17.2 A Pattern of Wholeness
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
This lesson is drawn from Patterns of Home: The Ten Essentials of Enduring Design by Max Jacobson, Murray Silverstein, and Barbara Winslow (2005) and uses specific quotes from the text.
Having laid the foundation for these “Patterns of Home” in the last lesson, let’s jump right into the ten patterns the authors present as those design elements that make a house a home. And in using these ten patterns, we are speaking entirely of the Body of Christ, a family of people, living together as a Community of Christ, that is, the Holy Place, the Father’s Home. And we are speaking entirely of Salvation, that is Wholeness, and specifically of A Pattern of Wholeness that Father and I together will set before the whole planet very soon.
Tying these ten patterns into the Bread of the Table will await the third lesson of this session.
The Ten Patterns. First, let’s list the ten patterns. 1. Inhabiting the Site. 2. Creating Rooms, Inside and Out. 3. Sheltering Roof. 4. Capturing Light. 5. Parts in Proportion. 6. The Flow through Rooms. 7. Private Edges, Common Core. 8. Refuge and Outlook. 9. Places in Between. 10. Composing with Materials.
For each of these ten, I will include a portion of the description from the text. Then I will apply the pattern to the Community of Christ. As we go through each one of these patterns, however, let’s keep in mind fully that we are speaking of two different things at the same time and in every line. We are speaking of Father Himself at Home AND we are speaking of ourselves at Home.
All the Fullness of Christ. You see, everyone speaks of heaven as of “going home.” Thus the essence of home is set in the heart of the Christian as the full fruit of Christ. I am presenting all that is this same full fruit of Christ, not by physical death, but alive here and now on this earth and found in the context of the Church.
Christianity posits that God must possess us first (by our obedience) before we will possess the fullness of Christ. Reality is that we must possess all the fulness of Christ (by our faith) before God possesses all that is us. Paul said that the fulness of Christ is the Church. Unbelief alone keeps anyone out.
These patterns of home allow us to see the fulness of Christ in a living way, but the limited space means only a brief introduction.
“Thinking in Patterns.” I must quote extensively from Patterns of Home. I suspect the owners will sell a number of copies as a result of my use of it.
“The essence of home is a notion that, while hard to describe abstractly, seems to be understood intuitively. We all have a sense of the spaces and places that possess it: entries that invite, kitchens that work and are a pleasure to be in, rooms that feel right, and those that, somehow, don’t. And while such things are, of course, subjective—a matter of taste, preference, desire—beneath the varieties of taste and style, there is a definable underlying essence that can be embodied in a wide variety of homes—big and small, traditional and modern.
“So how do we capture this essential quality to create houses that are memorable, satisfying, and enduring? …
“What Is a Pattern?” “We are all familiar with patterns in our daily lives. We use them to create meals…, to make clothes…, and generally to organize our approach to solving a problem. They are the tools that we count on to help us through a new experience, and they can become so familiar and natural that we use them intuitively, no longer having to think before we act. In its simplest form, a pattern is an idea about how something is done. At its best, a pattern can distill the wisdom from the past, reveal the potential to the future, and link with other patterns to form a language to guide a process. Patterns help us consider the essential elements as we undertake the creation of something new or the evaluation of something old. Designing with patterns does not lead to a preconceived result but to an infinite variety of solutions based on specific conditions.
“… The language used to talk about houses is too often one that focuses on resale value or curb appeal; it is a language of real estate rather than experience. The patterns of home go deeper, linking the way the house is designed with the way we experience the world. They explore the presence of light, the way we move through a space, the feel of one space as you are sitting in another, the relationship of indoors and outdoors.
“… We present the patterns in an order that starts with the site and… ends with the selection of building materials. This order is one way to think through a design. It should be noted, however, that there is no real scale to the patterns… Any one of the patterns can be a starting point, a point of departure, for beginning a design.”
“Pattern One: Inhabiting the Site”
“Think of the house and its site as a single thing but also parts shaped by a larger environment. The site is a part of a larger place—a neighborhood, a ridge, a region—and the house itself, no matter how large and complex, is a part of this larger order. In some sense, the house must participate in the large whole: a whole that includes views; the path of the sun; the presence of neighbors, sound, sidewalks, and roads; the nature of the soil; the places that are good to be in just as they are; the ugly places; the places in between. Getting the feel and sense of the site, finding the order latent in the site, placing the house to preserve and relate to the best of the site—all this is achieved in the first pattern, Inhabiting the Site. Get it right, and the rest of the design will flow smoothly.”
Knowing Christ in One Another. Inhabiting the site, on our side, means possessing all that is Christ given to each one. On Father’s side, it means His heart set on the place that He has chosen, a living, loving human family alive in the heavens and walking this earth.
In a Community of Christ it means knowing the plot of land belonging to the community and knowing the heavens by which that earth operates. It means fitting your life to all the aspects of the land and the land to your life, the fruit of the earth. It means knowing one another, the joys and gifts, desires and sorrows belonging to each one, not just to honor, but to include what each one has to give in the overall community life. Let’s assume 75 people in a community. There is no greater wealth than to know and to enjoy the many faceted gifts of Christ coming to you through 74 other people.
“Pattern Two: Creating Rooms, Outside and In”
“Buildings give shape to their interior spaces but also to the exterior spaces around them. Imagine the site as containing a mosaic of rooms, some inside and some out. The walls and wings of the house, as well as the paths and features of the site, define these rooms. Think of the outdoor rooms of the site as every bit as positively formed and invested with meaning as the indoor rooms. Identify the best outdoor places and use the elements of the building to help define them. If you don’t plan the house to shape rooms both outside and in, the outdoor rooms will end up as leftover spaces. Similarly, the indoor rooms will lack the coherence of design and feel detached from the site… In a well-designed house, there is a lively balance of indoor and outdoor rooms, and the two types of spaces make an interlocking quilt of the site.”
Places for Everyone. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places. Many places, in fact, for each one, rooms inside and out. I want a quiet study where I can write, a classroom where I can teach, a woodshop where I can work with wood, a garden where I can grow things, a community dining room where I can eat and fellowship with all, a court where I can stroll in conversation with others. Yet there are more rooms than this. Each member of Christ needs places of expression. Each member of Christ is one wondrous expression of Father’s interests and personality.
This is a critical truth – “if you don’t plan the house to shape rooms inside and out” – home leaves nothing to chance, but ensures that each one finds full places of expression and joy.
“Pattern Three: Sheltering Roof”
“One of the defining comforts of home is the feeling of being enveloped by a simple, sloping roof. The primitive house was essentially a roof on the ground, which speaks to the very essence of home. More than any other single element, the form of the roof—as experienced both outside and in—carries the look and meaning of shelter, of home. The overall roof plan, how it orients and shapes the spaces below and around it, how the parts of the roof are linked, the details of roof construction and how they will be expressed inside and out… all form the pattern Sheltering Roof. For a house to convey the meaning of home, its roof must be more than something tacked onto the rest of the building. It must express how the house is inhabited. The most powerful houses are those in which, in some form, the whole building is conceived as a sheltering roof.”
A Safe Place. Home is a safe place. Look at the Tabernacle of Moses; the tent itself is the covering roof. A Community of Christ is a safe place for each member as well as for the Holy Spirit through each. The Spirit of God is as a dove, ready to go quiet when things are not safe for His expression. Yet the Spirit feels safe ONLY as each member of the community feels safe.
It’s the job of every member to ensure the safety of all; however, there are those more gifted with that task – think of soldier ants whose job is to keep the regular ants freely safe. The purpose of ministry in the Church is to ensure that each member KNOWS Christ as them, is free to be what God made them to be, and has full place to give what God gave them – in full acceptance and safety. SAFE in spirit, in soul, and in body.
“Pattern Four: Capturing Light”
“A sheltering roof is primarily a defense against weather, but a home must also open itself to the light and warmth of the sun. Arrange interior spaces to gather light, each according to its needs, over the course of a day and over the course of the seasons. Important rooms deserve balanced light from at least two sides. And try to let light surprise you somewhere: a drop of light on a landing, a wash of light on a north wall. Above all, use natural light and the forms employed to collect it—windows, dormers, skylights, monitors, and wells—to reinforce the order of the plan: The important centers, edges, and goals are all revealed by Capturing Light.”
Many Reflections of Light. We will spend more time in the next session on the light of the Holy Spirit shining through each member of the Community. A safe Home provides one private space for each individual, a space that is theirs alone. However, all other spaces benefit greatly by more than one window on more than one wall shining light upon that room.
When I think of a woodshop or a garden all by myself, I think of clutter and loneliness. I want the light of Christ coming on OUR woodshop and OUR garden through other windows of Christ. And so does Father. Being all alone does not suit Him. It is not good for God or man to be alone. Father longs for our full contribution to His ideas more than we can know.
“Pattern Five: Parts in Proportion”
“A home is an assembly of parts, materials, and spaces—entry, roof, garage, kitchen, bedroom—and, in some graceful, rhythmic way, all these parts must add up to an orderly and sensible whole. What are the major parts going to be? How big will they be? How will they contain or support the minor parts? … Each element is both a part of something larger and a whole with its own constituent parts: A wall is part of a room or wing but also a whole that contains windows, which contain sashes, which contain glass… A home is a hierarchy of Parts in Proportion and will feel comfortable only when all its parts are in good proportion to each other and make up a balanced whole.”
Everything in Proportion. This is an intangible quality in a Community of Christ, but one of very great importance. It’s really easy to emphasize too much the “big” things a Community is doing at the expense of the little things from each one. It’s also easy to overemphasize the little things at the expense of the important fruit that must come through the fewer big things.
Yet we also apply all these things to the physical spaces and buildings of the community just as much. Our heaven/earth environment, to be home, must feel balanced and proportioned in every way. A poorly proportioned central building can cause a dampening effect on the entire Community life. A “one man” ministry disheartens Father, making Him go quiet.
“Pattern Six: The Flow Through Rooms”
“How we arrive on a site and how we enter the house and move through it have profound influences on our sense of the building as a home. Walk onto the site in your mind’s eye and head toward the entry; find the places where you naturally pause, walk through the front door and pause again; continue to walk through the house, coming and going. The entire sequence of movement through and around the house determines whether we feel welcomed, invited to move farther, or encouraged to linger at a threshold, settled and comfortable within a space. Movement through a room affects the room itself. Whether or not a room—a house! —feels settled and comfortable is directly related to how we move through it.”
Welcoming All. You are welcome here. And here, behind every corner and around every bend are intriguing possibilities for you to enjoy together with us. A Community is meant to be lived IN and walked through. The witness of Christ means that visitors find their own hearts leading them into inviting mysteries.
Yet we cannot give what we do not have. And thus it is the enjoyment each member possesses of all the expression of Christ that is the greatest mystery tugging at the heart of anyone who has “come to see.” What is the secret of your life together? – His name is Jesus and He lives inside the room of your heart. Yet Father is infinite and further rooms in Him given to us to discover will never cease – knowing the mystery of God.
Pattern Seven: Private Edges, Common Core”
“Against the flow of movement, rooms are meant to hold activity, to gather and focus the life of the home. Some of this activity is shared, like two people cooking together or a family playing a game of cards; some of it is private, like reading a book. A good home balances private and communal space throughout. It offers magnetic and lively centers, reinforced by light and ceiling shape, with circulation at the edges; and it provides claimable private areas for everyone, even if the spaces are tiny (private niches, desks, window seats, and alcoves). Some spaces are exclusively common, some exclusively private; but most often good rooms are a subtle mixture of the two. Finding the right mix of common and private spaces is one of the key issues of good design.”
The Essence of Love. In the last sub-section you read a description of practical love. Replace the word “home” and the “it’s” that follow with the word “brotherly” or “family love.” Then place this description in the design of the buildings and spaces inside and out, in the design of Community life together, and in the design of outward work.
Place this description in the design of our hearts, giving Father private places looking out on togetherness and togetherness surrounded by privacy. Call it utmost respect and the highest regard for each one. Call it love. “Finding the right mix of common and private spaces is one of the key issues of” – love.
“Pattern Eight: Refuge and Outlook”
“One of the abiding pleasures that homes offer is being in and looking out—providing a solid, stable, and protected place from which you can look out toward and over a larger ‘beyond.’ Think of how this drama can be enacted on the site– in both major and minor, social and private ways; caves with views, inglenooks open to larger rooms, carved out terraces looking out on a distant view. Think about perches, playhouses, alcoves, and window seats; solid backs and open fronts. In all cases, the core of the experience is being able to observe the outer world comfortably from a position of relative security. Usually, the refuge is at a higher position and is enclosed and dark—the outlook is normally below, unenclosed, and light. At its simplest, we are inside looking out.
The Ministry of Christ. There is no ministry of Christ without living turned around in the Holiest of all. You can tell someone who is at HOME inside of God, he or she never thinks of themselves, how they are going to “make it” or not. They sit upon the blood and between the cherubim, with their backs secure inside the love of God. And from that place alone, they go forth setting creation free.
The same is true of Father. I tell you what, the Father feels very UNSAFE when the members of His body are weeping over sin before the cross. Man is the master, and our rebellion shattered more than creation. One thing in us makes Father feel safe at HOME – our absolute CONFIDENCE that Christ is all that we are.
“Pattern Nine: Places in Between”
“The house on its site makes up a series of indoor and outdoor rooms. But many spaces are neither inside nor outside; they are in between. And it is this in between-ness that makes them so permanently appealing. The traditional front porch, carved into the mass of the house, is the archetypal in between. But such places can be imagined and found throughout a home: bay window seats and beds, balconies, sleeping porches, breezeways, gazebos, summer rooms, rooms with walls that disappear. Just as important as a home’s indoor and outdoor places are its Places in Between, places that allow you to inhabit the edge, that offer enough exposure to make you aware of your surroundings, and that provide just enough protection to make that awareness comfortable.”
Places Going Out. “Places in between” can also be thought of as places going out.
A Pattern of Wholeness is a community that is built in its physical design, not only with inside rooms and outside rooms, but with wonderful places in between the two. And it is a community that positions places of outward work and involvement with the outer world as the witness of Christ on the other side of these places in between.
Think of the large front porch, a part of the house and a part of the outside, both. This is the place that outsiders see as part of their world. Yet it is on the porch that the family sits of an evening waving to the passersby. There are places for family only, but the witness of Christ includes these places in between where family intermingles with all who freely come to drink.
“Pattern Ten: Composing with Materials”
“Finally, a home is not just something of the mind and the imagination. It must be built; made of something; made of materials. Choosing its materials—to support, frame, fill, cover, color, and texture space—is the act of composing the home. There are many decisions to be made: What are the major materials? How are they expressed and experienced? What materials will establish the fundamental themes? What kinds of rhythms, repetition, variation will be played out around and within the home? Columns, overhangs, soffits; beams, smooth white planes, thickness. Putting materials together in a way that promotes their individual qualities, longevity, and visibility is the art of composing with materials. Compose materials as a melody—those that support and underscore; those that offer counterpoint, slow the progression—all with a view to letting the building sing.
What Every Member Supplies. In a sense, this last pattern is the most important. According to the effective working by which every member gives its part (Ephesians 4). Any community, the Father’s House in each local place, is a joining together of specific individual people. Each one is highly valued as Jesus Himself. Yet each one is utterly unique, and unique in many different ways.
A Home for Father and for us must be made of people. And people are wondrously varied, silly and wise, strong and incapable, loving all sorts of different things, steady in habit and constantly changing. Think of 75 people each with 100 different qualities and you are thinking of the arrangement of 7500 human qualities into a wondrous tapestry of Father revealed.
A Home for God and for Us. We have hardly scratched the surface on the development of these patterns of home in every aspect, physical, soulical, and spiritual, of a Christian Community, for us as much as for Father.
My own experience of eighteen years inside of Christian Community gave me the full measure of these things in the positive and the full measure in the negative. Oh, how much was abusive; how much was NOT safe! Yet I will have only that which is Christ, and thus for you I draw out from the unsafe places all the wonder of HOME.
We humans are made for a PLACE and a PLACE is made just for each one of us. That place is HOME for God and for us.