Stop at the Pub on Your Way to Saving the World

In which your architectural critic lifts a glass to a couple of the bars and cafes in myth and fantasy.  Have a seat at one of these mysterious murky watering holes.  Here hobbits and resistance fighters for the Force drink, meet allies, are attacked and rescued, all on their way to saving the world from the dark side....

Pracning PonyI spent a little time this Christmas with two favorite mythmakers – J.R.R. Tolkein and George Lucas. As I reread some Lord of the Rings, and saw the new Star Wars movie, I was moved as always by the heroism and imagination of these stories about bands of unlikely small outsiders taking on the dark side. 

Like most hero's journeys, the action is mostly outdoors, hurtling through space or slogging through swamps.  But I was struck this time around by the key role that taverns and cantinas play in the plots.  Since I write here about all things structural, allow me a word of appreciation for the Prancing Pony tavern, at the edge of the Shire, and the cantina of Maz Kanata on the planet Takodana. 

In Star Wars and in Tolkien, our somewhat innocent heroes walk into these pubs and are instantly surrounded by a curious collection of strange and menacing aliens.  A public spot (“pub” comes from “public house”) is a good way to introduce a variety of characters and show that it’s a bigger world out there than our heroes may have realized. 

In each tale, it is near the beginning of the journey that our heroes enter a tavern, and there make an important advance in their quest.  The hobbits first meet a key ally, Strider/Aragorn, waiting for them at the corner table.  Rey and Finn learn more about the dark side from the wise and mysterious bar owner Maz, and Rey is guided to the hiding place of Luke Skywalker’s old light saber in the bar’s basement.

George Lucas has credited Tolkein, probably by way of Joseph Campbell, with inspiration and ideas about the mythic quest.  Any small hero in waiting would love a wise warrior guide; Gandalf obviously prefigures Obi Wan Kenobi.  Lucas has also admitted that the Prancing Pony inspired the first cantina in the original Star Wars, with the great jazz band of aliens and a panoply of weird barmates.  It is there that Luke and Obi first meet Han Solo and Chewbacca, and hire them and their Millennium Falcon starship for their battle against the Dark Side.  Director JJ Abrams in the new Star Wars film has many an homage to the originals, including a new cantina.  Bars can be a good place to get information and do business.

Mos Eisley CantinaBut they are dangerous places too, these pubs.  The hobbits carelessly draw attention to themselves in the Prancing Pony and barely miss death from the Dark Riders.  (Too big a pint for Pippin and he starts bragging.  Always a danger in pubs, loose lips.)  In the first Star Wars movies, in the Mos Eisley cantina, the Storm Troopers come into the bar after Luke, and Jabba the Hut’s henchman goes after Han, who casually kills him.

None of these bars are happy light places where everyone knows your name.  No one yells out “Norm,” like the Cheers bar.  When Frodo walks in he’s suspect and he senses the dangers, trying to hide who he is, using a false name.  Bar scenes, even before the fights start, are a good way to build some tension.  (As if we needed more.)

Mos Eisley CantinaI was already thinking about this column when Alan Rickman died this week and I was transported back to the Harry Potter world and his great portrayal of Professor Snape.  So I add to my list of mythic pubs: The Leaky Cauldron, Hog’s Head and The Three Broomsticks, more public houses where danger lurks and secret back exits might be your only hope.  Hopefully you can finish your butter beer before you have to sneak back to Hogwarts.

One could name more great fictional pubs and cafes: Rick’s Café Americain in Casablanca (“There’s no hurry.  Tonight he’ll be at Ricks.  Everybody comes to Rick’s.”)  Moe’s Tavern in the Simpsons.  Cabaret’s Kit Kat Klub.  Rosie’s Bar in M*A*S*H.

And of course one of the best – The Back Road Café.  Just look at all those happy pictures of Dale around the world with a pint and good company.  And look at these pages of happy writers.  “In cafes around the world individuals sit over coffee thinking, reading, writing and watching the day go by.  Groups of people converse, debate, laugh and then set the worlds to rights.”

So pull up a chair.  Have a pint or a latte or a butter beer.  Share a drink, meet someone new.  They might the hero who will save your live.  You might find in these rooms a precious and magical weapon.  You will surely get back out on the road rested and inspired.  You might just go out and save the world.

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter

What Belongs Near the Altar?

Should church buildings have rules about who can come in and what happens inside the building?  Generally I say no rules, but……

The stream of eager young adults began arriving at the big open church an hour early to make sure they got a seat.  Dressed in colorful informal clothes, sweats and tank tops, they were excited and chatty, saving places for the friends they meet there every week.

No, I wasn't at a fundamentalist mega-church.  I was at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, a massive century old neo-gothic Episcopal sanctuary complete with a bishop and a rose window  and a high altar and needlepoint kneeling cushions.

There's also a labyrinth laid into the floor at the back of the church, near the entrance, modeled on the one in Chartres Cathedral in France.  In the past few decades many churches have installed these floor patterns as a popular spiritual tool for walking meditation.  These eager folks, 300 of them, were coming this Tuesday night to "Yoga on the Labyrinth," a weekly combination class, meditation time, and meet up. 

I was also inside Grace Cathedral last week. But not to attend the yoga class, which I only discovered because I showed up for a more traditional church event, Evening Prayer.  I was in the city for a holiday visit, staying near the church.   For two nights in a row I, and 8 other people, took part in the 5:30 Evening Prayer service of psalms and prayers in the little chapel in the front of the church. 

The first night we were the only worshipers in the vast dark sanctuary at end of day, and as we left, they locked the church doors behind us at 6 pm.  But the next night I saw the stream of young adults, yoga mats under their arms, walking up the massive steps to the cathedral even before I arrived for the 5:30 service.  Even before we finished the prayer service, there was a dull roar of happy arrivals in the back, and I had trouble finding a path out among the hundreds of colorful yoga mats all over the church, many labeled "Grace."  It's not a yoga group that rents space at the church, it's a popular ministry of the church, and they even provide mats if you don't have one.

I remember when the church I attended in Monterey first suggested installing a labyrinth 20 years ago.  It seemed to me at first just the latest fad, and the proponents were so "New Age-y" that I had my doubts.  In their enthusiasm it sounded to me that they were worshipping the labyrinth, rather than God. 

My mind was changed by two different sets of people and how they reacted to the idea of installing a labyrinth.  I heard people tell stories of having been really hurt by church, shunned or scorned, and they said this simple walking meditation in a spiritual place was helping them feel welcomed back in and connected to God.  OK, that was a good thing.  Then I heard the bitter old men of the finance committee vote against it, concerned only with the threat of liability and the danger of strangers on the property.  OK, if those fossils were so opposed to it, then it must really be a good idea.  I've walked many a labyrinth since.

So I was surprised that my initial reaction to the happy yoga folks in the cathedral was a little bit of annoyance and disapproval. 

Just a little.  I could get over the intrusive noise in my quiet Evening Prayer time.  And it was good to see the labyrinth doing its job again, getting young folks into church.  I have no trouble with having a religious practice originally developed by Hinduism take place in a Christian church.  (Perhaps it was OK to me because it was New Age yoga atop New Age labyrinth.  Except they are both ancient practices, older than Christianity!)

My problem was, they weren't just putting down their mats on the labyrinth.  They needed more room.  They lined the aisles with their pink and green and purple mats, and then along the side aisles.  And then I saw the young woman in a tight and minimal leotard laying her mat down in the chancel area, in front of the high altar.  I thought to myself, "Does the bishop know about this?"

The chancel is the area in "high" churches, Catholic and Anglican mostly, around the altar, often surrounded by a low rail, which is also the communion rail.  Only certain people can enter that area during the worship service.  It is special, due extra respect.

That's what I was taught as a little Episcopal girl.  I still feel a little in awe when I go to an Anglican church and we are invited to sit in the choir stalls during evensong - do I deserve to sit up here, so close to the holiest part?

But come on, Streeter, you left that church because you don’t believe in any hierarchies in God’s community, no one is better than others, no places are so holy that some people are forbidden.  You are now a Congregationalist, all are welcome here.  And I’ve felt the sting of those restrictions personally - it was used to keep women out of serving at the altar - I was never allowed to be an altar girl, there was no such thing.  Neither were there women priests when I was growing up. 

OK, so I tried to remember that I’d left behind the idea that there is a holy of holies and some people aren't allowed in.  So why not have yoga mats in front of the altar?  Why not leotards in church - I've seen them on liturgical dancers?

You can see why I have trouble going to church - my brain works too hard and I have a wee tiny judgmental and puritan streak. 

But then I walked through the yoga crowd.  I saw the very happy attendees, and saw more streaming up the steps.  Others I saw getting off the cable car with mats under their arms saying they had come from across the bay.  A cathedral priest stood at the entrance welcoming people to "this time of meditation in this holy place, where all are welcome.”  The yoga teacher said, "Your body is temple, breathe in the spirit of love and healing and give thanks."

And I thought, "Get over it, Streeter, the altar is the exact place where seekers and pilgrims should be, and should move, and should lie on holy ground and lift up their hearts and the rest of their bodies to the Holy Spirit." 

I hope the bishop knows about this, and how vital this ministry is.

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter

Renting and Owning

In which we think about the difference between living in a house we own, or in one we rent, and what the hermit crab can teach us on the subject…

When I stand behind the Kelp Touch Pool at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, in my volunteer apron so I won’t get too wet, and try to explain to visitors about the lifestyle of the hermit crab, I often say,

“Hermit crabs are renters, not owners. They are born without a shell, a home of their own. That’s a scary life, because a sea otter would love to have them for lunch, and they have no protection. So they look for an empty shell of another kind of animal, a snail, that they can move into.

“But then they grow and get too big for that first shell. Like when you outgrew your crib and needed a bigger bed. So they must leave the safety of their shell and find another bigger one. See, here’s a big shell that’s empty, this would be a great shell for this guy to move into – he looks like he’s outgrowing this shell.”

Then I invite the kids to put a hermit crab on their hand, keeping it underwater so it can breath, and let it walk off their hand. Some kids will do this over and over. (I don’t get the appeal myself.) I guess hermit crabs are pretty sturdy, with this nomad life. They just calmly walk off the foreign hands and go back to house hunting.

“Nomad life” is, I think, a better term than “hermit.” Sort of odd that they are called “hermits,” because in fact these little guys and gals are quite social, if by social we mean, hanging out in groups. You rarely see a hermit crab all by itself. But by “social” I do not mean “considerate”– no, they will fight over a particularly appealing new bigger shell. At the same time they also do a remarkably social group activity called a “vacancy chain” when looking for a new home.

When an individual crab finds a new empty shell it will leave its own shell and inspect the vacant shell for size. If the shell is found to be too large, the crab goes back to its own shell and then waits by the vacant shell for anything up to 8 hours. As new crabs arrive they also inspect the shell and, if it is too big, wait with the others, forming a group of up to 20 individuals, holding onto each other in a line from the largest to the smallest crab. As soon as a crab arrives that is the right size for the vacant shell and claims it, leaving its old shell vacant, then all the crabs in the queue swiftly exchange shells in sequence, each one moving up to the next size. (Wikipedia)

I gather they are called “hermits” because they live in homes not of their own making. A snail, be it periwinkle or abalone or anything in between, makes its own shell, out of various secreted juices and calcium, and keeps growing the shell large and larger throughout its life as its body grows. The hermit crab, on the other hand, just moves into a succession of larger homes. (Another odd use of “hermit” – I don’t think of hermits as especially upwardly mobile – the word derives from the Greek for “desert” - these were the desert fathers and mothers of early Christianity, the eremites, who sought wilderness, not domesticity, less, not more…..)

So I call them “renters,” because they live in homes that once belonged to someone else. I even call the black snails, whose shells stand empty and ready to move into (because the voracious sea otters ate them), “the original owners.” (“No, don’t force that snail off the rock, that’s not a hermit crab, that’s the original owner. When that snail dies, and the shell is empty, the hermit crab might move in.”)

I’m trying to help the kids identify with the hermit crabs; this is a first principle of interpretation – connect the story you are trying to tell with the story of your listener. The aquarium lets in free 80,000 school kids a year, and many of them, I would guess, live in rented apartments. You may have been born without a home, but look at all these creative ways to find one. You’ve had to move recently? So has this crab!

But it’s probably more accurate to call the crabs “frequent movers.” Or “squatters.” That’s more like it – they find an empty domicile and just move in - original owner or building department be damned.

So I’m rethinking my “renter” analogy. Very few people build their own home – we all stand on the shoulders, or sleep in the bedroom, of someone who went before us. We’re all hermits crabs.

And like the black snails, after we move out, or die, someone else will move in, stand in “our” shower, cook in the kitchen that we thought was ours. Even “ownership” is temporary.

And if you’ve ever been part of a desperate Sunday afternoon round of open houses for a new apartment, or that late August frantic search for a room before school starts, you are familiar with the concept “vacancy chain.” The hermit crabs look positively polite in comparison.

Maybe the problem with my analogy is that a snail’s shell is not its residence, a separate structure, but actually its skeleton, a key part of its body. It’s an exoskeleton, the outer structure that snails and crabs and other animals do build themselves, just as we build our own inner structure, our skeleton. We all actually do build our own home, our own body. That’s our real home.

So the analogy is not really about real estate, but about mortality. The snail eaten by the otter has provided food for that animal, and a temporary shelter to another animal, the hermit crab. We all, like the otter, eat food that is the product of some animal or plant dieing. And our homes, whether outer structure or our own bodies, are really the gift of someone else since dead.

My neighbor, poet Ric Masten, wrote a sweet kids song about a lonesome snail. While all the other animals seem to know where their home is, nest or den, the snail is always looking. “Sliding down that highway, down that silver track, Searching for the very thing he carries on his back.” It’s called “The Homesick Snail.”

Maybe we’re so intrigued with the hermit crab because we too sometimes feel like hermits, homeless, homesick, alone, unaware that we all really make our own homes, and we all live because of the gift of someone else.

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter

No Room in the Inn?

Here are some architectural reflections on the so-called inn in Bethlehem that was all booked up Christmas Eve, forcing Mary and Joseph to set up Jesus’ delivery room out in the barn.

I’ve preached over 100 Advent and Christmas sermons.  I’m pretty adept at studying the original meaning of the Biblical text.   I’m right up there on my “hermeneutic of suspicion.”  (Biblical criticism combined with feminism; don’t assume the conventional interpretation is correct, in fact, assume it is incorrect.)  

So why has it never occurred to me to question the phrase “no room in the inn?”   As in “Mary brought forth her first born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

What if it wasn’t an “inn” with various “rooms” sadly overbooked?  Had I ever looked up the original Greek, compared the use of that word in other parts of the New Testament?

Apparently not.  Because almost by accident this week I found a pretty convincing article that upends all of my, and most people’s assumptions about the overbooked Bethlehem Motel 6.  All it took was some basic word study and some analysis of Near Eastern family patterns and domestic architecture and birthing practices to make it pretty clear we have the nativity architecture all wrong.

In all our crèche scenes this time of year, in paintings and churchyards and on my sideboard, we see the usual suspects, Mary, Joseph, some shepherds, the magi, all hanging out in the barn, surrounded by animals.  The implication is that the full and happy and noisy inn is just out of sight.  The innkeeper was kind to find this young struggling couple a place to huddle but it’s out here in the dark.

Mary is the only woman (maybe a shepherd girl these days.)  Jesus always looks pretty cold, naked in the feeding trough with the scratchy hay. 

(“Manger” is such a nicer word than feeding trough, sort of romantic, from the French “manger,” to eat.  I confess that until writing this piece I had fallen into a sloppy misconception that manger was a nice sort of romantic word for stable.  “Look at my old family manger scene with Mary and Joseph.” No, only the baby would fit in the roughhewn wooden feeding trough, usually intended for cattle and sheep. No crib for a bed.)

Authors Mario Seiglie and Tom Robinson begin by reminding us how the King James Version of the Bible has dominated the language and imagery of the Christmas story, and  that a little suspicion is in order.  The KJV uses lots of old fashioned words (swaddling), has lots of mistakes and sometimes portrays first century Palestine as the English countryside.  

Then they do some word study.  In all other places, the KJV translates the Greek word “kataluma” as “guest room.” Only here it is “inn.”  When they do refer to an “inn” it’s a completely different Greek word.   And the problem of overbooking?  Translations vary – some say “no room,” others “no space or place,” ie it was not necessarily a single room, but “space” for the family.

The authors studied what travel was like in those days, as well as housing and birthing patterns.  Turns out there probably weren’t little charming roadside inns with individual rooms in Palestine.   And even if there were, not in backwaters like Bethlehem, far from any Roman roads.  Since they went to this town because Joseph was from the house and lineage of David, which was centered in Bethlehem, why weren’t they saying with family, as middle eastern hospitality required?  And even if they had been forced to stay in someone’s barn, would this be how the birth happened, with no other women, kinswomen present?

OK, so read the article if you want more convincing.  Basically they point out that domestic architecture of the time had an entrance area or first floor where the animals were kept, to warm the house and keep the animals safe from being stolen.  And a “guest room” (extra sleeping space) upstairs or in the back.  But since it was census time, there were lots of relatives in town, and that extra room in the back was full, there was no space in it.   (“There was no space in the guest room.”)   Folks did not sleep in separate rooms, but together in one room.  So Mary and Joseph stayed down in the first floor with the warm animals and the feeding trough; there was room there for the family. 

(And in this larger warm room there would have been space for the other women who would certainly have helped with the birth of this child of a local family.)

So, does this revised nativity architecture change our ideas about the incarnation?  From “no room in the inn” to “let’s make room in the entrance/stable room?”

-Mary and Joseph were not solo lone out of town travelers.  Joseph was part of a big and honored family in this town.  We tend to picture them as special, heroic, but they were just folks in a crowd.  (That reminds me of Jesus’ humanity and ordinariness.)

-They were probably poor, could not have afforded a private room even if it had been available.  But they had family in town, that’s probably where they stayed.  (This reminds me of his solidarity with all poor, and that often the poor have tight family connections.)

-They were welcomed in, not shunned or ignored. We tend to make them victims of overcrowding or low status or just general Christian victimization themes – why do they hate us?  Mary most likely had birthing coaches and midwives and kinswomen to clean up. (The theological point is the welcome, not the overbooked inn.  There’s always room.  And coaches.)

-Their society was so much more communal and community oriented than ours.  Not to romanticize that, just acknowledge that there was less privacy, more support. (See above.)

“So Mary brought forth (how about “gave birth to”) her first born child, wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in the feeding trough, because they were in the warm stable entrance where there was room, not in the guest room in the back, which was full.”

So rebuild your crèche scenes.  And add in lots more women.

Copyright © 2015 Deborah Streeter

Fictional Houses

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

“Upon the face of this aged queen of French cathedrals, beside every wrinkle we find a scar. ‘Tempus edax, homo edacior;’ which I would fain translate thus: ‘Time is blind, but man is stupid.’”

“Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord.”  “A dreary name.”  “But not a dreary place at present, my lord.”

I read Charles Dickens’ Bleak House last week.  Since I write in these columns about building and buildings, I couldn’t help but notice that the novel’s buildings, especially the eponymous title house, are not just sets, but major characters in the story.  This got me thinking about fictional houses.

My quotes above are from Rebecca, by Daphne de Maurier, Notre Dame de Paris, by Victor Hugo, and Bleak House. 

Victor Hugo’s massive novel Notre Dame de Paris (only in the English translation was the title changed to The Hunchback of Notre Dame) (1829) is credited with being the first novel to have a building as a major character, some might say the major character.  The cathedral is the setting for almost all the action, (except the “greve”, the plaza outside the Hotel de Ville, so called, whence the French word for “strike,” because it is a common site for public protest.)  But the church is also a dramatic force in and of itself; the cathedral is an actor -  inspiring, punishing, embracing, rejecting, redeeming all the characters. 

When Hugo wrote the book, the cathedral had been both neglected and modified.  It was falling down, and to Hugo’s horror, clear glass windows had replaced the stained glass, to let in more light.   He condemned these modifications and neglect, and his very popular novel inspired a move to restore and preserve the great building.

Spoiler alert: I’m going to reveal the endings of Rebecca and Bleak House.  These are two great books – stop reading this right now and go read the novels – the endings are tremendous.

Manderly is a magical beautiful house on the Cornwall coast, where our narrator lives with her new husband.  But she can never forget that the first Mrs. De Winter, Rebecca, lived and died there.  In the novel’s last scene, Manderley burns down, thanks to the treachery of the hated Mrs. Danvers, ever loyal to her first mistress, Rebecca and ever cruel to our unnamed heroine.

In Bleak House our heroine Esther, orphaned and of indeterminate class, (like de Maurier, Dickens uses her as a narrator of about half the book, in an interesting style choice) at the end becomes mistress of Bleak House, but not, as expected, by marrying her noble guardian Mr. Jardyce, the home’s owner.  Instead, he lovingly and secretly builds her a whole different house, which he also calls Bleak House, so she can be happy and marry the adorable Mr. Woodward instead of him.

These three are a pretty random sample of fictional buildings (you can find various lists of greatest homes in literature, including here) but here are some first impressions:

- Many fictional houses are spooky or dangerous or get destroyed in the end.  Bleak House (with its scary title that put me off for years) is an exception – it’s an odd but happy home, and the book also ends happily for almost everyone.  The new Bleak House is a symbol of new possibility and hope for Esther and her true love.  Sort of rare in fiction.

- Maybe it’s because none of my three examples are contemporary, and are all northern European, but the buildings are all really cold.  Lots of scenes where they get the maid to lay a fire or they welcome in a cold traveler in the night.  I think I should read more fiction from the southern hemisphere.

- Also they are all pretty big, with lots of places to hide.  Important plot twists depend on overhearing conversations from a hidden closet or hallway, hiding in the dark.  Does good fiction require enclosed space to create dramatic tension?

- One of the cool things about Hugo’s Notre Dame is that at least two characters actually live in the church, Quasimodo and Frollo, the Archdeacon.  It’s not just a public building, but a home.  For me at least, there’s something intriguing about being able to sleep and eat in a tiny room (tucked away in spooky high corners) in a massive mysterious cathedral.  Like Bleak House and Manderley, Notre Dame, with its secret homes, holds many secrets.  In all three, the main characters either keep the secrets, or are condemned by them.

- I confess I have a set of sort of stock sets that I use in my imagination when I read about fictional houses – the mansion, the farmhouse, the suburban home.  All are roughly based on real homes I’ve known (my grandparents’ grand home, a 19th century farmhouse I lived in in upstate New York one year, my own suburban New Jersey home.)  So the brothers in Steinbeck’s East of Eden and the grim characters in Jane Smiley novels and Willa Cather’s Nebraska farmers all sit around the same kitchen table eating their big farm breakfasts.  Gatsby’s parties and Mr. Darcy’s receptions look strangly like where I had Christmas at my grandparents. 

- Anyone out there have other favorite fictional homes?  Would you like to live in Bleak House or Manderley?  Me, I’d take a secret room in Notre Dame.  Just make it far away from the bells.

Copyright © 2015 Deborah Streeter