The Golden Ass

I just found out today that my blog name is Spanish when translated is:

Burro de Oro.

Which is rather entertaining to me. It has an even better ring to it in Espanol!! LOL!!

PEACE and goofiness to all!

Jason

One day the great King Bob woke up with a neck ache and a sinus headache. Appropriately, then, the land awoke covered in gloomy coulds with no sign of sunlight. He though to himself: "Hhhmmm...this sinus headache isn't that bad. I'll just eat some breakfast and then it'll probably go away." Correspondingly, the people though: "If only the King's sinus headache will go away, then we will see the sun!"

After some sugar on his cinnamon buns and some fat free white water...err...milk...for breakfast...sure enough the sinus headache of the great Kin Bob only got worse. But in also drinking some O.J. with his breakfast he began to become conscious of an uncomfortable sensation in one of his nostrils. There seemed to be an uncomfortable foreign object lodged in the great King's nose that did not belong! So he marched upstairs to unsheath his weapon of choice for the great war to come. The coming war was so great that it might be termed a quest, and the weapon of choice had the glistening and purifying whiteness of a q-tip. At stake was no less than the health of the great King, sunlight falling on the land, and happiness in the hearts of the people!

So the great King Bob unsheathed his q-tip and went to battle with the pesky booger. If only he could dislodge this one gargantuan booger, he thought, then it would clear his nasal passages for proper drainage, thus eventually ending this epic battle in his favor. The land could have its sun, the people their sunlight, and he his health.

So he dug and dug and rotated and clawed with the pruity of the whiteness of the cotton q-tip. He withdrew the q-tip and observed with intense purpose. Was this the great booger that plages the land? But alas...he had only unearthed a small little peion booger...not the real problem. His frustration increased and his headache reamined. But his resolve strengthened!! He resolved to learn better q-tipping techniques. As he dug and dug unsucessfully more and more times, he learned better and better q-tipping technique. He learned by failure; with each unsuccessful dig...leaving only a little green meaningless booger with a small bit of yellow snot to blot out only a small bit of the glistening pure whiteness of the q-tip...he grew steadily closer to finding the proper relationship between the digging, clawing, twisting, and turning of the q-tip in order to remove the dreaded Great Booger from its circumstantial location (for alas, if the Great Booger were to find a different location in the nostril, then a different combination of digging, clawing, twisting and turning would be required).

Finally the Great Booger was removed and the nostril could return to the enjoyment of its originally natural and comfortable nostrillage. As it sat on the end of the previously glistening white q-tip, then king admired it with great awe and wonder. How was THAT in MY nose! Surely THIS will mean the end of this great war! This great quest! Surely THIS will mean sunlight throught the land, happiness in the hearts of the people, and health in the body of the King! When the diffused light of the couldy day combined with the light over the mirror of the bathroom fell upon the great thumnail-sized dried-up booger sitting on the tip of the great King Bob's unsheathed q-tip and as the great King contemplated the Quest, he decided to give the booger a name. It needed a name. After all, it was truly important. This booger meant so much!! Thus in its glistening yellowness it was dubbed "The Golden Booger."

But there was a problem. The great king still had his headache. Five minutes went by, and then ten. And the headache remained. Twenty and then thirty. The headache even dared to grow worse. There was no sunlight over the land, and the people grew even more weary and dim-witted...and emotionally drained as well over all the energy that was being put into this great Quest. After all...the boogers return!! Who do you think goes to the grocery store to buy the q-tips!! Why...its the people!! And on top of that, who keeps the stock of q-tips available in the grocery store!! Why its the people!! After a day of war with the ever-returning booger, the toll of this great war...the price of clear sinuses for the king...was becoming too much to bear.

So alas a specialist was called in. With great hesitation, reverence and fear Dr. Booger Eater (of course this is not his real name but instead was the genius of a catchy marketing campaign) approached the throne of King Bob. King Bob explained the story of his war with the Golden Booger to date, and the noble Dr. Eater had a quick and immediate response.

"Good and honorable King Bob, please do pardon me, but you are approaching this war the complete wrong way! You must approach the Sinus Headache scientifically! It is not a monster to be feared. There are no spirits to be fought. You need not name its boogers. They don't need to be called out of the darkness and brought into the light for you to be healed. This is a very practical matter. And above all, I need not sympathize with your Headachimus Neckachimus. Here. Here's a prescription. Have one of your little dwarfs run to the pharmacy and get you some Tylenol sinus and some Claritin HD. Take one Claritin and two of the Tylenol and call me in the morning with a report. You were approaching this thing with far too much superstition. I assure you, my science and my medicine will have you healed by the morning. The land will see the sun and the people will see their happiness. Great King Bob, I honour you but I need not sympathize with your headache to not have my happiness when you do have your headache."

The Great King Bob was not only honorable but humble. He nodded and said thank you to the Dr. Booger Eater and sent him on his way. He sent one of his people to the store immediately in order to fulfill the Doctor's orders...

When he awoke the next morning, the Great King Bob still had his sinus headache!! He was furious, the land was without sunlight, and the people were sad! King Bob called in the Doctor and forced him against the gift of his own free will to eat all the great Golden Boogers that had been dislodged from the Great King Bob's nostril in the last couple of days (17 glistening Golden Boogers to be exact). Dr. Booger Eater cired when he heard the orders, but he carried them out dutifully.

Next, the Great King Bob called in another specialist. Preacher Joe approached the great throne and said, "Hey Bob, how 'ya doin'?" Bob said, "Not good neighbor Joe. I've had this sinus headache for a while now. The land is without sunlight, the people without happiness, and I without a clear head, so to speak. I have been waging war for a while now. With some help from me, my generals have called it Operation Godlen Booger. Can you help me? Can you help, bring sunlight back to the land, happiness and bright wit back to the people, and also to resstore world peace as well?"

Well, Bob, I think maybe the world peace thing is kinda up to you. You're the one waging the war. For that I'd say just end the war. As for the sinus headache, I'd say just take a nap, get up and eat a good healthy Christmas dinner with your family. Laugh, love, enjoy life and be at peace with your boogers. After all, just as there will always be thorns and thistles in the earth, there will always be boogers in the nostril. If you can be at peace with your Booger, then there will be sulnight in the land, happiness in the hearts of the people (after all, you had been laughing at dinner, correct?), and health in your body (I guaranteee it!)."

"Thanks Joe. I'll call you after dinner and let you know the latest."

So the King had his people prepare the prescribed meal for Christmas dinner and invited Preach Joe and his family to join them. He ate and laughed at his Golden Boogers...his ornery Generals...even at his great headache (which must remain un-named) . He ate until his tummy was bloated and he had to unbotten the button on his pants. He laughted until his cheeks hurt. And he loved his family with his Preacher Joe and his family on Christmas day. As he plopped happily on his throne after a Great Dinner of breaking bread with his family, it suddenly "dawned" on him that his headache was gone!! He went to bed hopeful. So the families of Preacher Joe and King Bob said good night and hugged.

Surely enough there was sunlight on the land the next morning!! The people were happy and the great King Bob was healthy. The people were more light-witted, but no one to this day knows the exact connection between Preacher Joe's prescription and the resulting health of the land, the people and the King. But regardless, with great joy and haste...without bothering to get someone else to do it for him, King Bob called Preacher Joe first thing in the morning to share with him the Good News. "HEY MERRY CHRISTMAS JOE......"

And so the story goes :) Merry Christmas!

Jason Hesiak

If I overpay my credit card company, do they owe me interest?

If I hang one of those colored fabric rug-like toilet covers on my wall, is it still ornament?

What is the average speed of an unladen swallow?

Whose space is myspace? Is it space?

If its possible to drink till she wants me, is it possible that she wants me till she drinks?

And lastly...umm...I forgot...

:( We'll miss you.

I am going to miss you man. Please stay in touch and come visit when you can. - Matt

Jason - It's not going to be the same w/o you! I hope those Easterners appreciate what they're getting! :) Kim F.

Bye Jason. I don't want you to go! Celina (10 yrs. old)

Thank you for being by my side when God was showing me who I really am. - Genesis (started www.solisfoundation.org and is an executive at one of the largest marketing firms in the world).

We will miss you here. You have been so good to my kids & I will never forget that. Don't forget us and keep in touch. Love, Maria

Jason - I am writing upside down b/c it is symbolic - how you may ask? It is symbolic b/c it is who you are - you go against the grain, you are firm in your convictions that society and culture can be so much more, you are quirky and unique and you march (literally sometime :) to the beat of your own drum when others are mimicking the beat that they hear and think they need to conform. I don't know what I'm saying but I think you can understand despite my befuddled thoughts & words. I will miss you so much - you enrich my life and bring smiles to my soul. Now I will stop b/c others will get mad that I'm taking so much space you will alwasy be a true and close, fun friend & know I'll always support & cheer you on! "heart" Ames (Wu Tang)

What the mess?! It was nice knowing you. I hope you rest in peace - now, you are dead to me! No one leaves the family! Once yor're in the family you're always in the family. The only way out is in a pine box! Concrete-n-shoes in the Chesapeake. Fine! Enough of the hollow thoughts. I will miss you. We had a great run, peace to you brother. Don't forget - we both know a dead man who rose, so do we. - David

Dear Jason, I will miss you because you bring joy & wisdom into my life. I will miss you because you help me feel & think more fully. I will miss you because you are my friend & matter to me. I will miss you. Love, Audrey

Thanks for being so good to my kids. Julio

I'm writing this while still holding on to the hope that you won't actually leave. Like I said before, the only good thing is that we will see you when we go back to VA to see family. Other than that, nothing good can come out of this :) I love you, man!! Remember that you always have a home with the Blumbers if you want to visit (or come back!) Eric

So my last post is at some point going to be posted over at the church and postmodern culture: a conversation. In trying to figure out how best to say what I wanted to say, lots of stuff came out in the meantime. I figure I might as well share it with you guys. So - disclaimer - what follows is sort of being dug up from the trash bin, although the reasons were other than its trashyness. It, as well as the other things to be dug up from the same trash bin later, was in the trash bin mostly just because either it wasn't provacative enough (in the sense of getting thoughts moving around in people's noggin') or didn't provide a clear enough picture of how contemporary church relates to contemporary architecture (or some combination of the two). So, dearest readers (ode to Dejan :)...we're off...

(oh wait...one additional note: you may notice some overlap between the previous post that will actually go up at church and postmodern cultre and this one, as well as with the other post later to be dug up from the trash bin)...(oh and another...as for my reader's reaction: you may judge for yourself whether I chose the best route for posting over at church and postmodern culture, or you may treat each post separately as its own work...or some other unknown-to-me alternative :)...(oh and one more: I may actually still follow up on what I said I would follow up on but obviously did not since I didn't actually post this at the place that would have involved the follow-up)...

It is interesting to me that the first four chapters of the first book of the first treatise ever written on architecture – The Ten Books of Architecture, by a Roman architect named Vitruvius who died right about the same time as Jesus – contains just about all of the seeds of conversation in which I would like to engage in order to address the various ways that architecture is relevant to the church and to the conversation that is happening here at “the church and postmodern culture: a conversation.”

The opening of Chapter IV, called “The Site of a City”, seems to provide a kind of focal point, both for how I hope to illuminate how architecture in general itself “sits on” this web “site” and as well for how I hope to relate architecture to the church (besides the fact that churches often have buildings). I see a kind of triangulation happening. There is the “conversation” happening at this site. Then there’s a whole history and tradition of architecture, largely forgotten by most architects and unknown, I think (?), by much of my audience here. And then, of course, there is the church, of which many of us are a part. The conversation here at this “site” focuses primarily on how contemporary culture and theory relates to various issues or maladies (depending on who is speaking about them) and their justifications or cures (also depending on who is speaking).

To state it succinctly, then, my hope for this post is to relate architecture to the conversation occurring at this site. This conversation is obviously related to the church, so I also hope to clearly relate for my audience, much of whom I’m assuming has (for the sake of ease) a lack of knowledge of architecture, some architectural theory and practice to some church theory and practice. Later I will discuss these things in more detail as they pertain more to architecture specifically.

So back to Vitruvius: his Chapter IV opens as follows:

For fortified towns the following general principles are to be observed. First comes the choice of a very healthy site. Such a site will be high, neither misty nor frosty, and in a climate neither hot nor cold, but temperate; further, without marshes in the neighborhood. For when the morning breezes blow toward the town at sunrise, if they bring with them mists from marshes and, mingled with the mist, the poisonous breath of creatures of the marshes to be wafted into the bodies of the inhabitants, they will make the site unhealthy.

Now, my contention is that we’re already screwed on that count. We’re already settled into a very unhealthy “site” with lots of both mist and frost, and located all to near to lots of local marshes blowing “poisonous breath of the creatures of the marshes to be wafted into the bodies of the inhabitants” (ancient people spoke funnily, lol). What do I mean by that? I do not mean that this website “blows” and that I hope to avoid conversation with all of you sickly creatures so as to avoid catching your diseases. What I mean is that I think our cultural “site” in which we are all situated, in which we are all trying to work and “make a living” (or do church), is “sick.”

Now, Jesus seems to have had a bit of a different attitude toward sick folks than did Vitruvius. Vitruvius says: “First comes the choice of a very healthy site.” Compared to Jesus who says: “Here I come you sick screw-ups into a very unhealthy site. Welcome to my neighborhood! I love ‘ya.” That is just, however, to state the obvious so as not to stumble over it. I will mostly leave that aside for now, and move on to figuring out more of what I mean when I say that our “site” is sick. My professor once said that if Architecture is most like any profession, it is that of Medicine. Let’s then see what kind of diagnoses and prescriptions we can make out. Uumm…with the help of our healing Counselor, of course!

So, I’d say that its fair for me to say that three of the top topics of conversation these days in the church are: discipleship (and its programmatization), spiritual formation (even if the topic of conversation is either a more philosophical notion of “the formation of the self”, or how it is too often ignored) and liturgy (and the supposedly less “mechanical” and more protestant ways of doing worship). The architectural seeds of all three are found right there in Chapters I – III of Book I of Vitruvius’ treatise. Obviously, though, the categorizations shake out a bit differently in Vitruvius’ discussion on architecture!

What I am referencing as discipleship corresponds to Chapter I of Book I of Vitruvius’ treatise, which is on “The Education of the Architect.” In it he discusses how the knowledge that an architect must acquire “is the child of practice and theory.” He goes on to discuss how theory and practice should properly relate to each other. I find these thoughts from Vitruvius, then, to be fascinatingly relevant to what I’ve heard David Fitch complain about toward the church as its “pragmatization.” I will explain more of this later, as well, but I don’t think it’s a great leap to relate the church’s pragmatization to its programmatization (nor its programmatization to its mechanization, more on that as well).

Again, my take is that such a “pragmatization” does exist, as a sickness. And I know of at least one contemporary architect who, correspondingly I think, complains of the constant proliferation of “meaningless form” in architecture (meaningless utilitarian and beurocratically acceptable form, of course!).

What I am referencing as spiritual formation, and connecting to the more philosophical (and/or psychological) notion of the formation of the self, is often dealt with these days in a conversation about language (how or whether language plays an active role in the formation of the self). One section of Vitruvius’ chapter on education is on what I first interpreted long ago when I read Vitruvius for the first time as “the idea of sign and signified.” Basically Vitruvius says that an architect has to be both naturally gifted, corresponding in a building to “the thing signified” (the laws of nature), and also “amenable to instruction,” corresponding to “what gives it its significance” (the laws being demonstrated by buildings, which then signify natural laws).

There is also more on this to come, but the point here is that the seeds for our current conversation on language and the formation of the self seem to be present right there in Chapter I, Book I of Vitruvius writings. For now I will just note how the talk of the town these days is how the capitalist machine manipulates our identity, and yet how the church is mostly not only doing nothing to fight back, but is capitulating to such smelly marsh winds. Architecturally, although this is quite the rabbit hole, I think the place to start is, again, with the repeated observation that much contemporary architecture is pretty devoid of meaning, besides, of course, the meaning graciously granted to it by the market. My contention, then, is that architecture often participates in the very same consumerist forces of manipulation of the self that folks complain about in the conversation about church. Why have or worry about spiritual formation, of the self or of buildings, in the church or in the practice of architecture when…uumm…eerrr…you just buy them (both selves and buildings)?

What I am referencing as liturgy corresponds to Vitruvius’ Chapter II of Book I on “The Fundamental Principles of Architecture.” In this section Vitruvius discusses how the parts of a building should be properly arranged in an orderly relationship to each other according to the principle of “Eurythmy” (the Greek flows better: “eurythmia”) in such a way that the parts correspond properly to the whole and its character. The question of liturgy or a lack thereof in church is a question of how to properly arrange the various parts of the ecclesial service or mass in relation to each other in response to the calling of a good God who works in all of history and eternity. More liturgical ways of doing church often seem to be organized and guided by a higher kind of musical rhythm present in how the very flow of time is itself kept by and participated in with this rhythm, which appears sensibly in the actual audible music that occurs throughout the liturgical proceedings.

I like when a well-proportioned house (very, very uncommon) has a grand piano in it (also uncommon). And most church services appear to me as like the cacophony of and MTV video. Keep in mind, also, that when I say “cacophony,” I am referring not just to the bad sound of it, but also to the disorderly relations of the parts of the service – and thus, of man - that do not lead to a coherent picture of wholeness that reflects or glorifies the character of the God who made us (to reference spiritual formation again).

Now, Chapter III of Book I of Vitruvius’ treatise is on “The Departments of Architecture.” It opens: “There are three departments of architecture: the art of building, the making of time-pieces, and the construction of machinery.” Liturgy has already arisen here as sort of a way of keeping time. Additionally, I previously made note of “and the supposedly less ‘mechanical’ and more protestant ways of doing worship.” As it turns out, the changes in architecture’s relation to the machine throughout the historical sands of time is a good way to tie all of these various themes together, which I plan to do in a future post or two. This should now come as no surprise, considering the rest of the post.

This question of the machine and the departments of architecture, however, does relate I think, to a current hot-button topic of conversation whose seeds are not directly or actually present in Vitruvius’ treatise. And that is the question of how to relate either to contemporary pluralism or modern colonial imperialism (again, how it is referenced depends on who is speaking). Vitruvius was Roman, and speaking to the Emperor (as per his Apologia, which I will discuss in a moment), so I don’t think he was too concerned with anyone else! Architecturally, however, I am not a fan of “eclecticism.” I am not a fan of collage. I do think that things appearing in the world should have a certain coherence to them, which should naturally be reflected in certain truths that I do believe lie at the bottom of nature. How exactly that should work out in church, I do not know. But our narcissistic diseases that cause us to refer to Paul as an expository preacher and Augustine’s former Manicheanism as “materialistic” has got to stop.

So, and this is completely backwards, I feel that a bit of an Apologia is in the works. Vitruvius’ “apologia” is in the Preface of Book I, so that’s what I mean by “backwards,” lol (this is the end of my post). His reads:

While your divine intelligence and will, Imperator Caesar, were engaged in acquiring the right to command the world, and while your fellow citizens, when all their enemies had been laid low by your invincible valour, were glorying in your triumph and victory, - while all foreign nations were in subjection awaiting your beck and call, the Roman people and senate, released from their alarm, were beginning to be guided by your most noble conceptions and policies, I hardly dared, in view of your serious employments, to publish my writings and long considered ideas on architecture, for fear of subjecting myself to your displeasure by an unseasonable interruption.

Wait. Lacan just whispered in my ear that Vitruvius had major Father issues. Lol. Shoot. Let me start over, then! After all, everyone here knows that in a man’s work, which has theatrical meaning and political implications, the Apologia goes to the audience. And – more relevant to why I have to start over here with my backwardsly-placed Apologia – we all know as well that in our contemporary modern liberal democracy the audience is “The People!” But of course, most of those people are still busy glorying in Imperator Market’s (probably not a technically correct turn of phrase – “Imperator Market” - the market is the house, not the head of it; and “capital”, the head of the column, eerrr…house, drives the market rather than is the market) “triumphs and victories,” since he seems already to have “acquir[ed] the right to command the world.” What is the economic use of pluralism? Even “all foreign nations” are still “awaiting [his] beck and call”, so I must await his call before setting out on something so ambitious as a treatise (against him, snicker snicker).

Here I humbly begin, however, a short series of posts on architecture and its relation the postmodern culture in which we find ourselves, as well as its relation to various church issues often discussed at this “site.” As noted previously, the capitalist machine “turns out” to be a good way of bringing together lots of themes that, at the first glance had in this introduction, might appear as disconnected or disorderly categorizations.

And although I am not writing a treatise, the preface of Vitruvius’, however, continues by explaining how he began to take note that Caesar’s attention was being given, ”not only to the welfare of society in general and to the establishment of public order, but also to the providing of public buildings intended for utilitarian purposes.” Vitruvius himself took his continued commissions from the Emperor as evidence that, “I need have no fear of want to the end of my life, and being thus laid under obligation I began to write this work for you…”

Oh, and before I forget, dear audience. Please extend lots of grace from the very depths of your soul to my small number of Doctorate and Masters degrees (a big fat zero) as compared to the large number that usually accompanies the writers here at this “site” (usually somewhere between two and six – no exaggeration!).

Shalom.

The folowing should soon be found posed over at The Church and Postmodern Culture: A Conversation:

In The Geometry of Art and Life, Matila Ghyka says that the mathematics of architecture are about ratio, proportion and analogy. Ratio is a set relationship between two measures or numbers, proportion is developed in a series of relationships (in time), and analogy is the link holding them together. Imagine a rectangle with sides whose measures are 2 and 3. Now imagine a rectangle with sides whose measures are 4 and 6. Those two rectangles are in proportion with each other, and the analogy between them is 2.

These, however, are mere numbers. Geo-metry means “earth-measure.” The numbers once meant something. Pythagoras probably demonstrated (not “discovered” or “invented”) his theorem with triangular clay tiles. So what I plan to do in this post is draw an analogy between some of the key relationships at play in two famous museums designed by two famous contemporary architects (relationships which might be termed mathematical or geometric) and some corresponding relationships at play in what might be described as two contemporary ways of doing church (relationships which also might be descried as geometric).

There is a well-known evangelical way of doing church that is nicely exemplified in the hotly debated virtues or lack thereof of the typical mega-church (or in smaller churches that emulate them). Its like a shiny, well oiled machine that runs so smoothly that its members just continue to desire joyfully to do all the necessary work to keep the heavy and complicated machine running just as smoothly as it “always has.” After all, the point of a nicely humming machine is to attract “other” now-greatly-blessed people to come over and take a look at your shiny red car, right? Off, then, into the great frontiers…err, wheat fields…of God’s labour!

Corresponding to the peacefully running well-oiled pretty and shiny machine of the mega-church is The Getty Center in Los Angeles, CA, by American (of course) architect Richard Meir. Like the shiny mega-church, it photographs really well; however the photographs are often merely graphic and actually mean next to nothing (and often have no relationship to the ground). I mentioned once to a pastor who runs something like a mega-church that there is a strong correspondence to his typically Cartesian way of moving around the world by notation and the fact that the cross on the wall in his church has no body. He simply explained to me the history of the Protestant tradition of showing the cross without the body of Christ in order to celebrate the Resurrection. In his mind that was pretty much the end of the discussion (but not before he did share some fairly personal and touching stories of his own experiences with death).

The Getty is designed on a graphically-imposed orthogonal grid whose module size is determined by the distance at which most Americans have a “comfortable” level of intimacy when standing next to another person (determined by a survey, of course), which if I remember right is 30 inches (in Africa, or even Europe, you will notice that people stand much closer to each other in line). Similarly the preaching in a mega-church has that funny “warm tone” to it, but in reality the guy is talking to thousands of people he’s never met using an expository format that is meant to graphically expose everything in an obscene way to all these foreign people. By "obscene" there I mean the exposing of more than what is appropriate, even the very source of life, to a public showing.

Correspondingly, at the Getty there is no Shadow. Instead the joints between the elements of construction expose the fact that the shadows are really meant to be reveals. A reveal, these days, is a joint in the plaster finish of a building to prevent cracking. Or back in the day when a mason would take a hand tool to get the extraneous mortar that had dripped out of the joint between the bricks off the wall, the tool might leave a "reveal." Or in enlightenment period architecture, sometimes you just see this horizontal band, a visual/linear line of a little shadow cut into the stone finish of the building that is meant to evoke the mechanical motion of...well, everything...including the planets going around and around (hence the band's going "around and around" the building, and hence the elliptical contour of the wall around which the "reveal" probably runs "around"). At Meir's building, the "reveals" are the little joints between the white aluminum panels, or between the stones that are mechnaically fixed to the side of the building as the finish. The reason you see the reveal is because it makes a shadow; but figuratively it is not a Shadow but a reveal.

Additinally, the Getty is designed in such a way as to look holy and pure and “set apart” from its context. Of course, though, we then have to be reconciled to “nature,” so there are a bunch of gardens and trees around the grounds in which people can mosey. And the buildings themselves seem to twist and turn peacefully along with the Romance of the innocent American Landscape, a “view” of which is a primary feature of the Getty experience. In that picture one should take note the “fallen impurities” of the tall buildings in the way of the view (lol); luckily for the viewer they are really far away and so comfortably insignificant.

Similarly a mega-church has supposedly been “set apart” into a holy life with God. The only problem is that it is not really till after we die, so it is kind of far away and appears insignificant (the “it” that is far away is either life in the now or life in heaven after we die). Or maybe life with God is even in the now, but just as the Getty Center looks white, pure and shiny but isn’t really any different from the “context” around it – and in fact borrows its most important and determining features from its “context” – both the mega-church and the Getty, in their Downy-absorbent whiteness, really don’t do anything but cater to the stifling powers that be. In their “whiteness” they take on the colors of the things around them, although in a way that looks quite distorted and even a bit horrifying.

Ironically the biggest problems the architect had getting the Getty built was with the neighborhood “context” around the proposed center. They didn’t want this mechanically busy white piece of soon-rusted metal in the way their peaceful life in the mountains.

There is another less well-worn way of doing church that some evangelicals have been exploring lately. It doesn’t rely on expository disjunctions between what we do now and the “landscape” or context that we inhabit. It doesn’t rely on a series of whitely abstracted propositions about truths that conform strictly to the eternal laws of logic but then have a hard time conforming to the actual world that we live in. And it generally seems less interested in the erotic shiny redness of the well-oiled sports car. Instead some people today are interested in embracing their history as the only door to their present and future in such a way that – surprise - life and all of its oily and greasy mess is actually lived in a hopefully coherent way that leads to the wholeness of man living with and toward God. Some of us are trying to live in sight of the Cross and Resurrection rather than the red shiny Carriage. The King's Carriage is of course carried on the backs of the workers rather than on that of Jesus.

Corresponding in my analogy to this new way of doing church, about which others have already said much that they are more qualified than myself to say, is Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin. The building shares a plot of land with and sits right next to a pre-existing museum of the history of Berlin, which itself was built in the 1800s. As a tribute to the importance of the past in shaping the present, the only entrance to Libeskind’s new museum is through the old and pre-existing one. The new museum has no public entrance of its own.

Rather than being a reactionary tribute to the fading shine of the red sports car (think Joel Osteen as a most extreme example), the museum is also meant to, through various expressions of the language of architecture, remember the pain of the Holocaust and the resulting sense of loss and place of the Void in our souls and in the world. Yet the building is also meant to, in the face of such pain and sorrow, celebrate the past and ongoing collaborative influence of the Jewish people of Berlin on their city. As Libeskind says: The task of a Jewish Museum in Berlin demands more than a mere functional response to the program. Such a task in all its ethical depth requires the incorporation of the void of Berlin back into itself, in order to disclose how the past continues to affect the present and to reveal how a hopeful horizon can be opened through the aporias of time.

Like the more liturgical character of some of the new churches, the parts of the Jewish museum are themselves like measured modules of the life of the Jewish people of Berlin, meant to reflect the character of Jewish life and the Jewish God. It is also constructed or ordered in such a way that those invisible and visible remnants of Jewish life and the character of their God (both painful and hopeful, scarring and encouraging) is to be gathered into one experience, in time, of the “microcosmic” whole of the museum and city, an experience which itself will later leave a kind of footprint of memory in one’s soul after having “been through” it (someone I respect once said that an architectural plan is like a footprint). Says Libeskind: The Jewish Mesuem has a multivalent relation to its context. It acts as a lens magnifying the vectors of history in order to make the continuity of spaces visible.

Interestngly, then, rather than being designed over a superimposed and at least conceptually infinitely extended “grid,” the overall plan is a broken construction of the ancient Jewish symbol, the Star of David. The "symbol" of the Star of David is not, by the way, just an object that appears on the spacially flat and infinite screen of life, but fits inside the geometric Unity of a circle as part of a larger alchemical geometric construction of the world, figuratively speaking of course. The referenced figurative geometric construction is that of a square inside a circle using only a stright edge and compass, and its beginnings are actually the logo of Studio Libeskind. I digress.

Back to the Jewish Museum, the grounds do not form a flat platform good for viewing the whole world as if from atop the Tower of Babel, but instead leaves the pilgrim on a series of labyrinthine and interconnected pathways that are often deeply disorienting and yet in turn sometimes profoundly re-orienting. Spacially, the re-orientation is only possible through the actual physical and sensible horizon, which was unfortunately lost a good 400 years ago. Even a keen awarenes of, as well as a profound questioning of a naive reliance upon, what we take to be the very laws of optics are a part of the actual "ground plan" of the building (Libeskind knew that Deleuze was aware that objects in the world become subjects when they stare back at you). This becomes very evident in some of his drawings. In some of his early exploratory drawings, the vanishing point, which occurs at the "ground," is exposed and exploded as something more than just a point on a line at which you stare blankly. You can see the remnants of this in his buildings.

Interestingly, Libeskind’s mentor was Catholic, and the following quote from him helps me to come to terms with the definition and sacramental nature of ritual. The Jewish Museum is conceived as an emblem in which the Invisible and Visible are the structural features which have been gathered in this space of Berlin and laid bare in an architecture where the unnamed remains the name which keeps still. Libeskind also says: The Jewish Museum is based on the invisible figures whose traces constitute the geometry of the building. The ground on which the building stands is not only the apparent one in Kreuzberg, but that other one which is both above and below it (Libeskind).

Libeskind’s mentor, mentioned a moment ago (named John Hejduk), would in his projects oftentimes be sure to bring you into contact with a scratching of the surface of the ground before you enter simply to remind you that its here. I had mentioned that at Libeskind’s museum, you can only enter through the past, but you also actually enter through the ground. You actually break the surface of the ground and descend into the depths of the earth in order to begin your journey of contact with the above-ground Jewish history of Berlin. You enter the depths of the Ground of Being, and by the time many people emerge from their experience of the building they are on their knees weeping, having been stirred to the depths of their soul.

As soon as you enter the building, then, you are underground, as when you proceed through more liturgical worship. The only “windows” are above you. They are the breaking of the surface of the ground, and in form and placement are part of the embodied story of the building and the city. The windows are the physical manifestation of a matrix of connections pervading the site. These ‘cuts’ are the actual topographical lines joining addresses of Germans and Jews immediately around the site and radiating outwards. The windows are the ‘writing of the addresses by the walls of the Museum itself’ (Libeskind).

As you can see, then, the windows are more than simply panes of glass meant to fulfill the biological function of sight. After contact with the Jewish Museum, some come to associate these “cuts” in the face of the building with facial “scars” (those of the past, no doubt). Like a missional church, the museum, rather than being a pristinely disjointed machine for the production of surface level truths and experiences that avoid the depths of reality, elicits deep sympathies with the very depths of God and the human heart.

Another interesting aspect of Libeskind referring to the “windows” as “cuts”, again considering his interest in the actualization of history, is the fact that the word “covenant” means “to cut.” It is a reference to the covenant ritual performed by God and Abraham, in which Abraham “cut” the animals into two halves through which the a holy fire of God then passed, thus symbolizing the two sides of the covenant between God and man. This was the “old covenant” on which stands the covenant by which our savior bears our “scars.”

Once you have entered the museum and are underground, the image of the God in you and in covenant with you is played out through your choices between three pathways (pathos). As you walk down each, you find that they lead, respectively, to a Void with a sliver of light descending from above accompanied by an upside down staircase, an “upside down” Garden of Exile and Emigration, and a long and slowly ascending staircase leading up to the exhibition spaces from which light floods downwards.

And just for the curious, here is what the “windows” look like from inside the building on the upper levels. It is appropriate, by the way, that its the windows, the openings, that symbolize the covenant. In Greek mythology windows are Orphic; in the Judeo-Christian tradition windows guide us on our procession toward God. It is often those heterogeneous places in a given space of a Libeskind building where the "cuts" begin and/or end that you begin to notice the figure of vanishing point staring back at you.

Much could be said about all of these, and the rest of the architectural features (or “words”) of the museum, as well as how it relates analogically through other buildings to other ecclesiologies. Suffice it to say for now, however, that the building is meant to be an embodiment – in time - of what it means to be human, or maybe Jewish, in the specific world in which we dwell and in relation to God. It is not a machine with a distant love/hate relationship to the body that involves lots of bickering arguments between originally harmonious parts of the self, arguments which themselves involve throwing foreign cinematic projectiles at a screen from across the room.

Instead the objects in the room, so to speak, are meant to be gathered up as parts of a meaningful and coherent whole that does not ignore the pains of our days or our bodies but instead “lays bare” all the deepest desires placed on our heart by God in such a way as to make a “pathos” to a place of hope in the face of an all-too-easily-ignored blackness (thus leading to those regrettable yet memorable purchases of red sports cars). Although Libeskind often intentionally ignores entirely the term "form" in his written discourses because of all the baggage that comes with it, the very form of his building, and not just the linguistic content that is often assumed to be the only messenger in the world, is meant to be part of the wholistic message of hope and breath in a constricted world of darkness whose future can tend to look so bleak.

Today (Tuesday morning) I came across the following real life story, which I found just had to be shared:

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i moved this weekend...IT WAS A CATASTROPHE!!! You will not believe was a disaster it was! Let me just give a sample of just how bad it really was...

Before noon on moving day there was people doing back flips from the second floor to a luv sac on the first floor

4 large pizzas, 24 sierra nevadas and a bottle of crown royal that had be injested

A truck that did a full roll going full speed (hit it's roof and rolled back on the tires)

and someone with a concussion

That was just saturday morning...

Since then I've had cable problems, internet problems, a sprinkler leaking everywhere, I'm missing everything and a ping pong ball burst into flames

there are so many things that went wrong...im officially never moving again!!

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I laughed at all of that, my hard ass must admit. But...then my stone heart felt compassion when later in the day I heard an extension of the same story:

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This moving thing is the biggest disaster in my LIFE!!!

It actually cost me a new job opportunity!!! WHAT THE HELL??? I just found out today and me moving actually caused me to miss this opportunity!!! What else is gonna go wrong??? I'm scared to do anything...i have to leave right now...am i gonna get in a car accident and die????

So everyone out there...do whatever it is that you do to wish good for someone...praying, voodoo, witchcraft, The Secret, WHATEVER!!! whatever it is that you do send the goodness towards me cos I'm sinking!

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Its funny to me how "moving" was the experience that "moved" her to religion. Lol. I don't think that this story requires any commentary. Besides the observation that it makes me, all the more, want to see Balls of Fury when it comes out :)