Goodness of Fit
I’m working along at this propagation box, a mini-greenhouse of sorts. It was a good way to practice fitting and joining wood. These corners used open mortise and tenon and dovetail joints. I’m just about ready to put the plexiglass windows into the frames and make the front door. This week I brushed on a mix of linseed oil, turpentine and pine tar as preservative finish, and I’ll probably brush another coat on, before a coating a paste wax. Then it will be a winter of looking for plants to take cuttings from.
I said I’d post some short pieces about Hugh of St Victor on ‘Houses, Honeycomb and Forests.’ To that list I’ll add stringed instruments…but not till winter. Summer hasn’t left much writing time, and I think some prudent patience indicates this time of apartness is sadly not passed. But I appreciate those who read, and welcome hearing from you.
But I can say that Hugh meditated at length on shape, size and joinery of the Arks in scripture. I have been reading his thoughts on the placement of doors and windows in Noah’s ark. A testimony to mystical spirituality being in the end a practical affair.
He shows a fine attention to how the ark might have been shaped. He spends some lines in considering how the shape would have fared at sea with a heavy cargo. He also considers how the door was fit properly into the over all architecture, and for practical purposes, that is, walking in and out. His meditation circles the sense of goodness of fit. This applies practical arenas such as gardening, joinery or the placement of people in tasks and offices.
Something for you to consider. In relationships, in vocation, in art or technical work, in ecological inter-relationships, in daily living, in church life…
What makes a good fit?
As he meditates carefully upon the joinery and framing of the ark, Hugh indicates, based on a source I haven’t been able to determine, that the ark included little places on the outside for animals like seals and otters that require both dry land and water to enter and leave as the ark floated. Like dog houses attached to the outside. His meditation extends to the details of what species need for their characteristic way of being within habitats. The ark makes room for moving between water and dry land. Seal and otters are just the beginning of an expansive list, and a challenge to consider how we shape the spaces and activities of life, home, work and church to be a good fit for inviting others into something meant to sustain life and carry it forward into time and terrain of generations after us.
Wind_in_the_Willows_(1913).djvu: s:Author:Kenneth Grahame, ill. Paul Bransomderivative work: Xxagile, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons