Looking For God's House

October 15, 2021 Georgia Tanner

"In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?" John 14:2 ESV

There must be something in us that longs for holy ground. A holy place where we can easily find our God. I think of the holy places I have visited over the past weeks. Places built by human hands and heartfelt desire to honor the holy, to touch the Spirit – which I know is God – and to feel His presence.

My journey into holy places started in Arkansas. I had changed our course westward to visit two glass chapels – both built in the quiet of the woods, both designed by the architect E. Fay Jones. The first one we visited is called Thorncrown and was built through God's grace a few miles above the mountain town of Eureka Springs. We were the last visitors of the day to peer up into the wooden rafters that reached to the heavens, leaving as the couple who had arranged to be married there arrived in a bright red pickup truck. The groom was happy to oblige with having their picture taken although his bride had not yet slipped into her dress.

The following morning, we arrived early to walk through the sister gothic arches of the Mildred B. Cooper Chapel in Bella Vista – these constructed of steel. We walked a quiet hour in the woods along the lake around the chapel waiting for the memorial service to be concluded before venturing within its doors, nodding to the family and mourners as they left, murmuring among themselves. I sat silently looking up through the arches to green leaves and blue sky wondering if Harold Tarleton had ever visited here to admire the fine architecture. It felt like God might live here but I was too distracted to talk with Him.

And I thought it interesting that we had accidentally bumped into the two occasions marked important enough that we humans seek holy ground: a wedding and a funeral.

There was the Chapel of the Holy Cross in the red rock of Sedona. It was so close to the guest house where we were staying, we walked there one morning through the neighborhood streets. It was striking, towering above us, appearing to be carved into the red cliffs. The stream of pilgrims journeying there walked the rising paths and through the enormous doors into the dark hush, light streaming through the stained glass. Candles to the right were available to be lit for a small donation. A group of five Hispanic teen boys hovered in front of me, caught between standing in the corner or venturing down the aisle to join the other worshippers in the pews. A family with stairstep children filed out from the front. A woman stood mesmerized in the doorway holding her phone as if to take a picture, blocking all others from entering or exiting.

Everything there was beautiful. But my God wasn't there – although His people were.

Waking early to walk the streets of Tucson, church bells echoed through the morning air. As I walked the well-worn sidewalks, I discovered three places of worship lined up neatly next to each other. I still regret not photographing the first church, an African Methodist Episcopal Chapel, but I photographed its mission board stating what they believed: "God Our Father, Christ Our Redeemer, the Holy Spirit Our Comforter, Humankind Our Family." Beside it was the first place of worship for the Jewish community, which also housed a memorial and museum for the souls lost in the holocaust. Mirrors and glass moved softly in the wind, and I felt the power of loss.

Next door stood a white-washed pueblo-style building with a modest dome and steeple reaching skyward and white iron gates surrounding its outer courtyard. The name was painted in red to match the red door, Primera Iglesia Bautista. Three places to meet God, all in a row. I felt a little like the child in the story of The Three Little Bears, but none of them felt, "Just right!"

Fredericksburg, Texas was founded by hard-working Germans and churches found their place on main streets and prominent corners. The Lutherans. The Episcopalians. The Catholics. They even built themselves 'Sunday Houses' to stay the weekend in town since the land where they lived and planted their crops stretched out as far as twenty miles from town. I had been told I absolutely must see the interior of the painted church built in 1906. Its doors were always open. It was stunning and gorgeous and a beautiful work of art inspiring reverence and awe. The temperature was cool inside, not a soul was there. It must be reserved for Sundays.

Next to it the original chapel, smaller, built in 1863, was quickly filling up with the anticipation of worship. I asked the priest if I could slip quickly in before the noon Mass to see inside – obviously I was a tourist. He nodded "Yes". That space also was as incredibly beautiful as loving hands could make it – in a more primitive style; whitewashed wooden slats rose high to form a wide dome-like the heavens above; a cocoon surrounding the people who gathered there. But I felt like an intruder; I acknowledged the robed leaders as they lined up for the processional and backed my way out the door.

The weekend came and went. Monday morning, the car packed to leave Austin, I received permission from Vince to visit the Cathedral of Junk in his back yard. "Make sure you park in front of the house. I want to keep my neighbors happy," he instructed me.

He greeted us at the fence gate off his kitchen door, introduced us to his dog, and told us to take our time and enjoy ourselves; he pointed out the donation box ($20 per person recommended) and told us there were separate staircases under the dome that led to the second and third stories.

Vince had started building his cathedral in 1989, fifteen years before he owned the house and the property. It had taken three lawyers, an engineer, and an architect to fight the city ordinances that deemed it illegal and a hazard. It was quite an endeavor. I am thinking Vince may be just a little bit crazy – certainly eccentric – but much to my surprise, as I wander through his carefully constructed maze of discarded things forming pathways and rooms and arched doorways and curving staircases, I find God.

He was there in the sunlight shining through the blue bottles over my head suspended as a ceiling in a rusting frame of bedsprings. He was there in the firm foundation of tires painted yellow, filled with concrete, stamped with words, and embedded with bits of metal leading, curving up, up, up. He was there in the wonder of the rose bush which chose to weave itself along the curving handrail made from a red plastic deconstructed vacuum cleaner.

I was mesmerized. I walked quietly. I couldn't take it all in; in every direction I looked, there was something new – yet something old and discarded and re-found to be seen in a new way. I felt the wonder I feel when I am reading ancient holy words of scripture that I have read so many times before yet suddenly I see anew, I understand as if for the first time.

Although Vince tells us he doesn't "accept visitors" on Sundays – and he thinks everyone needs a day to "unplug and rest…whatever you want to call it," I don't get the feeling he is a religious man. But in his obsession, he has relentlessly pursued creating a holy place – a place where I felt the presence of God more than in the most beautiful of buildings.

Is it because, with the death and resurrection of Jesus, Son of God, Savior of humankind, we carry within us this place of holiness where God's Spirit has taken up residence? Is it because when we open our hearts to Jesus saying yes, yes, yes, our bodies of earthen dust become his temple, his chapel, his church, his home?

Each one of us yes-sayers is knowingly made, imperfectly unique, waiting for God's Spirit and light to fill us with His true life, His presence. Something is lacking from the moment we are created, a longing to worship Him, to hear His voice, to see His face, to be with Him. Jesus tells us that he is the way to His Father's house.

If you are looking for your Father's house, may you find a room there; prepared just for you.

"Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going."

Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him." John 14:1-7 ESV

Question: Where do you find Holy ground?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THh_hWrGXYw

Come On Up to the House Sarah Jarosz Written by Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan