exposed brick

i have been to the dentist twice in two weeks, and will go back again this week. check up, step one of crown, and next week, step two of crown. ick. the good news is, i love my dentist's office. the people are great too, but i really do literally love the office.

it is in the middle of downtown oakland. from the outside, it is a non-descript store front with a very small sign. but, when you walk in, the space is warm and inviting. it is a mix of textures, and open and closed space. sitting in the dentist chair, i got to look (when i wasn't looking at the tv) at an exposed brick wall. on either side of me were standard office walls, but they only went up eight feet or so. after that, the space opened up into a second story criss-crossed by beams and capped off with a ceiling painted with a blue sky and scattered with skylights to allow as much natural, anti-institutional light to reach those nervous in their dental chairs. maybe space doesn't have this effect on everyone, but it certainly made my visit to the dentist much more pleasant.

looking at the exposed brick, i was recalling my favorite patch of exposed brick... in my cozy house in cincinnati. it was a re-develop by a community development corporation that strips the insides of the house down the to exterior walls, finishes the outside, finds a buyer, and works with the buyer to renovate the inside. our senior year of college, my most talented husband designed the inside of our first.

the fascinating part of this process was working with an existing shell, yet building something that reflecting who we were. the house was charming on its own. underneath the new walls as layers of wallpaper that date the different trends the structure has lived through. famous rookwood tiles surround an original fireplace. a second chimney, without a fire place, climbs the west end of the house. a stairway in the middle brings light from the third floor to the first. the rooms at the top of the stairs fit into the gables, filling the nooks and crannies with usable space under the sloped roof.

and that is just before the work was done. using all of this as resources to be transformed, my husband brought even more texture, even more light, even more life into the house. in the bedroom, he left the brick from the chimney exposed. by adding a bamboo floor and built in shelves, he created a room rich in texture that was hold together by the warm tones that the shelves, floor and wall shared. each room is like this--incorporating parts of the home's architecture that predated us into a new design that creates a richer environment for us to live in. without either the old or the new, there wouldn't be the dynamism that the house has.

so as i am pondering all of this in the dentist's chair, looking at my exposed brick wall and sweating the upcoming dental procedure, i wonder why it can be so hard for us to learn this lesson about the church. the architecture of our traditions are a rich resource that will inspire new, exciting, and fresh designs that allow a dynamic faith to live where nothing used to. this is what keeps the church alive across decades, centuries and millenia... the ability to incorporate the structures and details of the previous manifestation of the building into the new design of the community.

and yet, when the church is dying or dead, when it is on its last legs, nothing but a shell of what it once was, waiting for its next occupant, we hesitate to be creative. we hesitate to not just rebuild what was there before.

we should jump in, using what we have to inspire new, creative life that may only barely resemble the former manifestation of the church, but that will be no less glorious.

for awhile, i was pondering new church development (NCD) as my "call," after all, i am working for what was until recently an NCD and thrive on the space i am given to be creative and love making something from nothing. my artistic nature perhaps?

and yet, this rebuilding, this particular kind of architecture that requires the blending of the old and the new energizes me in a particular way. perhaps my call is to redevelopment/transformation/change making in existing communities... however you want to label it.