The House of Cards

From Menletter October 2008

By Tim Baehr

My wife was reading a book in which a cathedral burns to the ground. How could a stone structure burn to the ground? Ann speculated that the roof, being of heavy wood timbers, would eventually cave in, large pieces smashing the stonework like so many battering rams.

We found out later that the roof of a large stone cathedral is an integral part of the building's structure; the supporting beams not only hold up the roof but keep the walls in place. Once the timbers fall, the walls buckle, and the whole thing comes tumbling down.

Like a house of cards.

We usually think of a house of cards as a temporary structure, erected with infinite patience. Its structural integrity involves a delicate balance between geometry and gravity. Any outside force - a trembling hand, a wandering cat, a slamming door, or an errant puff of wind - can bring it down. The house of cards: a metaphor for any flimsy structure, physical, conceptual, or metaphysical.

Cathedrals, on the other hand, were intended to be around forever. They're made of sterner stuff. But they are the result, like a house of cards, of a delicate balance between geometry and gravity. The various arches and buttresses are designed to transfer and redirect weight toward the Earth at the same time as their walls and spires direct our attention to Heaven. Heaven and Earth: two seeming eternities, or as close as we mortals can get to them.

But with the right outside influence - a fire, an artillery blast, or even the passage of time - a cathedral will crumble. A cathedral is a flimsy house of cards, just on a grander scale of time and materials.

We try to build our lives around structures - concepts, ideas, relationships, material goods - that we hope will last a long time. Usually, these structures fall somewhere on the continuum toward the house of cards rather than the house of God.

The problem comes when we think that our lives are structured more toward the cathedral end of the continuum. Maybe the structures in our lives won't last forever, but at least they will endure for a long time - perhaps a lifetime.

What structures? How about our job or vocation - our marriage - our home - our health - our financial security - our political allegiances - our religion - our philosophies. Some of us put so little thought and care into these essential structures of our lives that a small thing - the equivalent of a trembling hand, a slamming door, a wandering cat, an errant puff of wind - can bring them down. Others put more thought and care into building and protecting these structures, sometimes a lot, sometimes obsessively. But we're still subject to the equivalent of a fire, an artillery blast, or the passage of time. A major illness wipes out our savings. A sudden job loss threatens our financial stability and maybe our marriage. A marital infidelity threatens our home and job. Death of a loved one, and a subsequent moral crisis, threatens our religion.

The changes - the puffs of wind and the artillery blasts alike - are inevitable. How do we get into trouble? No matter how casually or carefully we order our lives, most of us operate under the illusion that nothing will ever change. We may pay lip service to the impermanence of all things, but deep down we act and think as if everything, like a diamond in a De Beers ad, is forever. And to make sure they last, we hold on to them for dear life. Why else would we be so surprised and dismayed when things change?

So what do we do? We might as well give up, right? Well, no.

We can cherish what we have without clinging. When we hold more lightly the things we love, that doesn't mean we love them less intensely, or that we should never grieve their loss. Losing something or someone that we cherish is devastating enough. If we have grasped something too tightly, however, the sense of loss can be magnified and prolonged. Grief over loss can paralyze us for a while. Maybe that's nature's way of keeping us still so some internal healing can take place. But if the object of our love has been wrested from a grasp that was too tight, we may also hold on to the paralysis too long. Then we will have lost not only the object of our love, but ourselves as well.

Also, we can realize that with loss comes change, and with change can come new opportunity. The builder of the house of cards, the builder of a cathedral, the builder of a life begins with nothing but unformed matter and ideas. The collapse caused by chance events is a force that returns a part of our lives to the unformed state. The sense of chaos can be overwhelming at first, until we begin to sort through the real or psychological rubble.

Sometimes nothing is left but memories. Sometimes enough pieces are left that we can reassemble them. Sometimes we can start over with new materials. Sometimes we have to abandon the enterprise. But we nearly always have some things that don't crumble: our ability to think, plan, and act; our capacity for love and relationship; our companions on the journey. We may also, in our loss, have received the gift of wisdom and compassion.

The longer we live, the more opportunities we'll have bid adieu to what we have lost. Depending on circumstances, we may also be able to pick up the salvageable pieces, start over, and build something new. And equally impermanent.