneezing. In Christ is nice, but a potent send-off. And using something as simple as Peace is just too mainstream. Part of me wants to reply with something like Through the Intercession of the Immaculate Mother of God or In the Mercy of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, but wiser counsel typically prevails.

Wish me well in my dealings with people via email!
Basking in the Brilliant Generosity of Your Readership,
Me

Isaiah's Trip to Purgatory

We will continue our little adventures in Biblical interpretation with a look at the oft-unpopular teaching of the Church regarding purgatory. Purgatory, says the high school history teacher, was an invention of the Medieval Church used to control people's access to the afterlife by preying on their fears and superstitions. Blah de blah de blah de blah. Of course, reality often runs contrary to the blithering of well-intentioned - but misinformed - high school teachers. So, in order to get ourselves back on course, we shall begin with a few relevant excerpts from the Catechism of the Catholic Church - straight from the horse's mouth (a very large, two thousand year old, splotchy horse). Emphases mine.

1030 All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.

Let us focus especially on the last sentence of that paragraph. Heaven is defined as the soul's eternal life in the presence of God. God is all-holy and all-perfect. In order to be in the presence of God, we too must be all-holy and all-perfect. Let us look at the scriptures for some evidence:

"Speak to the whole Israelite community and tell them: Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy." - Leviticus 19:2

"Strive for peace with everyone, and that holiness without which no one will see the Lord." - Hebrews 12:14

Clearly, as these passages point out, we are called to holiness in this life. Of course, we often miss the mark and fall into sin. Christ is the way out of sin and back on track (through the graces of confession), but we sometimes still have to suffer the effects of a sin that has been confessed (in a case of adultery for instance). We are often still far away from God and his holiness, even when God's mercy has restored our relationship to him. This is where the doctrine of purgatory has its roots: we need to be completely purified, of both the spiritual and temporal consequences of our sin before we can stand in the presence of a God who is perfection.

The title of this post refers to an episode that occurs early in the book of the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is being called by God and has a vision:

"In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifter up; and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; and the whole earth is full of his glory." And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!" Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth, and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven."" - Isaiah 6:1-7

In this passage we see the entire notion of purgatory played out, as it were, before the fact of Isaiah's death. Isaiah's vision is of God in glory in heaven (the temple), surrounded by the seraphim who are shouting to one another about God's triune holiness. Isaiah senses his unworthiness to be in the presence of God both for having unclean lips and for even living among those with unclean lips. God, in his mercy, sends a seraphim with a hot coal that purifies - or purges - Isaiah's tongue and takes away both his sins and the guilt of his sins. Isaiah is then allowed to stand in the presence of God.

We can hope for a similar outcome at the time of our deaths. We know Isaiah was not in mortal sin, for he was favored by God with the gift of revelation of prophecy. However, even a prophet, a holy man of God, was not worthy to stand in the presence of God without being cleansed by fire from the temple. Even if we receive God's mercy through confession and are reconciled to him through the power of the Cross, we still have guilt and sadness and suffering because of our sins. How happy for us that all of this will be taken away by the cleansing fires of purgatory so that we may stand before God unblemished and holy as he is holy.

The Daily Niblet: Back to School

Our recent scribblings on things papal and biblical obscured the fact that we have returned to Ball State for another year of adventure in higher education. This is my third year of architectural learning at the university, and I am looking forward to it with great expectation. Already, as of this afternoon, I have attended all of my classes for this semester. With some slight exceptions, I am thrilled about each of them. My studio placement could be described as nothing less than providential, and the combination of students and faculty in my section are brimming with potential. My "accessory" classes should be interesting, though a bit more challenging than in the past. By third year, we are hitting the more practicable knowledge such as HVAC, structure, and detailing in our non-studio architecture courses. Outside of the College of Architecture (yes, I do know of the existence of the outside world), I am enrolled in two honors classes. One is the final installment of the humanities sequence, in which we will deal with human achievements from the 18th to the 20th Centuries, and the other is a theoretical physics/math hybrid where we will be talking a lot of theory and philosophy. All in all, it will be a busy semester on this side of the computer.

Eliakim and St. Peter walk into a bar

Ok, so that never happened, but I'm feeling in a particularly swell mood today, so I thought I'd do an attention-grabbing title. However, if Eliakim and St. Peter were to walk into a bar at some point, I'm sure they'd have lots to talk about. Most importantly, they would probably talk about keys. Exciting, right? Well, read on, patient reader. The key is an interesting symbol that has very ancient meanings. We catch glimpses of the meaning in modern times when we speak of a mayor conferring on some important citizen a 'key to the city' for example. Giving over of keys is a way of conferring authority on another person. Consider: you leave town and give a key to your house to a trusted friend; that friend has a form of authority over your house. They can open and close your house, and take care of it while you are away.

Both Eliakim and St. Peter were conferred keys during the readings yesterday at mass. Though they lived hundreds of years apart, their stories point to the same truths about God, Jesus, and the nature of the Church. We will look at both of these stories, one from the Old Testament, one from the New. For, as the ancient Church Fathers loved to say: "The Old Testament is revealed in the New, and the New Testament is hidden in the Old." The way God dealt with the Israelites in the Old Testament prefigures the way he establishes the Church in the New Testament.

Fist, Peter and Jesus. This should be a passage familiar to most Catholics (and to many Protestants who dispute its meaning). Again, this was the Gospel reading for this past weekend:

"Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do men say that the Son of man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them. "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bat-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." - Matthew 16:13-19

In this passage, Christ asks his Apostles who the world thinks that he is. The world is a confused place. People have lots of crazy ideas about Jesus. This is especially true in our modern times as well. Jesus was a peace-loving hippie. Jesus was a communist. Jesus was a feminist. Jesus was a socialist. Jesus was just a guy. Jesus was just a spirit. Jesus was a figment of Paul's imagination. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum...

But Peter - the commonest of the Apostles, the Everyman, the sinner in need of repentance - replies that Jesus is none of that. Jesus is nothing more and nothing less than the Messiah, the son of God, the salvation of men. And for that, Jesus blesses Peter for his faith and entrusts him with the keys of the kingdom of heaven, giving him the power to bind and loose on earth. These keys symbolize Jesus handing over to Peter earthly authority to exercise power in His name. This power is used to steward the people of God on earth, the Church, which is founded on the sinful, common back of Peter. The Catholic Church believes that this authority was handed on from Peter all the way down to the present day through a series of sinful, common men called popes.

But now, let us go back and look at Isaiah, who - in a manner of speaking - prophesied this event centuries before.

"In that day I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your robe, and I will bind your belt on him, and will commit your authority to his hand; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. And I will fasten him like a peg in a sure place, and he will become a throne of honor to his father's house." - Isaiah 22:20-23

In this passage, God is speaking to the current steward of the royal household, Shebna, who must've been doing just a really crappy job. So, basically, God says, "I'm going to find a better guy to give the keys of authority to and he will be an honor to his people and to his father." We find in this passage a nice corollary with Peter being given the keys of the kingdom and a summary of papal authority.

Reading this passage in light of the New Testament - through the lens of Christ, if you will - we see that Christ will give authority to someone trusted who will become a father to God's house (the Church). The house of David symbolizes Christ's royal authority and lineage. The keys, again, are a symbol of power and responsibility to be a steward of the house. Open and shut can be replaced with bind and loose and retain similar meaning. Fastening like a peg in a sure spot is just like founding a house on a rock - it is something immovable and permanent (and something Christ himself recommends in Matthew 7:24).

The Church is the immovable house on rock of which Christ gave the keys to Peter before he ascended into heaven. The Church exercises its authority in the name of the master of the house, Jesus, through men who are guided by the Holy Spirit, the spirit that continues to guide them into all truth (John 16:13). The house called the Church is a refuge for all of the sinners of the world, so that they might become saints. It is a refuge from the madness of the world. And, it is the only refuge that will survive until the end of the world, for, we have it on reliable authority that Hades will not prevail against it.

But, perhaps the biggest point of this post was not to establish a fool-proof way for proving papal authority or the providence of the institutional Church, but to show that the God of the Old Testament is the same God as that revealed in the New Testament. And, by reading the Old Testament in the light of Christ, we can come to a better understanding of passages which may appear to have little or no relevance otherwise. Next week: King Solomon and Mary walk into a bar. Mary ducks.

Design for a Bunk-house

Many of my readers will know that my extended family owns a small cabin in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Purchased almost forty years ago by my grandfather and two great-uncles, it was originally intended to be strictly a hunting camp - as it sits on eighty acres of woodland. However, though it is still used for hunting during that season, nowadays the family enjoys going up there to really get away from it all and enjoy tearing around nature in dirtbikes and four-wheelers.

The current cabin is very small, with room for perhaps eight to sleep uncomfortably (there are only two tiny bedrooms). The design pictured at left is for a theoretical bunk-house to be added to the property to help remedy the lack of accommodations. The style is based on the current cabin, and on a larger tradition of wilderness and camp architecture (thinking specifically of the great Adirondack camps of the Nineteenth Century). In plan, the house contains a central living/sitting volume that divides the structure into symmetrical halves, each containing two ground-floor bedrooms, with sleeping lofts above. A wood stove at the center of the main room would provide the minimal heat needed during the peak periods of occupation (Memorial Day and Labor Day). Since running water and electricity are unavailable in the area, this cabin is built without any kitchen or bath fixtures. The existing cabin has cooking facilities, and an outhouse is nearby for when nature calls.

This was a fun little cabin to design. Sometimes the most uncomplicated things can be the most rewarding ideas when they get put on paper. Such a cabin would be easy to build, serve its purpose well, and blend in with the current, minimal, built context. Perhaps, with a source of funding yet to be determined, it could be built someday (rather cheaply, I would wager).  

Pope Leo XIII and the Dictatorship of Relativism

I'm not sure what possessed me to do this, but, over the past few days, I've been reading (and annotating, and highlighting, and digesting) Leo XIII's encyclical Libertas which concerns itself with the notion of true, Christian liberty. It is fascinating, nay - astounding, how prophetic Leo's words are (this letter being written in 1888). Often, our current pope discourses and laments on what he terms the 'dictatorship of relativism' - the current vogue intellectual notion that claims that absolute truth is unknowable and each person is free to decide what truths work for them personally. In its extreme, such a philosophy could result in murder being acceptable to one person, but not for another, based on their disagreeing definitions of moral truths. Leo anticipated this radical departure from both faith and reason in Libertas. Have a read for yourself. The excerpt is a bit lengthy, I admit, but intriguing in its foresight nonetheless. Emphases mine.

"The fundamental doctrine of rationalism is the supremacy of human reason, which, refusing due submission to the divine and eternal reason, proclaims its own independence, and constitutes itself the supreme principle and source and judge of truth. Hence, these followers of liberalism deny the existence of any divine authority to which obedience is due, and proclaim that every man is the law to himself; from which arises that ethical system which they style independent morality, and which, under the guise of liberty, exonerates man from any obedience to the commands of God, and substitutes a boundless license. The end of all this it is not difficult to foresee, especially when society is in question. For, when once man is firmly persuaded that he is subject to no one, it follows that the efficient cause of the unity of civil society is not to be sought in any principle external to man, or superior to him, but simply in the free will of individuals; that the authority in the State comes from the people only; and that, just as every man's reason is his only rule of life, so the collective reason of the community should be the supreme guide in the management of all public affairs. Hence the doctrine of the supremacy of the greater number, and that all right and duty reside in the majority. But, from what has been said, it is clear that all this is in contradiction to reason. To refuse any bond of union between man and civil society, on the one hand, and God the Creator and consequently the supreme Law-giver, on the other, is plainly repugnant to the nature, not only of man, but of all created things; for, of necessity, all effects must in some proper way be connected with their cause; and it belongs to the perfection of every nature to contain itself within that sphere and grade which the order of nature has assigned to it, namely, that the lower should be subject and obedient to the higher.

"Moreover, besides this, a doctrine of such character is most hurtful to individuals and to the State. For, once ascribe to human reason the only authority to decide what is true and what is good, and the real distinction between good and evil is destroyed; honor and dishonor differ not in their nature, but in the opinion and judgement of each one; pleasure is the measure of what is lawful; and, given a code of morality which can have little or no power to restrain or quiet the unruly propensities of man, a way is opened to universal corruption. With reference also to public affairs: authority is severed from the true and natural principle whence it derives all its efficacy for the common good; and the law determining what is right to do and avoid doing is at the mercy of the majority. Now, this is simply a road leading straight to tyranny. The empire of God over man and civil society, once repudiated, it follows that religion, as a public institution, can have no claim to exist, and that everything that belongs to religion will be treated with complete indifference."

Many goings-on in our current societal state were predicted in these two paragraphs alone. The supposed power of the majority to overturn natural law (as in the case of redefining marriage). The pursuit of pleasure being made the basis of law. The dictum that all people have a radical right to complete emancipation from participation in the demands of civil society. The animosity toward the Church, which nowadays has to defend its reason as well as its faith, since society has clearly done away with reason.

I encourage all of my readers to read this document in its entirety. It is not that long (as far as Papal encyclicals go), and the dialect is not a huge obstacle. In my ideal world, this would be read in every civics classroom across the land. The full text can be found here.

The Daily Niblet: If human society is to be healed

As one of my good friends once quipped, "When a pope takes the name Pius, playtime's over." It does seem so. From Pius I who excommunicated the heretic Marcion, to Pius V who laid the smackdown on the Ottoman Turks - thus saving Europe, to Pius X who just flat wouldn't put up with Modernist theological nonsense, the papal name of Pius seems to have a certain tone of frankness about it. Pius XI was no exception. He saw the concluding of the Lateran Treaty, which guaranteed the Vatican's existence as a sovereign state, and he canonized several important saints such as Albertus Magnus, Thomas More, and Therese of Lisieux. However, the point of this installment of the Niblet comes from his teaching in his encyclical letter Quadragesimo Anno in which he discusses the moral and ethical dimensions of economic and social issues. For your reading pleasure, a snippet of his philosophy:

"'Wherefore,' to use the words of Our Predecessor, 'if human society is to be healed, only a return to Christian life and institutions will heal it.' For this alone can provide effective remedy for that excessive care of passing things that is the origin of all vices; and this alone can draw away men's eyes, fascinated by and wholly fixed on the changing things of the world, and raise them toward Heaven. Who would deny that human society is in most urgent need of this cure now?" - Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno

The pope wrote this passage in 1931, yet it still bears fruit for thought for our current age.

The Daily Niblet: Notre Dame de Fourviere

A bit of Catholic eye candy for you: the interior of the Basilica of Notre Dame de Fourviere in Lyon, France. This church is an interesting blend of Gothic and Byzantine styles, a combination that seems a bit tricky, but which is accomplished nicely in this particular example. It is a close ecclesiastical cousin to the magnificent (if a bit ill-proportioned) Basilica of the Sacre Coeur in Paris: both were constructed during a similar timeframe in a similar blend of styles - though the Sacre Coeur tends a bit more toward the Romanesque. Notre Dame de Fourviere commands a fine vista over the city of Lyon and the Rhone River. More information - and photographs - can be found here.

And now for something entirely different

My range of interests is broad, bordering occasionally on universal, so I thought I'd share with you this bit of intellectual delicacy from the world of biology. The excerpt below comes from a fantastic collection of incisive and poetic biological-themed essays entitled The Lives of a Cell. The author is a man named Lewis Thomas.

"A good case can be made for our nonexistence as entities. We are not made up, as we had always supposed, of successively enriched packets of our own parts. We are shared, rented, occupied. At the interior of our cells, driving them, providing the oxidative energy that sends us out for the improvement of each shining day, are the mitochondria, and in a strict sense they are not ours. They turn out to be little separate creatures, the colonial posterity of migrant prokaryocytes, probably primitive bacteria that swam into ancestral precursors of our eukaryotic cells and stayed there. Ever since, they have maintained themselves and their ways, replicating in their own fashion, privately, with their own DNA and RNA quite different from ours. They are as much symbionts as the rhizobial bacteria in the roots of beans. Without them, we would not move a muscle, drum a finger, think a thought." - Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell, Viking Press, 1974

The Daily Niblet: Jesus, the first Gothic architect

Yes, candid reader, I have resurrected the "daily niblet" as a way to post some more or less intriguing - but brief - errant thoughts without bogging you down in more than three paragraphs or so. Expect meatier niblets than those of the past, but nothing more filling than your average appetizer. Firstly, from the great thinker G.K. Chesterton:

"Christ prophesied the whole of Gothic architecture in that hour when nervous and respectable people (such people as now object to barrel organs) objected to the shouting of the gutter-snipes of Jerusalem. He said, "If these were silent, the very stones would cry out." Under the impulse of His spirit arose like a clamorous chorus the facades of the mediaeval cathedrals, thronged with shouting faces and open mouths. The prophecy has fulfilled itself: the very stones cry out." - Orthodoxy, Ch. 7 The Eternal Revolution

Pictured below is the great Cathedral of Strasbourg, France.

Design for a Library

Inspired by my recent post about the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, I engaged in a bit of library design myself. The result is a structure that attempts to meld Beaux-Arts classicism with a touch of Art Nouveau decorative whimsy (perhaps it could even be classified as an American interpretation of the Baroque). I am quite happy with the overall composition, though there are some things that I would likely change if I were to start over.

The inscription on the bottom comes from the Old Testament book of Sirach and reads, "Wisdom breathes life into her sons and gives help to those who seek her." I thought it relevant to include this quote in order to present a library as a place to seek wisdom.