My House

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:14:18 -0600

The exterior of my house is very pleasing to the eye. It’s a modest, prairie home that is aging well and is comforting to look at. The porch is large, with chairs and a couple of swings. On the porch I am the perfect host - chatting, making people feel welcome, and carrying drinks around on a little tray. I’m very engaged in the conversations, actively listening, and moving smoothly from one group to the next.

People like the outside of my house and the front porch. I take great pride in that.

But I don’t invite many people inside my house. I need to know you pretty well before I let you see the interior, though I do have a variety of photo albums available on the porch. These photos are a carefully chosen selection from the various rooms inside my house. I’ve included a few safe, but slightly intimate photos of my private rooms, so that you’ll almost think you’ve been inside.

“Wow, these are great photos,” someone on the porch says. “So intimate and beautiful and daring.”

“Thank you,” I say with a big smile. “More lemonade?”

The people I allow inside are surprised to find that the interior looks nothing like what you’d expect in a prairie home. Through the front door is a large, open room that looks like a warehouse. Mounds of papers, books, and dirty plates cover the tops of tables and desks. Even some of the chairs have things stacked on them. Here and there are half-finished projects, some buried under piles of financial statements, unused calendars, and receipts. There is sawdust and trash all over the floor. Everywhere you look there are chewed pencils.

In the warehouse I rush back and forth in a mad panic, slapping things together, scribbling on papers, and stuffing things into envelopes. A phone is cradled on my shoulder, and I am shouting apologies into it. These apologies are as messy as the room, stitched together with lies and half-truths.

If I see you in my warehouse, I am deeply embarrassed and want to hustle you out of there as quickly as possible. I want everyone to think that things are as calm and peaceful inside as they are on the porch.

There is a door in one wall of the warehouse that leads to the family room, which is a kind of secret club. There is a very large lock on this door. Jeanene and I and the three sisters are the only ones with keys. Occasionally one of the girls rushes through the front door, dashes across the warehouse, and fumbles with the lock while looking over her shoulder in a panic. When the door opens, she slips inside with an audible sigh of relief.

One corner of the warehouse is more cluttered than the rest of the room. As you approach it, the mess gets more extreme until you think it can’t get any worse. Then you see the hidden, circular staircase that leads to a room below. Soft music floats up the stairs along with scents of patchouli and rosemary. Flickering lights from a fireplace below leap out of the hole in the floor and beckon to you to enter.

The stairs lead to my sanctuary. Because of the chaos above, it is astonishing that this room is perfectly neat and tidy, though it is obviously well used. Famous paintings are on the walls, and elegant, wooden shelves are filled with fine books with leather covers. The couches in front of the fireplace look deliciously comfortable, and you can smell pipe tobacco coming from tins on the mantel.

There is a home theater in one corner with a fabulous collection of movies and music. Fountain pens, inkwells, and heavy paper sit neatly on several wooden desks. All of my writing is done in this room. Finished works are stored here in perfectly organized filing cabinets.

I’m very proud of this room. In truth, it is the room I hope most defines me. When people visit here, I look up and acknowledge their presence, then go back to whatever I was doing. I sometimes find it difficult to engage people in my sanctuary; indeed I can barely hear their voices.

There is a circular, hobbit door in one wall of the sanctuary. It leads to a different sanctuary, one I abandoned in 1984. This room is filled with juvenile literature, science fiction, a record player, and an astonishing variety of sporting equipment. There are beanbag chairs all around and shag carpet. 70s and 80s rock and roll posters fill the walls. On one wall there are some framed pictures of girls in prom dresses. Their names are carefully carved into the frames. The colors of these photographs are fading, but they were clearly hung, long ago, in a place of honor and with great care.

Last year I entered this room for the first time in many years. I looked around a bit, smiled at the pictures of the girls, and then gasped when I saw my worn and beloved baseball mitt. I picked it up, smelled it, and took it with me when I left.

There is also a secret door in my sanctuary. If you push a hidden lever near the fireplace, a bookcase pops open to reveal a hidden room. There is only one person who knows how to push this lever. When she enters the room, her eyes sweep across the walls and shelves and then grow wide. She giggles and puts her hand over her mouth. Something on the other side of the room catches her eye. She stares at it intently. Her head tilts a little, and she squints. A smile slowly grows on her face. It is the Mona Lisa smile of a woman who knows that she is the one.

In the far wall of my hidden room is a door that has wedges and spikes pounded under it and around the edges. The door itself is scarred and splintered in places. It looks as though there has been a fight over whether to open it or keep it closed. From inside there is a furious pounding. Someone wants to come out. Someone selfish and extremely sensual, someone rude and very indulgent. Someone who would sacrifice anything for the pleasure of the moment. He needs pleasure, and he doesn’t give a damn about anything or anyone else. He’s angry as hell to be locked inside. You can hear him howling at night. And he swears that one day he will have his revenge.

On the floor, in a corner of my sanctuary, there is a heavy, wooden trap door. In the center is a black, iron ring. This is the door to the caverns beneath my house. It is very difficult to open this door. It takes a lot of courage and an enormous amount of strength. You have to grab the ring and pull with all your might. But sometimes this door pops open by itself, especially at night. If you walk by and find that it is open, it will slam shut as soon as you approach it.

Below the trapdoor are steps leading down into the darkness. Mysterious and frightening sounds rise from below. There is the sound of running water, the insane laughter of demons and lunatics, and grinding noises, like large gears slowly turning. Sometimes you hear the groans of slaves and prisoners who are apparently trapped below the house.

I’ve only gained the strength to open the trapdoor in the last ten years or so. In 2002 I began opening it regularly and going down the stairs. I bring up strange artifacts and set them on the mantle, where I puff away at my pipe and gaze at them in wonder. Sometimes I write about the things I find below. But it’s hard because when you write about what’s below, you cannot pass judgment. You can only describe what you have found. So many people do not understand that.

There are many other doors in the house. Some I have opened and others I have not. There is even a mysterious hallway that leads out of the house to places unknown. I do not know this house yet, but I am exploring more of it with each passing year.

These days a lot of people have been stopping by my front porch. The photos are there, of course, but lately I’ve been going down to the sanctuary and bringing up things I have written. I nail them to my front door or leave them on tables beside the swings. Sometimes I look out the window and am amazed to find that people are reading my work. All of it. Every blessed word.

A dear friend, one who spends time with me in front of the fireplace, recently asked me where God was to be found in my house. I tamped tobacco into the bowl of a simple wooden pipe and considered the question.

“It has taken me many years to discover the answer to that puzzle,” I say while lighting the pipe.

“As it turns out, God can be found in every room in this house. In all of them. And I am slowly learning to be comfortable with that.”

rlp

Prairie style home

Creative Coworkers With The Almighty

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 09:25:23 -0500

It’s not hard to find creative energy at work in our world. If you want a real challenge, try to find a part of creation that is static and dead. Try to find something that is not in flux and actively working with God to create reality. Everywhere you look you will find creation in all of its forms, both living and nonliving, working to create the world in cooperation with God.

Every tree grows with compounding, fractal surprises. Branches split and bend toward the light. After a few divisions and turnings, the various possibilities of form are so numerous our minds cannot count them all...

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The High Calling.

rlp

Real Live Preacher - Creativity

My House

Creative Coworkers With The Almighty