Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Life as a House


William owns a home in Mapelton Fall Creek and a home in Tennessee. He has left his home here in Indianapolis unattended, vacant, and bordered up for months. When he returned from Tennessee he found his home literally falling in around him. He made a comment that he had no idea how deeply philosophical, intriguing, and cool it was. Basically he said something like this: "Houses need love to! Houses need life. They need people not only to clean and upkeep them, but to cook, sleep, talk, and walk around in them. Otherwise they will die, just like what would happen if you neglected a person." (definitely not a direct quote).

When he said this I instantly thought of the poppy flower a week earlier that in my eyes represented the resurrection of a space that was left to die. This flower allowed me to see that a vacant lot was meant to have life on it in some form: a garden, a house, a park, anything, but there has to be life for it to reach the potential it was meant for. William allowed me to see that a house is the same way and that it isn't even really the cleaning and upkeep that keeps a house from falling in but the laughing, sleeping, breathing, eating, talking, crying, and all the other aspects of life that people's presence brings to a house.

I don't really know what to make of these thoughts other than I am given hope that if God can take a person that is broken and make them whole then he can certainly transform a vacant lot or boarded up house into something beautiful.

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