There was a crooked house...

Right now I am somewhere in England. (You don't need to know where.) All I'm going to say is that I am in a thatched house, a house that was built around 1630.

Can you imagine that? The oak beams that form the skeleton of this amazing dwelling were first put into place nearly 400 years ago. And who knows how old were the trees from which they were formed? These wooden beams above my head could well be 1000 years old!

I love this house. I love the fact that no two rooms on this house are on the same level. I love the fact that actually nothing in this house is level... or upright. There are no perpendiculars; no horizontals. Everything sits at a weird and jaunty angle. As you make your way from one room to the other you almost feel as if you are seasick, or at least on a rolling ship. It is hard to move in a straight line. It is made all the harder by the fact that some of the ceilings are very low. I guess people in Shakespearean times were smaller than they are now.

I've stayed in this house before and know exactly what it is like when you crack your head off an oak beam... several times. That's why now I walk around in a semi-foetal position... just in case.

Sometimes I feel like a hobbit.

What I like most about this house is that it has no straight lines. I have a good eye for the perpendicular. I hate to see a picture hung squint on a wall. But here it wouldn't matter because the walls are not straight. The whole house is a sort of living, moving thing. It feels organic and natural, not mechanical, nor clinical, nor man-made.

Of course, when you think about it, there are very few straight lines in the nature. Even the horizon is a curve. So this house feels like a part of the natural world, rather than a construction of human beings, although, in fact, that is precisely what it is. I marvel also at that. We have our wonderful new technologies and feats of civil engineering but how many 'ordinary' houses built now will still be standing in 400 years time?

I've commented before on our need to work in harmony with nature rather than always trying to shape it to our ends. This is something that is becoming ever more vital as we see the effects of some of our previous misadventures and exploitations of the natural world. (I happen to believe that climate change is a reality and that recent floods, not too far from here, are part of the pattern.)

I also think that life itself rarely happens in straight lines. Even the paths that God may lead us on are often long and winding roads rather than straight and wide motorways. It's what makes life interesting and challenging.